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The Obama administration took vendors of electronic health records to task for making it costly and cumbersome to share patient information and frustrating a $30 billion push to use digital records to improve quality and cut costs. The report, by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, listed a litany of complaints it has received about vendors allegedly charging hefty fees to set up connections and share patient records; requiring customers to use proprietary platforms; and making it prohibitively expensive to switch systems. (Beck, 4/10)

The Food and Drug Administration has announced a new program that will bring medical devices for life-threatening conditions to the market faster by shortening the up-front review process. On April 15, the agency will launch an “Expedited Access Program” for device makers seeking to bring the products to market, particularly those for unmet medical needs. The program will rely heavily on data collected once the products are commercially available. (Gustin, 4/9)

At the National Institutes of Health’s wooded campus northwest of Washington, America’s top medical researchers work in state-of-the-art labs to find a cure for cancer, map the brain and care for patients with Ebola. If they want to leave, though, to meet with scientists around the world at scientific and medical conferences, they spend their time doing paperwork instead. (Edney, 4/9)