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Dish Network’s bid for Sprint presents Dan Hesse and Co. with an interesting choice.

Analysts point out that Softbank has more than enough money to counter Dish’s $25.5 billion bid, but money aside Dish would make a much better strategic fit for Sprint. Softbank offers much-needed investment to the still struggling No. 3 U.S. wireless operator. But Dish doesn’t just bring cash; it’s got 4G spectrum and a huge pay TV network to boot.

Informa Telecoms & Media Principal Analyst Mike Roberts lays out all of the advantages of a Sprint-Dish marriage: “First and most importantly, Dish could combine its 2GHz LTE spectrum with the LTE spectrum of Sprint and Clearwire to build one of the strongest LTE spectrum portfolios in US, which would be the foundation for a powerful new competitor in the US telecoms market. Second, using Sprint’s newly-modernized mobile network would give Dish a cost-effective way to deploy LTE in its 2GHz spectrum and meet the FCC’s rollout requirements. Third, if the deal goes ahead, Dish and Sprint could quickly offer TV, broadband and mobile bundles to compete more effectively with larger integrated telecoms players such as Verizon and AT&T.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee will mark-up legislation on April 18 that would require police to obtain a warrant to search e-mails and other private online content.

Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, police only need a subpoena, issued without a judge's approval, to read emails that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old. Privacy advocates argue the law is woefully out of date and that police should need a judge-approved search warrant, based on probable cause, to view any private online messages. S.607, offered by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), would amend ECPA to require a search warrant regardless of how old the email is. "Safeguarding Americans’ privacy rights is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue— it is something that is important to all Americans, regardless of political party or ideology," Leahy said

Never before has the value proposition behind information technology investments in health care been so important.

A performance-based reimbursement landscape requires IT infrastructures that contain costs and boost quality. Three metrics in Title III of the 2010 Affordable Care Act -- value-based purchasing, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program and hospital acquired medical conditions -- establish a new paradigm for reimbursement at the federal level, where health care organizations must compete for a piece of the pie. This helps to ensure government is reimbursing for the best care available, but the smallest quality gap or error could impact a hospital’s performance ranking and, subsequently, payment.

Competition will likely get more intense if only those with perfect scores reap the benefits. Simply put, much is at stake for health care providers and there is little room for error. To meet the aggressive quality and cost metrics, IT infrastructures that are supported by clinical decision support applications and drive standardization of industry best practices must become a priority. Leveraging limited budget resources will depend on the way health care facilities use clinical decision support technology. That includes tailoring treatment plans for a specific patient and doctor through a combination of CDS tools -- including data-driven alerts, filtered referential information, order sets for specific diagnoses, care plans, surveillance technology and smart documentation forms.

National security threats are more diverse, interconnected and viral than at any time in history, the director of national intelligence said in a statement for the record delivered to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “This year, in content and organization, this statement illustrates how quickly and radically the world and our threat environments are changing,” James R. Clapper said in the statement’s introduction. At the top of the U.S. intelligence community’s 2013 assessment of global threats is cyber, followed by terrorism and transnational organized crime, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, counterintelligence and space activities, insecurity and competition for natural resources, health and pandemic threats, and mass atrocities. “This environment is demanding reevaluations of the way we do business, expanding our analytic envelope and altering the vocabulary of intelligence,” Clapper said in his statement. The 30-page statement, based on information complete as of March 7, also lists threats in terms of regions such as the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, East and South Asia, Russia and Eurasia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe. As the top-listed global threat, cyber is discussed in terms of increasing risk to U.S. critical infrastructure, the erosion of U.S. economic and national security, information control and Internet governance, and other areas.