Twenty-two health information technology notes:
1. Microsoft reported $30.6 billion in revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2019, which ended March 31. This represents a 14 percent increase year over year, according to its financial statement issued April 24.
2. The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint April 17 in federal court against Surescripts, a health information network focused on e-prescriptions, alleging the company used illegal tactics to maintain monopolies over two e-prescribing markets.
3. AliveCor, the Mountain View, Calif.-based artificial intelligence and medtech company, has received FDA clearance for two more analyses on its AI-powered KardiaMobile electrocardiogram (ECG) device.
4. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, hinted on Twitter that news from Neuralink, the neurotechnology company he founded in 2016, is imminent.
5. Blockchain leader IBM was granted a patent for mobile data sharing through blockchain technology.
6. Electronic giant Samsung has been rumored to be creating its own blockchain network and cryptocurrency.
7. Watertown, Mass.-based health IT software company athenahealth will lay off nearly 4 percent of its global workforce.
8. Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke about the tech giant's continued push into the healthcare space and the importance of using technology to monitor health in a conversation at the inaugural Time 100 Summit in New York City on April 23.
9. Pythonic AI, an artificial intelligence-powered medical records startup, was awarded $85,000 in seed funding from Northwestern Mutual.
10. Meredith Whittaker, a research scientist at New York City's NYU, an expert in the ethics of artificial intelligence and the head of Google's Open Research Group, wrote in a letter to other Google employees that she is facing retaliation from the company after helping organize a walkout in November 2018.
11. A U.S. District Court judge in San Jose, Calif., on Monday granted the request of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to put off setting a trial date.
12. In recent years, Google has invested what is estimated to be billions of dollars into healthcare innovation, focusing especially on artificial intelligence-powered solutions.
13. Amazon Alexa will launch a skill this summer that can connect users with a live, human therapist.
14. Ancestry, the Lehi, Utah-based online genealogy company, is readying an initial public offering.
15. Construction on the latest phases of Cerner's $4.5 billion campus in Kansas City, Mo., is moving forward.
16. Executives at health technology startups credit their social missions as a large contributor to their increase in recruiting talent from tech giants like Facebook and Google.
17. Genealogy company Ancestry is in the process of removing a commercial that depicted a slave-era theme.
18. Healthcare technology solutions provider Nasco is teaming up with Express Scripts and three other providers to form a blockchain coalition, known as Coalesce Health Alliance.
19. Haven, the joint health venture between JPMorgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon, will open an office in New York City to recruit prospects.
20. Vonage, a cloud and information technology services provider, released a new version of its application programming interface platform to support healthcare organizations' communications with patients.
21. Redox, an interoperability startup founded by Epic engineers, received $33 million in a new round of financing.
22. IBM has discontinued the development and sales of its Watson for Drug Discovery product due to poor financial performance.