Wearable sensors are expected to play a big role in healthcare in the coming years, according to Verizon, as data from these devices are integrated into patient electronic medical records. They offer a big-picture view of a patient's health, beyond a yearly checkup. These devices are also expected to play a major role as healthcare organizations look for new ways to engage patients electronically to meet new federal health IT requirements.

St. Jude Medical, Inc. announced the launch of the ILUMIEN III clinical trial on June 30. ILUMIEN III is a prospective, international, randomized trial evaluating the clinical benefits of the company's optical coherence tomography (OCT) guidance during stent implantation. The study will compare OCT-guided stent implantation to implantation guided by intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) or angiography alone, diagnostic tools that offer less resolution than OCT during intravascular assessments and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

A new document from the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) provides detailed guidance for clinicians on how to use echocardiography to see the full picture of the condition of patients with hypertension. The paper, Recommendations on the Use of Echocardiography in Adult Hypertension: A Report from the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) and the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) is a joint project between ASE and the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) and will appear in the July issue of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography (JASE).