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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Neither Covid-19 nor cyber-criminals care who gets infected and suffers
With the coronavirus pushing many NHS trusts to their limit, our columnist Davey Winder, explores why the health service is still an attractive target for cyber-criminals.
Davey Winder – April 2, 2020
Like many of us, I have a very personal connection to the evolving coronavirus pandemic. As I write this column, my elderly mother is in hospital having tested positive for COVID-19. She’s a tough old girl and it’s looking good that she’ll make it through all this.
However, I do wonder if the security of the NHS will prove to be so resilient. The cyber-criminal industry, by and large, has not hesitated to use the confusion, disruption and fear surrounding the virus to its advantage.
Beware of ransomware
In just the past ten days, the criminals behind the NetWalker ransomware campaign, a particular nasty variation that hides in plain site on Windows 10 machines, has taken to specifically targeting healthcare workers for example. This after two of the most prolific, and dangerous, ransomware gangs had pledged not to target hospitals and medical facilities.
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New digital service ‘to allow every UK GP surgery to offer remote consults’
A group of GPs and NHS healthcare workers has developed a free teleconsultation service that it hopes will allow every GP surgery in the UK to offer remote consultations.
Owen Hughes – April 2, 2020
Nye Health is a desktop and mobile-based platform that allows GPs to offer consultations to patients via video or phone call.
The service, which is now live and is free for the NHS to use, has been designed to help reduce the number of patients attending GP surgeries in person by enabling doctors to work remotely where required.
It can also help free up capacity during peak periods, triaging patients so that more urgent cases are prioritised for face-to-face appointments.
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Apr 2, 2020 - Health
Scoop: Google to lift coronavirus ad ban
Google will begin to allow some advertisers to run ads across its platforms that address the coronavirus, according to a Google memo sent to clients and obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: Democrats have argued that in banning attack ads targeting President Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, including on YouTube, Google was shielding his campaign in a critical election year.
- The broad ban had also stopped consumer advertisers, like retail and packaged goods companies, as well as corporate social responsibility advertisers like nonprofits, from running messaging about the virus.
Details: According to the memo, sent from Google's Head of Industry Mark Beatty to political advertising clients, Google is beginning to phase in advertisers who want to run ads related to COVID-19, prioritizing those advertisers that are working directly on this issue.
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Piecemeal testing flusters officials tracking coronavirus pandemic
The surge in coronavirus testing was supposed to give public health officials a better grip on who’s sick and where. Instead, it’s exposing gaps in reporting.
By DARIUS TAHIR
04/02/2020 06:28 PM EDT
The surge in coronavirus testing was supposed to give public health officials a better grip on who’s sick and where.
Instead, it’s exposing gaps in reporting, raising concern about whether complete results and basic information about patients that test positive is getting through to officials and health workers trying to contain the pandemic.
A hodgepodge of federal and state mandates on big commercial labs like Quest Diagnostics and others running tests have created reporting holes, even as about 100,000 are processed daily. Public health officials lack contact information of some who test positive. Primary care physicians don't always get their patients' results. And big lab companies are withholding results from digital patient data vaults that health providers and officials tap to coordinate care.
"Getting incomplete information is an ongoing problem we face, made more difficult by the exponential volume of results we’re dealing with in the COVID-19 response," said Kristen Maki, a spokesperson for the Washington state health department.
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Clinician burnout during the times of COVID-19
Burnout amongst health and care workers is already an issue which has been close to the top of the agenda and this was before the times of COVID-19.
April 03, 2020 02:29 AM
Burnout amongst health and care workers is already an issue which has been close to the top of the agenda and this was before the times of COVID-19.
It is important to understand why this was the case as a better understanding of the causes could well lead us to discover some potential solutions.
Burnout amongst health workers has been extensively studied and documented over the past few years and we are all very aware of the potential contribution of some of the ways we practice 21st century medicine to the increase in levels of depersonalisation amongst front line workers. From increased complexity of pathways, EMRs that are not configured to follow clinical flows, legal considerations, the changes in relationship between patients and their carers and indeed the shift that has taken place over the past few years where patients are assuming the role of consumers of care. Many of these trends and shifts are desirable. The shift from individual opinion to evidence-based care and better clinical governance, the shift from passive receptive patients to active assertive and activated consumers have both positively contributed to positive outcomes for example.
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NHS joins forces with US tech giants to create COVID-19 dashboard
Activists have raised privacy concerns about the involvement of big data firm Palantir.
By Tammy Lovell
April 03, 2020 06:34 AM
The NHS is working with US tech companies Palantir, Microsoft and Amazon to develop a data platform to inform the COVID-19 response.
According to a blog posted on Gov.UK, NHS England and Improvement will collate data from across NHS and social care organisation sources, including the NHS 111 call centre, NHS Digital and COVID-19 test result date from Public Health England.
Data will be integrated, cleaned and harmonised in order to “provide a single source of truth about the rapidly evolving situation”, which can be presented on dashboards to give a live view of metrics.
However, Privacy International and the Open Rights Group issued a statement raising concerns about the involvement of Palantir, which is providing its Palantir Foundry software, to power the front-end data platform. They flagged up the firm’s past work on the tracking of migrants and provision of espionage tools.
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Survey: Americans’ perceptions of telehealth in the COVID-19 era
Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they’d consider using telehealth to be remotely screened for COVID-19, and two-thirds said the pandemic has increased their willingness to try virtual care the Clearlink survey found.
By Bill Siwicki
April 03, 2020 12:09 PM
The rapid spread of coronavirus COVID-19 is taxing traditional methods of healthcare delivery. The sheer number of suspected cases of the virus, the pace at which it is spreading, and the desire to have as many people as possible practice social distancing or shelter-in-place have made it more challenging for individuals to receive care in a traditional, in-person setting.
Telehealth technology, originally designed to give access to care in areas where there is a shortage of specialty care providers, now is being used much more widely as a way to screen and diagnose patients without risking the spread of disease through personal contact.
But if health IT professionals have long been accustomed to notion of telehealth and virtual care, even if they haven’t deployed the technologies themselves, what do healthcare consumers think of this emerging new way of engaging with their care providers?
Clearlink, a marketing company focused on customer experience, recently surveyed 2,000 adults from around the United States to assess their perceptions of and experiences with telehealth in the age of COVID-19.
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How HIEs are Improving Healthcare with Patient-Generated Data
April 3, 2020
The following is a guest article by Andrea Tait, VP of Client Value, Orion Health.
Patient-Generated Data’s Place in Patient Care
Today, health systems have increasingly recognized the need to be patient-centered, with a focus on empowering and engaging patients to assist them in maintaining their own health. Through the right approach in using patient self-generated data, health systems can achieve improvements in patient’s quality of life and their population’s healthcare outcomes.
Today, health systems have increasingly recognized the need to be patient-centered, with a focus on empowering and engaging patients to assist them in maintaining their own health. Through the right approach in using patient self-generated data, health systems can achieve improvements in patient’s quality of life and their population’s healthcare outcomes.
As a concept, patient-generated health data (PGHD) is increasingly realized as important and a “hot topic,” though there is little guidance from implementers or academics regarding best practices and how much benefit can be expected from this approach.
The challenge with incorporating PGHD stems from the need to use other tools like artificial intelligence (AI) to assist patients in posting the most relevant data for their care team and to assist clinicians in triaging urgent information and leveraging information like social determinants of health (SDOH) or patient reported symptoms to understand the patient’s unique perspectives within the context of the full medical record.
A good example of PGHD being used in clinics is a patient symptom diary. Using a smart phone application to make a symptom diary electronic can reduce the clinician workload as patients capture the data themselves. Common applications include diabetes self-management apps, migraine diaries, menstrual diaries and so on.
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Picturing Telehealth in a Post-Pandemic World
By Alexandra Wilson Pecci | April 03, 2020
"The game changer for telehealth post pandemic is a whole new population will now have the experience of using the technology for the first time," says Gurpreet Singh, partner and health services leader at PwC.
Seemingly overnight, the United States has gone from hesitant about telehealth to embracing it, with COVID-19 forcing people out of their doctor's offices and onto their laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
"I don’t think healthcare delivery, billing or coding will ever be the same," Kem Tolliver, CMPE, CPC, CMOM, president of Medical Revenue Cycle Specialists in Maryland, tells HealthLeaders. "As an industry, I think we've been forced to innovate, not just for the sake of reimbursement but to stop the spread of a deadly virus."
Certainly, reimbursement for telehealth is the most important factor in boosting usage. But another, maybe overlooked, element in the telehealth boom is the the sudden use of the technology by swaths of consumers and providers who may not have ever done so otherwise.
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Coronavirus Testing and Privacy: Frequently Asked Questions
- Who has the records of my COVID-19 test if I want to get a copy of the results? What privacy law applies?
- How many entities will know that I tested positive for COVID-19?
- How much detail will be collected and revealed about my COVID-19 test?
- Can I get a record of everything related to my COVID-19 treatment?
- Can I get a copy of a deceased person’s health records?
- What are the rules about who gets my health record in a public health emergency?
- What about confidentiality of my records in a public health crisis?
- My health condition and photograph were published on social media or in an online publication. Can I do anything about this? What happens to my privacy rights if this information is published by someone else?
- In the coronavirus pandemic, do I need to send my medical records to my regular doctor if I was seen by a doctor in another city, state, or country?
- What happens to my health records or my child’s health records held at a school?
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ONC Opens Interoperability Proving Ground for COVID-19 Data
In less than a month, roughly 50 COVID-19 interoperability projects have been shared on ONC’s Interoperability Proving Ground platform.
April 01, 2020 - The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information (ONC) is calling all health IT professionals who are working on COVID-19 interoperability projects to share it with colleagues on the Interoperability Proving Ground (IPG) platform.
Started in 2016, IPG is an open, community platform where health IT professionals can share and learn about interoperability projects that are happening around the country.
“Through mission, patriotism, and sheer will, many of you – from the front lines to the coding scrums – have stepped up to gather data, release new best practices, create new connections, and point out gaps,” Steven Posnack, MS, deputy national coordinator for Health Information Technology, wrote in a blog post.
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Allscripts Streamlines Telehealth Implementation During COVID-19
Allscripts offers expedited telehealth implementation through its patient engagement platform to facilitate non-face-to-face encounters during the COVID-19 pandemic.
March 31, 2020 - Allscripts recently announced that it has created a specialized telehealth implementation plan for clients to implement virtual visits between providers and patients through its EHR-agnostic patient engagement platform.
The platform, FollowMyHealth, will allow clients across the nation to sign up and deliver telehealth visit capabilities in a quick timeframe to their patients.
“With our telehealth offering through the robust FollowMyHealth platform, Allscripts is helping clients adapt to the evolving healthcare environment by redefining how healthcare professionals interact with and engage their patients,” Jim Hewitt Allscripts EVP and GM of FollowMyHealth, said in the announcement.
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Microsoft Shares Health Sector COVID-19 Ransomware Insights
Human-operated ransomware hackers are using the COVID-19 pandemic to their advantage. In response, Microsoft shares healthcare-specific security considerations to strengthen defenses.
April 01, 2020 - Hackers are targeting network devices like gateway and virtual private network (VPN) appliances, as organizations have moved to a remote workforce during the COVID-19 crisis, including a rise in human-operated ransomware attacks, according to research from Microsoft.
Microsoft is urging the protection of critical services, especially hospitals, to ensure uninterrupted system access during the crisis. But recently, there have been an increasing number of human-operated ransomware campaigns that have taken advantage of vulnerable network devices.
“Human-operated ransomware attacks are a cut above run-of-the-mill commodity ransomware campaigns,” Microsoft warns. “Adversaries behind these attacks exhibit extensive knowledge of systems administration and common network security misconfigurations, which are often lower on the list of ‘fix now’ priorities.”
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Doctors turn to Twitter and TikTok to share coronavirus news
Updated 1515 GMT (2315 HKT) March 31, 2020
New York (CNN Business)Ali Raja spends his nine-hour shifts in the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital treating gunshot wounds, sprained ankles, heart attacks and now a growing number of coronavirus cases.
But before the emergency physician steps on to his long shift and after he's done, he's on Twitter, usually for at least an hour a day.
Raja, who is also the executive vice chair of Mass General's department of emergency medicine and a Harvard Medical School assistant professor, has been using Twitter to share information about coronavirus, also known as Covid-19, including personal protective equipment for medical professionals and the importance of social distancing, to his 57,000 followers, and to learn from other medical professionals.
"Right now, Twitter is the best way to get medical information out," Raja told CNN Business. "Because of the fact that everybody gets a voice [on social media], it's very easy for alarmist messages to pick up steam. We have to be constantly vigilant about trying to get that panic under control and spread a different message."
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/map-reveals-hidden-u-s-hotspots-of-coronavirus-infection/
Map Reveals Hidden U.S. Hotspots of Coronavirus Infection
By adjusting for population, researchers have identified rural areas in several states that could be disproportionally affected by COVID-19
The U.S. currently has the most confirmed COVID-19 infections of any country, with more than 203,000 cases as of Wednesday. New York City has emerged as the outbreak’s newest focal point, with more than 44,900 people testing positive as of Wednesday. And major outbreaks are underway in cities such as Seattle and New Orleans. But state-level data may be hiding hotspots in less populous areas.
Now a team from the University of Chicago has mapped confirmed COVID-19 infections per county—and has adjusted for population sizes. The researchers’ findings reveal significant clusters in parts of Georgia, Arkansas and Mississippi, among other areas. Even though the involved populations may be smaller than those of New York or Seattle, they could be disproportionally hit by the disease.
“When you flip from just state-level data to county-level data, you get a lot more information,” says Marynia Kolak, assistant director of health informatics at the University of Chicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science, who co-led the team that created the maps. “For example, there are a lot of areas in the South where the population is a lot smaller, but the proportion of people who have [COVID-19] is a lot greater. So that can cause potential challenges, because even though there are less people who have the virus, there are also correspondingly fewer hospital beds, [intensive care units] or ventilators.”
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Sensors to go are coming of age
A new generation of tools are becoming available and are not shying away from being rigorously tested.
April 02, 2020 01:41 PM
When healthcare experts in Europe started debating whether or not to reimburse digital health applications two years ago, Josef Hecken, a very senior German health politician, said in an interview that health insurance companies should not be obliged to pay for “fun applications.” Hecken is head of the German healthcare system’s governing board for reimbursement decisions (G-BA). He is among those who really have a say on where the money flows in German healthcare.
Quotes like Hecken’s led the German minister of health, the Christian Democrat Jens Spahn, to create a new reimbursement pathway for digital health applications that (partly) bypasses the traditional decision-making chains for reimbursement issues. The law that established this new pathway came into effect at the end of 2019. Whether it will work remains to be seen.
All around the world, there is still a sound scepticism toward digital health applications and wearable sensor technology in the realms of “deep healthcare.” Up until now, there is no healthcare system at all that offers straight-forward reimbursement for, say, a digital application that continuously monitors blood pressure or seizures. Most of what is being paid for is driven by marketing considerations of healthcare organisations that want to be seen as being innovative or of health insurance companies that want to attract younger – and less costly – customers.
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How COVID-19 is impacting hospitals' IT purchasing decisions
Some health systems foresee delayed implementation efforts because they lack the bandwidth right now to plan for them – but some technologies, particularly telehealth, are in high demand.
By Fred Bazzoli
April 02, 2020 03:55 PM
The coronavirus pandemic is throwing a new factor into hospitals' calculations about how to proceed with current and future healthcare IT implementations.
As provider organizations face a surge of new cases, or anticipate capacity challenges in the near future, they're reconsidering the speed with which they can conduct current implementations because of limitations in IT-staff capacity and the heavy demands that high patient loads are placing on clinical staff.
Looking ahead, some providers also may see future implementation efforts delayed because organizations lack the bandwidth now to support the often long and arduous process of making future purchases.
However, some forms of technology – particularly those that support telehealth services – are in hot demand as they prove their worth during the national pandemic, say experts who assess information technology adoption by the nation's healthcare providers.
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Tech Optimization: Medical device and IoT operating secrets
Three medical device experts – from Capsule Technologies, First Databank and Pivot Point Consulting – give CIOs, CMIOs, CMOs, CISOs and others some best practices for Internet of Things security and safety.
By Bill Siwicki
April 02, 2020 12:32 PM
Connected medical devices and the Internet of Things have become major areas of both promise and concern for hospitals in recent years. They generate key clinical data – and can enable timely and life-saving interventions – but they also pose serious safety and security implications when improperly configured.
Chief information officers, chief medical information officers, chief medical officers, chief information security officers and other IT leaders all have a vested interest in the safe operation of medical devices and IoT tools, and in ensuring the integrity of their data output. But making IoT run optimally is a challenge.
In this special report, three medical device experts – from Capsule Technologies, First Databank and Pivot Point Consulting – offer their decades of experience in the field to give best practices for healthcare-provider organizations seeking to optimize medical device and IoT technologies to run best for individual provider institutions.
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Fair Medication Pricing Isn’t That Hard: Lessons from Germany
April 2, 2020
In the wake of COVID-19’s devastation will come a tsunami of health care cost increases that could drive insurance costs to unprecedented rates of increase. So it’s not a bad time to pick up the national conversation that had been taking place over the past several years about the cost of medications in the United States.
Germany, which succeeded in reining in high drug prices that plagued it during the 1990s and 2000s, is often cited as a country that got pricing right. The key agent in this transformation was the independent, non-profit research agency known as the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWIG), launched in 2005. In 2010, the drug review process was established by the Pharmaceutical Market Reorganization Act (AMNOG). But what distinguishes this agency from other regimes for setting drug prices? God is in the details, it turns out.
Luckily, one of the leading experts in the German health care system, Karl Lauterbach, MD, gave an interview on video to Harvard’s Petrie-Flom Center in early March. The discussion was quite revelatory: although there is nothing fancy about the country’s evaluation system, they made a few key choices that put them ahead of other nations. I exchanged email afterward with Dr. Lauterbach and his interviewer, John McDonough DrPH, to fill in key details of this article.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/must-have-telehealth-remote-work-privacy-and-security-for-covid-19
Must-Have Telehealth, Remote Work Privacy and Security for COVID-19
COVID-19 has drastically increased the threat landscape for healthcare with the spike in telehealth and remote work; here are the must-have privacy and security needs during the pandemic.
March 31, 2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly expanded the use of telehealth, telemedicine, remote work, and bring-your-own-device, both on-site and remote in the healthcare sector. But while some outlets have reported hackers have vowed not to target providers during the crisis, healthcare leaders should not be lulled into a false sense of security.
On March 18, the Office for Civil Rights announced it would not impose penalties for HIPAA noncompliance against providers leveraging telehealth platforms that may not comply with the privacy regulation during the pandemic.
The move allowed providers to tap into popular teleconferencing apps, such as Zoom, Skype, and others, as long as the communications are not public-facing like with Facebook Live or TikTok.
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Artificial Intelligence Predicts Severe Disease in COVID-19 Patients
An artificial intelligence model was able to accurately predict which COVID-19 patients would develop severe respiratory disease.
By Jessica Kent
March 31, 2020 - Using artificial intelligence, NYU researchers accurately predicted which patients newly diagnosed with COVID-19 would go on to develop severe respiratory disease, according to a study published in Computers, Materials & Continua.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world has given way to an urgent need to identify which cases will escalate to critical illness, the research team said. While over 80 percent of cases seem to be mild, those who develop more severe symptoms often need oxygen and prolonged ventilation.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), fluid buildup in the lungs that can be fatal in the elderly, is a key feature in COVID-19 patients who experience declining outcomes. The team wanted to determine whether AI techniques could help accurately predict which patients with the virus would go on to develop ARDS.
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Google Makes COVID-19 Datasets Freely Available to Researchers
Google Cloud is allowing researchers, data scientists, and analysts to access COVID-19 datasets for model development.
By Jessica Kent
March 30, 2020 - Google Cloud is offering researchers free access to critical coronavirus information through its COVID-19 Public Dataset Program, which will help accelerate analytics solutions during the global pandemic.
The program will make a hosted repository of public datasets free to access and query, including the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE) dashboard, Global Health Data from the World Bank, and OpenStreetMap data. Researchers will also be able to use BigQuery ML to train machine learning models at no additional cost.
“Data always plays a critical role in the ability to research, study, and combat public health emergencies, and nowhere is this more true than in the case of a global crisis,” Chad W. Jennings, BigQuery product manager and GIS lead, and Shane Glass, developer advocate, wrote in a blog post.
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How Cerner is Using EHR Optimization to Combat COVID-19
Cerner is conducting EHR optimization to its system to do its part to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
March 31, 2020 - Following the first reported cases of COVID-19, Cerner updated its EHR platform by expanding its telehealth capabilities, implementing disease screening tools, and updating its EHR dashboards.
On top of that, the EHR vendor has taken additional steps to combat the pandemic by implementing telehealth solutions and waiving licensing fees for the expansion of hospital beds at health systems.
“This is a critical time for our clients who continue to be pushed to unprecedented limits in their heroic efforts to protect the health and safety of organizations, patients they treat and the communities where we live and work,” said Brent Shafer, chairman and CEO of Cerner.
“At Cerner, we understand our responsibility of providing the infrastructure and support they need to help combat this global pandemic. Now, more than ever, our health care clients are relying on our technology, capacity and flexibility in supporting their frontline work to care for patients.”
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ICUs Leverage Remote Doctors and Telemedicine to Manage Coronavirus Deluge
Hospitals fast-track remote technology to manage a deluge of critically ill Covid-19 patients—and protect on-site health-care workers
By Christopher Mims | Photographs by Ryan Lowry for The Wall Street Journal
March 28, 2020 12:00 am ET
As American cities face a surge of coronavirus patients who will require lifesaving care, they are also facing a rapidly dwindling supply of available intensive-care-unit beds. Physicians and nurses at many of the country’s largest hospital systems are leveraging a decades-old technology in new ways—at times coupling it with cheap, readily available gadgets—to expand their ability to care for and monitor patients.
Generally known as “tele-ICU,” this two-way bedside video is sort of like FaceTime or Zoom. The difference is that it typically adds a host of other technologies to videoconferencing, in order to connect critically ill patients in hospital ICU beds with teams of doctors and nurses who specialize in delivering care to the sickest, even when those teams are miles or even whole states away.
The technologies include high-definition cameras with pan, tilt and zoom abilities, so they can home in on anything in the hospital room, from the patient’s face to the instruments at bedside. They also include direct connections to equipment like heart-rate and blood-pressure monitors. These traditionally expensive systems can connect remote specialists to the doctors and nurses at patients’ bedsides, often at smaller hospitals and in rural locations.
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Guest comment: Eric Topol
Telemedicine is essential amid the covid-19 crisis and after it
Online health care helps patients and medical workers—and will be a legacy of combating the novel coronavirus, says Eric Topol of Scripps Research
Mar 31st 2020
This is a by-invitation contribution to the series “The world after covid-19”. More articles are at Economist.com/openfuture
FOR MILLENNIA the laying-on of hands represented the essence of the doctor-patient relationship: taking the pulse, tapping on and listening to the chest, feeling lumps—the human touch of the carer. But the covid-19 pandemic is accelerating the transition to a new model of remotely delivered health care that embraces the benefits of digital and data technologies. It is not a solution to the current crisis, but it will be one of its lasting consequences.
Telemedicine has been steadily on the rise for years, with companies around the world helping patients. It has not become a mainstream form of patient interaction because it defies the time-honoured custom of the physical visit. It also needs to overcome regulatory and commercial hurdles and requires a digital infrastructure that ensures secure connections between patients and physicians.
Yet as people worldwide face a lockdown and need medical consultations, remote health care is an important part of the response, hastening the telemedicine trend that has already been under way. Much of the technology already exists, and more is quickly being developed to combat the novel coronavirus.
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Cerner Millennium EHR to be used at London's 4000-bed temporary hospital
by Cerner UK
Published on 31 March 2020
Published on 31 March 2020
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to place exceptional levels of pressure on the NHS, Cerner Corporation continues to work around the clock to support NHS clients and partners with the digital innovation and technology required to confront the challenges presented by this global pandemic.
Last week, the government announced that 100-acre convention centre ExCel London would be turned into a temporary hospital to aid the city’s response to the pandemic – the Nightingale Hospital.
Today we announce that Cerner will be providing the electronic health records (EHR) platform that will help healthcare professionals providing care in this facility to access and record relevant information for COVID-19 patients in a scalable, reliable and accessible place.
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ONC, HIMSS put focus on collaborative COVID-19 response
The agency's Interoperability Proving Ground is becoming a hotbed of coronavirus projects. Meanwhile, HIMSS Healthbox has launched a digital think tank to cross-pollinate ideas that work.
By Mike Miliard
April 01, 2020 02:38 PM
This ONC map shows the locations of ongoing Interoperability Proving Ground projects focused on COVID-19 response.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT reports that its Interoperability Proving Ground, first launched in 2016, has recently become a locus of innovation for a wide variety of data exchange initiatives aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19.
And the agency is calling on healthcare technology professionals to add their own projects to the mix on the community platform.
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3D Printing Emerges As Option For Addressing Healthcare Equipment Shortages
April 1, 2020
As the demand for healthcare equipment rises, manufacturers are struggling to meet the demand. In response, some are turning to 3D printing as an extra option for providing the supplies providers need.
For example, one tech firm which makes 3D printers is helping to solve a nationwide shortage of COVID-19 test swabs by scaling up the printing of test swabs. The company, Formlabs, is working with hospitals to develop and create prototypes that can serve as models going forward.
Formlabs is already active in the healthcare industry. For example, the company recently announced an agreement with GE Healthcare in which radiologists use its Advantage Workstation to prepare 3D CT or MRI data to support diagnosis and procedure planning by exporting the data in a form ready for 3D printing on the Formlabs systems.
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FCC chief unveils $200M program to boost telehealth services amid COVID-19 outbreak
Apr 1, 2020 10:00am
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai wants to use $200 million from the economic stimulus package to expand telehealth services across the country.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump last week, earmarks the funds for the FCC to help healthcare providers offering telehealth.
The COVID-19 Telehealth Program, which Pai proposed as a draft order Monday, would have to be approved by the commission before launching.
Pai said the program will provide immediate support to healthcare providers using virtual care in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Providence St. Joseph using Twistle remote monitoring technology for 700 COVID patients
Apr 1, 2020 9:30am
Washington-based Providence St. Joseph Health worked with two digital health startups to quickly deploy remote monitoring technology for COVID-19 patients.
The health system is currently among those treating some of the largest numbers of patients who have been diagnosed with or are at risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus, largely because of its significant presence in Seattle, an epicenter of the pandemic.
Providence worked with Xealth, a digital prescribing platform, to roll out startup Twistle's care automation and remote monitoring tools in just four days, the organizations said.
Several health systems are using the Twistle app to check in with patients and look for adverse health trends. At Providence, Xealth is providing the underlying platform for automation and integration into the provider electronic medical record workflow.
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Can AI Predict Who Will Develop Diabetes?
TUESDAY, March 31, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to identify people who will develop type 2 diabetes, researchers say.
For the study, the researchers used machine learning AI to analyze more than 509,000 annual health checkup records of more than 139,000 people in Japan from 2008 to 2018. They included more than 65,000 who did not have diabetes in 2008.
The data included information from physical exams, blood and urine tests, and patient questionnaires.
During the study period, nearly 4,700 cases of diabetes were diagnosed. Machine learning AI was 94.9% accurate in predicting cases, according to the study published March 31 in a special supplemental section of the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
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ONC tracks more than 30 COVID-19 interoperability projects
The ONC has tracked more than 500 interoperability projects related to COVID-19 across the U.S. as part of the Interoperability Proving Ground open platform, and more than 30 are related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The platform allows groups working on COVID-19 projects to share ideas with colleagues through IPG and view other COVID-19 projects. The projects are also categorized by state to highlight where each project is taking place. As of March 31 at 5 p.m. CDT, there were 528 projects logged in the system and 40 tagged as related to COVID-19.
https://www.healthit.gov/techlab/ipg/?tag=COVID-19
https://www.healthit.gov/techlab/ipg/?tag=COVID-19
The projects include:
1. TrekIT, a HIPAA-compliant, interdisciplinary collaboration tool for front-line clinicians created by clinicians at Penn Medicine. The tool can support team-based collaboration during times of extreme strain and do not require IT resources to deploy.
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Hospitals Tell Doctors They’ll Be Fired If They Speak Out About Lack of Gear
By Olivia Carville , Emma Court , and Kristen V Brown
April 1, 2020, 12:23 AM GMT+11
· ‘It is outrageous,’ Washington nurses organization says
· Media guidelines are meant to protect patients’ privacy
Hospitals are threatening to fire health-care workers who publicize their working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic -- and have in some cases followed through.
Ming Lin, an emergency room physician in Washington state, said he was told Friday he was out of a job because he’d given an interview to a newspaper about a Facebook post detailing what he believed to be inadequate protective equipment and testing. In Chicago, a nurse was fired after emailing colleagues that she wanted to wear a more protective mask while on duty. In New York, the NYU Langone Health system has warned employees they could be terminated if they talk to the media without authorization.
“Hospitals are muzzling nurses and other health-care workers in an attempt to preserve their image,” said Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Nurses Association. “It is outrageous.”
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How Coronavirus Sparked Industry Collaboration, Team-Based Care
As the nation contends with an unprecedented global health crisis, clinicians are meeting the moment with never before seen levels of team-based care and industry collaboration.
By Sara Heath
March 27, 2020 - Healthcare is facing a never-before-seen global health crisis with the coronavirus outbreak, with infection rates on a meteoric rise. But at the same time, healthcare is seeing something else that’s unprecedented: a massive mobilization toward team-based care and industry collaboration.
Around the globe, the effects of the coronavirus are keenly felt. At the time of publication, some 551,337 people have the disease worldwide, while the death toll comes in at 24,906, per figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Healthcare is facing a never-before-seen global health crisis with the coronavirus outbreak, with infection rates on a meteoric rise. But at the same time, healthcare is seeing something else that’s unprecedented: a massive mobilization toward team-based care and industry collaboration.
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AI Drug Discovery Platform IDs Potential COVID-19 Treatments
Gero leveraged its AI drug discovery platform to identify 18 potential medicines to treat COVID-19.
March 26, 2020 - A drug discovery platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology has identified 18 potential treatments for COVID-19, according to an announcement from health IT company Gero.
Six of the potential anti-COVID-19 drugs have already been approved, three have been withdrawn, and the other nine have already been tested in clinical trials for other indications. The COVID-19 outbreak and the legal and regulatory status of these drugs have made it possible to start various clinical trials immediately.
Gero leveraged its AI drug discovery platform to uncover molecules with potential effects on the coronavirus replication.
“The fact that this time the potential treatments were found among the existing drugs marks a significant improvement over previous efforts to use AI to predict molecules active against COVID-19. The discovery makes it possible to start clinical trials in a matter of weeks,” Gero stated in the announcement.
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Can Multi-Factor Authentication Help Healthcare’s Security Posture?
Multi-factor authentication blocks nearly all automated cyberattacks, and most compromised accounts didn’t use the tech. Healthcare’s security posture is in need of improvement.
Jessica Davis
March 26, 2020 - Microsoft has found multi-factor authentication (MFA) blocks 99.9 percent of automated cyberattacks on Microsoft platforms, websites, and other online services. As hackers continue to target user credentials and email compromise, providers must bolster their defenses by employing better access controls and improving the security posture across the enterprise.
The latest Microsoft stats show that 99.9 percent of compromised accounts did not use multi-factor authentication. And just 11 percent of organizations use MFA, overall.
Further, employees continue to be one of healthcare’s biggest weaknesses with hackers consistently targeting user credentials to gain access into a system. According to the Protenus Breach Barometer, insider incidents compromised 3.8 million records in 2019.
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Epic Systems, OCHIN Launch COVID-19 Preparedness Screening App
Epic Systems partnered with OCHIN to enhance Washington’s care coordination during the COVID-19 pandemic.
March 30, 2020 - Epic Systems and OCHIN have deployed the COVID-19 Preparedness App, aiming to improve interoperability, care coordination, and overall clinical readiness in Washington state, where the country’s first confirmed case of the pandemic occurred.
In an effort to limit the number of individuals who are visiting local health facilities and triage sites, the new mobile EHR app allows for patient screening and triage on smartphones.
“This is an unprecedented, innovative solution for rapidly building capacity in the face of this growing public health emergency,” said Abby Sears, CEO at OCHIN. “We applaud the leadership of the state of Washington and the generosity and foresight of Epic as we stand together in this crisis.”
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74% of Providers Approve of OpenNotes, Patient Data Access
The latest data from OpenNotes showed that most providers like offering patient data access, but they acknowledge it adds a little more work for them.
By Sara Heath
March 31, 2020 - Medical providers are largely accepting of OpenNotes, the health data philosophy driving patient access to health information, although they do acknowledge that the practice requires a little extra work, according to new data published in JAMA Network Open.
Since the 2009 passage of the HITECH Act, which heralded in the meaningful use program pushing providers across the country to adopt EHRs and patient portals, patient data access has been top of mind.
Allowing patients to view their own medical records and clinician notes is regarded as the first step to a strong patient engagement strategy. After all, a more informed patient is able to make better decisions about her own health and wellness.
The OpenNotes movement builds on this idea, encouraging clinicians to share their own notes with the patient. OpenNotes is not a technology, but rather a philosophy that aims to drive patient engagement in care.
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Debian Linux readies an anti-coronavirus hack-a-thon
Open-source developers are uniting to create and improve code and programs to help fight COVID-19.
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | March 30, 2020 -- 18:34 GMT (05:34 AEDT) | Topic: Coronavirus: Business and technology in a pandemic
Open-source programmers and engineers have been working on a wide variety of projects to beat coronavirus. These range from hospital management programs to speeding up drug development to building inexpensive ventilators. Now, Debian Linux, one of the oldest and largest Linux distribution communities, is throwing its programming resources behind a hack-a-thon trying to beat COVID-19.
The Debian Med team is inviting programmers to a virtual COVID-19 Biohackathon from April 5-11, 2020. The Debian Med team wants your help in improving free and open-source biomedical software programs, tools and libraries.
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AMA offers new tools to help doctors navigate COVID-19
To help private-practice physicians manage the operational and business challenges posed by the coronavirus emergency, the American Medical Association has put together several new resources to help practices stay strong.
By Mike Miliard
March 30, 2020 03:26 PM
On this National Doctors Day, as the U.S. attempts to express gratitude even close to commensurate with the sacrifices and heroism shown by frontline medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Medical Association is making available some new resources for physicians.
WHY IT MATTERS
To help private-practice physicians manage the operational and business challenges posed by the coronavirus emergency, AMA has put together some new toolkits to help practices stay strong and deliver better care during the fast-evolving coronavirus crisis.
Among the resources, AMA has published a guide designed to help keep practices solvent. Its financial checklist offers physicians and administrators 14 tips to help business during the public health emergency, such as consolidating administrative resources like coding tools and making better use of digital health technologies.
Another resource is meant to help physicians in developing policies and procedures to triage non-urgent patient requests appropriately – a must-do for private practices during the current crisis. Its eight suggestions can help preserve staff, PPE, supplies and ensure staff and patient safety.
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Digital data opt-out scheme in England put on hold amid COVID-19 pandemic
The scheme aims to improve access to health data for research and planning.
March 31, 2020 03:58 AM
The deadline for compliance with the new national data opt-out has been extended by six months in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The policy by NHS Digital and NHS X, which was meant to take full action on 31st March 2020, has been extended so as not to put further pressure on health and care services currently dealing with the unexpected impact of the coronavirus.
The new deadline is 30 September 2020.
WHY IT MATTERS
The national data opt-out is an information governance policy that supports health and care staff to manage health data more effectively, enabling them to share it where appropriate to enhance research and planning. The service gives patients the opportunity to opt-out of having their confidential patient information being used in this way.
The deadline has been extended in part for healthcare professionals to properly complete the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT), an education tool to protect organisations against cyber-attacks and with which to confirm their compliance.
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The effect of the COVID-19 epidemic on health and care – is this a portent of the 'new normal'?
COVID-19 appeared in late 2019 and its epicentre has been moving with alarming speed from the far east towards Europe and now towards the Americas.
March 31, 2020 04:33 AM
The approach which differing countries have adopted has been fascinating to watch with the far east particularly South Korea and Singapore adopting very technologically advanced digital solutions towards contact tracing and also using testing very extensively. Differences in Europe have also emerged in terms of approach between countries with Germany having the highest rate of testing and the greatest number of ventilated beds (and as critically, the trained experienced workforce to support and deploy them) potentially having lower death rates as a result.
It is also becoming clearer that the effect on COVID-19 upon health and care systems goes beyond the disease it produces as health systems have to somehow contemporaneously cope with the existing levels of non-communicable diseases. This is an enormous challenge since in all too many cases, the systems cannot cope with the volume of patients needing care as a result of COVID-19, even if there were no other calls associated with cardiovascular, pulmonary and metabolic diseases and cancer.
The effect of this has varied from country to country but some patterns are emerging. For example, primary care has long held the promise that problems like access and care could be delivered digitally, but to date the scale of actual digital adoption has been disappointing, and the aspirations we have all had around digital transformation have had to be tempered by the reality of slower speeds of adoption than anticipated. This well could be changing and the 2020s could be remembered not only as the age of COVID-19 but also as the age when digital transformation started to come of age and become the mainstream solution.
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High Quality Data is Key to Quality Care
March 31, 2020
An interview with Charlie Harp, CEO of Clinical Architecture
We have more data than we know what to do with in healthcare. We have clinical data held in EHRs, results from lab systems, images from imaging platforms, as well as wellness data from personal devices and apps. So how do we sift through it all to find the relevant information? The solution starts with quality data.
I recently sat down with (well, maybe not “with” in the traditional sense – it was a virtual meeting) Charlie Harp, CEO of Clinical Architecture to learn about the importance of data quality in healthcare. Harp had some great insights on data – especially the new responsibility we have in Health IT to ensure the data we use is of high quality.
“To do value-based care well,” stated Harp. “You have to be able to communicate how you’re doing, understand how you’re doing, and then be able to leverage how you can improve how you’re doing,”
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COVID-19 puts new demands on e-health record systems
The ongoing pandemic is putting healthcare systems under strain worldwide and forcing hospitals and other medical facilities to scramble to make sure data can be shared effectively.
Senior Reporter, Computerworld | 31 March 2020 21:00 AEDT
As healthcare providers face unprecedented challenges fighting the COVID-19 outbreak worldwide, electronic health record (EHR) systems are having to adapt to shifting requirements for patient care.
“We have never had an international crisis of this proportion in the lifetime of the current EHR,” said Dana Bensinger MSN, RN-BC, informatics nurse specialist and client solution executive at consulting firm CTG. “Once things settle down, there will be a lot of analysis of how well our systems performed, what our areas of vulnerability are, and how we fix them for the future.”
With a surge in demand for hospital capacity, one of the challenges facing hospital IT staffers is figuring out how to quickly deploy EHR systems to alternative care locations.
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E-healthcare and telehealth become vital to tackling COVID-19 in CEE
Worried about COVID-19? During the outbreak, it is challenging for patients to seek in-person medical care. Self-quarantine is an important tool in managing disease transmission, especially among patients who are vulnerable to the risk of infection. This is where telemedicine becomes essential to ensure that patients have access to medical care and to boost community support. In times of a global public health emergency like the COVID-19 outbreak, healthcare systems should lean on remote medical check-ups, e-prescriptions and postal delivery of medicines in situations of quarantine and to tackle the further spread of the disease. Healthcare systems should expand beyond traditional healthcare tools and leverage existing telehealth tools to direct people to the proper level of healthcare for their medical needs (both to address their medical condition and to screen for COVID-19). Moreover, state administrations should make a historic effort to at least temporarily lift restrictions on telehealth usage (where such exist) to assist in the efforts to reduce patients' exposure to the virus and to ensure public health and safety.
How adequate is the current legislation in CEE? Are emergency aid legislative packages needed? We asked our specialists in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania how their local laws regulate the distribution of health-related services via electronic and telecommunication technologies.
Does the legislation in your jurisdiction regulate remote, online medical check-ups (via cameras / Skype sessions) and e-prescriptions of medicines?
Austria: In Austria, Section 49 (2) of the Medical Act regulates how doctors must fulfil their treatment mandate: "The doctor must carry out his profession personally and directly, if necessary, in cooperation with other doctors". Remote diagnosis, distance treatment or distance consultation was – based on this section – said to be prohibited. In fact, it is not explicitly regulated, and remote medical check-ups are on the up-and-coming. E-health (remote diagnostics etc.) was even included in the current program of the Austrian Federal Government.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/using-telehealth-in-a-pandemic-focus-on-flexibility-scalability
Using Telehealth in a Pandemic: Focus on Flexibility, Scalability
Executives from three different health systems talk about how they've used telehealth to meet the demands created by the Coronavirus pandemic - and how those services are laying the groundwork for 'the new normal.'
March 27, 2020 - Healthcare providers are scrambling to keep up with the demand for telehealth services as the Coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the nation. Many are seeing unexpected benefits in the shift to connected health – and hoping the momentum continues after the emergency is over.
‘Take Care of the Patients First’
“There’s been a lot of spontaneous action,” says Alexa Boer Kimball, CEO of Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a network of roughly 2,900 physicians spread across eastern Massachusetts.
“The key is to take care of the patients first,” she says.
Kimball remembers using telemedicine as far back as 1998, though more recently the network had focused on urgent on-demand care. Now her physicians are seeing thousands more patients each week via telehealth than they had seen just a few weeks ago.
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Leveraging AI for COVID-19 Outreach, Population Health Management
Medical Home Network is using artificial intelligence and population health management strategies to reach vulnerable patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Jessica Kent
March 24, 2020 - In the time since the COVID-19 outbreak has escalated to a full-blown global pandemic, buzzwords like artificial intelligence, population health management, and the social determinants of health have become vital defenses in the fight against infection.
Across the healthcare industry, organizations are using their analytics and big data resources to track the spread of the virus, monitor the use of resources, and identify individuals who may be particularly vulnerable in the midst of a health crisis.
Patients who experience food insecurity, a lack of transportation access, or social isolation often suffer from worse health outcomes, but when faced with a threat like coronavirus, it becomes even more critical to mitigate the downstream effects of these social factors.
At Medical Home Network (MHN), leaders are aiming to prioritize care for vulnerable patients. The Medicaid accountable care organization is using an artificial intelligence platform to identify individuals who have a heightened risk of developing severe complications from COVID-19.
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Internal Emails Show How Chaos at the CDC Slowed the Early Response to Coronavirus
The CDC fumbled its communication with public health officials and underestimated the threat of the coronavirus even as it gained a foothold in the United States, according to hundreds of pages of documents ProPublica obtained.
March 26, 12:18 p.m. EDT
On Feb. 13, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out an email with what the author described as an “URGENT” call for help.
The agency was struggling with one of its most important duties: keeping track of Americans suspected of having the novel coronavirus. It had “an ongoing issue” with organizing — and sometimes flat-out losing — forms sent by local agencies about people thought to be infected. The email listed job postings for people who could track or retrieve this paperwork.
This email is among hundreds of pages of correspondence between federal and state public health officials obtained by ProPublica through a records request in Nevada.
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As COVID-19 isolates patients, telehealth becomes lifeline for behavioral health
Mar 30, 2020 3:17pm
As more Americans are urged to stay at home amid the COVID-19 crisis, it’s not just physical health that’s going largely digital—it's behavioral health, too.
Social distancing can go against some of the key advice for treating behavioral health disorders, such as spending time with loved ones and getting outside, said Shilagh Mirgain, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
“I think some people can feel quite vulnerable that some of their safety nets or coping ethods … may be at risk,” Mirgain told FierceHealthcare.
Strategies to weather social distancing
Even for those without behavioral health disorders, the necessary social distancing to combat COVID-19 can be stressful and isolating. UW Health's Shilagh Mirgain offered some ways providers can share with patients to maintain connections:
· Watch a movie with a friend over video chat.
· Go on a nature walk while keeping six feet of distance.
· Challenge a friend to replicate an online art tutorial and compare your drawings at the end.
· Spend time with a pet.
· Meditate and center yourself in a moment that made you feel loved or cared for (video embedded below).
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HITAC sets up COVID task force to focus on tech issues impeding frontline clinicians
Mar 27, 2020 12:03pm
The Health IT Advisory Committee is standing up a coronavirus task force to tackle privacy and interoperability issues that are impeding frontline clinicians as they combat the growing outbreak.
HITAC co-chairs said during a meeting Thursday they plan to convene the task force in the coming weeks and would determine definitive charges for the group. The task force will begin soliciting participation early next week.
HITAC advises Congress and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on health IT policy.
National Coordinator for Health IT Donald Rucker, M.D. said ONC, an agency within HHS, needs to hear from frontline clinicians about what's working and not working and the resources they need.
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Source code of Dharma ransomware pops up for sale on hacking forums
The source code of one of today's most profitable and advanced ransomware strains is up for sale on two Russian-language hacking forums.
The source code of a major ransomware strain named Dharma has been put up for sale on two Russian hacker forums over the weekend.
The FBI, in a talk at the RSA security conference this year, ranked Dharma the second most lucrative ransomware operation in recent years, having extorted more than $24 million in payments from victims between November 2016 and November 2019.
Now, its source code is being sold for a price as low as $2,000 -- which has security researchers on edge.
Several ransomware experts who spoke with ZDNet today said the sale of the Dharma ransomware code would most likely result in its eventual leak on the public internet, and to a wider audience. This, in turn, would result in the broader proliferation among multiple cybercrime groups, and an eventual surge in attacks.
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How to address coronavirus misinformation spreading through messaging apps and email
March 29, 2020 10.42pm AEDT
During times of crisis, like the current COVID-19 pandemic, people need access to reliable information in order to keep themselves safe, manage risk and avoid becoming a burden on others or health-care systems. However, ensuring that people have access to the right information when they need it has become a major challenge due to widespread digital misinformation.
Not only are people bombarded by misleading or outright dangerous misinformation, but this information is often shared on platforms where it cannot be corrected, such as on private messaging services and email. Providing health information to the public via a broadcast model of communication should not be the only solution to dealing with misinformation.
Or to put it another way: if you build it, they will not (necessarily) come.
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COVID-19: 'A continuously evolving process that requires adapting by the hour'
It's imperative for hospital IT departments to track information for management decisions, enable the fast ramp-up of additional ICU beds and set up tools for remote working.
March 30, 2020 03:49 AM
The HIMSS Webinar, 'Italy and Germany facing COVID-19', hosted by Charles Alessi, HIMSS, had two CIOs from private hospital chains in Italy and Germany.
As the number of lives touched by COVID-19 is continuously mounting, so are the efforts of IT departments to counter the rising pressure on hospitals. The recent HIMSS Webinar, 'Italy and Germany facing COVID-19', hosted by Charles Alessi, Chief Clinical Officer, HIMSS, had two CIOs from private hospital chains in Italy and Germany, respectively, share their lessons learned from the coronavirus outbreak.
WHY IT MATTERS
Italy, in particular, has had to deal with a surge of infected patients and a shortage of ICU beds ahead of other Western countries. For almost five weeks Elena Sini, Group CIO, GVM Care & Research, Italy, has been working tirelessly to stay ahead of the virus. She recommends the strict segregation of COVID-19 positive and negative patients to minimise the risk of infection. For the same reason Sini urges systems to ramp up remote working capacities to protect staff, be it in the form of telemedicine and video-conferencing capabilities for doctors and nurses or to enable IT staff work from home. Additionally, IT staff on wards receive training from those familiar with working in an ICU environment on how to behave safely and nurses in ICU units are trained to take care of some IT-related issues by themselves to protect their colleagues from IT.
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White House asks all hospitals to report data on COVID-19 testing
In what it's calling an "unprecedented" exercise in information sharing, the administration is calling on health systems to share daily updates from their in-house labs with federal agencies.
By Mike Miliard
March 30, 2020 12:34 PM
The White House Coronavirus Task Force and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are asking all U.S. hospitals to report critical data about their COVID-19 response.
WHY IT MATTERS
As part of what it calls an "unprecedented" expansion of data sharing, the Trump Administration is requesting that providers submit data about their COVID-19 test results.
In a letter sent to hospitals and health systems on March 29, Vice President Mike Pence called on them to furnish daily updates on COVID-19 testing completed at in-house laboratories.
For those who outsource testing to private labs and commercial labs – LabCorp, BioReference Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics, Mayo Clinic Laboratories and ARUP Laboratories – such reporting is not required.
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$200 Million COVID-19 Telehealth Program from FCC as Part of CARES Act
March 30, 2020
This weekend we covered some of the billions of healthcare funding that was included in the CARES Act. One area of CARES Act funding we didn’t highlight for healthcare was $200 million in COVID-19 Telehealth funding that will be administered by the FCC.
Here are the most relevant details from the announcement:
About the COVID-19 Telehealth Program: This $200 million Program would immediately support health care providers responding to the pandemic by providing eligible health care providers support to purchase telecommunications services, information services, and devices necessary to enable the provision of telehealth services during this emergency period. It would provide selected applicants with full funding for these eligible telehealth services and devices. In order to receive funding, eligible health care providers would submit a streamlined application to the Commission for this program, and the Commission would award funds to selected applicants on a rolling basis until the funds are exhausted or until the current pandemic has ended.
Along with the $200 million mentioned above, FCC Chairman Pai also announced the final rule for another $100 million to stand up a broader, longer-term Connected Care Pilot Program. This program would study how connected care efforts could be a permanent part of the Universal Service Fund. The $100 million of funding for the Connected Care Pilot Program would look at funding pilot projects to cover 85% of the eligible costs of broadband connectivity, network equipment, and information services necessary to provide connected care services with an emphasis on projects focused on low-income Americans and veterans.
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Weekly News Recap
- UC San Diego Health publishes a description of Epic enhancements it created to address COVID-19, including tools for screening, ordering, secure messaging, and support for video visits.
- Scripps Research launches a wearables study that hopes to identify viral illnesses more quickly.
- Several organizations form the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, a data-driven effort to address coronavirus challenges.
- CMS offers exceptions and extensions for MIPS and MSSP.
- HIMSS announces that it will not offer refunds or credits to exhibitors and sponsors of the cancelled HIMSS20.
- The HCI Group begins hiring up to 600 people to staff its COVID-19 telephone triage service for hospitals.
- Thoma Bravo calls off discussions related to selling Imprivata for up to $2 billion, citing market volatility.
- UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with technology and healthcare startups to ask them for help in addressing coronavirus.
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Digital front opens in war on disease as start-ups come to the aid of NHS
Sunday March 29 2020, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times
Like many former doctors, Barney Gilbert was asked to rejoin the NHS this month to help tackle the coronavirus crisis. He declined.
Instead, Gilbert is doing his bit by running Pando, an instant messaging app used by health workers, which he co-founded in 2016.
Pando has created forums that let medics swap notes on how to deal with Covid-19. More than 40,000 are using the app to share information quickly and securely — up from 10,000 last month.
“I’m not going back to being a doctor because what we are doing at scale is more useful than my one-to-one services,” said Gilbert, 28. “So much changes every day, and sharing best practice is important.”
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Enjoy!
David.
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