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Supercomputers help mine cancer data to identify risk factors
Published June 15 2017, 7:12am EDT
For researchers exploring the complexity of cancer genomes linked to mutations that carry increased risks for the disease, it can be like searching for a proverbial needle in a haystack.
However, supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, given their ability to manage and analyze massive datasets, are helping to find correlations between chromosomal rearrangements—one of the hallmarks of cancer genomes.
“One of the things we’d like to understand in a predictive sense is where mutations are likely to occur, because mutations can lead to cancerous outcomes,” says Matt Vaughn, director of life sciences computing at the University of Texas at Austin’s TACC.
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The benefits of e-prescribing have long been emphasised, and uptake is increasing – albeit very slowly. The next step: harnessing the growing functionality and increasing intelligence that such systems can offer. Claire Read reports.
You’ll have heard about the potential benefits of e-prescribing. Perhaps it was from Tim Kelsey, the former national director for patients and information, who was fond of citing it as an example of the sort of technology the NHS should get on and adopt so as to save lives. Or maybe you’re aware of Lord Carter recommending its uptake in his review of NHS productivity.
Perhaps you remember the flurry of attention e-prescribing received when it was announced the entirety of the first tech fund was going to go towards funding the implementation of such systems. (Spoiler alert: that’s not quite what happened.)
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Portals – Advisory Series, June 2017
By Claire Read – Digital Health
In the second of Digital Health Intelligence’s new advisory series, Claire Read looks at how sustainability and transformation plans are embracing portals – and considers how the concept is evolving.
It’s a simple word, but ‘portals’ has a remarkable ability to polarise opinion in health IT. It’s fair to say Ciaron Hoye isn’t a big fan. “I absolutely hate the term,” admits Hoye, who is head of digital at Birmingham CrossCity Clinical Commissioning Group. He fears it is a “very vanilla description” which immediately conjures up an outdated understanding of its meaning.
“A lot of people when you say ‘portal’ think, ‘oh, right, a web page’,” he argues. “Well, no. That’s a very nineties and noughties idea of a portal.”
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DOCAPOST and Tactio Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate the Development of eHealth in France
PARIS, June 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ DOCAPOST, a subsidiary of LeGroupeLaPoste, andTactioHealth Group, theworldleaderin mobilehealthsystems, have teamed up to speed up the development ofeHealthin France.
This partnership is supported byDOCAPOST'sindustrial capabilities in the health prevention andtelehealthsectors in France.Tactiobrings its genuine technological expertise and business savvy in mobile and connected health, developed in the Canadian and American markets to grow new and innovative practices in these sectors in France.
The expected synergies will provide a complete end-to-end digital healthsolution covering 2 areas:
- A technological partnership which will lead to a close collaboration between the two companies on new telemedicine and eHealth projects in France in order to promote the large-scale development of eHealth solutions in France;
- A business partnership which will lead DOCAPOST to incorporate Tactio solutions into its offering portfolio in France, also combined with DOCAPOST's Internet of Things (IoT) and healthcare solutions.
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The drones are coming, and they’re here to help with medical emergencies
In the not-too-distant future, drones equipped with medical supplies might replace ambulances that are slow to respond to emergencies following a natural disaster.
Four years after Hattiesburg, Mississippi was hit with a tornado that injured at least 80 people, Italo Subbarao, M.D., the associate dean of William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine, has built three drone prototypes designed to provide medical care in the event of a large-scale disaster, according to a report by Pew Charitable Trusts.
Some have predicted that drones could be used in healthcare, particularly for remote regions of the country, but there have few real-world applications to date.
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Report: 19% of business passwords 'easily compromised'
Nearly one in five enterprise users have passwords that are weak or shared, putting their business at risk for cyber attack, according to a new report from Preempt.
Despite high profile breaches continuing to make headlines, weak passwords remain an issue for enterprises worldwide, leading to breaches and other security issues. An average of 19% of enterprise professionals use poor quality passwords or shared passwords that make their accounts "easily compromised," according to a new report from security firm Preempt.
Some 7% of enterprise users use an "extremely weak" password that has appeared on lists of previous password breaches—think using the word "password" or "123456." Meanwhile, about 13% of business professionals use passwords that they share with other users and teams, and between different accounts.
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What Health Systems, Hospitals, and Physicians Need to Know About Implementing Electronic Health Records
June 15, 2017
A decade ago, Kaiser Permanente installed the nation’s most comprehensive electronic health record (EHR). The decision was made by the health plan and medical group together. Due to the large size of our organization, implementation was challenging and expensive: The process took two years, and the cost at the time was estimated to be around $4 billion. But there is no question that the price tag and the effort required to train and motivate physicians and staff were worth it. The information the EHR provided, combined with our data analytics and integrated medical care delivery system, has helped us save countless lives.
Across the United States, few physicians have access to a comprehensive EHR that contains all of a patient’s medical information (regardless of how many doctors have provided care) and communicates care gaps and potential medical errors before they happen. As difficult and expensive as it may be to integrate this kind of system across a community, doing so is the best way to maximize quality of care for all patients. For health systems that want to make the investments in time and capital needed, here are some important lessons our experience taught us.
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FDA Pilot to Sign Off on Low-Risk Digital Health Products Without Premarket Review
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Thursday announced an upcoming pilot program that would create a third-party certification program under which lower-risk digital health products could be marketed without FDA premarket review and higher-risk products could be marketed with a streamlined FDA review.
The pilot, part of a new approach to regulating digital health tools, would help to certify, according to Gottlieb, whether a company "consistently and reliably engages in high quality software design and testing (validation) and ongoing maintenance of its software products. Employing a unique pre-certification program for software as a medical device (SaMD) could reduce the time and cost of market entry for digital health technologies."
FDA also will provide guidance clarifying its stance on products that contain multiple software functions and which currently fall outside FDA regulations.
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NHS Digital on cyber-attack: “We can be better prepared”
Shireen Khalil
14 June 2017
NHS Digital admits the organisation could have done better during the global cyber-attack that crippled parts of the NHS last month.
Speaking at NHS Confed ’17 on Wednesday, NHS Digital’s acting chief executive, Rob Shaw said that better communications could have been provided earlier.
“There is a lot of negative press and publicity against us but in my opinion we did really, really well and the local organisations coped really well…but we can be better prepared and we can also make sure we in the centre, provide better communications earlier and make sure we give advice.”
Addressing the audience of industry professionals in Liverpool, Shaw spoke about NHS Digital’s role in cybersecurity, services they provide on this front and the importance of communication, education and training healthcare staff.
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CIOs and CCIOs urge greater clarity on shared records and data protection
Claire Read
15 June 2017
Current data protection guidance and regulations are contradictory and not conducive to effective patient care according to a new discussion paper published by the independent CCIO and Health CIO networks.
The CCIO and Health CIO Networks discussion paper:’data sharing and data protection in healthcare’, considers the sensitive issue of the use of patient information, and was initially written in response to recent controversies over the data sharing model in TPP’s widely used SystmOne software.
The Information Commissioner’s Office in March announced an investigation into the TPP model over concerns it may contravene principles 1 and 7 of the Data Protection Act.
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HIT Think Why slow and steady IT development will best support value-based care
Published June 15 2017, 4:48pm EDT
Recently, my son has been listening to an adaptation of the classic story—the tortoise and the hare, a parable that supports the notion that slow and steady wins the race.
What does this story have to do with shifting healthcare to a value-based care system? Expectations and hype (the hare) cannot be allowed to overcome practical, thoughtful adoption (the tortoise). No change, especially fundamental change, can be expected to occur overnight. It takes time for reform to seep in, be implemented and be refined. And, we’re finding out, that it takes time for information technology tools to mature and provide the exact kind of support that providers will need to succeed.
A recent joint survey by Quest Diagnostics and Inovalon shows slow, but growing acceptance and recognition that value-based care is here to stay in healthcare. In comparison to the 2016 version of the survey, more physicians (and health plan executives) see that the technology tools are in place for value-based care.
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Video Call May Be as Good as Doctor Visit for Headache
Telemedicine offers a convenient alternative for sufferers, study authors say
WEDNESDAY, June 14, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Seeing a neurologist via video conference may be as effective as an in-person visit for people with headaches, researchers say.
The new study included just over 400 headache patients in Norway who were referred by their primary care doctor to see a neurologist.
Half of the patients had an in-person appointment with a neurologist, while the others consulted with the specialist via video conference -- also known as "telemedicine."
At the study's start, three months later and again after a year, the patients completed surveys about their pain and the impact of their headaches on daily life. No differences were found between people who had traditional office visits and those treated through video, the researchers said.
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Hospitals overpay for health IT when systems don't connect
Jun 14, 2017 11:43am
To ensure that technologies and data can be used effectively in patient care, providers should invest in systems management.
Healthcare organizations can end up significantly overpaying for new healthcare technologies when they don't have integrated systems such as electronic health records, according to experts at Johns Hopkins.
The U.S. spends more on health IT than many other countries. Meanwhile, attitudes about interoperability are mixed. One recent survey found most providers (75%) think integrated systems are valuable, but that's lower than in other countries, which average out at 88%.
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Why doctors hate electronic records — and what could change that
June 12, 2017 Updated: June 12, 2017 3:19pm
The health care industrial complex has spent billions of dollars and untold amounts of time trying to make medical records as flexible, invisible and unobtrusive as possible for patients and clinicians alike.
The results will be well worth the expense, the thinking goes, if the records — tracking patients in the vast and complicated health care system — could help clinicians spend more time caring for people and less on paperwork.
But after nearly two decades of concerted innovation, amid a push to do away with paper records, many physicians say they’re still hamstrung by issues that have dogged them for years. We’ve replaced the medical chart with a patchwork of systems that impose on doctors’ precious time and have yet to deliver clear improvements.
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ONC Releases C-CDA “Checkup” Tool for Healthcare Providers
A simple Direct message with a C-CDA attached can give healthcare providers insight into how to improve these critical data packets.
Jennifer Bresnick
June 13, 2017 - Organizations that aren’t sure if their Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) formatting and presentation are up to snuff can now get a simple numerical quality score from a new online ONC tool.
The One Click Scorecard allows users to see how their electronic health record systems generate C-CDA documents, giving providers a glimpse into how they can improve this foundational summary of patient care.
“This benchmarking tool is the health IT equivalent of an internet speed test and is specially designed with health care providers in mind – to give them visibility into the quality of the C-CDAs their health IT generates,” explained Steven Posnack, MS, MHS, Director of the ONC Office of Standards and Technology, in a blog post.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/opinion/how-iot-could-be-the-next-target-for-ransomware-attacks
HIT Think Why IoT may be the next big target for ransomware attacks
Published June 13 2017, 4:17pm EDT
Ransomware has become one of the most serious cyber threats plaguing organizations. Today, healthcare and other types of organizations are trying to protect themselves from encryption viruses.
But so far, not a lot of attention has been paid to the next wave of ransomware attacks, which many expect to be aimed at encrypting IoT devices. These attacks can be much more dangerous because of the omnipresent and extremely diverse nature of the Internet of Things.
Quite simply, there are some differences that make IoT ransomware more dangerous than the already widespread extortion viruses for desktops and smartphones. Here are some ways in which ransomware attacks on IoT devices pose huge challenges for healthcare organizations.
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HIT Think Why healthcare information still doesn’t flow freely
Published June 14 2017, 4:50pm EDT
A recent University of Michigan survey asked health information exchange (HIE) professionals about their experience with information blocking. Respondents clearly indicated that information blocking is real and is practiced by both health systems and EHR vendors.
“Half of respondents reported that EHR vendors routinely engage in information blocking, and 25 percent of respondents reported that hospitals and health systems routinely do so,” write professors Adler-Milstein and Pfeifer in their report. “Among EHR vendors, the most common form of information blocking was deploying products with limited interoperability. Among hospitals and health systems, the most common form was coercing providers to adopt particular EHR or HIE technology.”
The survey results are especially incriminating for EHR vendors—researchers contend that they either “routinely” or “occasionally” engage in information blocking, according to 88 percent of respondents. Hospitals and health systems fared better, but 59 percent of survey participants still used “routinely” and “occasionally” to describe information blocking behavior.
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Caldicott: 'Data security will become main priority for new government'
Article posted on: June 5, 2017
“I think what’s happened is that the technology and the drive to improve our services of health and care have proceeded at a pace where we haven’t really caught up with in terms of keeping the public informed on what is happening with their information,” Dame Fiona Caldicott said at the Hay Festival in Wales this weekend
The government has not yet issued a response to the National Data Guardian’s review of data security, consent and opt-outs
[London, UK] Dame Fiona Caldicott, National Data Guardian for Health and Care, has said at the Hay Festival in Wales on Friday that data security will be ‘at the top of the agenda’ for the new government that will come into power after the 8 June general election.
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Will healthcare IT go blockchain?
Article posted on: May 15, 2017
Blockchain might not be the newest kid on the IT block but its growing appeal as a potential framework for secure data sharing across the healthcare spectrum signifies a new wave of interest among technology strategists. And this is being driven by a range of pilots and research initiatives now bearing fruit around the globe.
The quest for technology that solves the perennial need in healthcare for a secure, collaborative information exchange model, cutting through the age-old challenges of interoperability and accessibility, has been long and fraught. But the potential of blockchain as a viable proposition for the management of decentralised healthcare data is rapidly gaining momentum across the sector, despite early nervousness about its enabling role in the rise of controversial cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
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Widespread precision medicine is still years away, experts say
While the industry is rapidly making progress on precision medicine, cultural, policy and regulatory changes are limiting momentum, industry leaders said at the Precision Medicine Summit on Monday.
June 12, 2017 02:15 PM
BOSTON -- While the Office of the National Coordinator believes the dawn of precision medicine has started, when pressed on the current state of the innovative technology, technology leaders say that the industry is still years away from full utilization.
In fact, on a scale of one to 10, most would place precision medicine at a three in terms of progress.
“The landscape is changing so quickly and things [in the industry] have changed so much already,” University Of California, San Francisco Director of Research Strategy and Associate Director of Precision Medicine India Hook-Barnard said at the HIMSS Precision Medicine Summit in Boston on Monday.
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Digital biomarkers are the new ‘digital divide’ for the mental health app industry
Jun 13, 2017 12:13pm
Access to mental health apps is no longer a concern. Now researchers are focused on identifying useful digital biomarkers.
Smartphones and health apps are emerging as a new and potentially beneficial resource for those with mental health conditions. But so far, little is understood about how that data can guide treatment.
Mobile apps addressing mental health conditions are still in their infancy, but many see the information that is collected through those apps as a new resource for clinicians to better understand various disease states. While access to mobile apps focusing on mental health is no longer a concern, the digital biomarkers collected through those apps offer a new “digital divide,” researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School wrote in the journal Digital Biomarkers.
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Software proves as effective for treating depression as drugs
Published June 12 2017, 7:17am EDT
A cognitive-emotional treatment for depression, using software developed by researchers at Mount Sinai Health System, has proven to be as effective as antidepressant drug therapy.
The digital therapeutic, Emotional Faces Memory Task (EFMT), a form of psychological test to ascertain the subject's emotional well-being, was tested in a trial at Mount Sinai that resulted in a significantly greater reduction of major depressive disorder (MDD) symptoms compared with a control group, according to initial clinical results presented last month at the Society of Biological Psychiatry Annual Scientific Convention in San Diego.
In the six-week trial involving 51 patients, the web-based intervention reduced MDD symptoms by 42 percent in the experimental group of 28 patients, versus 15.7 percent in the control group of 23 patients.
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Arizona State using big data in hunt for cancer cure
Published June 12 2017, 7:08am EDT
Looking for a cancer-causing variation requires the examination of literally millions of different spots within the human DNA in thousands of individuals—a seemingly overwhelming amount of information. In fact, until recently it was so much data that the storage and processing capacities of computing platforms couldn’t efficiently handle the loads, which limited the work of scientists searching for cures.
The researchers at Arizona State University, however, thought big data computing could be just the tool they needed to start making some serious breakthroughs.
ASU is the largest public university by enrollment in the United States, with more than 83,000 students and 3,300 faculty members. The university’s charter is based on a “New American University” model that encourages teaching and research. A program launched under that model is ASU’s Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative (CASI), which aims to tap different departments across the university to develop new technologies and solutions to the immense challenges the world faces in health, sustainability, security and education.
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ONC shifting focus from EHR adoption to usability, interoperability, Rucker says
The ONC chief told a Washington gathering the time is right to address the ‘angst’ over EHR design and moving medical records.
June 09, 2017 01:56 PM
When it comes to the focus of the work of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, adoption is out and usability and interoperability are in as health IT becomes more fully developed and new healthcare laws take full effect, ONC chief Donald W. Rucker, MD, said at a meeting in Washington Friday morning.
The 2009 HITECH Act has thus far provided about $36 billion to incentivize the adoption of electronic health records. And a significantly increasing number of healthcare organizations have been deploying the technology. Now, the 2015 Medicare physician payment law and the 21st Century Cures Act emphasize the free flow of medical records between systems and organizations.
"There's been a lot of angst out there about moving medical records," Rucker told attendees at the Direct Exchange Workshop, according to Politico. Rucker added that improving usability is too complex for government alone to solve. "I've never felt that kind of stuff works."
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Oscar launches machine learning tool to put relevant clinical insights in front of physicians
Jun 12, 2017 9:23am
A new analytics tool from Oscar aims to give physicians patient data they can act on.
A common complaint among physicians is that they are inundated with a deluge of patient data. Oscar is looking to solve that problem by using analytics to distill data into useful clinical insights.
The five-year-old insurance company has taken its lumps over the past several years, including more than $200 million in losses in 2016, but the company is still betting on its data-driven approach to health coverage.
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Audit estimates CMS issued hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of incorrect EHR incentive payments
Jun 12, 2017 10:57am
The HHS Office of Inspector General estimates that CMS erroneously paid $729 million in EHR incentive payments to eligible healthcare professionals.
As part of a program to encourage providers to shift to EHRs, the federal government incorrectly paid hundreds of millions of dollars in incentive payments to healthcare professionals who did not actually meet Meaningful Use requirements.
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General estimates that inappropriate payments to eligible professionals totaled $729 million between May 2011 and June 2014, according to a newly released audit (PDF).
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What Do Informatics Nurses Do?
Interviewer: Susan B. Yox, RN, EdD; Interviewee: Joyce Sensmeier, RN-BC, MS
June 07, 2017
We wanted to learn more about what informatics nurses do and review some of the highlights of the recent workforce survey done by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). So Susan B. Yox, RN, EdD, of Medscape spoke by telephone to Joyce Sensmeier, RN-BC, MS, vice president of informatics at HIMSS, to learn more.
Medscape: Would you tell our readers a bit about your background?
Ms Sensmeier: I'm vice president of informatics at HIMSS, and my background is nursing. Specifically, my specialty is nursing informatics. But my role at HIMSS goes beyond that, which probably is typical for many informatics nurses.
I oversee interoperability and standards activities at HIMSS, as well as the clinician community—nurse informaticists—of which we have about 8000 at HIMSS. I also oversee the physician community, pharmacy, and clinical engineering as well. And we're beginning to work more with the enterprise imaging professionals [medical imaging and information technology (IT)]. So those are my overarching areas of responsibility.
I oversee interoperability and standards activities at HIMSS, as well as the clinician community—nurse informaticists—of which we have about 8000 at HIMSS. I also oversee the physician community, pharmacy, and clinical engineering as well. And we're beginning to work more with the enterprise imaging professionals [medical imaging and information technology (IT)]. So those are my overarching areas of responsibility.
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Feds ID $729M in Improper EHR Payments
John Commins, June 12, 2017
Audit estimates that 12% of the $6 billion in electronic health record incentive payments made to hospitals, physicians and other “eligible professionals” under the HITECH Act did not comply with federal regulations.
Federal auditors say that $729.4 million in Medicare payments to incentivize rapid adoption of electronic health records did not comply with requirements for attesting meaningful use.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General is urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to conduct a thorough review of the incentive program that was created under 2009’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) and attempt to recover improper payments.
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Monday Morning Update 6/12/17
Top News
Cork University Maternal Hospital and University Hospital Kerry in Ireland report significant added expense as a result of their implementations of the nation’s first Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System. The initial $39.2 million price tag has increased by $785,000 in Deloitte consultancy fees, with millions more expected as 17 additional hospitals prepare to go live on the Cerner-powered system over the next several years. Ireland’s Health Service attributes the over-budget, delayed implementations to a lack of expertise on the part of its clinical and business staff.
Ireland experiences similar woes with its eHealth project, which is “not in a good place,” according to Chief Scientific Adviser Mark Ferguson, adding that the project is moving forward with several initial pilots to help alleviate patient concerns about the digital storage of PHI. The project will ultimately include the launch of a nationwide EHR, unique identifiers for patients, and capacity for genome-sequencing.
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Enjoy!
David.
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