Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Saturday, October 03, 2015

Weekly Overseas Health IT Links -3rd October, 2015.

Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
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High-profile breaches drive data security spending to $75B

Posted on Sep 25, 2015
By Bernie Monegain, Editor-at-Large
Global spending on information security will reach $75.4 billion in 2015, an increase of 4.7 percent over 2014, according to analyst firm Gartner.
Driving the spending are government initiatives, increased legislation and high-profile data breaches.
Security testing, IT outsourcing, and identity and access management present the biggest growth opportunities for technology providers.
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Medjacking: The newest healthcare risk?

Posted on Sep 24, 2015
By Mahmood Sher-Jan, Executive vice president and general manager, RADAR business unit of ID Experts
In early August, Popular Science reported an FDA safety warning against an infusion pump used in hospitals. According to the FDA, a type of pump used to administer IV fluids is vulnerable to cyber-attack, potentially putting patients' lives at risk. The article points out that, in an episode of the TV series Homeland, hackers killed the U.S. vice-president by hacking and disabling his pacemaker.
While that kind of attack is a great plot device for a TV drama (and makes medical device security an entertaining topic for Popular Science), the wider security threats posed by medical devices are both more mundane and potentially more destructive. Healthcare information is being exposed in more places every day, creating new risks for patients, providers, payers, and other organizations. In this article, I'll look at how medical devices fit into the risk profile.
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EMR-based model predicts patients' healthcare needs 6 months out

September 24, 2015 | By Susan D. Hall
Using data from HealthInfoNet, Maine's health information exchange (HIE), researchers have created an electronic medical record-based online risk model to predict the healthcare resources patients would need six months out.
Such predictions can help health organizations better plan care, and are vital in the shifting U.S. healthcare payment system, according to an article published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
The researchers are touting success with the model after testing it at both the individual patient level and population level. The analysis involved aggregated data from more than 1 million patients about their care from the preceding 12 months.
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Report: Healthcare more susceptible to privacy attacks than other industries

September 25, 2015 | By Dan Bowman
The global healthcare industry is much more susceptible to hacking and other privacy attacks, according to a new report.
The report, published by Raytheon | Websense Security Labs, notes that compared to the average industry, healthcare entities are plagued by 340 percent more incidents. What's more, the industry is 400 percent more likely to be impacted by advanced malware attacks and 74 percent more likely to be impacted by phishing schemes, according to the report.
The authors also note that so far in 2015, nearly 84 percent of all "Dropper incidents"--in which malware is deposited via open "backdoor" channels to electronic systems--have occurred in the healthcare industry.
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Iodine’s new antidepressant tracking app sets sights on postpartum depression

By: Jonah Comstock | Sep 24, 2015        
Iodine, the crowdsourced drug review startup that launched last year, is continuing to focus on antidepressants. Three weeks ago, the company launched an iOS app called Start to help users document their experience with antidepressants, and today the company announced a partnership with Postpartum Progress, a nonprofit that supports women with postpartum depression.
“Start is our mobile health program designed to help people track their experience with an antidepressant and determine if it’s working for them as fast as possible,” the company wrote in a blog post. “It helps people know what to expect from a medication, and also helps them remember to take it. For those who feel their medication isn’t working – which could be as many as half, judging by medical research – we help them talk to their doctor about options.”
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Top Challenges to Analytics in Healthcare? Not Technology

SEP 23, 2015 6:02pm ET
A variety of challenges stand in the way of successfully implementing analytics in healthcare organizations. Not surprisingly, the top issues don’t always involve technology.
This finding became clear in a study conducted by the Healthcare Center of Excellence this summer, which sought to determine what are perceived to be the top challenges facing analytics.
The study reveals the importance of executive leadership skills in bringing about support of analytics and the extent to which findings from analytic efforts are incorporated into how organizations change and adapt. This aspect of leadership, while learnable, needs to happen quickly if organizations want to achieve the desired incomes from their forays into analytics.
Methodology of the Study
During a workshop at Health Data Management’s Healthcare Analytics Symposium, held in Chicago in July, participants were asked what they believe to be the top challenges they face in implementing analytics at their healthcare organization. They each were asked to identify as many as five challenges they face, and then were put into groups to develop three solutions to overcome those challenges.
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Program Helps Patients with Undiagnosed Diseases

SEP 24, 2015 7:36am ET
An online patient application portal funded by the National Institutes of Health now is live to help diagnose patients who suffer from conditions that even skilled physicians have been unable to diagnose despite extensive clinical investigation.
Part of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN), the portal replaces what had previously been a paper and mail application process. Patients accepted into the program are seen by researchers and physicians from an array of medical specialties.
“We have seven clinical sites that are spread across the country and to make it easier for patients we created this online application system,” says Anastasia Wise, program director of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Division of Genomic Medicine and co-coordinator of UDN. “We want to be able to help improve the level of diagnosis and care for these patients that haven’t been able to receive a diagnosis yet.”
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Study: Commercial EHR use increases ED task-shifting, poses safety hazard

September 21, 2015 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
Switching from a homegrown electronic health record system to a commercial one in a hospital's emergency department greatly increased the frequency of task-switching by physicians, which can have a negative impact on patient safety, according to a study published recently in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
The researchers, from MedStar Health in the District of Columbia, and elsewhere, conducted a quasi-experimental study in an urban tertiary care academic emergency department with 90,000 annual patient visits, observing 14 physicians minute by minute to record their time allocation in five categories: use of a computer, verbal communication, time in patient room, time on paper and other. The study was conducted in three phases: prior to the transition from the homegrown EHR to the commercial one; during the transition; and three to four months after the transition.
Not surprisingly, they found an initial increase in computer-related tasks during the transition, which eventually returned to the baseline.
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Docs are paying more for technology than ever before

Posted on Sep 24, 2015
By Erin McCann, Managing Editor
Medical practices across the U.S. are now spending a lot more on technology this year, up nearly 34 percent from four years ago, according to a new MGMA report.
The annual report published by Medical Group Management Association, which represents physician practice groups nationwide, shows that just from last year alone, physician-owned multi-specialty groups reported nearly a 12 percent increase in technology-related operating costs. Overall, those costs tallied to $20,693 per full-time physician in 2014. This uptick, as the report suggests, is due in large part to the federal meaningful use program and its mandate to switch to digital records.
When looking back just four years ago, that number has shot up nearly 34 percent, according to survey results, which were collected from physician multi specialty practices across the U.S. 
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Asking the question

Thomas Meek visits a GP surgery in Romford that is trying out AskMyGP; an online access service that is trying to prevent unnecessary appointments; an idea right in line with local ‘vanguard’ work.
Among the many health messages that the different political parties have pushed in the past few years, one that seems to have been consistent across the board is that of patient power.
The likes of Jeremy Hunt, Andy Burnham and Norman Lamb have followed in the footsteps of their predecessors in the 1990s and 2000s in calling for patients to be at the centre of their care, with more control and, crucially, more choice.
One practice trying out a new way of working is Rydal Group Practice, part of the NHS Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Group in east London.
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East London exchanges health information

Rebecca McBeth
21 September 2015
Barts Health NHS Trust is exchanging patient information in real time with more than 100 practices across East London via Cerner’s Health Information Exchange.
Barts Health was the first English trust to go live with Cerner’s HIE in late 2013, with GP information available via a button embedded in its Millennium electronic patient record system. Usage has hit up to 1800 views a month.
It is now available at well over 100 GP practices in the East London area, including all 36 in Tower Hamlets and 57 out of 60 in Newham. Another 26 in Waltham Forest have also recently gone live.
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Care.data delayed by two years

Thomas Meek
22 September 2015
Final approval for the ‘pathfinder’ stage of the controversial care.data programme to go ahead will not be given until early next year.
This means the patient data collection scheme will be delayed by at least two years after the patient information campaign was first launched in early 2014.
A number of issues need to be addressed by NHS England and final authorisation for patient data to be collected now sits with National Data Guardian for health and care Dame Fiona Caldicott.
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Electronic data-sharing errors could compromise patient privacy

September 24, 2015 | By Susan D. Hall
As electronic data-sharing becomes more common in healthcare, the potential grows not just for hacking, but for errors that compromise patient safety and privacy.
For instance, in one case highlighted in a report from Bloomberg, a mother's prescriptions became known to her daughter through an insurance database mixup. The mother had not told her daughter about the prescriptions, and it created a difficult conversation between the two about the mother's health.
In a complaint to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the mother argued that her privacy had been violated. But because the insurance subcontractors did not reveal the mother's prescriptions to the daughter--she figured it out on her own--HHS's Office for Civil Rights found no wrongdoing, according to Bloomberg.
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Wed Sep 23, 2015 4:20pm EDT
Related: Health

Telehealth visits may be an option after surgery

By Andrew M. Seaman
(Reuters Health) - People may happily, and safely, forgo in-person doctors' visits after surgery by opting instead for talking with their surgeons by phone or video, suggests a small study of U.S. veterans.
Most patients preferred the virtual visits and the doctors didn't miss any infections that popped up after surgery, the researchers report in JAMA Surgery.
"These kinds of methods are really important in the climate we’re in now," said lead author Dr. Michael Vella, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. "So I think anything you can do to save money, see more patients and improve access to care is really important."
There is interest in so-called telehealth to increase access to healthcare while also decreasing the costs associated with traveling to office visits, Vella and his colleagues write.
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Hong Kong leading the way on digital government

The Hong Kong government is on the forefront of digital government, backing its push into apps, IoT, and digital IDs with a modernised legal framework.
By Corinne Reichert | September 24, 2015 -- 05:07 GMT (15:07 AEST) | Topic: Government : Asia
Hong Kong has been staying ahead of the technology curve by working on digitising its departments and agencies since the 1990s, according to former CIO of the Hong Kong government Daniel Lai, with the government now focusing on apps, digital IDs, e-health, city-wide free Wi-Fi, the Internet of Things (IoT), digital open data, and digital inclusion.
Speaking at Telstra's Vantage 2015 conference in Melbourne on Wednesday, Lai, now the interim vice president (administration) at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the government's digital strategy involved initially building out infrastructure, then adapting to internet usage, and most recently staying abreast of trends in mobility and cloud computing.
"In the earlier days, in 1998, it very much focused on building and introducing the ICT infrastructure necessary to support a digital city. Then, in the early 2000s, it was a matter of using internet to support government services to deliver public services through internet," he said.
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How many health apps actually matter?

Posted on Sep 23, 2015
By Jack McCarthy, Contributing Writer
Apps are all the rage in healthcare and pretty much everywhere else. Despite so much buzz about consumers using mobile healthcare apps, however, the options proving useful are few and far between.
With some 165,000 health-related apps available, in fact, a mere 36 comprise nearly 50 percent of downloads. Not to be confused with 36 percent, that's a total of 36 applications, according to a study by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics that analyzed 26,000 apps. 
Two key data points illustrate how almost all of the apps fall short: Just 10 percent can connect to a device or sensor while a mere 2 percent sync into providers' systems, IMS found, and that functionality could greatly improve both accuracy and convenience of data collection.
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BI don’t care if the weather ain’t fine

It feels as if winter has come early this year, but for the NHS it starts officially on 1 December, when trusts start sending their daily situation reports to NHS England. Many trusts will ‘hand crank’ these reports; but some are looking for electronic solutions – and for data that will help them to predict and prepare for likely demand. Daloni Carlisle reports.
Winter is fast approaching and acute trust informatics departments up and down the country will be gearing up to send their daily situation reports to NHS England starting on 1 December.
For many, this will be an onerous task that will involve pulling together a daily return with information about capacity that includes bed occupancy and availability, demand including emergency department attendances and emergency admissions, and any ED closures or diverts.
“Responsibilities around sit reps creates a significant overhead for informatics departments,” says Dr Mark Davies, medical director of MedeAnalytics. Often these rely heavily on manual processes to the point that Davies refers to them as “hand cranked”.
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HIEs: building connections one provider at a time

Jeff Rowe
Sep 23, 2015
Between Congressional inquiries into the state of health IT interoperability and ONC’s 10-year plan, there’s certainly been no shortage of discussion of how best to ensure that disparate IT systems might ultimately “talk to” each other.
But meanwhile, Scott Mace, of HealthLeaders Media, recently pointed out, health information exchanges are moving toward essentially the same goal as they expand their capabilities and increasingly connect providers who, not so long ago, were still working in silos.
For example, in Pennsylvania, “the Keystone Health Information Exchange (KeyHIE) connects 20 hospitals, 239 physician practices, and 30 home health locations primarily located in 31 counties in central, northern, and northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as 69 long-term care facilities spread throughout the state.”
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What Retail Telemedicine Means for Health Care Providers

by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Direct-to-consumer retail health options are fast-growing in the U.S. health ecosystem. CVS Health brought three telemedicine vendors to its pharmacy brick-and-mortar stores. CVS also acquired Target's pharmacies, expanding its retail health footprint. Rite Aid has added HealthSpot kiosks to its pharmacies, while Walgreens expanded its relationship with MDLive. And, Cox Cable acquired Trapollo to bring remote health monitoring into subscribers' homes.
Coupled with the growing supply side of telemedicine vendors, the latest National Business Group on Health survey found that most large employers plan to expand the telemedicine services they offer. Three in four large employers (74%) plan to offer telemedicine to workers in 2016, a dramatic increase from 48% in 2015. This trend is part of business' continued challenge of bending corporate cost curves for health and designing the health benefit to deliver lower-cost, convenient on-ramps to health care for employees looking for lower-cost services paid out by their own high-deductible health plans.
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In Telemedicine Recommendations, ACP Advises Caution

Alexandra Wilson Pecci, for HealthLeaders Media , September 23, 2015

The American College of Physicians outlines when and how telemedicine can be used appropriately in primary care and what's needed to make it better.

Telemedicine is good, when it's an appropriate use of the technology, but there are still some hurdles to jump along the way to make it as good as it can be.
Those are the main takeaways from the American College of Physicians' position paper outlining its policy recommendations for using telemedicine in primary care settings.
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ONC unveils draft 2016 Interoperability Standards Advisory for comment

September 23, 2015 | By Katie Dvorak
A draft 2016 Interoperability Standards Advisory has been released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and reflects updates based on input obtained from the public as well as the Health IT Standards Committee.
The new draft advisory is open for public comment, and will be altered during the comment period. A final advisory will be published at the end of the year, according to ONC.
Discussion on the scope of the 2015 advisory was wide-ranging and has little consistency, FierceEMR previously reported.
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Facing an EHR update? Here are 5 steps for success

Written by Phil Stravers, Partner | ICE Technologies, Inc. | September 23, 2015
Updating your community hospital's EHR system (or any technology system, for that matter) requires a solid strategy and a methodical process.
If you just "go at it" with a generic plan, you could spend big and still end up with problems that affect patient care, workflow and revenue.
Don't let your next update grind operations to a halt. Before you execute, print out these five success steps and tape them to your monitor.
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'Countless' Patients Harmed By Wrong or Delayed Diagnoses

Evidence is incomplete, but still shows most patients will be impacted by the problem at some point in their lives.

By Steve Sternberg Sept. 22, 2015 | 11:25 a.m. EDT
The Institute of Medicine on Tuesday released a ground-breaking report calling wrong or delayed diagnoses a vast "blind-spot" in U.S. healthcare and blaming them for harming countless patients each year.
The report, called "Improving Diagnosis in Health Care," asserts that diagnostic errors occur daily in every health care setting nationwide, yet they have never been adequately studied. No one knows how many people suffer from misdiagnoses or delays that affect their care.
Despite the sketchy evidence, the authors conclude that "most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences."
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Patient engagement tips from the pros

Posted on Sep 22, 2015
By Erin McCann, Managing Editor
Looking to move forward with a patient engagement initiative? Best to talk with the folks who have been ahead of the game for some time.
Geisinger Health System's Chanin Wendling is one of those people. Wendling, the director of Geisinger in Motion in the applied research and clinical informatics division, has been spearheading patient engagement initiatives since late 2010.
We're talking using iPads, text messaging appointment reminders, patient portals and mobile apps for lumbar spine surgeries, all with the common goal of improving care by better connecting with patients.
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Final Federal Health IT Strategic Plan Moves Beyond EHRs

SEP 22, 2015 7:54am ET
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on Monday released the final Federal Health IT Strategic Plan for 2015-2020, aimed at modernizing the nation’s health IT infrastructure beyond just electronic health records.
The plan results from collaboration between more than 35 federal offices, laying out the vision, goals, and actions that the government will pursue to achieve “high-quality care, lower costs, healthy population, and engaged individuals” through widespread use of all forms of health IT. Specifically, federal agencies are looking to “expand the ability of individuals to contribute electronic health information that is personally relevant and usable to their care providers so that both can use it effectively in health planning.”
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Updated federal HIT strategic plan focuses on person-centered care

September 22, 2015 | By Dan Bowman
An updated version of the Department of Health and Human Services' federal health IT strategic plan will focus on ensuring care is more person-centered, federal officials said on a call Monday.
The plan, developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, represents the government's strategy through 2020 for improving the health and wellness of individuals through the use of health IT. It outlines four overarching goals, including:
  1. Advancing person-centered and self-managed care
  2. Transforming healthcare delivery and community health
  3. Improving research and innovation efforts
  4. Enhancing the national health IT infrastructure
National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo (pictured) called the plan a "shift" from the government's prior plan, released last December, in which electronic health record adoption by providers was a heavy focus.
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ONC releases final Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020

Posted on Sep 22, 2015
By Mike Miliard, Editor
Embracing a long-term vision for nationwide health information technology that 'puts the person at the center,' the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has finalized its strategy for the next five years.
The document represents an "action plan for federal partners, as they work to expedite high-quality, accurate, secure, and relevant electronic health information for stakeholders across the nation," writes National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo on the ONC website.
"The Plan's strategies for achieving this aim focus on making electronic information available so individuals can manage their health, providers can deliver high-quality care to their patients, public health entities and long-term services and supports can improve community health, and scientists and innovators can advance cutting-edge research and solutions."
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CRM Aims to Finish the Job EHRs Started

Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , September 22, 2015

A few pioneering healthcare providers have figured that because customer relationship management apps are so good at the people-oriented workflow details necessary for care coordination, the effort to customize CRM for healthcare would be worth it.

The more I look into the status of meaningful use—it's a source of distress—the more I find beleaguered care coordinators using notebooks, Excel spreadsheets, and sticky notes to keep track of risk-stratified populations.
The reasons why they are not using EHRs to do this are varied, but fall into two general categories:
  1. Too many EHRs either require care coordinators to adopt unfamiliar workflows.
  2. EHRs require too much time, effort, training and retraining to provide workflows which are sufficiently tailored to the provider's way of doing things, or to the workflows that make the most sense for care coordinators.
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5% of Patients Experience Diagnostic Error, Says IOM

John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media , September 22, 2015

An Institute of Medicine report estimates that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lives and that that the severity of these errors will "worsen as the delivery of healthcare and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity."

Diagnostic errors are a factor in 10% of patient deaths, account for as much as 17% of hospital adverse events, and are a leading driver of medical malpractice claims, according to a sweeping report released Tuesday by the Institute of Medicine.
The report, Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, calls diagnostic errors "a blind spot" in healthcare delivery that has been around for decades which persists across all care settings and harms "an unacceptable number of patients."
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Need to Address Diagnostic Errors is Urgent, IOM Says

SEP 23, 2015 7:28am ET
Diagnostic errors in healthcare are at epidemic proportions and causing serious safety concerns, yet the problem has received limited attention from the medical community, according to a core finding in an Institute of Medicine report on diagnostic errors released on Tuesday.
“Urgent change is warranted to address this challenge,” states the IOM report. “For decades, diagnostic errors—inaccurate or delayed diagno­ses—have represented a blind spot in the delivery of quality healthcare. Diagnostic errors persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients.”
Errors in diagnosis affect one in 20 patients annually, an estimated 12 million Americans, according the report, which concludes that “most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating conse­quences.”
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Commentary: Six Ways to Ease Healthcare Data Management

SEP 21, 2015 7:51am ET
The healthcare industry is struggling to redefine best practices in data management. To some extent external forces, such as hospital consolidation, government regulation and technology advancement are driving this change. 
Healthcare organizations struggling to better consolidate, organize and manage their structured and unstructured data may want to consider use of an enterprise clinical archive, a standards-based, centralized repository for all hospital data.  Let’s look at the six ways in which an enterprise archive can resolve data management challenges.
Improve Data Quality: An enterprise archive provides fully indexed patient data gathered from multiple disparate diagnostic applications. Consequently, when clinicians want to find specific patient information, powerful search tools make the process swift and straightforward. The archive environment is configured to enforce data quality rules on ingestion that can be maintained over time. And, as it’s built on and adheres to healthcare’s open data standards, the archive will use these standards to maintain data quality, including demographics and content synchronization.
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Developing your mHealth Strategy? This Guidance Can Help

SEP 21, 2015 7:42am ET
Providers, insurers and consumers trying to better understand the mobile health app market have a daunting task: There are more than 165,000 mhealth apps. Apple alone has about 91,000, which is more than double what it offered two years ago.
A 63-page report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics walks industry stakeholders through the availability and use of mHealth apps from the Apple and Google stores. Almost 25 percent of the apps target chronic care management, but in totality half of apps have limited functionality, primarily providing information, according to the report. And, only 2 percent of apps can communicate with a provider information system.
“One in 10 mHealth apps have the capability to connect to a device or sensor, which greatly improves the accuracy and convenience of data collection for mHealth apps,” report authors note. “Of the top mHealth apps, 65 percent connect to social media, underscoring the importance of this feature for consumer engagement.”
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Where are we headed, post-HITECH?

Posted on Sep 21, 2015
By Mike Miliard, Editor
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation surveys the state of a digitizing health system in a new report, taking stock of the meaningful use program's successes and limitations -- and forecasting emerging healthcare trends.
In the study, Health Information Technology in the United States, 2015: Transition to a Post-HITECH World, RWJF (along with researchers from Mathematica, Harvard School of Public Health and University of Michigan, School of Information) looks back on "highlights and milestones of the past eight years" – and tries to assess how well the HITECH stimulus program has positioned the industry for a challenging future.
Meaningful use has been both a boon and for adoption and something of a bother for many of the providers trying to keep pace with its mandates, the report shows.
"The most recently available survey data finds approximately three-quarters of U.S. nonfederal acute care hospitals have at least a basic electronic health
record system, according to RWJF. "While this represents a significant increase from the prior year, many fewer hospitals appear to be ready to meet Stage 2 meaningful use criteria and may be subject to penalties."
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RWJF: HITECH Act falls short of overall goals

September 21, 2015 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
The HITECH Act has helped initiate "significant" progress in the use of health IT, but has fallen short of its goal to create an efficient and effective healthcare system with the advanced use of health IT, according to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report.
The report, entitled Health Information Technology in the United States, 2015: Transition to a Post-HITECH World, found both successes and disappointments in HITECH and the Meaningful Use program. These include:
  • While HITECH was a key driver to the adoption of electronic health records, only 1,826 hospitals had successfully attested to Stage 2 of the program in 2014, far fewer than the 4,379 that attested previously to Stage 1. That indicates that providers were facing substantial challenges in meeting the more stringent requirements. Physician participation in the Program has declined in the past year.
  • Health information exchanges (HIEs) were operating in most states and could support the sharing of different kinds of data, but were faced with obstacles, such as the ability to hire and retain staff, disagreement on what "HIE" includes, privacy concerns and problems with financial sustainability.
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ATA Fall Forum: Experts Discuss How To Overcome Barriers to Telehealth

by Joe Infantino, iHealthBeat Senior Staff Writer Monday, September 21, 2015
WASHINGTON -- Telehealth has the potential to solve some of health care's most persistent problems -- high costs and access to care, in particular -- but concerns about reimbursement, licensure and standards stand in the way of realizing the technology's promise, stakeholders said at the American Telemedicine Association's 2015 Fall Forum last week.
"It's a new solution to old problems, but we can't innovate for the sake of innovation," ATA President Reed Tuckson said. Instead, these technologies "must deliver on quality and improve cost effectiveness so as to sustain access to care that meets the needs of people around the country."
Tuckson was among several speakers at ATA's 2015 Fall Forum in Washington, D.C., last week who highlighted telehealth's potential to improve health care, the barriers limiting adoption and the steps necessary to overcome those hurdles.
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Enjoy!
David.

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