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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Digital Health’s Review of 2019 Part One: January to June
It’s been a roller coaster of a year in the NHS technology sphere, and we daresay elsewhere as well. We’ve had the creation of NHSX, lost several high-profile technology leaders to the private sector and, of course, everyone’s favourite event Digital Health Rewired 2019.
Andrea Downey – 27 December, 2019
Just when you thought all the major news was done for the year and all that was left to do was eat mince pies, Santa has on more present up his sleeve for you – it’s the Digital Health News yearly round-up.
Let’s take a sleigh ride back through some of our biggest stories for 2019…
HIT Think
4 emerging CDI trends and how they will impact the industry in 2020
December 27, 2019, 2:17 p.m. EST
The Clinical Documentation Improvement industry has been transformed by new technologies since its inception in the mid 2000s.
Today, CDI nurses act like air-traffic controllers with sophisticated software systems at their fingertips, quickly scanning, identifying and resolving opportunities for clinical documentation improvement within thousands of patient charts. The days of walking the floors with a stack of paper sticky-notes and chocolate bars are pretty much gone.
With new technologies available, hospitals are expanding CDI coverage, as they struggle to accurately and consistently translate care provided into diagnostic coding terms necessary for proper payment and publicly reported quality outcomes. Hospitals lose significant reimbursement dollars when physician documentation is not consistency and quickly clarified for coding purposes.
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AHA voices concerns about FDA guidance on clinical decision support
December 26, 2019, 10:04 p.m. EST
The American Hospital Association is concerned that if the Food and Drug Administration’s draft guidance on clinical decision support software is implemented it could hinder innovation.
According to the FDA, its draft guidance—released in September for public comment—is a proposed approach for regulating CDS software that not only fulfills the provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act, but also strikes the right balance between ensuring patient safety and promoting innovation.
However, in a letter last week to the FDA, the AHA charged that the regulatory agency’s “interpretation of certain criteria could result in many existing CDS algorithms being subject to the FDA approval process and ultimately slow the pace of innovation and development of new software tools to support better patient care and outcomes.”
In particular, AHA notes that the FDA proposes to focus its regulatory oversight on CDS functions that are intended to help a healthcare professional inform their clinical management for serious or critical conditions and that are not intended for professionals to independently evaluate the basis of the software’s recommendations.
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The economy of connecting
The monetisation of patient data is set to be one of the biggest drivers of new business models across the healthcare landscape – and ownership of that data can give patients the power to shape the kind of healthcare they want.
By Piers Ford
December 27, 2019 05:00 AM
Right now, patients don’t know their own strength. But as they wake up to their emerging role as keepers of their own healthcare data, the economic clout that comes with ownership will hand them a controlling stake in the new business models that are set to disrupt traditional financing across the sector.
Forecasts give a strong indication of the potential scale of that role – and the reasons why technology startups, insurers, providers and researchers are gearing up for the age of value-based health, in which patients will trade their data as currency, investing in their own care outcomes and the tools that will help to identify and realise them.
An IDC/Seagate whitepaper, The Digitisation of the World, for example, estimates a CAGR of 36% for healthcare data by 2025, making it the fastest growing sector by some distance. Put this in the context of a global data monetisation market worth almost $708bn by the same year, and the economic impact of patient data ownership becomes clear.
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Mayo Clinic names first chief digital officer
Rita Khan, who comes to the health system from UnitedHealthcare, will guide digital strategy and spearhead the launch of Mayo's new Center for Digital Health.
December 27, 2019
Mayo Clinic announced this week that it has created the role of chief digital officer, and hired Rita Khan, who most recently served as senior vice president of consumer digital at UnitedHealthcare, to the new C-level position.
WHY IT MATTERS
In her new role, Khan will guide Mayo Clinic's strategy as it prepares for big changes across the digital space, according to the health system.
In her new role, Khan will guide Mayo Clinic's strategy as it prepares for big changes across the digital space, according to the health system.
As CDO, Khan will chart digital strategy, putting in place a "comprehensive business plan and digital standards that align with Mayo Clinic's culture and values," and establish the new Mayo Clinic Center for Digital Health.
At UnitedHealthcare, Khan directed enterprise-level digital strategy and lead a team that designed new digital tools for providers, employers and members across the insurer's commercial, Medicare and Medicaid businesses.
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Emory Healthcare, Verily partner to improve medication, lab ordering
The Atlanta health system will work with the Alphabet subsidiary on several new initiatives, starting with deep analysis of existing medication and lab ordering patterns at Emory.
By Nathan Eddy
December 27, 2019 11:19 AM
Georgia’s largest health care system, Emory Healthcare, announced a partnership with Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which is focused on life sciences and healthcare.
The aim of the partnership, built on Emory’s capabilities as an academic medical center and Verily’s expertise in data science, analytics, user experience and product development, is to develop and deploy a host of solutions to help improve cost-effectiveness, operational efficiency and quality of healthcare.
One of the first areas of organizational change the two partners will focus on is a deep analysis of existing medication and lab ordering patterns at Emory, which will in turn be followed by solutions to improve the processes involved in those areas
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Third-Party Vendor Risk Management in Healthcare
December 27, 2019
One of the realities I’ve seen is that the healthcare CIO is largely a vendor manager. I’ve grown that view a bit to include the management of people, but that’s the majority of a CIO’s job. Manage the people that work for the CIO and manage the vendors that work with their organization.
This is not a knock on CIOs. This is really important work that they’re doing. Although, it is a recognition that much of the risk they take on as CIO is dependent on the vendors with whom they work. This is true from an innovation perspective where the innovations of the vendor will either make the CIO look really good or really bad. However, it’s also true from a multitude of other financial, legal, security, and reputation standpoint as well.
How then are CIOs managing their third-part vendor risk?
I’m sad to say that the reality for most organizations is simply: a bunch of spreadsheets.
Chew on that for a minute. A CIO’s third-party risk is being managed by a bunch of spreadsheets. I love a spreadsheet as much as the next person, but we know that a file on Sharepoint is the place where documents largely go to die. Plus, managing hundreds of spreadsheets across a wide variety of vendors is brutal.
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Clinical Trial Finds Google Glass App Helped (Slightly) Improve Socialization of Autistic Children
December 27, 2019
While it continues to be an intriguing technology, Google Glass is not in wide use in healthcare today, though It’s far from dead,
Also, there’s still those who are exploring ways in which it might help patients, including the following study which seems to have generated some positive results. (There’s reason to be skeptical about these conclusions, however. More on this below.)
According to a recent paper published in JAMA Pediatrics, a group of researchers set out to find out whether Google Glass (which it describes as “a wearable artificial intelligence intervention designed for use in the home” ) would reinforce facial engagement and emotional recognition among children with autism spectrum disorder and thereby improve their social skills.
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Algorithms, MRI scans help predict 10-year breast cancer recurrence
December 25, 2019, 11:11 p.m. EST
Researchers at Penn Medicine have used radiomics, a method that leverages algorithms to extract large amounts of features from medical images, to provide more personalized tumor characterization for breast cancer patients.
In the process, the algorithms were able to successfully predict recurrence-free survival after 10 years, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
Researchers contend that the use of imaging to characterize the genetic makeup of tumors can pave the way for individualized, non-invasive treatment.
“Our study shows that imaging has the potential to capture the whole tumor’s behavior without doing a procedure that is invasive or limited by sampling error,” says Rhea Chitalia, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. “Women who had more heterogeneous tumors tended to have a greater risk of tumor recurrence.”
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Technologists upbeat about AI impact on their careers, but not on society
December 26, 2019, 3:30 a.m. EST
Artificial intelligence will shape the technology landscape of the 2020s, but unintended consequences pose big risks, according to a new report from ISACA, a technology professional association.
The evolving relationship between AI, automation and humans is expected to create promising opportunities in the technology workforce, while simultaneously presenting sobering concerns for the general public, the study said.
For its research, ISACA surveyed more than 5,000 business technology professionals, and found that respondents are significantly more optimistic about how technology advancements in the new decade will impact their career than they are about how it will impact society as a whole.
Some 59 percent of respondents expressed optimism for the ramifications of AI on their careers, compared with only 40 percent who are similarly upbeat about the overall societal impact.
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Proposed Senate bill aims to coordinate federal SDOH efforts in Medicaid
December 26, 2019, 2:49 p.m. EST
A bill proposed in the Senate would aim to use a coordinated approach among federal agencies to address social determinants of health for Medicaid recipients.
The approach would incorporate the use of data from several federal agencies to better meet the needs of recipients whose health is influenced by a wide variety of factors, such as access to medical care and transportation, proximity to sources of nutritious food, and issues with social isolation and lack of safe housing.
The bill, S. 2986, entitled the Social Determinants Accelerator Act of 2019, was introduced by Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind) and is co-sponsored by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). The bill has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee. The bill asks $20 million to fund the program for five years.
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ADA says autonomous AI meets diabetes standards of care
The news is being touted by IDx, makers of the first medical device approved by FDA to use artificial intelligence to assess diabetic retinopathy.
By Mike Miliard
December 26, 2019 03:26 PM
In a move that could help win over some skeptics about the value and efficacy of AI in clinical care, The American Diabetes Association, in its new set of clinical standards, recognizes the use of autonomous artificial intelligence for the screening of some medical conditions.
WHY IT MATTERS
The ADA's new 2020 Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes includes language noting that “AI systems that detect more than mild diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema authorized for use by the FDA represent an alternative to traditional screening approaches.”
The ADA's new 2020 Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes includes language noting that “AI systems that detect more than mild diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema authorized for use by the FDA represent an alternative to traditional screening approaches.”
The clinical standards – published earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal Diabetes Care – represent a new source for evidence-based best practices, consulted by hospitals and health systems, physicians, insurers and quality organizations.
While acknowledging that autonomous AI can be an alternative to traditional screening, however, the ADA specifies that it feels the "benefits and optimal utilization of this type of screening have yet to be fully determined."
In addition, it cautions that "artificial intelligence systems should not be used for patients with known retinopathy, prior retinopathy treatment, or symptoms of vision impairment."
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Health IT Leaders choose MU, Consumerism and Cloud as Top Stories of Past Decade
December 26, 2019
Over the past decade we have moved from a world where more than half of healthcare processes were paper-based to one that is mostly electronic. We also saw the rise of patient portals, a movement towards value-based care, the implementation of a new billing code system and an explosion of health data.
It’s hard to pick just one development from the past decade of Health IT as THE ONE that stands out the most, but that’s exactly what John Lynn and I tried to do on a recent episode of the Healthcare IT Today Podcast. My pick was government regulations. Nothing else had a bigger impact on healthcare in my opinion.
Things got started with the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act which begat the Meaningful Use program. That program eventually poured $28 Billion in federal stimulus money into EHRs (and Health IT in general) starting in 2011.
Later, we had the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as Obamacare) which led to the creation of the federal health exchange – HealthCare.gov. This exchange landed with a thud. The story of HealthCare.gov became both a case study on how NOT to launch national government IT initiative and how to FIX one.
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Electronic Health Records Creating A 'New Era' Of Health Care Fraud
By Kaiser Health News | December 23, 2019
Major EHR software makers have allegedly gamed the system, repeatedly.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Whistleblower lawsuits allege that some EHR software used in hospitals and medical offices has hidden flaws that may pose a danger to patients.
· Three major EHR vendors have made multimillion-dollar settlement deals — totaling $357 million — over DOJ investigations.
· Beyond those cases, federal officials have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to doctors and hospitals that could not show they were even qualified to receive them.
This article was first published on Monday, December 23, 2019 in Kaiser Health News.
By Fred Schulte and Erika Fry, Fortune
Derek Lewis was working as an electronic health records specialist for the nation's largest hospital chain when he heard about software defects that might even "kill a patient."
The doctors at Midwest (City) Regional Medical Center in Oklahoma worried that the software failed to track some drug prescriptions or dosages properly, posing a "huge safety concern," Lewis said. Lewis cited the alleged safety hazards in a whistleblower lawsuit that he and another former employee of Community Health Systems (CHS) filed against the Tennessee-based hospital chain in 2018.
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AI software test shows promise for breast ultrasound diagnoses
December 24, 2019, 11:52 a.m. EST
A test of artificial intelligence in assessing breast ultrasound examinations has offered some evidence that it aids in cancer detection and boosts physician accuracy.
The best, conducted by a New York-based private practice radiology group that performs a high volume of such exams found promising results in assessing lesions found during breast ultrasound examinations.
The evaluation spanned 18 months and involved nine specialist radiologists who used artificial intelligence software from Koios Medical, which has been cleared for use by the Food and Drug Administration.
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Mobile apps offer suicide intervention potential, but oversight is lacking
December 24, 2019, 12:30 p.m. EST
Mobile apps may help address the needs of persons at risk of suicide, according to results of a study conducted at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
However, more vigilance is needed to ensure that apps that are available are effective in heading off potential life-threatening events.
In the project, researchers assessed six types of mobile apps that could help in depression management—these include mood and suicidal thought tracking; safety plan development; recommendation of activities to deter suicidal thoughts; information and education; access to support networks; and access to emergency counseling.
Worldwide, an estimated 800,000 people commit suicide, and about 16 million make a suicide attempt each year.
Timely identification of persons at risk for suicide is important to ensure adequate provision of care. Some 60 percent of individuals with suicidal ideation transitioned to a first attempt within a year of onset, which is a significant number considering that half to two-thirds of suicide deaths occur in the first attempt. More than 90 percent of persons who died by suicide had depression, alcohol abuse or both.
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ONC data shows potential link between EHRs and patient harm
December 23, 2019, 9:35 p.m. EST
Publicly available electronic health record surveillance data shows a possible link between EHRs and patient harm, according to researchers from the MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare.
That’s the finding of a research letter published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
MedStar researchers contend that their results represent the “first-of-its-kind” examination of EHR surveillance data collected by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, with all publicly available surveillance data—from Jan. 28, 2016, to June 24, 2019,—analyzed.
“This is a unique analysis,” contends Raj Ratwani, director of the MedStar Health Human Factors Center and an author of the JAMA research letter. “Nobody’s really done this kind of analysis with those data before.”
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Drugmakers Turn to Data Mining to Avoid Expensive, Lengthy Drug Trials
Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Amgen try to win drug approvals by analyzing vast data sets of electronic medical records
By
Peter Loftus
Updated Dec. 23, 2019 9:55 am ET
Drugmakers are trying to win drug approvals by parsing vast data sets of electronic medical records, shifting away from lengthy, and costly, clinical trials in patients.
Pfizer Inc., PFE -0.08% Johnson & Johnson JNJ -0.35% and Amgen Inc. AMGN -0.29% are among the drugmakers that have submitted the data-mining analyses to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in seeking approval to sell new medicines or for new uses for older ones. The FDA has approved new uses for breast cancer, bladder cancer and leukemia drugs in part based on the data.
For the companies, the use of real-world data can cut costs and shorten drug-development times. Instead of finding trial subjects, companies simply mine hospital and doctor files for cases where patients already took a drug in routine medical care, looking for changes in blood pressure, tumor size and other readings to see if the medicine is helping or causing a side effect.
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Why Physicians Should Care About Wearables
We are at the point of the "digital revolution" in healthcare and it is growing at a fast pace. With all of these new innovations, one issue is clear: The physician needs to be in the know, so we can continue to guide this new era.
Having a doctor at the table for all these new types of disruptive technology will help healthcare, help us be a part of the conversation, and ultimately will ensure that the patient gets optimal care.
One such example is wearable devices, creating a new form of data generated by the patient for interpretation by physicians.
The wearable medical device marketplace is expected to reach $14.1 billion by 2022 (from $6 billion in 2017). This growth is attributed to factors including new technology, greater use of smartphones, and growing preference for wireless connectivity among healthcare providers and patients. In a recent survey administered by Accenture in over 2000 patients, 75% stated that technology and digital health was somewhat or very important to them.
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Payers Are Using mHealth, Telehealth to Promote Better Health Outcomes
mHealth tools and telehealth services are giving payers like Humana the opportunity to push better data to their members and care providers - which, in turn, will help them make better decisions about health and care.
December 20, 2019 - mHealth and telehealth are enabling payers to give their members and care providers the information they need to make better decisions and provide better care.
But it’s not just about giving doctors and patients more data, says Worthe Holt, vice president of the Office of the CMO at Humana. It’s about giving them new data not found in the medical record, and in real or near-real time, helping them to make more impactful decisions about healthcare and wellness.
“Having actionable insights and data at your fingertips is extraordinarily important if you’re going to be effective,” Holt said during a recent episode of Healthcare Strategies, the Xtelligent Healthcare Media podcast series.
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Few Apps for Depression & Suicide Prevention Meet Clinical Guidelines
Last updated: 21 Dec 2019
Most (93 percent) mobile apps for suicide prevention and depression management do not provide all six suicide prevention strategies commonly recommended in international clinical guidelines, according to a new study led by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
Currently, there are more than 10,000 mental health apps available on the Apple App store and Google Play. But even as digital mental health interventions seem to offer a promising alternative to in-person visits, very few apps available in the app stores have been evaluated in clinical trials or by regulatory bodies.
The study, published online in the journal BMC Medicine, highlights the need for responsible design and creation of guidelines for apps that could have a significant impact on people’s lives.
For preventing suicide, international guidelines from the UK, US and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend six evidence-based strategies: the tracking of mood and suicidal thoughts, development of a safety plan, recommendation of activities to deter suicidal thoughts, information and educational articles on signs of suicidality, access to support networks, and emergency counselling.
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‘Gist’ processing of images enhances AI’s breast cancer risk assessment
December 23, 2019, 2:05 p.m. EST
Machine learning—combined with radiologists’ intuitive, or “gist” processing—is more accurate in assessing breast cancer risk than either approach alone.
Deep learning models, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), enable automatic screening of life-threatening breast cancers at an earlier, more curable stage. However, CNNs rely on large annotated datasets for clinical diagnosis as input.
Gist is the memory representation of the bottom-line meaning of an experience. Gist-based intuition is a human visual ability, an advanced form of reasoning that is mainly unconscious and develops with experience. However, it has not been used in neural networks for screening mammograms even though it enables the human visual system to readily extract meaningful information. For instance, radiology experts can classify mammograms as normal or abnormal at above-chance levels after less than one second exposure to the image.
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Study suggests analytics, screening tools and EHRs can aid autism treatment
December 23, 2019, 2:25 p.m. EST
New research is trying to determine if computer automation coupled with clinical decision support software can increase timely screening of autism spectrum disorder.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) represents a range of disabilities in speech, social interaction and intellect, and features repetitive movements or behaviors ranging from mild to severe. Although the prevalence of ASD has been increasing in recent decades, primary care physicians may not have a deep understanding of autism and may not routinely screen pediatric patients for its signs.
An article in the Journal JAMA Network.com describes research involving a clinical trial that took place in four primary care practices at Eskenazi Health System in Indianapolis. The trial compared ASD screening rates among 274 children in urban pediatric clinics of an inner-city county hospital with or without a screening module built into an existing clinical decision support system.
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VA providing vets with digital tools to access healthcare info
December 22, 2019, 10:45 p.m. EST
The Department of Veterans Affairs has added a number of online resources to improve access to patient statements as well as compare the performance of VA medical facilities with non-VA facilities.
Through the agency’s AccessVA website, veterans receiving care for non-service related conditions can now view, download and print their patient statements electronically, using their secure information for DS Logon, ID.me or MyHealtheVet Premium.
While the VA will continue to mail veterans paper statements, online patient statements are available on AccessVA for as long as six months and include a summary of services received at any VA medical facility.
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HIT Think
How the technology puzzle can help address youth suicide
December 23, 2019, 2:43 p.m. EST
Perhaps it’s because we live in an age of competing epidemics and crises—opioids, impeachment, homelessness, insulin—that youth suicide trends don’t warrant a front-page headline every week.
The numbing, knee-bending statistics say they should.
Per the CDC, suicide rates among young people 10 to 24 years old rose 56 percent between 2007 and 2017. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for that group after accidents like car crashes—paradoxical tragedies often caused by the excessive exuberance of youth. Of course, the number of suicides is a small subset of the number of attempts, which are up 400 percent.
The numbers give rise to so many questions, primary among them, “Why?”
The answer is by no means clear. Desperation is almost always a complex brew of family dynamics, economics, romantic relationships, peer pressure, sexual orientation, genetics and other factors. Despite that, academic Jean Twenge notes that the rise in youth suicide tracks with the explosion of smartphone use. According to Twenge, a San Diego State psychology professor, that’s not circumstantial.
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Hancock announces ‘digital aspirant’ programme for hospitals
The health secretary made the announcement in his first speech following last week's UK general election.
December 19, 2019 01:23 AM
After a tumultuous election, health secretary Matt Hancock returned to the post with a speech that reinforced his focus on technology and revealed plans to launch a ‘digital aspirant’ programme for hospitals in England.
WHAT HAPPENED
“If you thought I was going to relent on tech then I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you,” Hancock said today at the Policy Exchange think tank in London.
“Until now, the focus has been on getting some hospitals up to scratch through the global digital exemplar [GDE] programme,” he continued. “They’ve [GDEs] got to keep advancing, but now we’re going to help many more hospitals with a new digital aspirant programme.”
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Patient-centricity taken seriously
Everybody talks about putting the patient in the driving seat. But connected care platforms that take this vision seriously continue to experience a hard time. How should patient-centricity be reimbursed?
December 23, 2019 05:20 AM
By most standards, severe hemophilia is an infrequent disease. It is estimated that around 20,000 people suffer from it in the US. In Europe, a little more than 1 in 10,000 newborns carry a hemophilia A or B mutation. Those of them who need treatment are taken care of in around 420 specialised centers all over the continent. Hemophilia is not only rare, it is also pretty expensive. To prevent bleedings, for example into the joints, patients inject clotting factors or antibodies that they store at home. Treatment costs can add up to several hundreds of thousands euros per year, strongly dependent on how much injectable therapies the individual patient actually needs.
Digital hemophilia platform optimises use of expensive clotting factors
“Given this background, there is a clear rationale for managing hemophilia patients with a digital platform. Doing so allows us to monitor compliance, and it also allows us to correlate bleeding events and medication in order to find the optimal dosing schedule for each individual patient,” says Andreas Rösch of Rösch & Associates, a Frankfurt-based company that is offering the digital haemophilia platform “smart medication”. At the moment, nearly 1,300 hemophilia patients in Germany and Switzerland, roughly one out of three, use the application for their medication management and for communicating with their doctors. Forty-five hemophilia centers in these two countries offer the solution to their patients.
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In 2019, social determinants of health got the attention they deserve
Hospitals and health systems are beginning to embrace a more holistic approach to ensuring the wellness of their patient populations, and are adjusting their IT strategies to accommodate it.
By Mike Miliard
December 23, 2019 03:16 PM
In a March 2019 interview with Healthcare IT News, Dr. Jacob Reider – CEO of the Alliance for Better Health and former deputy national coordinator for health IT – described the conversations he'd been having about social determinants of health with an array of different healthcare stakeholders.
"There's a lot of interest in this in this domain," he said. "Folks from federally-qualified health centers, so on the frontlines of the medical side. We had folks from states, and/or or former state leaders who are looking at this from a public health perspective. We had folks from social care providers. We had health plans. So we had this really broad cross section of the care continuum, all saying, 'Hey this is important and we would like to participate in some way, in figuring this out together.'"
The push to do a better job incorporating social determinant information into care and treatment plans gained momentum in 2019, as more and more provider organizations recognized the key role that housing, transportation, food security and other non-clinical factors play in patients' health.
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2020 Could Be The Year Wearables Find Their Place In Healthcare
December 23, 2019
After many years as a black sheep of the healthcare family, the wearable is coming into its own. This has been signaled in no uncertain terms by Google, a kingmaker if there ever was one, which recently acquired wearables giant Fitbit for $2.1 billion.
As influential and cash-rich as Google is, though, I don’t think even the big G is capable of forcing a market to come together single-handedly. In fact, I see the acquisition as more of an effect of converging forces and trends, including the following:
- Larger providers are reaching the point where they to see the value of collecting healthcare data from virtually any source they can identify.
- The maturation of artificial intelligence technologies, especially machine learning, has added new purpose and power to providers’ data analytics projects.
- A growing number of use cases (such as this one) are emerging, lending strong support to the idea that AI-fueled big data projects can make a major clinical and financial impact.
- A growing number of consumers are beginning to buy into the idea that health data can be used not only stay in shape but also to improve the health in other ways,
- Wearables are beginning to clear regulatory hurdles, with several obtaining FDA clearance or approval during 2019 including devices treating irritable bowel syndrome and ADHD and tracking vitals and heart rhythms.
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EHRs and Collaboration: Leveraging Technology to Help Patients with Substance-Use Disorders
December 23, 2019
The growth in substance use disorders [SUD] across all demographics and income brackets has impacted the role of primary-care providers [PCPs].
Physicians, especially those in rural and/or underserved parts of the country, who are most affected by the opioid epidemic, have had to step up their engagement with patients to help them physically, mentally and emotionally. They’ve also had to increase collaboration with behavioral health providers, including SUD professionals.
In 2018, CMS unveiled a new Psychiatric Collaborative Care Model in the Physician Fee Schedule that would enable providers to generate revenue when they co-manage patients with a psychiatrist or other behavioral health professionals. And in August, the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] proposed updates to 42 CFR Part 2 — the federal regulations governing the confidentiality of patient records created by SUD treatment programs — to improve care coordination and outcomes for patients with substance-use disorders.
These are just two of many efforts intended to foster a more collaborative relationship.
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Monday Morning Update 12/23/19
HisTalk - Top News
In Australia, government health officials admit that while 23 million people have a My Health Record online health account – most of them only because enrollment was changed from opt-in to opt-out early this year – 91% of them have never logged in and most of those who did log in have not returned.
A large percentage of public hospitals, pharmacies, and medical practices are connected, but only 33% of private hospitals and less than half of medical and diagnostic labs.
The Australian Digital Health Agency has had to pay software vendor, pathology providers, and imaging providers for integration in trying to boost data availability and usage.
The system cost more than $1 billion to develop and annual maintenance costs are estimated at $350 million.
The digital health agency’s CEO is Tim Kelsey, who just resigned to take an SVP job with HIMSS.
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Weekly News Recap
- The National Academy of Medicine publishes an overview and recommendations for the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
- LifeLabs, Canada’s largest lab testing company, admits that it paid a hacker’s ransom to recover its systems in an October breach that affects 15 million patients.
- Amazon Web Services adds ICD-10 and RXNorm linking to its Amazon Comprehend Medical natural language processing service.
- HIMSS hires Tim Kelsey, CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency, for an SVP of analytics job.
- Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey’s largest health system, admits that it has paid a ransomware hacker to regain access to its systems.
- A Florida pain management chain pays $85,000 to settle HIPAA charges that it ignored a patient’s request to send an electronic copy of their medical records to a third party.
- Partners HealthCare announces a five-year, $100 million digital health initiative.
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Enjoy!
David.
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