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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Data still vulnerable for healthcare organizations, other entities
Published May 31 2019, 5:29pm EDT
Bad actors continue to experience success in gaining unauthorized access to protected health data and other types of business information.
In its most recent annual report on data breaches, spanning 86 nations, Verizon acknowledges that, “Seemingly, no matter what defensive measures security professionals put in place, attackers are able to circumvent them,” the company says. “No organization is too large or two small to fall victim. No industry is immune.”
Regardless of the type or amount of your organization’s data, there is someone out there trying to steal it. Having a sound understanding of the threats you and your peers face, how they have evolved over time and which tactics are most likely to be utilized can prepare you to manage these risks more effectively and efficiently.”
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HIT Think How to improve defenses against health data security threats
Published May 31 2019, 5:47pm EDT
Healthcare institutions are trusted with our most valuable information. Within their networks they store highly sensitive data such as medical records, treatment plans, financial records, contact information and more. This data is essential for healthcare providers to effectively communicate with patients and provide the best care possible.
However, having this information is also what makes them so attractive to cyber criminals. This is just the sort of information that cyber criminals seek to steal in order to sell or commit fraud.
Additionally, healthcare institutions are also preferred targets due to their status as a critical infrastructure. Beyond traditional attacks such as ransomware seeking monetary payout or the theft of PII, they are also targeted by hacktivists and nation-state groups seeking to disrupt critical operations at a national level.
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Kaveh Waddell May 30, 2019
Medical AI has a big data problem
Facing increasingly overworked doctors and labyrinthine insurance systems, hospitals are searching for a lifeline in AI systems that promises to ease hard diagnoses and treatment decisions.
Reality check: The data underpinning the very first systems is often spotty, volatile and completely lacking in critical context, leading to a poor early record in the field.
The big picture: Basic clinical decision support (CDS) systems have been around for decades, but a skepticism of technology leads many doctors to ignore or override them. Now, experts say a nascent generation of CDS — infused with AI in academic labs and startups — may reduce the estimated 40,000–80,000 deaths a year that result from medical errors.
- The grand vision: Researchers hope AI programs can point doctors toward the best medications, lab tests or treatment plans based on minute patterns discovered in huge numbers of patients' past experiences.
- Last week, we reported on the promise of combining pools of private data to strengthen AI systems, feeding them with ever more examples of past outcomes.
- This helps solve the quantity issue. But data quality — a constant struggle in health care — remains an enormous threat to medical AI.
The big problem: Record keeping is so bad that doctors laugh when you ask about it.
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Why tech companies keep hitting the same wall when they try to get into health care
Published Thu, May 30 2019 8:43 AM EDT Updated Thu, May 30 2019 10:49 AM EDT
Key Points
- Paul Markovich, CEO of Blue Shield of California, thinks tech companies will keep trying to open up access to health information on behalf of consumers.
- That’s because it’s difficult for them to scale if medical information isn’t easily shareable.
- Markovich is trying to make health information flow more easily between doctors and health systems.
Technology companies like Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft keep making moves in the health sector, which isn’t surprising given that it represents a $3.5 trillion opportunity.
But these companies keep hitting the same stumbling block: the inability to share health information across medical systems. Millions of patients are learning that they can’t share clinical data from their electronic medical records between doctors, especially among those working at different hospitals. They face a similar challenge getting billing information.
Paul Markovich, chief executive of Blue Shield of California, a health insurance plan with more than 4 million members, said big technology companies are highly motivated to work with the medical industry to solve this problem. It’s challenging to build systems using things like artificial intelligence, for instance, if companies can’t access the large-scale data they need to build their computer models.
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Physicians need better EHR training, study finds
May 30, 2019
By now, physicians know that electronic health records (EHRs) have not lived up to their potential.
But a new analysis published in the journal Applied Clinical Informatics points to lack of training on how to use EHRs as the chief cause of physician dissatisfaction. The authors argue that most of the problems with EHRs would be alleviated with proper training.
“The extensive feedback from tens of thousands of users reveals critical gaps in users' understanding of how to optimize their EHR,” the authors write. “Therefore, we as an industry have an opportunity to improve EHR adoption by investing in EHR learning and personalization support for caregivers. If healthcare organizations offered higher-quality educational opportunities for their care providers—and if providers were expected to develop greater mastery of EHR functionality—many of the current EHR challenges would be ameliorated.”
The authors caution that their findings do not let EHR vendors off the hook on improving their products, or the need to relieve physicians of some of the regulatory burdens that require extensive documentation for billing purposes. Instead, they see improved training in how to use the system as an untapped opportunity to help EHRs become a tool to improve patient care and lower healthcare costs.
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40% of Health Organizations Suffered WannaCry Attack in Past 6 Months
A report from Armis found that two years after WannaCry, healthcare and manufacturing organizations are still being impacted due to unpatched, legacy devices.
May 30, 2019 - More than two years since the WannaCry attack wreaked havoc across the world, the malware is still impacting devices with 40 percent of healthcare organizations suffering a WannaCry attack in the past six months, according to a report from Armis, a security firm.
WannaCry is a ransomware cryptoworm that struck on May 12, 2017, infecting 300,000 computers globally in just a few short days. The hackers leveraged the EternalBlue exploit developed by the NSA, leaked a few months before the attack. While Microsoft released a patch for vulnerable systems months before the attack, many organizations did not apply it.
As a result, the exploit allowed the virus to proliferate, claiming the UK National Health Service as one of the hardest hit victims. A researcher found a killswitch that prevented the malware from spreading, which stopped the cyberattack in four days.
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Health data security exposures doubled in one year, report says
By Nathan Eddy
May 30, 2019 09:32 AM
Research from Digital Shadows found imaging files particularly vulnerable.
There has been a 50 percent increase in the exposure of medical-related data over the past year, according to a report from Digital Shadows, a San Francisco-based provider of digital risk protection solutions.
WHY IT MATTERS
Most of the healthcare specific exposure the firm detected were DICOM imaging files, which are typically set up to transfer images within a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) architecture.
Overall, Digital Shadows analysts uncovered roughly 4.7 million medical-related files exposed through online file stores.
Overall, Digital Shadows analysts uncovered roughly 4.7 million medical-related files exposed through online file stores.
The report recommended health care providers should secure all of the various servers within a PACS architecture, whether that is a HL7 or DICOM server, specifically.
The cause of this data exposure was largely due to the misconfiguration of commonly used file storage technologies, with nearly half of the files exposed through the Server Message Block protocol – a technology for sharing files first designed in 1983.
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IBM Watson Health says AI for clinical decision support is making progress
By Nathan Eddy
May 31, 2019 09:40 AM
Vendor shows 22 studies that show how artificial intelligence is reducing variability in care.
Tech giant IBM showed off the results of a series of studies indicating Watson Health, the company’s division dedicated to data-driven health technologies, has made progress in providing clinical decision support for cancer care.
WHY IT MATTERS
The study results come as IBM Watson Health has been making major investments in health AI — such as the
$50 million it gave to Brigham and Women’s and Vanderbilt to help to advance the science of AI and its application to major public health issues — and as the company faces increased scrutiny for under delivering and struggling sales for its drug discovery AI services, among other issues.
HOW IT WORKS
The Watson Health cognitive computing cloud platform can analyze large volumes of patient healthcare data using embedded artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.
Among the 22 studies the company showcased at the American Society for Clinical Oncology was a trial where Watson for Oncology was shown to inform clinical decision changes in 13.6 percent of cases at a hospital in India.
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An Example of Why Patient Centric Interoperability is So Important
May 31, 2019
In our last article, we talked about how healthcare interoperability is insanely complex. In it we shared some of the technical nuances of keeping health data synchronized between different software systems using an API. As a follow up to that article, this article will look at a small but extremely important human nuance that makes healthcare interoperability so complex.
This insight comes from a blog post called “Problems with Interoperability and Coordinated Care.” It’s written by a patient who has a challenging mix of chronic conditions, medical trauma, and mental health issues.
The patient acknowledges that she started off being a big proponent of healthcare interoperability. Who wouldn’t want to not have to to “fill out those long intake forms”? However, she also discovered some challenging realities she faced when she as the patient wasn’t in control of how, when, and where her health data was being shared.
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Healthcare Interoperability Is Insanely Complex – That’s Why It’s Not Like an ATM Machine
May 30, 2019
A couple of articles recently came across my virtual desk that really caused me to pause and think about healthcare interoperability. I’ve long known about many of the challenges of healthcare interoperability. I’ve often said that healthcare interoperability was not a technical problem, but a business problem. However, after reading these two takes on healthcare interoperability, I’d also add that it’s an insanely complex problem. Hopefully, I can illustrate it for those of you who are frustrated that the healthcare interoperability problem isn’t “just solved already.”
The first article comes from Grahame Grieve on is Health Intersections blog. If you’ve been in the healthcare interoperability space, then you certainly know about Grahame. He’s the project lead and product director for the FHIR and HL7 standard. That should be about all you need to know about how deep he is into the weeds of healthcare interoperability, but I’ll add that he’s a really smart guy that truly wants to make healthcare interoperability possible.
This can be seen in his blog post “Hard #FHIR Safety Problem: Synchronization.” If you’re a health IT nerd like me, you’re going to want to read the whole post to really understand the complexity associated with a small slice of the healthcare interoperability challenge: synchronization. For those, that don’t want to read it, here’s his opening description of the problem:
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Data Challenges Are Halting AI Projects, IBM Executive Says
The cost and hassle of collecting and preparing data comes as a shock for some companies, according to Arvind Krishna
By Jared Council
May 28, 2019 5:30 a.m. ET
International Business Machines Corp. executive Arvind Krishna said data-related challenges are a top reason IBM clients have halted or canceled artificial-intelligence projects.
Mr. Krishna, IBM’s senior vice president of cloud and cognitive software, said about 80% of the work with an AI project is collecting and preparing data. Some companies aren’t prepared for the cost and work associated with that going in, he added.
“And so you run out of patience along the way, because you spend your first year just collecting and cleansing the data,” said Mr. Krishna, who was interviewed at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival last week. “And you say: ‘Hey, wait a moment, where’s the AI? I’m not getting the benefit.’ And you kind of bail on it.”
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Cyber Risk Management – Bringing Security Intelligence to The Board
By Josh Lefkowitz, CEO of Flashpoint 24th May 2019
Third-party risk, including supply chain weaknesses, is a hot topic among board rooms
Data breaches are costly. According to a recent Ponemon Institute study, the average breach costs an organisation $3.86 million, writes Josh Lefkowitz, CEO of Flashpoint.
A separate study found that, although the share price of breach-affected companies shows its sharpest drop 14 days after the breach is made public, there is still a discernible impact on the organisation’s stock valuation three years post-event.
Business impacts at this level affect the fundamental financial performance and sustainability of an organisation, which means cybersecurity must no longer be considered an IT issue; it’s a matter for the board in its role as custodian of shareholder value. By managing cyber risk as part of the overall organisational risk strategy, boards can put it into a commercial context and drive the cultural awareness of risk that is essential to promote cyber resilience across the business.
Making the shift from technology-centric to business-centric risk management
Elevating cyber risk management to the board level is not without challenges, however. We are still very much in the midst of a shift in mindset from a technology-centric to a business-centric view of cyber threats. This can result in a disconnect: many boards find it difficult to interpret the information they receive from the IT team, while many IT functions struggle to understand what data the board really needs to carry out effective oversight. This challenge was underlined by EY interviews that found difficulties “obtaining relevant, objective and reliable information, presented in business-centric terms…[and this] affects board members’ ability to understand the risk facing their organisations and evaluate management’s response to these risks.”
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May 29, 2019
Identifier mix-ups undermining quest for useful electronic health record exchanges
Names, birthdates still causing identity problems in health record exchanges.
SA review of more than 700 comments on a proposed rule to standardize the exchange of electronic health records points to one major concern: inconsistently or improperly recorded patient names.
Multiple patients often share names and birth dates, and without unique identifiers, their records may be combined or split accidentally. Researchers have previously said the issue might be especially challenging for rural skilled nursing providers, who serve small communities in which mothers and daughters or fathers and sons frequently share names.
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EHRA says ONC’s proposed interoperability rule needs major revisions
Published May 30 2019, 12:55am EDT
While the EHR Association supports the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s efforts to improve interoperability, the group contends that an ONC proposed rule exceeds the mandate of the 21st Century Cures Act and goes far beyond the intent of Congress.
“We worked throughout the drafting of the 21st Century Cures Act with Congress and are supportive of its goal to remove obstacles to information exchange, but we have found that the tremendously broad reach of the proposed rule goes far beyond Congressional intent,” states EHRA in a blog posted this week. “In particular, we have significant concerns regarding timelines, ambiguous language, disincentives for innovation and definitions related to information blocking.”
When it comes to the latter, EHRA notes that ONC’s proposed rule seeks to implement the information blocking provisions of the Cures Act and includes seven exceptions to the definition of information blocking—the act of intentionally interfering with the sharing of electronic health information.
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EHRA: ONC Interoperability Proposed Rule Discourages Innovation
EHRA warned that the ONC interoperability proposed rule may extend beyond Congressional intent and limit innovation.
By Kate Monica
May 29, 2019 - The EHR Association (EHRA) expressed concern that ONC’s proposed rule on interoperability and information blocking may have too broad a reach and extend beyond Congressional intent in a summary of its drafted comments.
EHRA’s comments are currently being reviewed by the association’s executive committee and the seven workgroups and task forces that assisted in developing the feedback.
While EHRA is supportive of ONC’s efforts to promote health data exchange, the association warned ambiguous language, disincentives for innovation, and strict timelines included in the proposed rule may result in unintended consequences.
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HIT Think Why improving healthcare needs clarity and simplicity
Published May 30 2019, 5:33pm EDT
Last month, New York Times reporter Robert Pear died at age 69 from complications of a stroke. The name was unfamiliar to me, and I guess that’s to be expected, given what I’ve learned of the man since.
It turns out that Robert Pear was a thoughtful, unassuming reporter who wanted the accuracy and validity of his work to speak for him. This approach engendered much respect among his peers in the 40 years that he primarily covered healthcare policy.
“Robert was an exacting reporter,” writes Edward Pound in the Health Affairs blog. “He wasn’t interested in the sound of his own voice. He listened, always he listened, the trademark of a great reporter … Robert was easy to be around, easy to work with. You knew you could trust his reporting: no mistakes in his memos, no nonsense, just clear prose. He was, to be sure, a reporting machine.”
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Tieto launches first openEHR-based information systems in Finland
By: tieto
May 30, 2019
06:22 AM
THE ROAD TO HELSINKI: At the HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Conference, Tieto will present the first openEHR-based information systems for Finnish healthcare.
Today, health care organisations use multiple health information systems from various suppliers. The integration of several systems and data transfer between them can be problematic.
Opening clinical data for use across various hospital information systems will help to solve the acute need for long-lasting, standardised and vendor-neutral clinical documentation. This enables clinicians to make clinical adaptations safely and based on standard models.
"For modern healthcare systems, just having open interfaces is no longer enough. All clinical information needs to be based on open data exchange by standard models, creating a fully open ecosystem that improves operational efficiency, patient centricity and boosts innovation both locally and internationally," explains Teemu Vähäkainu, Tieto head of healthcare.
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IoT risk assessment means all hands on deck
May 30, 2019 10:56 AM
The wide array of connected devices means "lot of different stakeholders that need to coordinate," on both the clinical and IT side. That requires "process and due diligence.
When it comes to information security, healthcare faces some foundational challenges that other industries don't. Not least the fact that it is "not a digital-native industry," said Stacie Hoffmann, digital policy and cybersecurity consultant at Oxford Information Labs.
It's not only that huge swathes of healthcare were primarily paper-based less than 10 years ago. Over the past decade as hospitals have adopted electronic health records and other IT, many are now also managing an ever-expanding universe of vulnerable connected devices.
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How robots and your smart fridge can keep you out of a nursing home
Published: May 29, 2019 2:02 p.m. ET
Your end-of-life caregiver may be a robot — why that might not be such a bad thing
By JosephCoughlin
For 40 years, Vicky and Kyle have lived in their suburban home. The house is where they’ve collected a lifetime of memories. Every square foot of their three-bedroom split-level is a monument to their shared life’s work. But the aging couple now finds this symbol of their shared success is becoming a challenge.
Vicky and Kyle’s unspoken strategy is divide and conquer. Kyle takes the lead on yard work, car maintenance and appliance repairs. He can still do most jobs around the house. But certain tasks, like seasonally hauling out the ladder to change the batteries of the dozen smoke alarms scattered throughout the house, have gone from rituals to major chores.
Vicky is effectively the home’s chief purchasing officer, taking charge of grocery and pharmacy shopping. She takes the lead in arranging doctor’s appointments and helping Kyle maintain a diet and medication regimen to manage his diabetes. Diagnosed with macular degeneration, she does most errands during the day as driving at night has become more difficult.
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How HarrisLogic is using data analytics to prevent suicides
St. Louis, Missouri-based HarrisLogic develops clinical services and population health management software for providers, schools and law enforcement intended to help users identify potential behavioral health issues within a population and divert them appropriate resources or sites of care.
May 28, 2019 at 8:52 PM
Suicide has risen to the status of a critical public health issue in the United States and rates are continuing to grow across the country. According to data from the CDC, the age-adjusted suicide rate jumped up by 30 percent between 2000 and 2016, when nearly 45,000 people committed suicide.
With these sobering figures, clinicians and crisis services providers have been looking at new ways to prevent suicides by using technology to identify at-risk patients and intervene before a life-threatening event.
St. Louis, Missouri-based HarrisLogic develops clinical services and population health management software for providers, schools and law enforcement intended to help users identify potential behavioral health issues within a population and divert them appropriate resources or sites of care.
The company’s StellaCrisis platform was borne out of the company’s experience as a provider of suicide hotline and mobile crisis services to the Dallas Area.
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Report: 40% of healthcare organizations hit by WannaCry in past 6 months
May 29, 2019 9:00am
Two years ago, the WannaCry ransomware attack crippled more than 300,000 machines in 150 countries, including 80 National Health Service hospitals in Britain that were forced to divert patients after malware prevented clinicians from accessing medical records.
While media headlines have moved on to other cyberthreats, WannaCry continues to be a major problem for many organizations.
According to a research report from internet of things security company Armis, WannaCry continues to be an active threat, with 40% of healthcare organizations and 60% of manufacturing organizations experiencing at least one WannaCry attack in the last six months, according to Armis' client database.
"This is not too surprising as these types of organizations generally suffer the most from old and unmanaged devices, which are difficult to patch due to operational complexities," Armis researchers said in the report.
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OIG: Medicare ACOs have yet to realize full potential of health IT
May 28, 2019 3:25pm
Medicare accountable care organizations aren't using electronic health records to their full potential, a new report shows.
The report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) gathered data from across six ACOs, some of which used a single EHR across provider networks and were thus able to share data in real time. Some of the included ACOs had access to health information exchanges (HIEs) that allowed for access to patient data even when the patient was treated outside the ACO network.
In addition, most of the ACOs used data to group patients according to the potential severity and cost of their health conditions.
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The high cost of physician burnout: $4.6B a year
May 28, 2019 11:39am
There’s a good reason for organizations to try to alleviate physician burnout. The problem costs the U.S. healthcare industry an estimated $4.6 billion a year because of doctor turnover and reduced clinical hours.
Although physician burnout is blamed for negative clinical and organizational outcomes, it also carries economic costs, according to a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
A research team comprising members from the National University of Singapore, Stanford University, the Mayo Clinic and the American Medical Association developed a mathematical model using contemporary published research findings and industry reports to estimate burnout-associated costs.
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Health plans in the catbird seat for pushing provider interoperability
By Diana Manos
Published May 29 2019, 12:40am EDT
Health plans are in a central position to improve interoperability, especially through the use of payment models that require certain standards for how providers exchange data.
The growing shift to value-based care can be the impetus for the push to data exchange, says Vindell Washington, MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana (BCBSLA) and former National Coordinator for Health IT.
“In the traditional fee-for-service system, the financial incentive was for providers to run tests or do extra services to get more patient data because they could be reimbursed for it,” says Washington, a former National Coordinator for Health IT within the federal government.
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App that enables virtual mental health visits gets capital infusion
Published May 29 2019, 5:14pm EDT
A startup whose app connects people with mental health clinicians for counseling through text messages and video chats raised $50 million.
The company, Talkspace, also announced that it is developing ties with the biggest U.S. health insurer, a sign that the market for delivering psychotherapy remotely is growing.
Talkspace said the investment round, led by Revolution Growth, brings the total amount it has raised through venture funding to about $110 million. Its deal with Optum, a unit of UnitedHealth Group, will make the Talkspace app available to about 2 million Optum customers.
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Ohio Living achieves low readmission rates with telehealth
By Nathan Eddy
May 29, 2019 10:37 AM
Patients are equipped with Bluetooth-enabled tablets that record biometrics information.
Ohio Living Home Health and Hospice earned a readmission rate of just 7.5 percent, nearly half of the state’s Medicare average, by introducing telehealth services.
HOW IT WORKS
Patients have been equipped with 4G-enabled tablet devices provided by Health Recovery Solutions (HRS), which as well as additional Bluetooth-enabled devices that give patients the ability to record biometrics like their heart rate, weight and blood pressure.
The non-profit also recently expanded its telehealth services through a partnership with Northwest Ohio Accountable Care Organization, and Ohio Living claimed 80 percent of patients enrolled would recommend the program to a family member or friend.
Not only has the telehealth program helped improve patient adherence to health plans, but overall adherence to the telehealth program itself stands at 80 percent.
In addition, Ohio Living said more than three-quarters of enrolled patients said they agree the telehealth program has given them the opportunity to be more involved in their own care.
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AI in health: the launch of the French Health Data Hub
The French Office parlementaire d’évaluation des choix scientifiques (the Office) has published a report on artificial intelligence and health data following the public hearing organised in February 2019, in the form of two round tables on artificial intelligence and health data.
The hearing, attended by AI researchers, entrepreneurs, public and private stakeholders of the health sector provided an opportunity for open discussions on the launch of the Health Data Hub, a unique platform opening the access to health data for health professionals, industrial, start-ups, researchers, and private companies. The Health Data Hub is a major initiative to promote innovation and artificial intelligence in the health sector in France.
While the opportunities of a unique health database are significant (e.g., the development of the digital patient identity through the matching of biologic, behavioural data; for diagnostic assistance or therapeutic progress, the algorithm could be trained on health data combined from different sources and enable the improvement of new medical services assisting health professionals, such as e-health and e-diagnosis), the report also addresses the significant challenges in the exploitation and protection of these data.
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ONC: Nearly half of smartphone owners use apps to monitor health
Forty-nine percent of smartphone or tablet owners used a health and wellness application to help manage their health in 2018, according to an ONC analysis.
For its report, the ONC analyzed data from HHS' national Health Information Trends Survey to identify how people commonly use electronic devices and health and wellness apps in 2017 and 2018.
When asked why they use a health and wellness app, participants said the following:
· Track progress on a health-related goal: 75 percent.
· Make a treatment decision for an illness or condition: 48 percent.
· Discuss health with healthcare provider: 45 percent.
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Survey: Access to Physician Notes Helps Medication Adherence
Giving patients access to physician notes may help them better manage, understand, and adhere to their medications, results of an online survey of patients indicate.
Catherine M. DesRoches, DrPH, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and executive director of OpenNotes at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues surveyed patients at the three centers included in the original OpenNotes pilot about their use of medications and their engagement in updating their medications since the project began in 2010.
In addition to Beth Israel, the other two centers in the pilot were Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Of 136,815 patients invited to take the survey in 2017, more than 29,500 (22%) responded.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/workgroup-outlines-4-key-challenges-to-using-ai-in-imaging
Workgroup outlines 4 key challenges to using AI in imaging
By Fred Bazzoli
Published May 28 2019, 3:51pm EDT
There are four key priorities that are necessary for artificial intelligence to play a consistent role in medical imaging within clinical practice.
Outlining those challenges, opportunities and priorities for research in AI are the goals of a report published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
The report suggests the key challenges are:
· Creating structured AI use cases, defining and highlighting clinical challenges potentially solvable by AI.
· Establishing methods to encourage data sharing for training and testing AI algorithms to promote generalizability to widespread clinical practice and mitigate unintended bias.
· Establishing tools for validation and performance monitoring for AI algorithms to facilitate regulatory approval.
· Developing standards and common data elements for seamless integration of AI tools into existing clinical workflows.
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New Zealand's National Health Information Platform replaces EHR
May 27, 2019 05:43 AM
The nHIP will be a key enabler for real-time clinical decision support, empowering patients to self-manage their health and wellbeing and data driven healthcare.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Health is going to Cabinet this June to get approval to develop a detailed business case for a national Health Information Platform.
The Ministry has moved away from the idea of building a single Electronic Health Record, towards developing a national HIP that will enable data about a single patient to be shared, said deputy director data and digital Shayne Hunter.
Hunter was a keynote speaker at the Emerging Tech in Health conference in Christchurch on May 21.
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3-Part 'Sprint' Intervention Eases Clinician EHR Burden
An 11-member intervention team redesigns workflows, develops new EHR tools, and trains clinicians to use the EHR more efficiently.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· EHR burden has been linked strongly to clinician burnout.
· 'Sprint' intervention teams feature a project manager, a physician informaticist, a nurse informaticist, EHR analysts, and EHR trainers.
· The total annual cost of funding one Sprint team including lost clinician productivity during Sprint interventions is about $1.7 million.
An intense, two-week program to improve electronic health record systems at the clinic level improves clinician satisfaction with the EHR significantly, recent research shows.
EHR burden has been cited as a primary contributor to clinician burnout. Research indicates that nearly half of physicians are experiencing burnout symptoms, and a study published in September found burnout increases the odds of physician involvement in patient safety incidents, unprofessionalism, and lower patient satisfaction.
In a study published this month in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, researchers show the two-week "Sprint" EHR intervention developed at Aurora, Colorado-based UCHealth increased clinician EHR satisfaction. On a net promoter scale ranging from -100 (worst) to +100 (best), clinician satisfaction with the EHR was -15 before the Sprint intervention and rose to +12 after the intervention.
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EHR intervention teams may help reduce clinician burnout, study finds
– 29 May, 2019
A team-based intervention approach to improve EHR use and efficiency may help alleviate burdens that physicians report feeling when dealing with computer-based clerical work, according to a recent study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Aurora, Colo.-based UCHealth researchers developed a two-week "Sprints" EHR intervention, which was led by an 11-member team trained to help clinic staff make the EHR more user friendly. The team comprised one project manager, one physician informaticist, one nurse informaticist, four EHR analysts and four trainers.
Sprints interventions had three main components: train clinicians to use EHR features more efficiently, redesign the clinic's multidisciplinary workflow and create new specialty-specific EHR tools. Sprints are completed as a two-week process.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/chime-playbook-seeks-to-optimize-use-of-it-against-opioids
CHIME playbook seeks to optimize use of IT against opioids
By Fred Bazzoli
Published May 26 2019, 11:49pm EDT
Healthcare IT can play a more substantial role in combating the opioid epidemic and improving patient outcomes, and a new playbook aims to maximize the impact of technology in the fight.
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, through its opioid task force, has published the guide to help senior healthcare IT executives, providers and others better use information technology to combat abuse.
The task force’s playbook includes resources, best practices and real world examples that show the potential of IT to stand in the way of opioid addiction and deaths.
A 2019 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked the United States as the country with the most opioid-related deaths among the 25 countries tracked. In 2017, the U.S. had more than 42,000 deaths from opioid overdoses.
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Weekly News Recap
- Agfa is reportedly considering the sale of its health IT business
- Medical drone delivery company Zipline’s latest investment round values it at $1.2 billion
- ONC finds little interoperability improvement among office-based physicians since 2015
- Google promotes Glass from its skunkworks division in releasing a new enterprise version aimed at software developers
- JP Morgan buys medical payments processor InstaMed for more than $500 million
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Will Blockchain Ever Really Matter in Healthcare?
May 24, 2019
The following is a guest blog post by Todd Winey, Director, Partner Programs for InterSystems Data Platforms group.
Maybe, but in much more focused ways than you think.
Blockchain (Distributed Ledger Technologies or DLT) is being touted as the next technology to revolutionize healthcare. It has been presented as the answer for everything from interoperability to insurance processing. But is it really?
I have spent years in product management organizations, where the ultimate goal was to get viable commercial solutions to market, I am skeptical of many early blockchain claims. If the attitude is “blockchain is the answer, what’s the question?” there is a high probability that many of the proposed use cases for blockchain will not solve the panaceas they claim to solve.
I wrote those words some 19 months ago, and in May of 2019, I find we are no closer to answering those questions than in November 2017.
A recent survey from Venrock touted “AI is slowly finding its place, while blockchain struggles as much in healthcare as in other segments,” “At the typical pace innovation matures in healthcare, blockchain may never matter…..” According to the survey, 75 percent are still struggling to find blockchain’s role in healthcare, 18 percent have found ways blockchain can be used to benefit patients. The last 7 percent are still asking, “What’s a blockchain?”
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Enjoy!
David.
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