Here are a few I came across last week.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
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Special Report: Shared Care Records
In June last year, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens named eight accountable care systems, meant to spearhead efforts towards closer, more integrated means of working. Even though there is uncertainty on when the systems will get formalised, most agree shared care records will be key to providing joined-up care. So how is the NHS progressing on implementation of record sharing? Maja Dragovic investigates.
Beverley Bryant has long beaten the drum for shared care records. As director of digital transformation at NHS Digital, director of digital technology at NHS England, and now as chief operating officer at System C and Graphnet, she has strongly made the case for efficient information sharing.
And in the form of accountable care systems (ACSs) and sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs), she sees the structures that just might make it happen.
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Number of patient records compromised by data breaches dropped 80% in 2017
Still, analysts warned that 2017 may have been an off year for malicious actors who are “taking a breach before a resurgence of attacks in 2018,” according to an annual Breach Barometer report published by Protenus and DataBreaches.net.
A total of 477 data breaches were reported to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights last year, up slightly from the 450 reported in 2016, according to the report. Far fewer records were implicated: 5.6 million in 2017 versus 27.3 million in 2016.
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Free text in radiology reports complicates automated diagnosis
Published February 01 2018, 7:26am EST
Allowing radiologists to report their findings using free text rather than in structured templates increases their variability in language and length, making them harder to use—and more difficult for machine learning to predict diagnoses.
That finding, from a new study in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, suggested that structured templates for radiology reports could improve diagnostics, make results easier to understand, enhance billing, and assist in population health.
However, the study authors, from Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey Pa., noted that templates can be a burden on the radiologists using them.
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Special Report: AI voice assistants have officially arrived in healthcare
Amazon has an early lead, but lessons from cutting-edge providers can also be applied to Apple Siri, Google Home and Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana.
By Bill Siwicki
February 01, 2018 08:30 AM
As 2017 wound down, Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant rose up to the top of Apple’s App Store while Amazon’s Echo Dot was its own bestseller.
But some of the millions of those devices sold have already found their way into hospitals like Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Northwell Health in New York, the Commonwealth Care Alliance in Boston, and Libertana Home Health in Los Angeles.
“When we went from laptops to smartphones as our primary means of doing computing, that was a major paradigm shift,” said John Halamka, MD, CIO at Beth Israel. “Ambient listening tools probably will replace mobile devices.”
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Stanford's Lloyd Minor on his expectations for the Apple Heart Study and leveraging Silicon Valley connections
by Evan Sweeney
Feb 1, 2018 10:00am
Stanford Medicine’s Lloyd Minor, M.D., has a solution to the growing number of complaints that physicians pay more attention to their computer screen than patients sitting in front of them: more technology.
That approach may sound counterintuitive, but Minor says digital health tools that can re-engineer the role of physicians will actually swing the pendulum back toward patients by allowing clinicians to be “teachers, empathetic observers and counselors."
Technology "should enable healthcare providers to get back to that human interaction,” the dean of Stanford University's School of Medicine told FierceHealthcare. “A lot of the things that are being done by hand or not done at all will be handled by technology.”
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Epic Tops in Best in KLAS for Eighth Straight Year
January 30, 2018
by Heather Landi
The 2018 Best in KLAS Software and Services report, released this week by Orem, Utah-based KLAS, named the top-performing companies within various market segments based on customer feedback, and once again Epic earned the ranking of number-one Overall Software Suite.
It’s the eighth straight year that Epic has secured the top spot, with Meditech ranked number two, followed by Cerner. Epic also was named the top Overall Physician Practice Vendor, with athenahealth ranked number two. What’s more, Epic won Best in KLAS awards in seven segments and Category Leader awards in two segments.
Optimum earned the designation of top Overall IT Services Firm for the second year in a row, won two Best in KLAS awards and earned one Category Leader award. ECG Management Consultants earned the title of top overall Healthcare Management Consulting Firm.
The KLAS report showcases the vendor solutions that lead out in their respective software and services market segments, the winners of the 2018 Best in KLAS awards are those with the highest ratings according to their customers. Separate from the winners of Best in KLAS, the Category Leaders also earned top honors for helping healthcare professionals provide better patient care. The Category Leader designation is reserved for vendor solutions that lead select market segments in which at least two products meet a minimum level of KLAS Konfidence, according to the report.
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Amazon Web Services exec: We're interested in longitudinal health records for analytics and pop health
The tech giant said the cloud can serve as a home for patient records and enable a broader view at medical data to fuel value-based care.
By Mike Miliard
January 30, 2018 02:49 PM
When Amazon announced that it is creating a new healthcare company with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, the move signaled how the company is stepping into the industry.
During a pre-HIMSS18 Q&A just days ahead of that revelation, Patrick Combes, global technical leader of healthcare and life sciences at Amazon Web Services, shed some light on where the cloud computing arm of Amazon is headed in healthcare.
“Looking ahead, AWS is interested in how we can work with longitudinal health records and leverage them for population health and analysis efforts,” Combes said. "As we’re seeing it, it’s possible for the cloud to act as a permanent home for all patient records and enable the shift away from event-based records to a more holistic view of patient health, supporting value-based care initiatives.”
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HIT Think Why healthcare interoperability moves at a snail’s pace
By Dan Cidon
Published February 01 2018, 5:26pm EST
Healthcare undoubtedly lags behind other industries when it comes to interoperability. Sadly, organizations remain stymied by systems that fail to communicate. Vendors’ sluggish efforts to make progress have only placed more distrust in the market.
There are concerted efforts underway, ranging from government officials emphasizing interoperability and information blocking, and industry standards such as HL7’s FHIR have come to the forefront. However, little has been done to motivate IT vendors to achieve better integration and data sharing. The industry will have to wait until April to see if the proposed health IT provisions within the 21st Century Cures Act will be enough to drive the final push toward true interoperability.
Having just returned from Cleveland following our annual participation in the IHE North American Connectathon—where vendors cooperatively demonstrate and test the latest industry standards for interoperability—it raises the question; “Why can’t this open collaboration successfully proliferate outside the confines of the event?”
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Epic introduces new One Virtual System Worldwide interoperability initiative
EHR maker says One Virtual System Worldwide will enable its customers to exchange health data with other vendors’ electronic health records platforms.
January 31, 2018 09:28 AM
Epic Systems announced on Tuesday afternoon the One Virtual System Worldwide initiative for clinicians across all organizations using Epic to exchange data and collaborate more around it.
“We’re taking interoperability from being able to view more to being able to do more,” said Dave Fuhrmann, Epic vice president of interoperability. “Over the last decade we expanded the amount of data customers can exchange, going well beyond industry requirements.”
The overarching One Virtual System Worldwide effort is composed of three pieces: Come Together is about gathering data while Happy Together is presenting information in digestible formats and Working Together is the piece wherein users take cross-organizational actions based on the data.
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Successful antibiotic stewardship programs engage clinicians, embrace IT, study shows
Jan 31, 2018 10:30am
Some hospitals face challenges when implementing an antimicrobial stewardship program, and a new study has identified some of the key strategies to overcome them.
Researchers interviewed 12 antibiotic stewardship leaders at four prominent U.S. programs, and three trends emerged:
- The structure of these programs is evolving. The most effective stewardship approaches have moved away from a top-down approach and engage frontline pharmacists and clinicians, according to the study, which was published in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.
- Using information technology is crucial. Integrated IT systems allow for real-time data sharing and monitoring that can flag risks and optimize therapies.
- Barriers to technology integration pose a challenge. An ongoing lack of interoperability throughout the industry and a limited database for analysis can both limit the effectiveness of IT in antibiotic stewardship, the study found.
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Meaningful use most helpful for routine care: survey
Author Les Masterson
Published Jan. 29, 2018
Dive Brief:
· The federal meaningful use program created a “significant practice burden without clear benefits to patient care,” but policymakers should drill down into the different aspects of MU and figure out what’s working and what needs improving, according to a report in the JAMIA.
· A 2015 survey of 480 family physicians found that 18 of 31 MU criteria were considered useful for more than half of patient encounters, with 13 of those useful for more than two-thirds. Thirteen were useful for less than half of patient encounters, and four were deemed burdensome.
· The study authors said MU Stage 1 criteria were the most beneficial for physicians. This stage related to basic or routine care. Physicians felt Stage 2, which was more complex and population care, was less beneficial and more burdensome.
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KLAS ranks Epic, GE Healthcare, Change Healthcare among top vendors
Published January 31 2018, 7:20am EST
Vendor research firm KLAS Enterprises has released its annual Best in KLAS listing of health information technology vendors.
KLAS, a research and consulting firm specializing in healthcare information technology, offers ratings that measure vendor satisfaction rates of healthcare providers and professionals across the industry. It says its ratings are based on thousands of interviews with hospitals and physician practices during the past year.
Information from interviews conducted during 2018 came from more than 2,500 clinics and 4,500 hospitals, covering 750 products and services from more than 200 vendors.
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Epic initiative seeks to facilitate data exchange
Published January 31 2018, 5:05pm EST
Epic Systems is implementing a program to make it easier for client organizations to share electronic heath record data with each other as well as with healthcare organizations that don’t use Epic systems.
Under the One Virtual System Worldwide service, Epic will search for and collect patient records from clients and other organizations that use other EHRs and networks that work with the Epic clients, enabling outside clinicians to have a merged view of information on a patient from multiple provider organizations. The capability of gathering data is intended to eliminate gaps in care.
The information received from organizations that use Epic, and from those that use other companies’ applications, are expected to be as easy to read as if all the information came from one organization, according to the vendor.
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HIT Think Why Meltdown and Spectre pose threats to data security
Published January 31 2018, 4:36pm EST
The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities shook the world when they were revealed earlier this month. Since then, the cybersecurity workforce has become very familiar with the part of the CPU architecture impacted by the vulnerabilities.
There have been numerous articles, proof-of-concept codes and wild speculations of just how far hackers can go. So, just how far can they go?
Speculative execution
A CPU may execute some code ahead of time in a program to save time. Consider the pseudo-code below.
A CPU may execute some code ahead of time in a program to save time. Consider the pseudo-code below.
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CMS mandates that hospitals report EHR meaningful use data through secure portal
The QualityNet Secure Portal, or QNet streamlines data submission methods to make it easier for eligible hospitals and CAH’s to report.
By Susan Morse
January 29, 2018 04:07 PM
For 2018 and beyond, hospitals are required to submit their meaningful use data through the QualityNet Secure Portal, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services affirmed this month.
Reporting began on Jan. 2 for hospitals and critical access hospitals eligible for Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs.
CMS said its goal is to simplify reporting, as the hospitals can now report meaningful use using one portal, instead of two.
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Oscar Health’s telemedicine consultations up 32% in 2017 as more members access virtual touchpoints
by Evan Sweeney
Jan 30, 2018 9:54am
Oscar Health saw a 32% increase in telemedicine consultations among its members last year amid an overall increase in virtual services.
Telemedicine consults are less utilized than the other digital services offered by the company: 25% of members used the service in 2017, up from 17% in 2016. But those figures outpace other telemedicine leaders. A survey published last year by the National Business Group on Health found that nearly 20% of employers have telehealth utilization rates of 20% or higher.
Oscar’s telehealth utilization rates outpace those of industry leaders as well. Teladoc recently reported a 7% utilization rate among its 23 million members in 2017.
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Google Study Uses Entire Patient EHR for Predictive Analytics
Researchers at Google showed using all data contained within a patient EHR can improve accuracy for predictive analytics.
By Kate Monica
January 29, 2018 - A recent study by researchers from Google, University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Stanford University, and University of Chicago Medicine (UCM) found representations of a comprehensive patient EHR using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) can be used for more accurate predictive analytics.
Researchers used de-identified EHR data from UCSF and UCM gathered from 2009-2016 during inpatient and outpatient encounters. Datasets included patient demographics, provider orders, diagnoses, procedures, medications, lab values, vital signs, and flowsheet data. In total, the study included data about 216,221 hospitalizations involving 114,003 patients.
Researchers then used a single data structure to predict health outcomes instead of requiring custom datasets for each new prediction.
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New Medicare ID cards come to mid-Atlantic states first
By Virgil Dickson | January 29, 2018
The CMS has revealed which states will be the first in the nation to receive new Medicare identification cards that don't contain Social Security numbers.
Medicare beneficiaries in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia are among the states that will be first to get the cards starting in April.
Beneficiaries in Alaska, American Samoa, California, Guam, Hawaii, the Northern Mariana Islands and Oregon are also expected to get the cards starting that month.
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Amazon set to play role of technology disruptor in healthcare
Published January 31 2018, 7:36am EST
The announcement by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase that they are forming an independent company to offer high quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost to their combined 1.2 million U.S. employees is a long-overdue kick in the pants for the industry, observers say.
Plagued by high costs and inefficiency, healthcare has become a “hungry tapeworm” eating away at the American economy, according to Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. However, the new partnership is an attempt to optimize the patient experience and health outcomes while remaining “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.”
Although Tuesday’s announcement was light on specifics, the new company will focus first on technology solutions. As the world’s largest online retailer and a cloud computing behemoth, Amazon will bring its technology and scale to bear—first with U.S. employees and their families at the three participating companies and then the healthcare market in general, ultimately acting as an industry disruptor to benefit all Americans.
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Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase partner to build healthcare company with focus on tech
The new nonprofit plans to give people more control and greater transparency into their healthcare to improve satisfaction and drive down costs, executives said.
January 30, 2018 10:09 AM
Amazon, the world’s ubiquitous online store, revealed today it is collaborating with Warren Buffet, who heads Berkshire Hathaway, and the bank JPMorgan Chase to build an independent, nonprofit healthcare company with the goal of increasing user satisfaction and reducing costs.
The first order of business, the partners announced, is focusing on technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost. They plan to draw on their combined capabilities and resources to take a fresh approach.
“The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Buffett said in a statement. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable.”
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Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan move to target healthcare costs
Published January 30 2018, 9:13am EST
Three corporate giants are teaming up to combat what billionaire Warren Buffett calls a “hungry tapeworm” feasting on the U.S. economy—healthcare.
Amazon.com, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. say they plan to collaborate on a way to offer healthcare services to their U.S. employees more transparently and at a lower cost. The three companies say they plan to set up a new independent company “that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints,” according to a short statement issued Tuesday.
The move sent shares of healthcare stocks falling in early trading.
The healthcare industry has been nervously eyeing the prospect of competition from Amazon for months. While the new company created by Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan would be for their U.S. staff only, this is the first big move by Amazon into the industry. The new collaboration could pressure profits for middlemen in the U.S. healthcare industry.
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HIT Think Why Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan will continue the push for value
By Fred Bazzoli
Published January 30 2018, 5:37pm EST
Some big names have jumped into the movement to reinvent healthcare and try to reduce the rising arc of medical costs.
Today, Amazon.com, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced plans to collaborate on a way to offer healthcare services to their employees. While the plan is initially targeted at their employees, executives say the plan could be expanded to offer services to other companies and organizations.
There’s significant shock value when an initiative includes the likes of Amazon, Warren Buffett (the chair of Berkshire Hathaway) and a huge banking conglomerate such as JPMorgan Chase. They say the new company will have an initial focus of using technology to provide simpler, cheaper and more transparent healthcare.
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Missouri Mulls Looser Telemedicine Rules
Alexandra Wilson Pecci, January 30, 2018
A new bill would allow reimbursement for telehealth visits that meet the same standard of care as in-person visits.
The state of Missouri is considering new legislation that aims to remove barriers to practicing telemedicine in the state.
Telemedicine adoption has been inconsistent throughout the United States for several reasons, and chief of among them is how providers would get reimbursed for such services.
Although Medicare covers certain services performed at certain locations, state regulations vary for Medicaid payments. According to the Center for Connected Health Policy, "no two states approach telehealth in the same way."
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SMART on FHIR app uses machine learning to help dermatologists make diagnoses
Physicians at one Missouri health system are using the app to quickly reach conclusions and move forward with the best care options, its CMIO says.
By Bill Siwicki
January 26, 2018 05:27 PM
Dermatology is finding Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources an increasingly useful standard from HL7.
CoxHealth, a Springfield, Missouri-based health system, is using the VisualDx app that uses medical images, visualization and machine learning to help compare variations of disease to get to a more accurate diagnosis.
VisualDx is what's called a SMART on FHIR app. It is integrated into the health system's Cerner electronic health records system. Having the application integrated into the EHR saves physicians time by having it available at the bedside or with a patient in an examination room and linked to patient data.
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The Olympics at HIMSS18: International interoperability a new team sport
The Olympic Healthcare Interoperability Initiative hopes to offer a real-world proving ground for a more seamless data exchange to treat athletes, trainers and attendees from more than 200 countries.
By Mike Miliard
January 29, 2018 12:44 PM
The initiative hopes to integrate into the core Olympics infrastructure and expand information exchange among the countries participating.
Olympic games offer athletes from around the globe a chance to shine on the world stage, showcasing their top-tier talent for all to see. Just about everybody knows that but what’s perhaps lesser known is that they also offer a chance to prove the utility and value of healthcare data interoperability.
The Olympiad lends itself well to such a mission: The biennial nature of the event, and the participation of thousands of athletes from nearly every nation for whom good health is paramount, make it an optimal proving ground to expand interoperability success.
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US health IT investment skyrockets to $7.1 billion
Health IT investment shattered prior records and IT M&A and valuations were at all-time highs, according to Healthcare Growth Partners report.
By Susan Morse
January 26, 2018 03:31 PM
The new report speculates Change Healthcare may file for an IPO in 2018.
Last year was a blockbuster year for health IT, according to the semi-annual health IT market review from Healthcare Growth Partners.
Health IT investment activity fired past prior records, and IT mergers and acquisitions activity and valuations were at all-time highs.
Here are the numbers: U.S. health IT investment was $2.8 billion in 2013; in 2017, it totaled a whopping $7.1 billion.
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Novant Health and Wake Forest Baptist Health merge medical records
by Evan Sweeney
Jan 26, 2018 12:30pm
Backed by a cheerful marketing campaign, two of the largest health systems in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, have merged medical records, allowing patients to access their information through a single portal.
The campaign known as “Happy Together” paired medical records systems at Novant Health and Wake Forest Baptist Health. Although both health systems use Epic, patients were previously forced to maintain separate MyChart accounts for each system. As of Jan. 14, patients could access records at either system through a single account. Providers will also be able to access patient records in each system.
Three days after the feature went live, about 6,700 Novant Health patients had merged their accounts, according to an announcement.
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A new natural language processing system can define EHR 'jargon': 5 things to know
January 24, 2018
A team of researchers evaluated the usability of NoteAid, an online natural language processing system that links medical terms found in EHRs to "lay definitions," according study results published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
The mission behind NoteAid — a system developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester — is to improve patient comprehension by providing definitions for clinical terms that can be "easily understood by lay people."
"Many health care systems now allow patients to access their EHR notes online through patient portals," the study authors note. "Medical jargon in EHR notes can confuse patients, which may interfere with potential benefits of patient access to EHR notes."
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Dashboard helps monitor patients under anesthesia in surgery
Published January 29 2018, 7:37am EST
Anesthesiologists face significant challenges in monitoring patients in the operating room as they are inundated with data. To help guide anesthesia providers in surgery, a decision support system integrates multiple real-time data streams into a single dashboard providing a ‘live’ schematic view of organs.
The system, called AlertWatch, leverages data extracted from physiologic monitors, electronic health records and laboratory systems, and then displays a patient’s condition in a single user interface, with color-coded icons to indicate normal (green), borderline abnormal (yellow) and abnormal (red) ranges for the data related to each organ system or lab value. The central part of the dashboard includes icons of five organ systems: brain, heart, kidneys, liver and lungs.
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January 28th, 2018
Apple Wants to Build an Electronic Medical Record — Here’s Where They Should Start
If you want to get a bunch of clinicians riled up — make them really mad — ask them to describe the problems with their current electronic medical record.
So when a company like Apple announces it plans to introduce an electronic medical record of sorts, we should rejoice, right?
This is the company, after all, that leveraged the Think Different and It Just Works slogans to boast about how easy their products are to use.
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Enjoy!
David.
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