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.
-----
ONC issues new EHR contracting guide for providers
Sep 26, 2016 11:33am
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has unveiled a new tool to help providers better understand electronic health record contracts so they can negotiate more equitable terms with vendors.
The guide is geared toward helping providers navigate the sometimes “daunting” process of selecting a new or replacement EHR. Released as part of the kickoff of National Health IT Week, the advice given focuses on the acquisition of EHRs, although it can apply to other health IT products. It is designed to help buyers better understand and communicate their requirements to potential vendors, negotiate contract terms and consider and manage risks that may arise in buying and using an EHR.
-----
AMA: Docs want HIT vendors to prioritize workflow, efficiency
Sep 26, 2016 11:36am
If health IT vendors want doctors to be enthusiastic about new digital tools, they must prioritize improving workflow and efficiency, according to a new survey from the American Medical Association.
Tools such as electronic health records must be easy to use, not detract from face-time with patients and improve clinical care, respondents said. The survey of 1,300 physicians asked about their motivations and requirements for integrating digital health tools in their practices, according to an announcement.
The three biggest selling points for a tool, respondents indicated, were improving work efficiency, improving diagnostic ability and increasing patient safety. Doctors said they are looking for technologies that fit within those already in place, including integrating with their current EHRs. They also want tools that provide data privacy and security, and that are covered by malpractice insurance.
-----
Direct messaging: Not just for meaningful use anymore
Nemours shares lessons from its success using the Direct protocol, including a look at common message types. The takeaway: this still-underused method of health data exchange has considerable potential.
September 29, 2016 01:12 PM
While Direct messaging has had a circuitous path into health information exchange, Nemours is already using the protocol to meet the 10 percent threshold for sending electronic summary care records when transitioning patients to other care settings under meaningful use.
Nemours has Direct messaging integrated with its EHR and also contracts with a separate HISP – health information services provider – which senior manager of strategic process implementation Alex Koster likened to "a telecom company for Direct messaging," during a National Health IT Week webinar on Wednesday.
In Nemours' case, the HISP is Surescripts, but others include DataMotion MedAllies, Medicity, Orion, RelayHealth and many more.
-----
3 ways machine learning will transform healthcare
Sep 30, 2016 6:33am
Better algorithms, not more data, will transform healthcare in the not-too-distant future, say Harvard Medical School's Ziad Obermeyer and the University of Pennsylvania's Ezekiel Emanuel.
The authors, in an article published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine, cite the ability to consider millions of variables as the machine learning advantage over humans. For example, with dramatic advances in computational power, computers can look for anomalies at the pixel level of radiographs, they say.
-----
The New Data Experts Our Health-Care Professionals Need
By Drew Harris
Sep 29, 2016 6:04 pm ET
Dr. Drew Harris (@drewaharris) is director of health policy and population health at Thomas Jefferson University’s College of Population Health in Philadelphia, where he focuses on the interplay between public health, medical care and public policy.
Our nation’s health-care professionals have access to more data than at any time in history.
We are at the verge, for instance, of fully integrating the doctor’s electronic medical record into a spectrum of insightful data sources ranging from the genes to the community-level. Health-care providers will be able to fully characterize an individual’s physical condition and their behavioral, environmental and social exposures to better identify and address all the determinants of health. Even more exciting, is the ability to use this information to find new cures and treatments and to develop unique prevention strategies that work with whole communities.
-----
By The Numbers: Our Progress In Digitizing Health Care
September 29, 2016
Over the past seven years, the United States has seen a historic health IT transformation, moving from a primarily paper-based health system to one where virtually everyone has a digital footprint of their care because of the dramatic uptake of electronic health records (EHRs). Recent data have helped quantify just how rapidly technology has transformed clinical settings. Today, nearly all hospitals (96 percent) and nearly eight in 10 (78 percent) physicians use certified EHRs. This transformation is the result of 2009’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, when fewer than one in 10 hospitals and 17 percent of physicians used EHRs. This rapid uptake of technology reflects the unyielding effort by clinicians and health systems across the board who helped usher in this new era of medicine. The result of this effort is a vast amount of electronic health data now exists which simply did not seven years ago.
This transformation represents more than simply digitizing paper health records. It also puts us at a global competitive advantage and is leading to real-world impacts in the clinical setting. Systematic reviews of academic literature found that 84 percent of studies showed that certified EHRs had a positive or mixed positive effect on quality, safety, and efficiency of care. Other recent studies found that EHRs can reduce adverse events among cardiovascular, surgery, and pneumonia patients and that switching EHRs did not result in adverse safety events.
-----
HIT Think Why curing patient matching issues won’t be easy
Published September 28 2016, 3:14pm EDT
Unless you’re off the grid, your email box is full of newsletters and news stories focused on the patient matching conundrum. Trying to solve our country’s patient identification woes has many highly respected healthcare experts talking about this billion-dollar problem—some even going so far as to put their money where their mouth is.
Recently, the phrase “digital identity” has been tossed around whenever talk turns to solutions. Healthcare organizations and vendors alike are weighing in on how technologies being developed under this umbrella will help to solve this costly problem. Smart cards, magnetic stripe cards, bar-coded cards, biometrics (such as iris recognition or palm vein scanning) and smartphones/mobile devices are all authenticator-type technologies being developed to chip away at identification errors.
-----
Wachter calls for three point IT implementation plan
28 September 2016
A successful implementation strategy, a network of clinical information professionals, and interoperable systems, should be the top three things on the government’s digital to-do list, according to Robert Wachter.
The US ‘digital doctor’ gave his suggestions from Texas via Skype into the Healthcare Efficiency Through Technology show in London.
He was speaking after the publication of the results of his review of NHS IT at the Health and Care Innovation Expo in Manchester earlier this month.
-----
Ewan Davis: EPS – is it my fault?
Ewan reflects wonders why he keeps running out of his repeat medication, ponders the hapless state of the so called Electronic Prescribing Service, fears that both are his fault, and says lessons need to be learned if the problems afflicting EPS are not to derail further digital health efforts.
27 September, 2016
It’s probably my fault. I have been struggling with the Electronic Prescribing Service. I want to get to the point where I don’t have minus five days’ supply of one if my repeat medications and 12 months’ worth of another.
Not that EPS has caused this problem (it was ever thus) but it hasn’t solved it. Yet it should have, and I have this nagging doubt it my fault!
Twenty years ago, in Wales
I’ve tried my best. I’ve worked out when the supply of each of my medicines will run out and I’ve suggested what should go on both of my two monthly repeat scripts over the next six months.
-----
Big Data: Healthcare must move beyond the hype
The biggest hindrance to progress is that tools like artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and machine learning conjure images of sci-fi movies rather than real-world uses. Here’s what one Harvard Medical School expert said needs to happen next.
September 28, 2016 07:06 AM
Harvard Medical School assistant professor Leonard D’Avolio said the term Big Data needs to be clarified before healthcare providers can make significant strides with related technologies. D’Avolio and colleagues are building an organization called Cyft to deal with these issues.
The hype surrounding so-called Big Data – the computational analysis of vast data sets to uncover patterns, trends and associations – is “bi-polar.” That’s how Leonard D’Avolio, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, describes all the chatter around this technology.
“Either we are reading about how Big Data will cure cancer or about how it’s foolish to believe Big Data will replace doctors,” D’Avolio said. “I think the narrative should be in the middle, where we are talking about these technologies as tools that could be used to complement the work of not just clinicians but also healthcare administrators, operational leaders and others. Big Data is another set of technologies with pros and cons.”
-----
Tips for reading Big Data results correctly
A prominent MIT healthcare economist explains how Big Data can be misleading, and discusses methods for properly studying such information.
September 27, 2016 01:32 PM
MIT healthcare economist Joseph Doyle spends his time measuring the returns on healthcare spending and outcomes with the goals of identifying value and waste in the $3 trillion U.S. healthcare system along with helping to create a higher-quality, more cost-effective approach to healthcare. And data drives Doyle’s empirical, evidence-based approach for answers.
One area Doyle has been studying is whether hospitals that spend more money on healthcare achieve greater outcomes. The answer is not a simple one to uncover, said Doyle, Erwin H. Schell professor of management and professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
-----
Med ordering errors linked to CPOE use
Sep 28, 2016 3:27pm
Computerized physician order entry can reduce medical error rates, but also can also facilitate new types of errors, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).
For the study--with contributors from Atrius Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Partners HealthCare, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania--researchers reviewed all patient medication error reports from six sites participating in a Food and Drug Administration-sponsored project examining CPOE safety.
Of 2,522 reports of errors in the medication ordering phase, more than half (51.9 percent) were related to CPOE. Of these, CPOE facilitated the error in 13.1 percent and potentially could have prevented the error in 86.9 percent. Mistakes facilitated by CPOE included erroneous names in the system for drug formularies, problems entering the order leading to a workaround, outdated order sets, protocols and dictionaries, and pull down menu problems. Errors where CPOE could have prevented an error but failed to do so included inadequate clinical decision support alerts, lack of electronic communication of discontinuation of a CPOE order to the pharmacy and medication reconciliation errors.
-----
Google Glass is a way for docs to ‘look patients in the eye again’
Sep 29, 2016 12:13pm
It’s a long way from Marcus Welby, M.D. In fact, the device that more doctors may soon wear on their heads looks more like something out of Star Trek.
The sleek, metallic device is Google Glass, which roughly 500 doctors in 27 states now use to live-stream patient exams, according to The Washington Post. The doctors wear Google Glass, which look like high-tech eye glasses, during office visits, live-streaming the exams to virtual scribes, many of them who work in India, who look on to take detailed notes for the patient’s electronic health record.
-----
Data sharing key to creating a successful learning health system
Sep 29, 2016 9:51am
Sharing data to create a learning health system will require both a change in culture and new technology. However, despite the high potential for such a system, incentives often are not in line with requirements to make this happen, says Yale School of Medicine cardiologist Harlan Krumholz.
According to Krumholz, Sharon Terry of the Genetic Alliance and Joanne Waldstreicher of Johnson & Johnson--writing in a viewpoint article published online this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association--those in possession of data, including health systems, researchers and others, generally bear the costs associated with data sharing. It’s difficult, they say, to fully integrate data from various sources, to fully analyze and to apply it.
Among the strategically important aspects, then, will be ensuring patient access to their data, which may require new tools and infrastructure as well as regulatory changes,the authors write.
-----
Gov. Brown Signs Bill Targeting 'Doctor Shopping' For Opioids
California doctors will be required to check a database of prescription narcotics before writing scripts for addictive drugs under legislation Gov. Jerry Brown signed Tuesday that aims to address the scourge of opioid abuse. Jean Elle reports. (Published Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016)
SACRAMENTO - California doctors will be required to check a database of prescription narcotics before writing scripts for addictive drugs under legislation Gov. Jerry Brown signed Tuesday that aims to address the scourge of opioid abuse.
The measure attempts to crack down on a practice known as "doctor-shopping," in which addicts visit multiple providers to obtain prescriptions for addictive drugs. The action by the Democratic governor comes amid an intensifying national focus on the problems that stem from prescription and illegal opiates.
-----
Survey: Digital Divide Between Patients, Physicians Continues
Alicia Ault
September 28, 2016
A digital divide of sorts still exists between physicians and patients in how they view the use of technology such as electronic health records (EHRs), patient portals, and smartphone apps for self-diagnosis.
That's according to a recent Medscape survey of 1423 health professionals (including 847 physicians) and 1103 patients. The biggest gap was seen with EHRs. Eighty percent of patients said EHRs make a practice more efficient, compared to just 54% of physicians. Just over 90% of doctors said they used EHRs, but 1 of every 2 said it reduced their efficiency.
Web portals were also viewed favorably by patients, with two thirds saying they improved the relationship with the doctor. More than half of patients said a portal was available for accessing their physician, and about a fifth said they always or almost always made use of the communication method.
-----
Cyberattacks on personal health records growing ‘exponentially’
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA. Since it took effect, doctors’ offices, hospitals and other health-care providers have been very careful about releasing information.
Sometimes frustratingly so.
I’ve had providers refuse to send my information to me by email, because that form of communication is considered less secure than the now-ancient practice of faxing.
In 2015, 113 million electronic health records were breached, a major leap over the 12.5 million the year before. In 2009, the number was less than 135,000. The number of reported hacks and breaches affecting records of at least 500 individuals rose from none in 2009 to 56 last year, almost double from 2014.
-----
FDA eyes plan to lessen review burden for software updates
Published September 28 2016, 6:42am EDT
The Food and Drug Administration is getting high marks from Health IT Now, a coalition of patient, provider, and payer groups, for a potentially streamlined regulatory pathway for software products.
According to HITN, the FDA is considering a “pre-check like system” of quality controls for developers—when it comes to medical device software updates—that is modeled after the Transportation Security Administration’s expedited security screening process at airports.
Jeffrey Shuren, MD, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, discussed the concept on Monday as part of a panel at the Digital Health Technology Expo co-hosted by the FDA and the Consumer Technology Association.
-----
Standard interventions prove better than wearables for weight loss
Users may become overly dependent on devices to help change their health when they might do better by relying on a simple diet and exercise plan.
September 27, 2016 07:04 AM
Wearable devices, often associated with health and fitness, may not be useful tools for weight loss, according to a new study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Rather than motivating users to exercise more, the devices were actually less effective at encouraging people to lose weight than simply following a diet and exercise plan, a two-year study by the University of Pittsburgh School of Education’s Department of Health and Physical Activity found.
Users may in fact become overly dependent on the devices to help change their health, leading to a false sense of security – and they might do better by relying on a simple diet and exercise plan.
-----
The great digital divide: Patients and docs disagree on role of technology
Sep 28, 2016 11:53am
Patients and doctors have very different opinions on the role technology should play in healthcare.
Nearly 90 percent of patients feel entitled to access their physicians’ notes, while only 60 percent of physicians embrace such clinical information sharing. But this changes a bit, the more years a doctor has practiced medicine, according to a recent Medscape survey, which includes responses from more than 1,400 healthcare providers and nearly 850 patients.
While less than half of physicians under the age of 34 wanted patients to have access to their notes, two-thirds of physicians 45 and older supported sharing their notes with patients.
-----
Intermountain's Marc Probst: We're not close to solving interoperability
Sep 28, 2016 11:58am
Interoperability and reimbursement for telehealth were among several persisting healthcare IT challenges discussed by hospital CIOs and others who gathered Tuesday on Capitol Hill for an event hosted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.
In talking about the former issue, Intermountain Healthcare CIO Marc Probst said that despite the fact that some progress has been made with help from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, there is still a long way to go for the industry to be truly and semantically interoperable.
“We have not solved interoperability,” said Probst, who also is the current board chair for CHIME. “We’re not even close.”
-----
HIMSS, CHIME seek to separate health IT, health informatics, health information management occupations
As the Standard Occupation Classification Policy Committee is making revisions to its classifications for 2018, it may consider distinguishing occupations related to health informatics, health information management and health information technology.
CHIME, HIMSS and 36 other organizations wrote to the SOCPC regarding their desire to separate these three job categories into their own unique codes, saying they are "concerned with the conflation" of the occupations.
Occupations are classified into codes by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for purposes of collecting, calculating and disseminating data.
-----
Clinical Alarm Safety Improvements are a Team Effort
Jennifer Thew, RN, September 27, 2016
The Joint Commission has called for improvements in clinical alarm safety, but nurses can't do it on their own. They need the help of device manufacturers, hospital leaders, and quality and risk management specialists.
When was the last time you responded to the sound of a car alarm? The noise may have been irritating, but it probably didn't raise enough concern to warrant a call to the police.
"When car alarms first came out, we heard those and were like, 'Hey, someone's ripping that guy's car off!'" says Michele M. Pelter, RN, PhD, assistant professor at University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing and director of the ECG monitoring research lab in the school's department of physiological nursing.
"And then we realized, well no it isn't [being stolen]. Somebody bumped it, or it's the wind, or a motorcycle went past. And so we now ignore those."
-----
Robots--not people--may solve healthcare’s nursing shortage
Sep 27, 2016 11:39am
Finnish think tank EVA estimates that robots could be employed to do as much as a fifth of nurses’ work. And some hospitals in other countries are already taking advantage of them.
For example, some hospitals in Japan use Terapio, a medical cart that can make rounds, deliver medications to patients and grab medical records, according to The Daily Beast. When it follows a clinician, the robot can also be used to update patient data.
-----
Apple Said to Expand HealthKit From Tracker to Diagnosis Tool
September 26, 2016 — 8:00 PM AEST
So far Apple Inc.’s HealthKit has mostly collected fitness data from its devices. In the future, if the company gets its way, the software will interpret that information, turning it into advice for users, doctors and others.
Scores of health-care experts hired by Apple in recent years are building improved electronic health record software that can better analyze and understand the implications of patient data, according to people familiar with the team’s plans.
The iPhone maker is also working on new apps for the Apple Watch. One helps users track sleep patterns, one of the people said. Another app gauges fitness levels by measuring the time taken for the heart rate to fall from its peak to resting level, according to one of the other people. Apple already has an app that measures heart rate, but doesn’t interpret that data.
-----
ONC Launches Health IT Playbook
Resource aimed at helping docs best use health IT
by Joyce Frieden
News Editor, MedPage Today
09.26.2016
WASHINGTON -- As healthcare providers work to implement electronic health records (EHR), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has developed a resource aimed at helping them.
The Health IT Playbook, which the ONC is launching today, is aimed at helping solo providers, and those in small and medium-sized practices, get the most out of their health information technology, Thomas Mason, MD, ONC's chief medical officer, told MedPage Today in an exclusive interview.
Over the years, the ONC had implemented tools such as its Beacon Community Program and regional extension centers to help doctors get started with EHR and other health information technology. "We were in the process of aggregating and reviewing all of the content we'd put together ... and we thought it would be great to put this together in a way that was user-friendly and intuitive," Mason said in the phone interview, at which a public relations person was present.
-----
This Data Exchange Framework Sets the Bar High
Scott Mace, September 27, 2016
In Massachusetts, a service used for securely sharing data between physicians and emergency departments is being called a "game changer."
In the battle to reduce hospital admissions and readmissions, the struggle to share information remains on the front lines.
But in Massachusetts, data-sharing arrangements between physicians and emergency departments are making progress. One example is Worcester-based Reliant Medical Group, a multi-specialty group practice with more than 500 providers.
If a patient of one of Reliant's physicians arrives in an emergency department at nearby Saint Vincent Hospital or Milford Regional Medical Center, the EHR systems of those EDs will automatically generate and send a message to the physician.
-----
WEDI: EHR support for genomic medicine lacking
Published September 26 2016, 6:50am EDT
Genomic medicine requires high-quality data that can be readily accessed and applied in the patient care setting. Yet, despite improvements to electronic health record systems, much work remains to optimize their ability to support genomically informed care.
Written by WEDI’s Genomics Workgroup, the document asserts that for the potential of genomic medicine to be realized a computer-based infrastructure must be built to harness the power of clinical data linked with molecular data, to begin storing and utilizing genetic and genomic data from a centrally-managed resource.
-----
Video The advantages of telehealth
Published September 23 2016, 4:37pm EDT
Healthcare doesn’t end when patients check out of the hospital or leave their doctor’s office. In fact, some of the most important steps in the healthcare process take place in the critical days and weeks after initial care is delivered.
Telehealth is an important step forward to ensure that patients continue to stay engaged in their own healthcare by using technology to facilitate communication with their doctors and using self-service tools to gain access to vital information.
-----
Physicians report willingness to adopt digital tools
Published September 26 2016, 6:38am EDT
Most physicians are using some digital tools and expect to increase the use of assistive technologies in the near future, findings from an American Medical Association survey shows.
The survey of 1,300 physicians from research firm Kantar TNS also finds high expectations for such tools as telemedicine, mobile and wearable devices, mobile apps and remote monitoring, as 85 percent of respondents believe these tools can help improve patient care.
Further, nearly half of respondents are enthusiastic about potential benefits of the tools improving clinical decision support, workflow enhancements and consumer access to care, among other factors.
-----
Is telemedicine the key to curbing rural hospital graveyard shift expenses?
September 22, 2016
For rural hospitals that are having difficulties with night coverage, telemedicine may be the way to go. Hospitals that leverage one of Eagle Telemedicine’s solutions have achieved up to 40 percent in savings on nighttime coverage.
“The interest from rural hospitals in telemedicine is exploding,” Dr. Talbot McCormick, president and CEO of Eagle Telemedicine, told HCB News.
The telemedicine solution is a robot on wheels with a two-way videoconferencing monitor. A physician from a remote location can directly interact with the patient and monitor them with a stethoscope, otoscope and blood pressure gauge.
At the National Rural Hospital Association’s 15th Critical Access Hospital Conference this week in Kansas City, Eagle Telemedicine will discuss the benefits that its customers are experiencing including an increase in patient census, avoiding transfer and addressing staffing gaps.
-----
EHR Health Data Collection to Impact Health Industry Shift
A new PwC report details the driving forces behind an impending healthcare industry shift, highlighting EHR and health data collection as primary factors.
EHRs and health data collection will be primary drivers behinds a shifting healthcare ecosystem over the course of the next decade.
According to a report from the PwC Research Health Institute , the healthcare industry is facing a “seismic shift” driven in part by the transition from volume to value, the growth of health technology, and focus on patients as consumers. In order to thrive in that change, PwC researchers suggest that healthcare professionals prepare for swift data collection via the EHR.
-----
We're told data breaches cost millions on average - but this security study disagrees
New research suggests that the average cost of data breaches is lower than many estimates and too low to drive greater investment in cybersecurity.
Far from running into millions, the average cost of a data breach is less than $200,000, or roughly what firms are spending on IT security systems, according to a study from non-profit thinktank RAND.
The study, published in the Journal of Cybersecurity, challenges the much higher cost estimates provided by the Ponemon Institute. This year that research organization put the average cost of a breach at $4m.
Graeme Hackland, IT director at Williams Martini Racing and Williams Advanced Engineering, tells ZDNet how the organisation works to avoid the nightmare scenario of getting hacked.
-----
Global healthcare information systems market to reach $53.2B by 2019: 6 key trends
The global healthcare information systems market is set to grow at a rapid pace over the next few years, according to a Persistence Market Research report.
Here are six trends:
1. The global healthcare information systems market was valued at $35.2 billion in 2013.
2. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.1 percent from 2013 to 2019 to reach a value of $53.2 billion.
-----
Reducing digital burden by deleting social media accounts for a 'digital clean slate'
John Halamka, MD, recently started a process that some may consider regressive. He began deleting his social media accounts to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in his life.
September 23, 2016 11:05 AM
Last weekend, I started a process that some may consider regressive. I began deleting my social media accounts to improve the signal to noise ratio in my life.
10 years ago I wrote about the importance of social media and building networks of colleagues, collaborators and relationships.
During that decade our social norms have changed to the point that we walk off cliffs, text while driving, and document every microsecond of our lives on devices that have become the centerpiece of our waking hours.
The problem has gotten so profound that Google has introduced artificial intelligence technology to respond to messaging for you – "LOL," "cute dog," "a movie at 7 pm is great."
-----
Medical Record Mix-Ups a Common Problem, Study Finds
The opportunities for the mistakes, which can be deadly, are increasing as health care becomes more complex
By Melinda Beck
Sept. 25, 2016 7:00 p.m. ET
A patient in cardiac arrest was mistakenly not resuscitated because clinicians confused him with a patient who had a do-not-resuscitate order on file.
Another patient was given an okay to undergo surgery based on a different patient’s records and was found dead in his hospital room the next day.
Such patient-identification mix-ups are common and can have deadly consequences, according to a report from the ECRI Institute, a nonprofit research group that studies patient safety.
-----
AMA surveys docs on digital health
09/26/16 10:00 AM EDT
FIRST IN MORNING EHEALTH: AMA SURVEY ON DIGITAL HEALTH: Eighty-five percent of doctors see either a definite or likely potential for digital tools to improve patient health, a survey of 1,300 physicians conducted by the American Medical Association finds.
A few other key surprisingly optimistic findings:
-Doctors are most attracted to digital health because they think it’ll help them practice more efficiently and improve patient safety. Patient demand is still a low-driver, however.
-Digital tools must be integrated with the EHR, uphold privacy and security and be covered by malpractice insurance.
-Doctors are high on mobile apps extending the reach of their systems, but are looking to someone else – a practice leader – to make the jump.
-Doctors are most attracted to digital health because they think it’ll help them practice more efficiently and improve patient safety. Patient demand is still a low-driver, however.
-Digital tools must be integrated with the EHR, uphold privacy and security and be covered by malpractice insurance.
-Doctors are high on mobile apps extending the reach of their systems, but are looking to someone else – a practice leader – to make the jump.
-----
Enjoy!
David.
No comments:
Post a Comment