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.
-----
HHS, HITRUST aim to prep health industry for cyber attacks
March 14, 2014 | By Ashley Gold
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) have announced they will be conducting monthly threat briefings, starting in April, in an expansion of industry cyber threat preparedness and education efforts.
An analysis of HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) assessments performed over the last year indicates progress has been made across various sizes of organizations, but mostly for larger organizations with annual revenues over $6 billion.
-----
Verizon Looks to Become Patient, Provider Identifier for Health Care
Thursday, March 13, 2014
March 5 --As health records become increasingly digitized, health-care organizations, particularly large hospital systems, are struggling to properly match patients to their electronic data and encourage patients to access that data online, Peter Tippett, chief medical officer and vice president of Verizon Health Solutions, the company's health IT division, told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 28.
Verizon is hoping that its universal identity technologies can solve the health-care industry's patient identification issues, Tippett said. Both problems, he said, have the same solution, a universal identity service that can authenticate and verify patients' identities using their smartphone or another mobile device.
-----
- March 13, 2014, 4:06 PM ET
Hospital Okays Google Glass in the Emergency Department
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has modified Google Glass wearable computers so they can be used to treat patients in its emergency department without running afoul of privacy regulations. Using software from a startup, the hospital ensures no data travels over Google’s servers, says Dr. John Halamka, the hospital’s CIO.
“We have total control of all data flowing to and from Glass,” said Mr. Halamka in an interview Thursday.
With Glass, physicians can call up patient data through voice commands and view it on the screen mounted on the device’s eyeglass frame. The setup lets physicians keep their hands free while treating patients.
-----
Wearable computing at BIDMC
Posted on Mar 12, 2014
By John Halamka, CareGroup Health System, Life as a Healthcare CIO
Over the past few months, Beth Israel Deaconess has been the pilot site for a new approach to clinical information technology, wearable computing.
In the Emergency Department, we’ve developed a prototype of a new information system using Google Glass, a high tech pair of glasses that includes a video camera, video screen, speaker, microphone, touch pad, and motion sensor.
Here’s how it works.
When a clinician walks into an emergency department room, he or she looks at bar code (a QR or Quick Response code) placed on the wall. Google Glass immediately recognizes the room and then the ED Dashboard sends information about the patient in that room to the glasses, appearing in the clinician’s field of vision. The clinician can speak with the patient, examine the patient, and perform procedures while seeing problems, vital signs, lab results and other data.
-----
Cyberattack alerts coming to healthcare
Posted on Mar 13, 2014
By Erin McCann, Associate Editor
If you're in charge of a healthcare organization's data privacy and security, listen up. You now have a new, valuable resource at your fingertips.
HITRUST, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, announced Thursday that it will conduct monthly cyber threat briefings and alerts for the healthcare industry. So, first, if there's a cybersecurity attack, you'll know about it; second, you'll get actionable data on recent, ongoing and prospective cyber threats and learn best-practices for combating them.
The briefings are slated to kick off in April and will be held online.
-----
HIE use results in fewer hospitalizations, cost savings
March 13, 2014 | By Ashley Gold
Using a health information exchange system may reduce hospitalizations from the emergency department and save money, according to a new study from Weill Cornell Medical College published this week in Applied Clinical Informatics.
As outlined in an announcement from Cornell, emergency department physicians are less likely to admit patients to the hospital when they have readily available electronic access to those patients' health records.
-----
EHR Spending Continues, But Jury Still Out on ROI
Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , March 13, 2014
As healthcare leaders continue to pour money into electronic health record systems, many (but not all) find that their return on investment remains elusive.
Of all the capital investments made by healthcare leaders, none appears more unproved than the move from paper to electronic health records. In the past decade, billions in public and private money, boosted by nearly $20 billion in federal incentives over the past three years, have been poured into EHRs. What has that money bought?
On Capitol Hill last summer, with healthcare's cost curve just barely starting to bend, patience was in short supply. Concerns about lack of interoperability among purchased EHRs mounted. Lawmakers grilled providers and vendors, seeking hard numbers on EHR return on investment—numbers that remain in short supply.
For their part, most healthcare leaders maintain the investment is worth it, pointing to a vast array of anecdotes and scattered studies showing the value of the EHR. In a few relatively isolated cases, they say, tangible ROI is achievable within five years. And yet others caution that true ROI requires even more patience and say the bulk of the rewards can take up to 10 years to achieve.
-----
UK Coroner Fingers NHS Computer System in Toddler’s Death
By Robert N. Charette
Posted 10 Mar 2014 | 20:36 GMT
The number of IT-related errors, ooftas, and deficiencies reported last week reverted back towards the mean from the previous week's overabundance. We start off this edition of IT Hiccups with a sad case of a child’s death in the UK. The tragedy is being attributed in part to the past effort to fully computerize the UK’s National Health Service.
According to the Bristol Post, a coroner in charge of the inquest into the death of Samuel Starr, aged three, indicated in a narrative verdict that, “Due to the failure of the [Royal United] hospital's outpatient booking system, there was a five month delay in Samuel being seen and receiving necessary treatment.” It is very rare for a coroner to criticize a hospital IT system so directly.
Samuel Starr was born with “complex congenital heart disease” in 2009. His parents were told at the time of his birth that Samuel would need several operations before he was five, and in fact, Samuel underwent an operation when he was nine months old. The Post reported that he made a good recovery, and was due to have regular checkups and further treatment at the Pediatric Cardiac Clinic at the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath. Samuel received a checkup in October 2010 and one in April 2011, at which time his parents were told by his doctor to schedule another in about nine months for a more extensive examination of his heart.
-----
Physicians' Concerns About Electronic Health Records: Implications and Steps Towards Solutions
- by Mark William Friedberg,
- F. Jay Crosson,
- Michael Tutty
March 12, 2014
Policy makers and professional organizations have become increasingly concerned about physician professional satisfaction. As in the managed care expansion of the 1990s, recent health reforms, including but not limited to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), have begun to have effects “in the exam room,” changing how patients, physicians, and allied health professionals interact. To better understand how these reforms are affecting patient care and other aspects of physicians' professional lives, we recently conducted an in-depth study of professional satisfaction using a combination of open-ended interviews and written surveys with physicians and other professionals in 30 practices (encompassing 55 distinct practice sites) across the United States.
-----
EHR Incentive Program Exceeds $22.5 Billion Payout Estimate
MAR 11, 2014
According to the latest figures from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the EHR incentive program has exceeded its total estimated payout of $22.5 billion.
CMS states in the January report that it has paid out a total of $20.937 billion in EHR incentives, with payments of $5.371 billion in 2011, $9.667 billion in 2012, and $5.896 billion in 2013. But these payments do not include another $1.942 billion to eligible hospitals in fiscal year 2014 so far, bringing the total to-date amount the program has paid to $22.78 billion.
-----
Data attacks on healthcare flying high
Posted on Mar 12, 2014
By Erin McCann, Associate Editor
In the realm of privacy and security, heeding snooping employees and encrypting portable devices isn't enough in healthcare these days. Criminal attacks on hospitals are on a huge upward trend, with a whopping 100 percent reported increase just from four years ago. That’s according to a new Ponemon Institute study released today.
This year, 40 percent of healthcare organizations have reported a criminal data attack. And, business associates who are not yet compliant with HIPAA in addition to those employees given the green light to use their unsecured devices certainly are not helping these numbers, say Ponemon officials.
The news isn't all bad, however. Data breaches have actually slightly declined in recent years, but it's still no number meriting celebration, as breaches continue to cost the industry a pretty penny, $5.6 billion annually to be exact.
-----
EHI Intelligence forecasts IT growth
10 March 2014 Lis Evenstad
NHS spending on IT will increase over the next five years in response to pressures on the health service, an EHI Intelligence report has found.
This year’s market sizing, forecast and trends report, which looks at IT spend across the UK, says trusts in England will need to invest in software as the National Programme for IT comes to an end, and they look to improve efficiency and quality in response to financial and regulatory challenges.
This will lead to increased spending on infrastructure, hardware and staff and – eventually – cloud services and outsourcing.
----
http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/nist-offers-recommendations-integrating-ehrs-workflow/2014-03-12
NIST offers recommendations for integrating EHRs into workflow
March 12, 2014 | By Susan D. Hall
A new report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides recommendations for EHR vendors and ambulatory care centers to improve the way EHRs are integrated into clinical workflow.
NIST used to workflow modeling tools as well as conversations with physicians and interdisciplinary teams to better understand the problem and possible solutions.
-----
Potential Data Breaches Most Significant Barrier to mHealth Adoption, Survey Finds
Healthcare IT professionals' greatest concern around mobile health technologies is the potential of a data breach, according to a survey of attendees of the HIMSS 2014 Annual Conference and Exhibition.
According to the survey, 45 percent of respondents reported the risk of data breach as the greatest barrier to mobile health adoption, followed by meeting regulatory and compliance requirements for the privacy and security of patient data, according to the report.
-----
Global Market for Electronic Health Records (EHR) Expected to Reach $22.3 Billion by the end of 2015, According to Accenture
February 24, 2014
Global Market for Electronic Health Records (EHR) Expected to Reach $22.3 Billion by the end of 2015, According to Accenture
U.S. market projected to reach $9.3 billion with 7.1 percent annual growth
U.S. market projected to reach $9.3 billion with 7.1 percent annual growth
ORLANDO; Feb. 24, 2014 – Despite slower-than-expected growth, the global market for electronic health records (EHR) is estimated to reach $22.3 billion by the end of 2015, with the North American market projected to account for $10.1 billion or 47 percent, according to research released by Accenture (NYSE:ACN) at the annual HIMSS Conference in Orlando.
-----
Can Wearable Tech Prevent Healthcare Errors?
3/11/2014 09:06 AM
Wearable computing devices can be applied to nurse fatigue, staffing, and other quality-of-care problems.
Wearable devices -- following in the footsteps of Google Glass, Jawbone, FitBit, and Pebble -- could become invaluable tools in the healthcare workplace. If implemented correctly, wearables could reduce the risk and effects of nurse fatigue, improve patient satisfaction, increase employee productivity, and even contribute to higher levels of quality care.
-----
Physicians’ Concerns About Electronic Health Records: Implications And Steps Towards Solutions
March 11th, 2014
Policy makers and professional organizations have become increasingly concerned about physician professional satisfaction. As in the managed care expansion of the 1990s, recent health reforms, including but not limited to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), have begun to have effects “in the exam room,” changing how patients, physicians, and allied health professionals interact. To better understand how these reforms are affecting patient care and other aspects of physicians’ professional lives, we recently conducted an in-depth study of professional satisfaction using a combination of open-ended interviews and written surveys with physicians and other professionals in 30 practices (encompassing 55 distinct practice sites) across the United States.
-----
Patients Need Some Hand Holding with Secure Messaging
MAR 10, 2014
Secure electronic communication has significant potential to improve patient engagement, but in order to fully realize its potential, health care organizations must provide users with sufficient education and also provide a sense of confidentiality, according to a new study from Veterans Affairs researchers.
The researchers reported barriers to satisfied use of the secure messaging tool included veterans' discomfort with learning that members of their primary care teams other than the intended provider had access to their messages, care teams' discouraging the veterans from sending personal non-health related information, and refusal by care team staff to use the portal, instead reverting to telephone calls.
-----
Geisinger CEO gives tips for smarter BI
Geisinger CEO Glenn Steele Jr., MD
'There's almost no outcome that can't be improved.'
DANVILLE, PA | March 11, 2014
Glenn D. Steele Jr., MD, president and chief executive officer of Geisinger Health System, says the integrated delivery network's pioneering population health programs depend on insightful use of data to drive behavior change.
Serving 43 counties over some 20,000 square miles of northeastern Pennsylvania, Geisinger provides care for more than 2.6 million people; its innovative efforts to combat diabetes, coronary disease, COPD, hypertension and other chronic ailments have been held up as examples for the rest of the country.
When Steele delivers the keynote at the HIMSS Media Healthcare Business Intelligence Forum, April 16-17 in Washington, D.C., he'll offer lessons from Geisinger about deploying analytics tools to improve patient care and the bottom line. And he'll stress the importance of making sure that data changes behavior and thought processes – not just of patients, but of providers and payers, too.
-----
US and UK take forward health IT MoU
7 March 2014
The US and UK are working together on harmonising quality indicators, releasing and using health data, the Blue Button initiative and the interoperability of electronic patient record systems.
Chief technology officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services, Bryan Sivak, spoke at the Health and Innovation Expo in Manchester this week and detailed the projects on which the two countries are collaborating.
NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre signed a healthcare IT memorandum of understanding with the US Department for Health and Social Services in late January.
-----
Researchers: It's time to advance personal health record mobility
March 9, 2014
By Judy Mottl
New research on improving healthcare in emergency and disaster situations recommends the federal government take the lead in mobilizing personal health record systems to improve information sharing, treatment determination and patient care.
Mobile personal health records (mPHRs), which are in play to a limited extent today, provide online access to critical data that is often out of reach in emergencies and could also potentially reduce medical errors, according to co-authors Nidhi Bouri (pictured right), and Sanjana Ravi of the UPMC Center for Health Security in Baltimore.
The comprehensive study arrives at a time when healthcare payers, providers, government agencies and consumers are tapping new mobile-related technologies to enhance healthcare and treatment while striving to reduce healthcare costs.
-----
HIT policy committee approves Meaningful Use Stage 3 recommendations
March 11, 2014 | By Ashley Gold
The Health IT Policy Committee today voted to approve the Meaningful Use Work Group's Stage 3 recommendations.
The recommendations--scaled back 30 percent from the initial number--will now go to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, according to Healthcare Informatics. The agency will put out a final rule in 2015.
The article notes that the workgroup eliminated eight of 26 initial recommendations, including some that dealt with care planning, imaging, medication adherence and reminders.
As reported in February, the workgroup had seven new recommendations for Stage 3 with four areas of emphasis: clinical decision support, patient engagement, care coordination and population management.
-----
Federal panel scales back MU Stage 3
Posted on Mar 12, 2014
By Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Members of the Health IT Policy Committee approved a set of recommendations Tuesday that will bring meaningful use Stage 3 requirements one step closer to federal approval and scale back the initial Stage 3 proposals by 33 percent.
Leaving 19 measures as part of the proposal, the recommendations, presented as a Stage 3 matrix developed by the meaningful use workgroup, will be sent on to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services for consideration in developing the final Stage 3 MU requirements. More public hearings and a notice of proposed rulemaking to inform HHS’s final requirements are expected to follow in 2015.
-----
Rapid Growth of HIE Market Forecast
March 10, 2014 by John DeGaspari
Private HIE market commands largest share
The global health information exchange (HIE) market is projected to reach $878 million in 2018, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5 percent from 2013. The market was valued at $558 million in 2013, according to the report, “Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) Market by Setup Types (Public & Private), Vendors (Web Portal & Platform), Implementation Models (Centralized, Federated, & Hybrid), Application (Interfacing, Secure Messaging)—Global Trends & Forecast to 2018,” released today by marketsandmarkets.com
The report identifies the rising demand for HIE and electronic health record (EHR) technologies, the increasing number of U.S. federal government incentive programs, and the need to reduce healthcare costs are the major drivers for the market. The private HIE Market commanded the largest share of the HIE Market, by set-up type, in 2013 and is expected to grow at 10 percent CAGR during the study period. This large share can be attributed to the increased adoption rate, clear business models, and rising investments by major HIE vendors.
-----
Electronic health records: A hard pill to swallow for some doctors
- Article by: REBECCA HARRINGTON , Star Tribune
- Updated: March 10, 2014 - 12:32 AM
Others find computerized records useful diagnostic tool.
Justine Mrosak entered the exam room, laptop in hand, and began interviewing her patient about his shoulder injury, systematically checking off questions and entering medical data on the computer.
At Entira Family Clinics, where the third-year medical student was making her rounds last week, the computer has become an extension of the doctor’s arm, as essential to patient care as the stethoscope.
Dr. Cindy Firkins Smith sees things a bit differently. The Willmar dermatologist hates to put technology between her patient and herself, and finds data entry a time-consuming chore.
“You are taking the most expensive cog in the wheel,” she said, “and you are making them a computer input person.”
-----
5 Hot Healthcare Ideas from SXSW
Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , March 11, 2014
SXSW demonstrated that technology and innovation are leading the way in healthcare while regulators struggle to keep up. Everyone is trying to answer one question: "Who provides care, and how?"
After barely recovering from HIMSS, I hustled down to Austin, Texas this past weekend to take a look at healthcare IT at South by Southwest Interactive. I hadn't been to this conference since 2012, and in those two years the health track moved from a venue across town to the Hilton right across the street from the main convention center.
Seating capacity is up, and so is attendance, with many sessions near full capacity. Here are my five biggest takeaways:
1. Wearables are hot.
A session sponsored by Rock Health an incubator for healthcare technology startups, created a line around the block that made some think that Daft Punk was making a musical appearance. The first 100 attendees received a wearable Misfit Shine physical activity monitor, and the session itself generated plenty of tweets.
-----
Telemonitoring Cuts ICU Time, Boosts Outcomes
Published: Mar 10, 2014
Remote monitoring in the intensive care unit was associated with lower mortality and shorter stays, a large multicenter study showed.
Adjusted hospital mortality fell by 16% and ICU mortality by 26% after implementation of telemedicine programs with audio and video connections at 56 ICUs in 32 hospitals. The programs allowed remote providers to watch over patients with the assistance of software to detect unstable conditions (P<0 .001="" both="" for="" span="">
Total hospital and ICU stays declined significantly across all groups that stayed for at least a week, Craig M. Lilly, MD, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, and colleagues found.
-----
Event Notification Becoming Integral to HIEs
MAR 7, 2014
Health care providers and insurers across the country are discovering event notification system (ENS) capabilities supply an integral "value-add" to critical information exchange.
In Florida, for example, the statewide health information exchange is rolling out an ENS service in which insurers and primary care physicians are notified of transitions of care. The ENS engine was designed by Baltimore-based Audacious Inquiry, which also designed the ENS for Maryland's HIE, Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP), and Delaware's DHIN.
CRISP CEO David Horrocks says the ENS was not part of the HIE's original design, but the organization began thinking about how best to leverage admission-discharge-transfer (ADT) notifications in 2011, after encouragement from Farzad Mostashari, M.D., former national coordinator for HIT.
-----
Hospitals in EMR buying frenzy
Posted on Mar 10, 2014
By Erin McCann, Associate Editor
The electronic medical record market is poised for a competitive shakeup. As Stage 2 meaningful use demands more from hospitals, many current EMR platforms just aren't cutting it, and up to half of large hospitals are ditching their old systems for new, interoperable platforms with population health capabilities.
Two new reports, conducted by Black Book and KLAS Research, underscore the EMR market trends at hospitals with more than 200 beds. And the once ill-fated Allscripts has made a huge comeback this year, edging out a slight lead for top-ranked EMR inpatient vendor over three-time annual champion Epic Systems, according to Black Book researchers.
The reports find that from one-third to half of all large hospitals are looking to trade out their old EMRs by 2016, but, according to KLAS data, only 22 percent of those buying decisions may be up for grabs, as 34 percent of them have already officially selected a vendor, and the lion's share, 44 percent, are already strongly leading toward a certain vendor.
-----
Eric Topol: Remote patient monitoring is the future, but we're not there yet
March 10, 2014 | By Ashley Gold
With the promise of remote patient monitoring technologies comes privacy and legal issues, but there is reason to be optimistic, Eric Topol, M.D. told MedCity News.
Topol (pictured), a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, who is conducting a clinical trial involving high-risk patients being hooked up to personal data trackers, thinks technologies like a portable electrocardiogram built into a smartphone case are the future.
"It's the real deal of what's going on in their world from a medical standpoint," Topol--who also serves as AT&T's chief medical advisor--told MedCity News. "The integration of that with the classical medical record is vital."
-----
Notifiable disease reporting may double with required electronic lab reporting
March 10, 2014 | By Ashley Gold
Case report volumes for public health departments are forecasted to double when federal requirements for automated electronic laboratory reporting of notifiable diseases go into effect next year, according to a new study by researchers from the Regenstrief Institute Inc. and the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
An announcement notes that this is the first study to estimate what will occur with the 2015 required adoption of electronic laboratory reporting under Meaningful Use.
-----
Interoperability, patient safety key to ONC budget
March 10, 2014 | By Susan D. Hall
The $75 million allocated for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in President Obama's proposed FY 2015 budget will increase focus on interoperability and patient safety, according to a justification report for the Appropriations Committee from National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo (pictured right).
"The budget provides continuing support for programs that directly support the Meaningful Use Programs; the Certification Program testing tools for developers and strengthened surveillance activities; the Blue Button Program, which engages providers, developers, and consumers to create solutions that empower all participants in health care; and a National Learning Consortium that disseminates best health practices to providers on how to optimize health IT and effective guidelines to achieve meaningful use of electronic health records," DeSalvo writes in an opening letter.
-----
Mobile Tech Extends Hospitals' Reach Into The Home
3/6/2014 04:52 PM
Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx is texting patients and might use Fitbits to monitor diabetic teens.
Hospitals are exploring how mobile technologies can extend patient care beyond their walls and into patients' homes.
By doing so, hospitals reduce the cost of care; they're more likely to be involved in prevention and early diagnosis, and build a relationship with patients who will be more likely to choose them over competitors. If hospitals' relationships end when patients check out, they have no control over their daily healthcare, no insight into outside health influences, and no ongoing rapport.
Now that providers' pay is changing to reflect value-based purchasing, it is incumbent on hospitals to build lasting relationships. As a result, some are considering technology to enable long-term interactions.
-----
Social Media Users Willing To Share Health Data Despite Concerns About Privacy
Monday, March 10, 2014
Janet Freeman-Daily writes a blog about lung cancer. As a former aerospace systems engineer with a degree from MIT, Freeman-Daily uses her blog, "Gray Connections," to describe scientific information in less technical terms for patients with lung cancer. It's also a forum in which she can share her personal experiences as someone who had been diagnosed (in 2011) with stage 4 lung cancer. She describes the purpose of her blog this way:
"This blog is a place for me to capture new science and technology developments in fields that interest me, which include lung cancer (which I have), the brain (which I used to have), dementia, memory and autism. I'll also include notes about my writing, health, travels and anything else I find particularly intriguing. I confess, I'm a curious geek. EVERYTHING techie intrigues me! I'll blog about all of it eventually, hopefully with humor."
Freeman-Daily's decision to share her experiences with a wider audience didn't come easily.
"I had to think long and hard about whether or not to go public with my lung cancer," she said.
-----
Enjoy!
David.
1 comment:
onceSince 2011, the former Labor government, in conjunction with the states, has invested over AU$1 billion in the e-health program aimed at improving patient care through making it easier for healthcare providers to access and share information about a patient throughout the medical system.
Unlike the current problems affecting the US government's healthcare website, Australia's e-health system faced the opposite problem: Very little interest from the public and doctors in signing up.
While sign-up for patients had been roughly in line with expectations from the government, reaching over 900,000 to date, the number of documents being created and used in the system is still relatively low, with only a few hundred healthcare professionals putting up the "shared health summary" that lists a patient's details, and around 5,000 documents uploaded in total.I also know that in some hospital,patients'information is stored on the qrcode on the treatment cards, it's convenient for doctors to view the records before.
Post a Comment