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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Putting trust at the heart of (patient) personal data
Following on from reports US healthcare provider Ascension, the largest non-profit system in the US, was providing Google with access to 50 million private medical records, Finn Raben, director general at ESOMAR, a membership organisation which representing the interests of the data and research, explores why trust needs to be at the heart of data sharing agreements in healthcare.
DHI News Team – 5 December, 2019
This month the Wall Street Journal reported on how US healthcare provider Ascension, the largest non-profit system in the US, was providing Google with access to 50 million private medical records. The report revealed that Google’s aim was to create productivity tools for doctors that sift through complete medical records for pertinent data and make recommendations or to quote them directly : “Google is using the patient data to tune artificial-intelligence software that may help improve patient care”.
According to Google nothing about this activity was illegal in the US, but many media reported that neither patients nor doctors were notified, and mention estimates of 150 Google employees having access to the data, which included lab results, diagnoses, and hospital records, all of which provide detailed information on people’s health histories.
There was further Google and medical data controversy when Google acquired the health division of London-based AI firm Deepmind.
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Industry Voices—Farzad Mostashari, Claudia Williams make the case for requiring hospital ADT alerts
Healthcare is complicated indeed, but there are rare instances where the problem and solution are shockingly clear.
When a patient—let’s call her “Mom”—is discharged home from the hospital, she, like many other patients, is in danger. Mom is weakened by her illness and immobility. She is taking several new medications begun just days or even hours before discharge. The illness that led her to be hospitalized may linger or recrudesce, or she may have acquired a new infection or complication during her stay. Her family doctor no longer rounds in the hospital, and the “hospitalist” physicians rotating through never really got to know her during her pressured short stay at the hospital.
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Dec 6, 2019, 08:00am
As Healthcare Goes Digital, Social Care Lags Behind
William A. Haseltine Contributor
This article is the second in a series about a new report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that calls for the integration of social care and healthcare. Read the first, on what social care is and how it makes healthcare more inclusive, here.
Since 2009, federal legislation has awarded billions of dollars to physicians and hospitals that make health information technology part of their practice. While many highlighted the downsides of digitization, the providers who unlock its full potential know very well that it benefits clinical care immensely.
Most social care organizations, however, were left untouched by this outpouring of funds—not for lack of necessity, but their inability to qualify. Although their exclusion was no doubt a missed opportunity, digital tools and data solutions have emerged over the past decade that can more than make up for lost time.
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Cognitive Aids May Improve Surgeons' Care of Deteriorating Patients
By Will Boggs MD
December 05, 2019
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Cognitive aids increased adherence to best practice in the treatment of deteriorating surgical patients in simulation studies, researchers report.
"From our experience with cognitive aids, we have seen that they are not only useful during critical events, but also that there is a big role for them in educational settings in preparing doctors for these kind of events," said Dr. Lena Koers of the University of Amsterdam.
"Furthermore, they can also be used in debriefing settings to learn from these events by seeing if steps are missed or if management could have been improved," she told Reuters Health by email.
Cognitive aids have been shown to improve communication, teamwork and leadership and to promote a surgical safety culture, which, in turn, has reduced perioperative morbidity and mortality. There are no commonly used cognitive aids for the management of deteriorating surgical patients.
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Survey Shows Patient Interest in Improved Physician Engagement, Tech Options
DECEMBER 05, 2019
Samara Rosenfeld
As technological capabilities continue to align with everyday healthcare, patients want to leverage their devices to communicate with providers, according to the results of a recent online survey.
In today’s world, patients as consumers are used to getting answers quickly and conveniently. Healthcare isn’t usually that way, but patients want it to be. Healthcare engagement group DocASAP surveyed 1000-plus US residents who have visited a doctor in the last 12 months to gauge their preferences in visitation expediency and capability.
Their findings show 4 in 5 patients stated they do not want to wait more than 2 weeks to visit a doctor. In fact, a majority of patients stated they want to see their provider within a week.
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In today’s world, patients as consumers are used to getting answers quickly and conveniently. Healthcare isn’t usually that way, but patients want it to be. Healthcare engagement group DocASAP surveyed 1000-plus US residents who have visited a doctor in the last 12 months to gauge their preferences in visitation expediency and capability.
Their findings show 4 in 5 patients stated they do not want to wait more than 2 weeks to visit a doctor. In fact, a majority of patients stated they want to see their provider within a week.
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The tricky ethics of Google’s Project Nightingale, an effort to learn from millions of health records
December 3, 2019 11.58pm AEDT
Author Cason Schmit
The nation’s second-largest health system, Ascension, has agreed to allow the software behemoth Google access to tens of millions of patient records. The partnership, called Project Nightingale, aims to improve how information is used for patient care. Specifically, Ascension and Google are trying to build tools, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, “to make health records more useful, more accessible and more searchable” for doctors.
Ascension did not announce the partnership: The Wall Street Journal first reported it.
Patients and doctors have raised privacy concerns about the plan. Lack of notice to doctors and consent from patients are the primary concerns.
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Microsoft Shares Spear-Phishing Insights as Attacks Increase
Spear-phishing attempts doubled from 0.31 percent in September 2018 to 0.62 percent a year later. Microsoft shows how to reduce the risk, as hackers successfully target human nature.
December 03, 2019 - Microsoft researchers have seen spear-phishing attempts double over the past year, from 0.31 percent in September 2018 to 0.62 percent in September 2019. In fact, the sophisticated nature of the techniques has such improved that the tech giant often refers to the attempts as “laser” phishing.
In light of the steady increase, Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Field Chief Technology Officer Diana Kelley and Cybersecurity Solutions Group Senior Manager Seema Kathuria shed light on common techniques and defenses to help organizations bolster their security programs and policies.
“Even your most security-savvy users may have difficulty identifying honed spear phishing campaigns,” Kathuria and Kelley wrote. “Unlike traditional phishing campaigns that are blasted to a large email list in hopes that just one person will bite, advanced spear phishing campaigns are highly targeted and personal.”
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Tackling Healthcare’s Endpoint Problem with Detection, Planning
Malwarebytes found attacks on healthcare endpoints doubled during the last quarter; Adam Kujawa shares insights into the sector’s unique endpoint challenge and how to move the needle.
December 04, 2019 - Healthcare is suffering with a massive endpoint problem. Health systems and providers rely on vast amounts of medical devices, IoT medical devices, legacy computers, and a trove of other endpoints. And reports have shown that many providers are unaware of just how many devices are operating on their network – or whether all of those endpoints are secured.
As providers continue to struggle with inventory, patching, and securing these devices, hackers continue to improve the sophistication of their attacks. For example, several malware variants like Emotet, Trickbot, and other backdoor threats will later install ransomware payloads in their attack chains.
In mid-November, Malwarebytes Lab released its quarterly Cybercrime tactics and techniques report on the state of the healthcare, which showed the sector is the seventh-most targeted sector with overall detections nearly doubling from 14,000 to 20,000 during the last quarter.
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OCR Shares Targeted Ransomware Mitigation, Response Guidance
In light of the emergence of targeted ransomware attacks, OCR shares insights on the threat actor's successful techniques and what healthcare providers can do to prevent falling victim.
December 05, 2019 - Since its emergence in the healthcare sector as a disruptive cyberattack in 2016, ransomware attacks have evolved into highly effective, targeted cyberattacks. In response, the Office for Civil Rights released insights into the threat actors and mitigation techniques in its quarterly Cybersecurity Newsletter.
While ransomware attacks have declined overall across many sectors, the healthcare sector has remained a steady target given the sensitivity of its data and the need for constant access to patient information.
In fact, the last month has seen three massive ransomware attacks that have disrupted care or caused data loss.
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CT scan read errors a leading cause of patient injury
December 06, 2019, 3:11 p.m. EST
The results of the study, by The Doctors Company, provides evidence of the increasing complexity of radiologists’ workloads and how artificial intelligence-based tools might provide essential support that could reduce mistakes.
The study by The Doctors Company, the nation's largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurer, found that misinterpretation of scans and films—particularly CT scans—is the leading cause of patient injury involving diagnostic radiologists. The study analyzed closed malpractice claims against both diagnostic and interventional radiologists.
The study involved physician experts who reviewed claims and conducted medical record reviews to gain an accurate and unbiased understanding of what led to patient injuries. The analysis found:
- The top contributing factor to patient injury was misinterpretation of diagnostic studies, occurring in 78 percent of cases.
- The most common injury from misinterpretation of a diagnostic study was an undiagnosed malignancy.
- CT scans were a factor in 34 percent of the cases involving misinterpretation of diagnostic studies.
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Senators urge health orgs to combat racial bias in AI algorithms
"There is great promise in using algorithms to sort patients and target care to those most in need," said Sens. Cory Booker and Ron Wyden in letters to CMS, FTC and others. "However, these systems are not immune to the problem of bias."
By Nathan Eddy
December 06, 2019 03:52 PM
United States Senators Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, are urging the Trump administration and some of the nation's biggest health insurers – Humana and Blue Cross among them – to be aware of potential racial bias in healthcare data algorithms.
The letters were sent to leaders at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Federal Trade Commission – as well as to the executive vice president of CVS Health Karen Lynch, who is also the president of the company's Aetna business unit, as well as to the president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Scott Serota, and David Cordani, president and CEO of Cigna, among others.
"In healthcare, there is great promise in using algorithms to sort patients and target care to those most in need. However, these systems are not immune to the problem of bias," said Senators Booker and Wyden's in their letter to Lynch stated. "As algorithms play an increasingly prevalent role in the health care system, we urge Aetna to consider the risk for algorithmic bias and its potential impact on health disparities outcomes."
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VA establishes new National Artificial Intelligence Institute
NAII will work with veterans and partners across federal agencies, the private sector and academia to prioritize AI research and development for better health.
By Mike Miliard
December 06, 2019 10:52 AM
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has launched the National Artificial Intelligence Institute, with the aim of boosting the health and wellness of veterans through advanced AI and machine learning technologies.
WHY IT MATTERS
The institute will incorporate feedback from veterans and other partners across federal agencies, industry, nonprofits and academia, said VA officials. The goal is to "prioritize and realize" AI research and development that can help veterans and others.
The institute will incorporate feedback from veterans and other partners across federal agencies, industry, nonprofits and academia, said VA officials. The goal is to "prioritize and realize" AI research and development that can help veterans and others.
NAII is a joint initiative between VA’s Office of Research and Development and Secretary’s Center for Strategic Partnerships. Professionals there will design, execute and collaborate on strategies that build on the American AI Initiative and the National AI R&D Strategic Plan.
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Technology optimization: Elevating cloud performance
Four analysts from Black Book, Chilmark, KLAS and PwC offer their expert advice for healthcare CIOs and other IT leaders seeking to make cloud technology work for their organizations.
By Bill Siwicki
December 06, 2019 01:07 PM
The cloud is becoming ubiquitous in healthcare provider organizations across the country. Cloud computing has become a style of IT and networking that healthcare CIOs and other health IT leaders and workers have come to depend on to manage systems and data in an efficient and effective manner.
There are steps provider organizations can take – before and during cloud deployments – to optimize their effectiveness. Enhancing the way a cloud meets the specific needs of an individual provider organization can reap many rewards.
Here, four analysts with deep expertise in cloud computing offer technology optimization best practices for the cloud. Provider IT staff have much to learn from these experts from Black Book Research, Chilmark Research, KLAS Research and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
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Alphabet’s Buyout of Fitbit Sets It Up To Rule The Consumer Health Data Business
December 6, 2019
In early November, news broke that Google parent Alphabet had agreed to acquire wearables maker Fitbit for about $2.1 billion in cash.
The agreement positions it to become the top vendor in the maturing market for patient-generated health data. More specifically, it offers the Big Tech giant access to massive datasets drawn from more than 28 million Fitbit users. In so doing, it sets up Alphabet to better compete with Apple, whose smartwatch has made significant inroads in the fitness tracking space.
Alphabet was not the only global consumer tech giant hot to acquire Fitbit. While it was known at the time that there were competing bids for the wearables company, it’s since become public knowledge that Alphabet took part in a bidding war with Facebook. However, Facebook apparently wasn’t quite as eager as Alphabet was to win.
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NHS e-health systems 'risk patient safety'
· December 7, 2019
A team at Imperial College say the systems cannot "talk" to each other, making cross-referencing difficult and potentially leading to "errors".
Of 121 million patient interactions, there were 11 million where information from a previous visit was inaccessible.
The NHS said it was working to ensure different systems could work together.
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Google's Verily plans another $5M investment in Dayton
Danis recently completed construction of the OneFifteen addiction treatment center.
The research arm of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), is planning another multimillion-dollar investment to expand its addiction treatment services in Miami Valley. The project is expected to bring several new jobs to the Dayton region.
Verily Life Sciences, which oversees the OneFifteen addiction center and future workforce development site, is looking to construct a 5,000-square-foot addition to its outpatient clinic. The $5 million project would enable the organization to offer intensive withdrawal monitoring seven days a week.
OneFifteen, established in early 2019, is funded and supported locally by Kettering Health Network and Premier Health Partners. The organization's name comes from a 2017 statistic from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which cited 115 deaths linked to opioid overdoses per day in the U.S.
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Patient, Provider Support Key to Healthcare Artificial Intelligence
Support from patients and providers, strong data governance, and technological investments will facilitate widespread use of artificial intelligence.
By Jessica Kent
December 05, 2019 - To accelerate the adoption and use of artificial intelligence in healthcare, health systems will need to secure patient and provider support of the technology, develop strong data governance strategies, and invest in innovative tools, the American Hospital Association (AHA) said in a recent report.
AI has the potential to improve every step of the care delivery process, from prevention and detection to diagnosis and treatment, AHA noted. Providers can use the technology for clinical decision support, identifying patients who are at risk for certain diseases, or predicting patients who are likely to suffer an adverse event in the hospital.
“While AI’s success hinges on the expertise of the clinicians and health professionals who use it, it can significantly ease pressure on resources and increase efficiencies,” the organization said.
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pMD launches new feature that lets patients communicate with group of providers
By Laura Lovett
December 05, 2019
This morning pMD, a mobile communication and data capture platform, announced a new feature that allows patients to contact their doctors through pMD Secure Messaging.
The Californian startup boasts that patients will be able to send messages in real time that include photo and video files.
The latest feature includes a group function, which allows patients to communicate with a team of clinicians, allowing care collaboration across teams. Users are also able to add contacts by sending them an invitation to download the new feature.
pMD is best known for its provider-facing platform that allows clinician-to-clinician communication and data capture, with the goal of increasing efficiency in patient care and billing.
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DeepMind co-founder leaves to join owner Google in new role
December 05, 2019, 3:18 p.m. EST
Bloomberg—The co-founder of DeepMind, the high-profile artificial intelligence lab, is set to move to the U.S. to take up a role at parent company Google.
Mustafa Suleyman, who ran DeepMind’s “applied” division, was placed on leave in August after controversy over some of the projects he led. In a blog post Thursday, DeepMind said Suleyman is leaving for an unspecified role at Google.
The post, written by fellow co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis, added that the company wanted to ensure it was the “best place in the world for fundamental breakthroughs in AI, and that we conduct this work thoughtfully and responsibly.”
Suleyman was a key public face for DeepMind, speaking to officials and at events about the promise of artificial intelligence and the ethical guardrails needed to limit malicious use of the technology.
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HIT Think
Why patients are picky about what health data they’re willing to share
December 05, 2019, 3:42 p.m. EST
In the past decade, electronic health records have gone from being a tool that only a select few healthcare organizations use to near-universal adoption.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of 2017, more than 85 percent of office-based physicians use some sort of EHR, and about 80 percent have adopted a certified EHR. As a result, modern patients have increasingly accepted the idea that their medical history—including notes, imaging, lab results and medications—can be easily accessed by their doctor via computer.
However, this increased availability also raises concerns in patients’ minds about exactly who else may be accessing their records.
According to a recent study, about two-thirds of surveyed patients indicated they are comfortable with sharing their EHR data and biospecimens for research purposes. However, the study also found there were differences in sharing preferences, based on the researchers’ affiliations.
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Halamka looks to scale digital health globally for Mayo Clinic
December 04, 2019, 11:31 p.m. EST
The Mayo Clinic has an opportunity to “define a digital health platform for the planet,” contends John Halamka, MD, who will spearhead efforts to scale the provider’s capabilities worldwide.
On Tuesday, the Mayo Clinic announced that Halamka—who most recently served as executive director of the Health Technology Exploration Center for Beth Israel Lahey Health—will be joining the Rochester, Minn.-based healthcare organization on January 1.
“As president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, I lead a portfolio of new digital platform businesses focused on transforming health by leveraging artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and an ecosystem of partners for Mayo Clinic,” Halamka wrote in a blog on Wednesday.
The platform is an initiative of Gianrico Farrugia, MD—the Mayo Clinic’s new president and CEO—who is co-author of Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast: A Blueprint for Transformation From the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, which lays out the need for change in healthcare delivery.
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Interoperability Institute's virtual testing environment can help with Cures Act compliance
Available on the AWS Marketplace, the new Interoperability Land offers a platform to develop and test different versions of DSTU3, STU3, R4 FHIR, SMART on FHIR and other standards.
By Nathan Eddy
December 04, 2019 03:12 PM
The Interoperability Institute has launched a simulated healthcare testing environment called Interoperability Land, which aims to help various players in the healthcare space move toward the adoption of the new rules for data sharing and modernization of patient data exchange.
WHY IT MATTERS
The environment gives organizations the ability to explore various ways to implement interoperability standards – and it is well-timed given the upcoming interoperability rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT.
The environment gives organizations the ability to explore various ways to implement interoperability standards – and it is well-timed given the upcoming interoperability rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT.
The platform, which uses simulated data, is designed to help organizations understand how different applications will work with their product or solution. Interoperability Institute likens the testing ground to the virtual simulators used to train surgeons and pilots – helping healthcare organizations test their approaches without the risk of exposing protected health information.
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Core Principles for Application Decommissioning and Data Archiving
December 5, 2019
While we’ve been writing about EMR data archiving since back in 2009 and then again in 2013 and 2014 to name a few, the topic has never been more important than it is today. With many healthcare organizations literally supporting 100s and even 1000s of health IT software, how you handle legacy systems including data archiving is becoming more and more important.
While many things have changed over the last decade, I still see the same two core questions when it comes to application decommissioning and data archiving:
1. Do you want to retain the data as long as possible to improve care or for research purposes?
2. Do you want to purge EMR data as soon as legally possible to avoid liability for old records?
These two will always be at odds and is something every healthcare organization will have to answer for themselves. This is particularly true since the answer to these questions has as much to do about the culture of the organization as it has to do with the correct answer. A research or rural organization prefers retention and accessibility while a more urban organization generally leans towards more risk management and liability avoidance.
While the culture of your organization will influence how you approach legacy health IT systems and application decommissioning, every organization is facing this challenge head on. It’s more a question of whether you’re going to decommission or archive data more often. Plus, even if you want to eventually decommission a product, you’ll often find that archiving the data for legal retention purposes is cheaper than paying exorbitant fees for a software you’re no longer using and the liability risks of limping along software that’s no longer getting updates.
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Health Spending Grew 4.6% in 2018, Outpaced by Overall Economy
By Jack O'Brien | December 05, 2019
The total number of uninsured people rose by 1 million for the second consecutive year.
Healthcare spending in the U.S. grew by 4.6% in 2018, totaling $3.6 trillion, according to data released Thursday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary.
Healthcare, as a share of the overall economy, slipped to 17.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018, down slightly from 17.9% in 2017.
The statistics, published in Health Affairs, show that healthcare spending averaged $11,172 per person in 2018, while the total personal healthcare spending growth rate held steady at 4.1%.
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Analytics ROI: It's Not Only About the Money
By Jonathan Bees | December 05, 2019
Gains from analytics are not only about capturing additional margin. Return on investment for analytics can also be about improving the quality of care, reducing costs, and improving efficiency.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Almost two-thirds of survey respondents in the 2019 November/December HealthLeaders Intelligence Report indicate that their organizations plan to increase investments in analytics for the next three years.
· One healthcare system executive says increasing investments in analytics at his organization is "not so much in software licensing or hardware-related things," but also investing more in people and processes.
The healthcare industry is being remade in radical new ways through the increasing use of sophisticated analytics and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning solutions. Providers and payers alike are ramping up their investments in analytics software and human capital, and for good reason.
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Cerner taps Amazon Web Services to ramp up healthcare AI capabilities, predictive technology
Dec 3, 2019 2:40pm
Health IT company Cerner is deepening its partnership with Amazon Web Services to build new prediction tools and a virtual medical scribe for healthcare providers.
Cerner named AWS its preferred cloud provider in July. At the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week, Cerner expanded that partnership by naming AWS its preferred cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning provider.
"For 40 years, Cerner ushered in health care’s digital age by moving medical data from paper charts and manila folders into electronic health records,” Cerner CEO and chairman of the board Brent Shafer said during the AWS re:Invent conference Monday.
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Senators seek answers from CMS, private payers on potential racial bias in data algorithms
Dec 4, 2019 12:15pm
Two top Democrats are putting pressure on the Trump administration and big-name health insurers to address concerns about racial bias in algorithms used to assess patients’ healthcare needs.
Sens. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, sent letters to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), CVS Health, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealth Group Tuesday requesting additional information on if and how these groups may be tackling bias in these algorithms.
“Both the people who design these complex systems and the massive sets of data that are used have many historical and human biases built-in,” the senators wrote. “Without very careful consideration, the algorithms they subsequently create can further perpetuate those very biases.”
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The Pros and Cons of a National Patient Identifier (NPI) System
Congress recently voted to lift the ban of funding for a national patient identifier (NPI) system, giving the system new life and potential in the near future.
December 04, 2019 - For over two decades, the House of Representatives and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have debated the merits of a national patient identifier (NPI) system. The system would assign each United States citizen a unique number to be used across the healthcare system.
Congress’ reason for not providing funding primarily stemmed from a privacy concern.
But in June 2019, Congress voted to end the ban that bars HHS from funding NPIs. Organizations such as CHIME and HIMSS pressed Congress to lift the ban so that HHS could assist in funding the system to help improve patient matching and reduce the chances of creating duplicative patient EHRs.
“AHIMA is pleased that the House today has taken the first step in repealing an archaic ban that has stifled innovation and industry progress for nearly two decades,” said AHIMA CEO Wylecia Wiggs Harris, PhD, CAE, in a statement emailed to EHRIntelligence.com at the time of the June vote.
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HIT Think
Why consumer trust is increasingly hard to win, easy to lose
December 04, 2019, 3:40 p.m. EST
Debates around the privacy of healthcare data have been raging for years. Recently, the flames were fanned to new heights after an arrangement between Google and Ascension Health was revealed.
After the immediate (not necessarily accurate) reaction of claiming that the arrangement violated HIPAA settled down, the more nuanced discussion turned to trust. Namely, who do individuals believe can or will appropriately hold and maintain sensitive and private information?
Before getting further into the discussion around trust, defining the concept will be helpful. A dictionary definition of trust is “one in which confidence is placed” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). When someone or something is trusted, there is a belief that the person or thing will respect and act in the interests of the one providing the information, object, or other item. Along with the trust is a belief that self-interest may be placed to the side.
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Halamka to join Mayo Clinic and lead its digital health effort
December 04, 2019, 12:05 a.m. EST
Health IT thought leader John Halamka, MD, will be heading up the Mayo Clinic Platform, an initiative meant to elevate the provider to a global leadership position within digital healthcare.
Halamka, who previously served as executive director of the Health Technology Exploration Center for Beth Israel Lahey Health in Massachusetts, will be joining the Mayo Clinic on January 1.
“It’s an exciting time to join Mayo Clinic and work with new colleagues to enhance what we can offer to patients worldwide,” says Halamka, who has been named president of Mayo Clinic Platform. “The Mayo Clinic Platform provides us the opportunity to shape healthcare in a new and dynamic way.”
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Will Big Tech’s Entrance into Healthcare Just Entrench the Current Expensive Healthcare System Even More?
December 4, 2019
A lot has been made about big tech companies entering healthcare. In fact, it’s something we’ve covered on this site quite a bit (See: Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon). That doesn’t even include other big tech companies like Salesforce and BestBuy or even large retailers like Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS. It seems like almost every large company is making some sort of entrance into healthcare.
This shouldn’t be surprising. There’s a lot of opportunity in healthcare. It’s a multi trillion dollar industry and growing. The problem is that healthcare is unlike other industries. In many ways, we think it’s good if an interesting grows really large. Growing the healthcare industry is a bad thing.
Of course, many people and publications are heralding the arrival of these big tech companies and other large corporations as a great thing for healthcare. No doubt they’re going to have a big impact on healthcare. In fact, in many ways they already are having an impact and much of what they’re doing really is creating fascinating new solutions. However, it begs the question on whether their entrance into healthcare will be good for the healthcare system overall or not.
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Healthcare Virtual Reality Market To Hit $30 Billion Within Six Years
December 4, 2019
Healthcare uses of virtual reality technology worldwide should mushroom over the next several years, generating more than $30 billion within seven years, a research firm predicts. (I don’t know about you, but that number was much higher than I would have expected!)
According to Fortune Business Insights, the healthcare VR market stood at $1.56 billion in 2018 and climb to $30.4 billion by 2026, which represents a brisk compound annual growth rate of 42.4%. Among the key use cases driving this expansion include pain management, patient care management, rehab/therapy and treatment of PTSD.
Researchers said one of the reasons healthcare VR use should expand substantially is the inclusion of VR capabilities in wearables devices, which could eventually allow physicians to conduct visits in VR space. Also, with the increased deployment of 5G communications systems, which among other things offer increased bandwidth, the infrastructure to support IoT, augmented reality and VR will be more readily available, they noted.
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Merck Cyberattack’s $1.3 Billion Question: Was It an Act of War?
In a world where a keyboard can cause more harm than a gunship, a legal dispute between the drug giant and its insurers could determine who pays for cyber damage.
By David Voreacos, Katherine Chiglinsky and Riley Griffin
December 3, 2019, 4:01 PM GMT+11 Updated on December 4, 2019, 9:03 AM GMT+11
By the time Deb Dellapena arrived for work at Merck & Co.’s 90-acre campus north of Philadelphia, there was a handwritten sign on the door: The computers are down.
It was worse than it seemed. Some employees who were already at their desks at Merck offices across the U.S. were greeted by an even more unsettling message when they turned on their PCs. A pink font glowed with a warning: “Ooops, your important files are encrypted. … We guarantee that you can recover all your files safely and easily. All you need to do is submit the payment …” The cost was $300 in Bitcoin per computer.
The ransom demand was a ruse. It was designed to make the software locking up many of Merck’s computers—eventually dubbed NotPetya—look like the handiwork of ordinary criminals. In fact, according to Western intelligence agencies, NotPetya was the creation of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency—the same one that had hacked the Democratic National Committee the previous year.
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EHR visual aid cuts duplicate orders for lab, radiology tests
December 03, 2019, 5:05 a.m. EST
The implementation of a visual aid in an electronic health record ordering system resulted in a significant reduction in duplicate orders for both laboratory and radiology tests.
Results of a study, involving emergency department clinicians at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, were published Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
“The introduction of a visual aid was associated with a 49 percent reduction in unintentional duplicate orders for laboratory tests and a 40 percent reduction in unintentional duplicate orders for radiology tests,” concludes the study.
However, according to the study’s authors, there was no statistically significant change in unintentional duplicate orders for medications.
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Amazon, Verizon partner to push computing to millions of devices
December 03, 2019, 2:57 p.m. EST
Amazon.com’s cloud services division is teaming up with Verizon Communications to offer a 5G service that will push computing power closer to customers and enable a new generation of video gaming, robotic controls and car automation.
The two companies are in a race with Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Inc. to dominate “edge computing,” which allows millions of connected devices to more quickly reach a data service rather than waiting for a remote server farm to do the job.
Amazon Web Services started selling the service, which it’s calling Wavelength, on Tuesday in Chicago where at least one customer has already signed on: Bethesda Softworks, a unit of ZeniMax Media Inc. which produces video games including Doom, Rage and Fallout.
The rollout of 5G is limited so far to parts of a few dozen cities, and full-fledged, nationwide coverage isn’t expected for several years. But the race to be seen as a leader is under way. There’s a lot of potential new revenue at stake where cloud services and 5G connections intersect. Edge computing will be a $4 trillion market by 2030, according to industry analyst Chetan Sharma.
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AMIA: Draft NIH data sharing policy is a step backwards
December 03, 2019, 5:17 a.m. EST
A draft data management and sharing policy issued by the National Institutes of Health is counterproductive, according to the American Medical Informatics Association.
Last month, NIH released a request for public comments on its draft policy, which is meant to increase access to scientific data resulting from agency-funded or conducted research.
However, AMIA is “disappointed” with the recently proposed NIH data sharing policy, especially in light of the private sector’s interoperability initiatives and longstanding data silos in biomedical research.
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EU report: Digital tools show 'great potential' for disease prevention
Published at the end of November, the report provides an analysis of the current state of health in the EU.
December 02, 2019 03:43 AM
Recent papers have indicated that the uptake of digital tools for healthcare varies across the EU, with the pace of transformation continuing to be seen as slow. New initiatives, however, point to signs of progress. Only at the beginning of November, Germany passed new legislation in what is perceived by many as a step forward to digitising healthcare in the country.
According to a new report from the European Commission, digital products hold “great” promise for disease prevention in the EU. However, their uneven introduction risks deepening health inequalities – with those most in need potentially lacking access to the tools being introduced or the skills needed to use them.
“Employing digital solutions to strengthen health and well-being will require equal digital opportunities, widespread digital literacy, strong digital security and well-designed, effective tools, services and platforms,” the authors warn.
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3 questions to ask before investing in machine learning for pop health
Fundamental issues related to executive support, staff buy-in and patient risk stratification need to be understood and addressed before machine learning applications can help with population health goals.
December 03, 2019 09:49 AM
The goal of population health is to use data to identify those who will benefit from intervention sooner, typically in an effort to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. Machine learning introduces the potential of moving population health away from one-size-fits-all risk scores and toward matching individuals to specific interventions.
The combination of the two has enormous potential. However, many of the factors that will determine success or failure have nothing to do with technology and should be considered before investing in machine learning or population health.
Is there enough incentive?
Population health software, with or without machine learning, only produces suggestions. Getting a team to take action, particularly if that action is different, is one of the hardest things to do in healthcare. You will not succeed without executive support. Executives will not support you without significant incentive to do so.
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Cerner expands AWS relationship with new machine learning initiatives
At Amazon Web Services re:Invent, CEO Brent Shafer said Cerner aims to migrate its core applications to AWS – and is working with it on AI projects focused on readmissions and clinician burnout.
By Mike Miliard
December 03, 2019
03:20 PM
In an expansion of their ongoing collaboration, Cerner has chosen Amazon Web Services as its preferred artificial intelligence and machine learning provider – and will continue to use AWS technologies to improve patient and provider experience, boost population health efforts and tackle healthcare costs.
WHY IT MATTERS
Cerner will work to migrate core applications to AWS as part of the collaborative agreement, officials said. In addition, the company is standardizing its AI and machine learning workloads on AWS to develop new predictive technology.
Cerner will work to migrate core applications to AWS as part of the collaborative agreement, officials said. In addition, the company is standardizing its AI and machine learning workloads on AWS to develop new predictive technology.
One focus of this new initiative is the Cerner Machine Learning Ecosystem – a platform built using Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Simple Storage Service, AWS Lambda, Amazon Simple Queue Service, AWS Step Functions and Amazon CloudWatch.
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By Kelly Young
The Dexcom Follow app — which sends alerts to parents (or other family members) of patients with diabetes when their blood glucose levels are too high or low — experienced an outage affecting thousands beginning Friday night, the New York Times reports.
Patients wear the Dexcom G6 continuous glucose monitor, and family members are sent notifications via the smartphone app when the target glucose levels fall out of range.
A Dexcom official said that a "large portion" of users were affected by the service outage, which was caused by server overload, the Times reports. Service was still not fully restored Monday morning.
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INSIGHT: The Top Five Health Care Privacy Issues to Watch in 2020
Nov. 29, 2019, 8:00 PM
WilmerHale’s Kirk J. Nahra looks at the top five health care privacy issues for 2020. The HIPAA Request for Information takes center stage as the HHS looks for input on expansion of disclosures for value-based care, coordinated care, and to address the opioid crisis. Other things to watch include access rights and enforcement, the CCPA, and medical research privacy issues.
The health care industry has had privacy and security rules since the early 2000s. These rules, stemming from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, provide some of the most important, comprehensive and evolved privacy rules in the country.
At the same time, it is increasingly clear that the HIPAA rules (1) do not apply to significant percentages of the health information that is created in the country; and (2) there are increasing complexities for a broad variety of health care stakeholders (including patients) because of this limited scope of the HIPAA rules.
These tensions are driving the focus of attention in 2020 for the health care industry and the broader range of entities that use, collect and analyze health care information.
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‘I feel like I’m in jail’: Hospital alarms torment patients
Dec 2, 2019 11:42am
When Kea Turner’s 74-year-old grandmother checked into Virginia’s Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital with advanced lung cancer, she landed in the oncology unit where every patient was monitored by a bed alarm.
“Even if she would slightly roll over, it would go off,” Turner said. Small movements―such as reaching for a tissue―would set off the alarm, as well. The beeping would go on for up to 10 minutes, Turner said, until a nurse arrived to shut it off.
Tens of thousands of alarms shriek, beep and buzz every day in every U.S. hospital. All sound urgent, but few require immediate attention or get it.
Intended to keep patients safe alerting nurses to potential problems, they also create a riot of disturbances for patients trying to heal and get some rest.
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Patient Photo on Health Record Curtails Medication Errors
The idea is simple — display a photo at the top of an electronic health record, visible at all times, alongside the patient's name, age, and medical record number — and physicians are less likely to make "wrong patient" medication errors.
"Errors commonly occur when the provider is interrupted during order entry and has to multitask between multiple patient's charts, or when the provider uses a patient list and selects the wrong patient by accident," the researchers — Bonnie Blanchfield, ScD; Adam Landman, MD; and Hojjat Salmasian, MD, PhD — from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, explained.
"Other groups have implemented strategies to reduce wrong-patient errors that have involved interruptive solutions," such as alerts, but adding a photo "is noninterruptive yet significantly effective," they told Medscape Medical News.
In their pilot study conducted in the emergency department of a large urban academic medical center, registration staff took photos of consenting patients when they checked in.
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Imaging devices, soft security practices are a ‘weak link’ in protecting data
December 02, 2019, 3:08 p.m. EST
Security concerns for imaging professionals are on the rise, as hackers view digital radiological devices—increasingly connected to IT systems—as a weak link that can be broken to access medical information.
Healthcare organizations aren’t spending enough on hacking defenses anyway, and imaging systems represent a potential playground for hackers who want to crack defense perimeters of healthcare organizations.
Those weaknesses range from outdated operating systems on imaging devices to sloppy use of usernames and passwords to misguided efforts to make it easy to exchange image files, said speakers Monday at a session describing best cybersecurity practices for radiologists at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.
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Documentation system seeks to improve paramedic-ED patient handoffs
December 02, 2019, 1:47 a.m. EST
An automated clinical documentation system is being tested to better facilitate handoffs of patients brought to the emergency department via ambulance.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center partnered with the Nashville Fire Department in a feasibility study as part of a $1.7 million research grant from the Department of Defense.
“The specific focus is how to improve patient care and clinical documentation during transport in military and civilian cases,” says project lead Daniel Fabbri, assistant professor of biomedical informatics in the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt University.
The Automated Sensing Clinical Documentation system includes sensors that are placed on paramedics’ wrists and forearms, which transmit body motion and muscle activity data in real time that is analyzed to let ED physicians and trauma surgeons know what in-transit medical procedures have been performed on patients.
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A big question at HIMSS Australia Digital Health Summit: Why innovate?
Representatives from two healthcare providers and a technology partner discussed the meaning, processes and obstacles to innovation in healthcare at the HIMSS Australia Digital Health Summit.
By Dean Koh
December 01, 2019 09:34 PM
As healthcare organizations face unprecedented challenges to improve quality, reduce harm, increase efficiency, eliminate waste, and lower costs, innovation is becoming a major focus. A panel consisting of healthcare providers from Australian and international perspectives, together with a technology partner gathered at the HIMSS Australia Digital Health Summit on 21 November to talk about the realities and challenges to healthcare innovation.
What does innovation mean in the context of healthcare?
“Innovation is more of a verb than a noun, healthcare organizations and providers need to step up and start embracing the phenomenon that everybody is an innovator. They need to be encouraged to solve old problems differently, but also anticipating problems in the future and create solutions for them. Using novel ways to address these problems, whether it's through technology, whether it's through process redesign or better governance,” said Dr Manish Kohli, Managing Director of Beyond Horizon Health, Co-Founder and Partner, Infinite Care Holdings.
Chief Executive and Chief Information Officer of eHealth NSW, Dr Zoran Bolevich said that innovation is the process of finding new ways of achieving outcomes that matter. He explained that it is not just about new drugs, therapeutics or new diagnostic devices or digital technology. Innovation could be in the form of clinical processes, engagement with consumers, organizational approaches, funding structures and incentives. All of these ‘non-tech’ components are also important levers that deliver good health outcomes.
“From my perspective, innovations that are scalable, are most valuable,” he added.
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The new HIPAA-compliant tool will be able to capture physician dictation or doctor-patient conversations.
AWS launches Amazon Transcribe Medical
By Laura Lovett
December 02, 2019
Amazon Web Services is tapping into its voice technology once again with the launch of the Amazon Transcribe Medical, an automated speech recognition service that will let developers add medical diction and documentation to their apps.
The streaming API tool is designed to cater to medical and pharmacological terms, thereby allowing doctors, clinicians and researchers to dictate into it. It also has a natural speech feature, which can transcribe a doctor-patient visit.
The new feature is an add-on to Amazon Transcribe, which was included on the list of AWS’ HIPAA-eligible services in November of 2018.
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Why Google’s Move into Patient Information Is a Big Deal
November 26, 2019
A recent agreement between Google and Ascension, a huge national health system, is yet another sign of how the digital revolution is transforming health care. We are at the dawn of a new era where clinicians will be able to apply in real time the collective human experience in treating any particular problem to the care of every patient with that condition.
But the critical reactions to the agreement — under which Ascension will send to the Google cloud the clinical data it collects on its 50 million patients, and Google will process that data to help Ascension better manage its patients and its finances — make it clear that changes of this magnitude are never smooth. The announcement generated concerns about patient privacy and the misuse of information for the private gain of third parties. It triggered an investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and calls from members of Congress for further inquiries. We are obviously at the beginning of what will likely be a long, contentious, and vital debate over how to manage personal health information in the digital age.
Patients have an undeniable right to privacy and control over their personal health data. Doctors and hospitals need leeway to use patient information in their care. Patients, health professionals, and the larger society have an interest in learning from our collective experience with care to better prevent and treat disease. And tech entrepreneurs want a return on their capital when they add value to the management of health-care data. The coming debate will be about how to manage these sometimes conflicting interests as health information technology revolutionizes our health care system.
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Healthcare Is So Inconsistent That You Can’t Compare Which One Is Better
December 2, 2019
One of the most insightful meetings I had at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas was with Robbie Hughes, CEO and Founder of Lumeon. For those not familiar with Lumeon, they work with healthcare providers to design and automate care pathways in an effort to deliver measurable outcomes at lower cost. They’re deployed in 12 countries with over 11 million patients on their platform across 2,000 sites.
One thing that made my interaction with Lumeon unique was that they started off by admitting that every healthcare organization was different and required a customized solution. Having worked on automating care pathways across so many organizations and patients, they would know. That’s not to say that there aren’t similarities and some standards across organizations. There certainly are, but there are differences as well that must be taken into account for a digital health solution to be effective. Robbie suggested to me that in his experience about 80% of what healthcare organizations do in a care pathway is the same, but there’s a 20% nuance that comes from a healthcare organization’s operational structure or environment that must be considered to create an effective clinical pathway.
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US tech firms want access to £10bn NHS health data
Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor
December 2 2019, 12:01am, The Times
A leading trade economist has warned that NHS patient data may be exploited by US technology companies under a trade deal with America.
Alan Winters, director of the Trade Policy Observatory at Sussex University, said clauses on data sharing and algorithms that US negotiators want inserted into a deal could be used to capture the value in NHS patient records, estimated at £10 billion a year.
A leaked cache of official government files on the private discussions released by Jeremy Corbyn last week revealed “the free flow of data is a top priority” for the US in any trade talks. US negotiators also urged the UK to dilute data privacy rules after Brexit and “to avoid forcing companies to disclose algorithms”.
The arrangements could give US companies unrestricted access to valuable UK data, one of the most promising of which is Britain’s 55 million health records. EY, the accounting firm, has estimated this health data could be worth £10 billion a year.
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Enjoy!
David.
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