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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Predictive Analytics Models Help Plan for COVID-19 Demands
Cleveland Clinic has developed predictive analytics models to forecast future demands on the health system during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Jessica Kent
April 29, 2020 - To inform decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cleveland Clinic has created predictive analytics models that help forecast patient volume, bed capacity, ventilator availability, and other metrics.
With COVID-19 rapidly spreading among patient populations, hospitals and health systems are facing unprecedented strains on resources and capacity. Organizations are increasingly turning to real-time analytics tools to help track and predict healthcare demands.
The predictive models, developed by Cleveland Clinic and SAS, provide timely, reliable information for hospitals and health systems to optimize care delivery for COVID-19 and other patients.
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NHS Digital CEO says healthcare tech is ‘here to stay’ after Covid-19
The chief executive of NHS Digital has said some healthcare technology which has been rolled out at scale in response to the Covid-19 outbreak is “here to stay” but there will be some processes which will need to be reviewed.
Hanna Crouch – April 30, 2020
Speaking to Digital Health News, Sarah Wilkinson, said NHS Digital’s response to Covid-19 had been “really really intense” but “unbelievably engergising”.
She added that the organisation has been “empowered” after “time-consuming blockers” fell away as the NHS ramped up it’s effort to use digital services as the coronavirus threat increased.
NHS Digital revealed in April that demand for NHS tech services had skyrocketed since the coronavirus outbreak began. The most notable increase in use was recorded for Microsoft Teams, the NHS App and NHS 111 online.
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Manchester’s Nightingale hospital goes live with Patientrack
NHS Nightingale Hospital North West has gone live with Alcidion’s Patientrack early warning system to help clinicians spot deteriorating Covid-19 patients.
Angela Downey 30 April, 2020
Patientrack alerts doctors and nurses when a patients vital signs are deteriorating, letting them know if they need urgent attention.
The system, which calculated the National Early warning Score (NEWS2) for each patient, was deployed within a week.
The hospital, located at Manchester Central Convention Complex and run by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, was temporarily set up this month to help the NHS cope amidst a rise in hospital admissions due to coronavirus.
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New Covid-19 assessment tool in Patientrack to help staff intervene early
NHS technology provider Alcidion has created a tool in its early warning software that will help nurses carry out crucial assessments designed to allow hospitals to identify coronavirus patients sooner.
DHI News Team – 2 April, 2020
Patientrack, which is already used by hospitals to detect deadly conditions like sepsis and acute kidney injury, will now be used by nurses to record key information for all respiratory patients, which will then immediately inform professionals if the patient needs to be tested for coronavirus.
The digital assessment tool has been designed by Alcidion, the Australian company that provides the Patientrack system, to make it easy for nurses to assess every patient presenting to hospital with a respiratory illness.
Staff on the ward will follow a series of questions covering symptoms, the patient’s circumstances and their physiological measurements, and will enter information directly into Patientrack via a computer or mobile device.
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Google’s medical AI was super accurate in a lab. Real life was a different story.
If AI is really going to make a difference to patients we need to know how it works when real humans get their hands on it, in real situations.
April 27, 2020
The covid-19 pandemic is stretching hospital resources to the breaking point in many countries in the world. It is no surprise that many people hope AI could speed up patient screening and ease the strain on clinical staff. But a study from Google Health—the first to look at the impact of a deep-learning tool in real clinical settings—reveals that even the most accurate AIs can actually make things worse if not tailored to the clinical environments in which they will work.
Existing rules for deploying AI in clinical settings, such as the standards for FDA clearance in the US or a CE mark in Europe, focus primarily on accuracy. There are no explicit requirements that an AI must improve the outcome for patients, largely because such trials have not yet run. But that needs to change, says Emma Beede, a UX researcher at Google Health: “We have to understand how AI tools are going to work for people in context—especially in health care—before they’re widely deployed.”
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A.I. can’t solve this: The coronavirus could be highlighting just how overhyped the industry is
Published Wed, Apr 29 20201:24 AM EDTUpdated Wed, Apr 29 20206:47 AM EDT
Key Points
· Big AI firms like DeepMind, OpenAI and Facebook AI have remained relatively quiet throughout the crisis.
· AI has huge potential, but right now scientists are turning to tried and tested technologies instead.
· Of course, there are a few useful AI projects happening here and there.
The world is facing its biggest health crisis in decades but one of the world’s most promising technologies — artificial intelligence (AI) – isn’t playing the major role some may have hoped for.
Renowned AI labs at the likes of DeepMind, OpenAI, Facebook AI Research, and Microsoft have remained relatively quiet as the coronavirus has spread around the world.
“It’s fascinating how quiet it is,” said Neil Lawrence, the former director of machine learning at Amazon Cambridge.
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Expert report predicts up to two more years of pandemic misery
By Maggie Fox, CNN
Updated 0002 GMT (0802 HKT) May 2, 2020
(CNN)The new coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years—until 60% to 70% of the population has been infected, a team of longstanding pandemic experts predicted in a report released Thursday.
They recommended that the US prepare for a worst-case scenario that includes a second big wave of coronavirus infections in the fall and winter. Even in a best-case scenario, people will continue to die from the virus, they predicted.
"This thing's not going to stop until it infects 60 to 70 percent of people," Mike Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, told CNN.
"The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology."
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Managing COVID-19 in a perfect world
How far could we have been in managing the pandemic if we used the digital tools available earlier asks Bogi Eliasen, director of health at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and HIMSS Future50 leader.
By Bogi Eliasen
May 01, 2020 04:27 AM
Many countries have been caught off guard by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In every way possible they are trying to gain control over a public health crisis of unprecedented scope and scale., and we are rooting for success for one and all. The purpose of this blog is not to look in hindsight and proclaim: This could have been done better. Rather, the objective is to look forward to the other side of this pandemic and be thankful for the rapid evolutions that medicine, technology, data mining, genomics, IoT, artificial intelligence, and big data have undergone, and, more importantly, to make sure that we remember to use the possibilities. If we had implemented all available tech in a cooperative manner with a focus on achieving the best possible outcome and value, would we then have been better prepared and possibly been capable of fending off both the health and financial crises caused by COVID-19? One of my mantras in the last couple of years has been: We are not lacking technology – we are lacking decisions. We have pushed this important message forward in a number of initiatives and networks such as Nordic Health 2030, Future Proofing Health, HIMSS Future50, and will discuss in more detail during a webinar on 4 May too.
Be warned
Just like a Tsunami-warning system, there are early warning systems for epidemics and pandemics. But we did not seem to make much use of them regarding SARS-CoV-2. We urgently need to figure out why. For many countries and regions this was not caused by the lack of available technology, but ignorance, politics, an inadequate focus on implementation, and, in this case, perhaps an unnerving sense of – we will get to it “in good time”. In 2018, the European Commission launched a €5 million prize to find the best solution for setting up an early warning system for epidemics. The deadline to submit applications is 1 September 2020, and the winner is planned to be announced in 2021. In October 2019, The Trump administration cut funding to “Predict”, a government research programme aimed at identifying animal viruses that might infect humans and to head off new pandemics. In April 2015, a TED Talk about the imminent risk of a pandemic featuring Bill Gates was shared on social media. It should also be noted, though not to belittle Gates’ talent or ability to predict the future, that many others have made similar warnings and predictions for a long time – we even have a popular board and computer game named 'Pandemic' and a smartphone app called 'Plague'. The point is that we all knew the threat of a pandemic was real, but we either have lengthy procedures that delay the transitions of solutions from ideas to prospects and even more to implementation, or governments lose interest and, with it, the sense of of urgency and patience in the systems that can effectively prevent and mitigate such crises. This is because investing in preparedness is like health insurance you hope to never have to claim. The absence of use, then, is not due to a lack of advanced technology.
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Open health data privacy debate set to drive post-COVID-19 planning
The HIMSS chief clinical officer says technology can be used more effectively to plan for healthcare provision in a second wave of the pandemic and beyond – and that we should not shy away from a proper discussion about the role data is set to play.
By Piers Ford
May 01, 2020 07:56 AM
Encouraging an open debate about the secondary use of data and the preservation of privacy must be central to any preparations for the inevitable second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and beyond, Dr Charles Alessi, chief clinical of officer of HIMSS, has said during a Public Policy Projects discussion, COVID-19 Planning for the Future.
Dr Alessi suggested it will also be essential to exploit the ‘new normal’ of digital modalities for the care of non-communicable diseases. We’re not using technology and data as much as we should to drive AI for better care management, he said.
Digitally enabled patient flows will be vital in ensuring that COVID patients are only admitted to hospital when necessary in a world that will also have to accommodate non-COVID patients. “Remember, this is about all of us,” he said.
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Final rules on info blocking pose multiple challenges – but also big opportunities
As the clock begins ticking on deadlines to meet federal rules implementing the 21st Century Cures Act, healthcare organizations must start the push toward compliance now. If done well, the effort should be worth it.
By Fred Bazzoli
May 01, 2020 11:56 AM
New federal rules intended to improve interoperability and boost patient access to healthcare information present new risks for healthcare organizations, with many of the specific mechanisms for compliance and enforcement yet to be defined.
It's likely that the industry will get some grace period before the rules are enforced, but organizations should start now to map out how best to comply with the new requirements, said two experts on interoperability and past government compliance programs.
The requirements also can present opportunities for organizations that can demonstrate performance with the rules, said Mark Segal, principal of Digital Health Policy Advisors, and Steven Gravely, founder and CEO of the Gravely Group, who presented information on emerging regulations a recent HIMSS20 Digital presentation, Implementing 21st Century Cures: A Data Access Gamechanger.
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Epic Dominates EMR Market Share Wars; Cerner Loses Ground
By Mandy Roth | April 30, 2020
Only two vendors experienced significant gains during 2019: Epic and MEDITECH.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Epic dominates the EMR market with a 29% market share.
· Cerner maintains a 26% market share, but records its first loss since 2010.
· MEDITECH also gains ground.
Electronic medical record (EMR) company Epic muscled a greater share of the U.S. acute care market EMR market during 2019, while its closest competitor, Cerner, lost ground, according to the 2020 U.S. Hospital EMR Market Share Report from KLAS. MEDITECH was the only other vendor demonstrating positive gains, growing its market share by 29 facilities over the previous year. CPSI, MEDHOST, and Allscripts all recorded losses.
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EFF Warns COVID-19 Tracing Apps Pose Cybersecurity, Privacy Risks
Google, Apple, and others are racing to develop contract tracing apps to help individuals determine potential COVID-19 exposures, but EFF warns the tech may put privacy and cybersecurity at risk.
April 29, 2020 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation are joining the call urging COVID-19 contact tracing app developers to consider the potential privacy and security risks posed by these technologies, while warning no application should be trusted to “solve this crisis or answer all of these questions.”
Earlier this month, Google and Apple announced plans to collaborate on contact tracing technology that would leverage Bluetooth Low Energy to inform individuals whether they’ve been exposed to someone who has COVID-19.
The tech relies heavily on decentralized location or proximity data from mobile phones, which would also alert users to potential exposures. Users are assigned an anonymous identifier beacon, which will be sent to nearby devices via Bluetooth.
When two users who’ve opted into the app are in close contact for about 5 minutes, the devices will exchange their identifier beacons. If either of the users is later diagnosed with COVID-19, the user can then enter their test result into the app and the people who’ve come into contact with the individual (who has also opted into the app), will receive an alert.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/maintaining-chronic-disease-management-in-coronavirus-pandemic
Maintaining Chronic Disease Management in Coronavirus Pandemic
Driving chronic disease management during the coronavirus pandemic has proven challenging, but telehealth is emerging as a key tool to push continuity of care.
By Sara Heath
April 29, 2020 - Starting the week of March 9, California-based Primary Care Medical knew it needed to pivot. Like so many primary care providers across the country, the clinician team was growing increasingly concerned about ensuring quality chronic disease management and patient care access as the rest of the nation shuttered its doors in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As COVID-19 cases started to pop up in our area, we very quickly, within a matter of five to 10 days, converted to telemedicine,” said Maria Barrell, DO, a family medicine physician at the clinic. “We had no telemedicine capabilities prior to the outbreak, but we have a phenomenal CMIO who was able, with her tech whiz husband, to come up with a platform for telemedicine visits and get I'd say 90 percent of our workforce to operate in a telemedicine platform from home while maintaining open offices.”
Employing a strong telehealth strategy, fueled by technology from AristaMD, not only made good business sense — although that was important — but it was essential to keeping the patient at the center of care.
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NEPA hospital data potentially exposed in Tennessee twister
BY JON O'CONNELL, STAFF WRITER / Published: April 28, 2020
Deadly storms nearly two months ago in Tennessee destroyed a warehouse that held thousands of medical records for Northeast Pennsylvania residents, potentially exposing patient information.
In a public notice published in The Sunday Times, a Times-Shamrock Newspaper, Community Health Systems, which owns and Wilkes-Barre General Hospital and Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, advised patients that a tornado in Wilson County, east of Nashville, on March 3 struck a building leased by Stat Informatics Solutions LLC, a contractor hired to convert paper medical records to electronic ones.
Potentially exposed information includes patients’ full names, Social Security numbers, addresses and dates of birth. Other potentially compromised information includes account numbers, images, diagnoses and medications.
CHS, parent company of Commonwealth Health, owns other hospitals in the region, but said only General and Moses Taylor records were affected.
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5G: Are we ready for the next generation?
All over the world, 5G networks are on the brink of rollout, and some think that it is healthcare where most benefits can be expected. But is this really the case? Or are we only hyping technology instead of healthcare once again?
April 30, 2020 01:31 AM
For many years now, the GSMA has been the most important global industry association of mobile phone and mobile network providers. It has an intelligence unit called GSMA Intelligence, and this unit features a dashboard on its website that is counting mobile connections, including licensed internet of things (IoT) devices, worldwide. It is the overall figure and the annual growth rate that are most impressive. In early February 2020, there were more than 9.5 billion registered mobile connections around the world, and with 5.5%, the annual growth rate is more than solid.
These are figures from the 4G age. GSMA has published a new report on the Future of Devices in the age of 5G networks in January 2020, and it identifies China as the place in which this next mobile revolution will be adopted the quickest. Nearly 50% of Chinese consumers say they will get a 5G phone as soon as the service is available, compared to 30% in the US and between 15-20% in Europe. Taking a look at this closer, the GSMA survey shows that, for mobile phone customers, 5G is all about speed and coverage. Fifty-three percent say that they expect 5G to bring faster networks, and 37% look forward to better coverage. Only 27%, in contrast, expect cool new services, and no more than 23% say that 5G is about connecting new tools to the mobile networks.
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Tech optimization: Pushing patient engagement farther
Today it is key to engage patients with their providers and their healthcare. Five patient-engagement-technology experts offer best practices to heighten use of the IT.
By Bill Siwicki
April 30, 2020 12:27 PM
Healthcare-provider organizations always are looking for more and better ways to engage with their patients in efforts to improve care delivery and patient outcomes. It is important for caregivers to have full and active partners in patients for successful healthcare.
To help caregivers and provider organizations in these efforts, there are all kinds of healthcare information technologies. But they are not plug-and-play solutions. They must be understood and optimized to offer an individual organization the best results for that particular institution.
In this special report, five patient engagement technology experts – from BioIQ, Experian Health, Qure4u, Salesforce and Vivify Health – advise readers, offering best practices for optimizing this brand of health IT.
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Breathing Life Into Telehealth: How New York City is Keeping COVID-19 Victims at Home
April 30, 2020
Telemedicine and connected health have a reputation for being hard, but the 2020 pandemic has suddenly taken away all other options. In New York City, the hardest hit area so far, a hospital chain in just a single week put together a creative approach to monitoring patients at home.
The pandemic crisis struck NYC Hospitals + Health, the largest U.S. public health system, in the middle of a different telehealth project they were implementing with Lumeon, a patient communications and care coordination automation platform. I have written before about one of their collaborations, and Colin Hung has written about the COVID-19 response in another Healthcare IT Today article. Hung did not explain how an accurate model was developed, though, and I hope to fill in that gap in this article.
Predicting COVID-19 Risk: Both Easy and Hard
With the intensification of the pandemic, the hospital chain and Lumeon realized that they needed to pivot fast and come up with a way to reduce admissions of people whose cases of COVID-19 could be managed at home.
We don’t know much yet about COVID-19, but we know that the majority of victims, even if they feel absolutely awful, can recuperate on their own. A hospital would offer the less ill patients little more than hand-holding, plus monitoring them for signs that they’re getting worse. One sole symptom determines whether victims need hospitalization: shortness of breath. Wouldn’t it be great if the monitoring could be done at home?
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As Coronavirus Strikes, Crucial Data in Electronic Health Records Hard to Harvest
By Kaiser Health News | April 30, 2020
The pandemic is bringing into stark relief just how far the nation is from achieving the promised benefits of EHR.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Limits in electronic data collection systems are hindering COVID-19 public health and surveillance efforts.
· Several top EHR vendors have joined the data-sharing coalition, which is pledging to at least partially fill the information void.
· The group has access to COVID data from about two dozen health systems and is expecting to add more.
This article was first published on Thursday, April 30, 2020 in Kaiser Health News.
By Fred Schulte
When President Donald Trump started touting hydroxychloroquine as "one of the biggest game changers" for treating COVID-19, researchers hoped electronic health records could quickly tell them if he was on the right track.
Yet pooling data from the digital records systems in thousands of hospitals has proved a technical nightmare thus far. That's largely because software built by rival technology firms often cannot retrieve and share information to help doctors judge which coronavirus treatments are helping patients recover.
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A NYC Telemental Health Clinic Uses mHealth to Gain New Insights Into Care
Soho MD, a Manhattan-based virtual care practice focusing on teletherapy and telepsychiatry, is using an mHealth wearable to track heart rate and breathing patterns from patients dealing with anxiety and depression.
April 28, 2020 - With the Coronavirus pandemic severely curtailing in-person care, a Manhattan-based mental health clinic is getting the most out of its virtual care platform. Now they’re complementing their telemental health services with an mHealth wearable that monitors patient anxiety.
Soho MD founders Jacques Jospitre, MD, and Edward Ratush, MD, say the move from brick and mortar to telehealth a few years back gave their patients a more fluid, patient-friendly means of accessing care. When you’re in the middle of New York City, access to care isn’t easy regardless of the restrictions caused by COVID-19.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/patient-outreach-strategies-enhanced-covid-19-update-messaging
Patient Outreach Strategies Enhanced COVID-19 Update Messaging
Boston Children's Hospital set up patient outreach models to keep families up-to-date on different COVID-19 protocol and breakthroughs.
By Sara Heath
April 27, 2020 - Two months ago, a patient and her parents or guardians might have walked into Boston Children’s Hospital together, without any face masks, and maybe with a younger sibling in tow. The family may have gotten strong patient outreach about the care they’d receive that day, but otherwise this would be nothing out of the ordinary for BCH, which had patient communication down to a science.
But today, a pediatric patient and her family visiting the hospital is anything but normal, with COVID-19 sparking ever-changing hospital policy all set to protect patients and providers from the fast-spreading virus.
“I'm part of our hospital incident command structure during an emergency on the ambulatory side, and a lot of what we talked about was how do you communicate effectively when everything is changing so rapidly,” Kevin Pawl, MS, FACMPE, who also works as the senior director of Patient Access at Boston Children’s, said in an interview with PatientEngagementHIT.
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NSA Shares Cybersecurity Guidance, Assessments for COVID-19 Telework
New guidance from the National Security Agency (NSA) is designed to help organizations assess and compare collaboration tools used for remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 28, 2020 - The National Security Agency recently shared cybersecurity guidance with high-level security tool assessments to help organizations select and safely use collaboration services to support the increase in remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the guide is aimed at government employees, combined with telework insights from the American Medical Association and American Hospital Association, healthcare providers will be able to lean on these free resources to shore up vulnerabilities within the increased threat landscape posed by the crisis.
Many providers have shifted to telehealth at this time, using personally owned devices for both remote care and other telework responsibilities. NSA explained that “collaboration services vary widely in the cybersecurity functionality and assurance that they offer.”
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County-Level Data Shows Racial, Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Cases
Data collected at the county level shows that COVID-19 is more prevalent among black and Hispanic populations, revealing significant racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare.
By Jessica Kent
April 27, 2020 - County-level data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed staggering racial and ethnic disparities in care, with the virus disproportionately impacting black and Hispanic populations.
A new report from the Commonwealth Fund shows that COVID-19 is more prevalent and deadly in US counties with higher black populations. While African Americans make up about 30 percent of the population in Chicago, they account for 68 percent of the city’s COVID-19 deaths. The team found similar patterns in Milwaukee, New Orleans, Michigan, and other places.
“Troubling racial inequalities have emerged in the COVID-19 pandemic; city and state health departments have raised alarms about the impact on communities of color,” Laurie Zephyrin, MD, David C. Radley, Yaphet Getachew, Jesse C. Baumgartner, and Eric C. Schneider, MD wrote.
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Federal Watchdog says VA's March EHR go-live date was 'unrealistic'
Apr 29, 2020 11:10am
The VA is implementing a new EHR system at 174 medical centers and 1,577 standalone sites. If successful, it will create a common EHR system across the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs. (JeffOnWire CC BY 2.0)
A pair of reports from government watchdogs sheds more light on why the Department of Veterans Affairs delayed the initial March go-live of its new EHR system.
The VA failed to incorporate lessons learned from the Defense Department's implementation of a Cerner electronic health record system, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded in a new report.
In its EHR project, DOD concluded that infrastructure upgrades should be completed at sites six months before deploying the system to help ensure an efficient and successful system rollout, the OIG said.
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Cerner's Q1 revenue grows to $1.4B but misses target due to impact of COVID-19
Apr 28, 2020 7:00pm
Cerner's first-quarter 2020 fell short of its expectations as the company felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March.
The company's first-quarter revenue grew 2% to $1.41 billion, compared to $1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2019.
Cerner expected first-quarter 2020 revenue between $1.4 billion and $1.5 billion. First-quarter revenue also missed Wall Street estimates with a consensus revenue estimate of $1.43 billion.
The Kansas City, Missouri-based health IT company's bottom line totaled $147 million, or $0.47 per share. That declined compared with $166 million, or $0.51 per share, in last year's first quarter.
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Apps to Track the New Coronavirus Have an Old Problem: Getting the Downloads
At least 60% of a population would have to opt in for contact-tracing apps to work well, some experts say
By David Uberti
April 28, 2020 7:15 pm ET
Researchers at Covid Watch, an international group of academics building a mobile app to track the novel coronavirus, have one number in the back of their minds: 60%. That is a commonly cited percentage of the population that would need to adopt any such Bluetooth-enabled app to paint a clear picture of Covid-19.
“Below that would still have an impact, but it’d be less of an impact,” said Rhys Fenwick, an Australia-based co-founder of Covid Watch, which includes researchers at Stanford University and the University of Waterloo.
Contact-tracing is key to fighting many diseases. In recent weeks, various app developers have been working to bolster the efforts of human disease detectives, who find and interview acquaintances of contagious individuals to track the virus’s spread. Mobile phone data could broaden their reach by automating the process.
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Costs Would Keep 1 in 7 Americans From Seeking COVID-19 Treatment
TUESDAY, April 28, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Worries over medical bills would prevent 1 in 7 Americans from seeking treatment if they had possible symptoms of COVID-19, a new poll finds.
Of more than 1,000 adults surveyed, 6% -- representing 15 million Americans -- said that during the coronavirus pandemic, they or a family member had been denied care for another health problem.
Asked if they would seek medical attention for a fever and dry cough -- telltale signs of COVID-19 -- 14% said they would not because of cost, according to the results from the nonprofit West Health and Gallup.
Even if they suspected they were infected, 9% said they wouldn't seek treatment -- a finding that suggests insurance coverage shortfalls, lack of money, or poor knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms, the survey sponsors said.
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Online Self-Help Tied to Less Suicidal Ideation
— Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy may be considered a low-threshold treatment option
Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) seemed effective for preventing suicidal thoughts, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis.
In six randomized trials, people who participated in an online CBT or dialectical behavioral therapy program saw a much lower rate of suicidal ideation versus controls (standardized mean difference -0.29, 95% CI -0.40 to -0.19, P<0 .001="" em="">I
2=0%), reported Rebekka Büscher, of the University of Freiburg in Germany, and colleagues.
These individuals were able to maintain a reduced rate of suicidal ideation at follow-up in four trials (SMD -0.18, 95% CI -0.34 to -0.02, P=0.03, I2=36%), they stated in JAMA Network Open.
Büscher explained to MedPage Today that while this small effect size was "encouraging" and "promising," it was not necessarily surprising. "The effect size is comparable to face-to-face interventions for suicidality, which is a common finding in research on web-based interventions," she said.
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Cyber-attacks on healthcare facilities 'growing threat' during coronavirus pandemic
Acronis believes it is likely cybercriminals will target government agencies, healthcare facilities and medical professionals treating patients during the COVID-19 crisis.
April 29, 202003:07 AM
Government and private hospitals in the Middle East region and beyond are being warned of an increased risk of ransomware attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a statement issued by global technology company Acronis, cybercriminals “will target the government agencies, healthcare facilities and medical professionals treating patients during the COVID-19 crisis,” after it found a surge in ransomware detections in Europe by up to 7% in the last week of February 2020, followed by a 10% increase the week after.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it new challenges and new risks to the business environment and cyberspace is no exception,” said Acronis founder and CEO Serguei Beloussov. “As most businesses and individuals are now required to go digital in a bid to ensure that their operations do not grind to a halt, they have also become easy targets with healthcare facilities becoming more vulnerable, because the systems that care for patients and lab work are often linked.”
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In-home passive monitoring can help seniors stay independent
Stony Brook University experts describe key design points for a successful in-home senior-health-monitoring system, and their efforts to develop such a tool.
By Dave Muoio
April 29, 2020
The shift toward "aging in place" has been fueled by a range of health monitoring technologies – fall-detection pendants, emergency alert systems, fingertip blood pressure monitors, ECG patches and so on. But the senior population has needs and preferences unique from the general population, creating a home health monitoring challenge that can't simply be solved by sending them home with clinical-grade monitors or even consumer-friendly wearables.
"There are a lot of problems with these," Fan Ye, an associate professor at the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University, said during a recent HIMSS20 online seminar. "Traditionally, equipment [is] bulky, expensive and hard to deploy and wear at home. Wearables, people have to remember to charge them every day and put them on. This can be challenging for cognitively challenged older adults."
With this in mind, Ye – along with Elinor Schoenfeld, a research professor at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, and colleagues – set out to develop a non-wearable home health-monitoring system for seniors. To do so, the group conducted a handful of group-discussion sessions with 57 community-dwelling older adults from New York City (n = 24) and suburban Long Island (n = 33).
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COVID-19 Driven Interoperability and What Does this Mean for Healthcare Interoperability Going Forward?
April 29, 2020
As part of our Healthcare IT 100 in 100, we asked a wide variety of healthcare interoperability experts to chime in on the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare interoperability. Plus, then we asked them how it will impact health data sharing going forward. Their responses were largely positive, but did highlight the challenges we still face with interoperability in healthcare.
One thing was abundantly clear from our panel of experts. COVID-19 has exposed many of the flaws in healthcare. Lucie Ide, Founder of Rimidi, shared that “The pandemic really highlights the need for data in a standardized format that’s connected to the patient record in the EMR across different health systems, different EMR vendors, different geographies, etc. How can we study trends when we don’t have a full clinical understanding of patients who test positive?”
Plus, Ide also added that “Only 5.8% of known COVID-19 cases had data available pertaining to patients’ underlying health conditions or potential risk factors. We need to connect data about pre-existing conditions and other patient characteristics to testing in order for public health officials to get a clear picture of risk.” I’d add that it’s not just public health officials, but clinicians on the front lines need this data as well.
Marilee Benson, President of Zen Healthcare IT offered praise to existing health information exchanges and national trusted exchange networks like Commonwell, Carequality, eHealth Exchange, but also pointed out gaps like CMS asking hospitals to manually submit manual excel sheets daily. Really?
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Hospitals Testing Out Epic AI Tool To Predict COVID-19 Patients’ Progress
April 29, 2020
Not long ago, we shared the details on how Stanford was using machine learning to predict how patients with COVID-19 were at risk of having their condition worsen. There are many more such stories emerging as the virus continues to wreak havoc within many hospitals.
According to STAT News, hundreds of hospitals are also using the Epic technology deployed by Stanford. While the Epic tool, known as the deterioration index, wasn’t designed with COVID-19 in mind, hospitals are wading in anyway.
The speed at which hospitals are adopting this technology is virtually unprecedented. As the SN story notes, hospital IT departments usually test such a tool extensively, refine AI capabilities to meet their needs then restructure care processes to support the rollout before clinicians get involved.
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Bipartisan lawmakers back efforts to expand telehealth services for seniors
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are throwing their support behind efforts to expand telehealth services, especially for elderly patients, to help combat the coronavirus.
Speaking at The Hill’s first virtual event on Wednesday, Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) highlighted how telehealth allows elderly patients to receive proper medical care and checkups during the pandemic while staying at home.
“This is really changing, I think, not only health care for seniors during this pandemic, but for everybody,” Matsui said at the event sponsored by the Better Medicare Alliance. “And I believe that as we move forward, this is going to be one of the things that we can look to as changing health care.”
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Apple Mobility Data Tool to Track User Movement, COVID-19 Spread
The mobility data tool will gather data from 63 countries and regions using Apple Maps to uncover the change in volume of individual mobility during COVID-19.
April 23, 2020 - Apple recently released a mobility data trends tool from Apple Maps to track and mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The app may be useful to governments and health authorities as a foundation for new public policies by showing the change of volume of people driving, walking, or taking public transit during coronavirus. Understanding where people have been and where hotspots arise may help public health officials understand the spread of the novel coronavirus and understand how to mediation the issue.
Apple does not keep a history of where a user has been and does not associate mobility data with a user’s Apple ID, the announcement emphasized.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/apple-google-address-covid-19-contact-tracing-app-privacy-concerns
Apple, Google Address COVID-19 Contact Tracing App Privacy Concerns
After reviewing feedback from industry stakeholders, Apple and Google have revised their COVID-19 contact tracing app proposal to address privacy concerns, stressing transparency.
April 27, 2020 - Apple and Google updated their initial COVID-19 contract tracing app proposal to address feedback from industry stakeholders and some of the privacy concerns raised after the tech giants announced their partnership two weeks ago.
The companies are working to develop a COVID-19 contract tracing app designed to support governments and health agencies control the spread of the virus. The proposed technology would lean on proximity data pulled from the Bluetooth of mobile phones and alert users to potential Coronavirus exposures.
At the time of the announcement, Google provided a detailed plan of its privacy policies, including a requirement for explicit user consent.
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How De-Identified Patient Data Access Fuels COVID-19 Research
De-identified patient data repositories are being utilized to help curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 27, 2020 - EHR and data vendors are putting together and allowing access to de-identified patient data repositories to help their clients and researchers battle the spread of COVID-19.
To make the data de-identified, identifiers must be removed from patient health information. The list of identifiers includes names, all geographic data (state, address, zip code, etc.), birth date, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, and other information that can identify a specific individual.
Patients are beginning to understand the importance of sharing their data to help researchers in the future.
According to a study published in JAMA Network Open, only 3.7 percent of individuals said they are not comfortable with sharing their data for research and 72.9 percent said they would be willing to share their data selectively.
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Microsoft’s technology chief pivots to pandemic response
Microsoft’s chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, oversees thousands of engineers and scientists working in artificial intelligence, computer science and other research.
But right now he’s laser-focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest projects include setting up a chatbot for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and repurposing Microsoft’s supercomputers to help in drug discovery.
He’s also out with a new book. “Reprogramming the American Dream” connects Scott’s rural upbringing in Gladys, Virginia, to his optimistic view that AI could help bridge the digital and economic divide.
Scott spoke with The Associated Press about the pandemic’s effects on his day-to-day responsibilities. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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EHR Optimization Fixes Equip Care Teams to Treat COVID-19 Patients
Researchers at University of California San Diego are conducting EHR optimization to mitigate patient and clinician COVID-19 exposure.
April 28, 2020 - EHR optimization and implementing tools into the EHR are crucial to managing the spread of COVID-19, according to a study published in the Journal of Informatics in Health and Biomedicine.
“While the incidence of COVID-19 continues to rise, healthcare systems are rapidly preparing and adapting to increasing clinical demands,” wrote the authors of the study. “Inherent to the operational management of a pandemic in the era of modern medicine is leveraging the capabilities of the EHR, which can be useful for developing tools to support standard management of patients.”
“Technology-based tools can effectively support institutions during a pandemic by facilitating the immediate widespread distribution of information, tracking transmission in real time, creating virtual venues for meetings and day-to-day operations, and, perhaps most importantly, offering telemedicine visits for patients,” they continued.
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AITRICS and Cleveland Clinic partner to verify AI-based sepsis prediction solution
AITRICS’ AI-based platform VitalCare will be verified for accuracy using datasets provided by Cleveland Clinic.
By Dean Koh
April 28, 2020 09:23 PM
AITRICS, a Korea-based startup offering AI solutions which was founded in 2016, has signed a joint research agreement with Cleveland Clinic, a private, non-profit hospital health system based in Cleveland, Ohio. Both parties will collaborate on verifying VitalCare, AITRICS's AI platform that predicts critical events in hospitals.
WHY IT MATTERS
Sepsis is a disease that causes a systemic inflammatory response after infection from microbes, which has a high mortality rate to be selected as the leading cause of death globally. Early detection is the best because there is no underlying cure for sepsis. If sepsis treated within 1 hour after onset, the survival rate is 80%, but after 6 hours, it falls to 30%.
The challenge is that diagnosis can be tricky or misleading as the symptoms are too generic. To detect sepsis, doctors need to determine whether patients have an infection, but the results of the blood test will take at least two days, which is too late for intervention.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT
Both parties will start off by verifying the AI solution platform, VitalCare, an AI-based platform that significantly reduces the mortality rate of patients by timely detecting the occurrence of risk factors in a hospital through real-time monitoring of the patient's EMR. AITRICS verifies the accuracy of VitalCare and advances its AI model by utilizing datasets provided by Cleveland Clinic.
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New HHS rule calls for FHIR use cases to aid data exchange
The interoperability final rules that will be added to the Federal Register this week mention two implementation guides from the Da Vinci Project to help payers exchange data.
By Fred Bazzoli
April 28, 2020 12:06 PM
New interoperability final rules expected to be published this week will expand use of application programming interfaces that make use of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standards.
The new rules will feature the use of two approaches that have been developed by the Da Vinci Project, a private-sector initiative that's seeking to use FHIR to improve data sharing in value-based care activities involving providers, payers and patients.
The inclusion of requirements for data sharing in the new rule lines up closely with two Da Vinci Project use cases for which implementation guides have been developed, said Alexandra Mugge, Deputy Chief Health Informatics Officer at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Mugge participated in an online roundtable event of the Da Vinci Project, one of several accelerator programs of HL7, a standards organization that has developed FHIR as a standard that makes it easier to exchange health data.
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COBOL is a Distraction (from the real numbers and issues)
April 28, 2020
Over the past few weeks, there have been numerous articles lambasting states and organizations for continuing to run legacy systems that support unemployment and financial processes. In particular, New Jersey was lambasted for advertising to find help with maintaining their unemployment system written in COBOL. Many of the systems out there that support our daily lives, including banking, credit and debit cards, and accounting, utilize it.
It’s still supported. Micro Focus offers Visual COBOL, which allows developers to leverage Microsoft’s Visual Studio software development environment to build modern COBOL applications. IBM’s latest mainframe offering, the z15, provides a very fast environment to run them in with excellent support for modern encryption and cryptography. If you like Open Source, you can run GNUCobol on Linux and use your editor of choice to write code. The first version of COBOL came out in 1959, 11 years before C, which is the language of choice that many of your applications were developed in, including Windows and MacOS.
The narrative behind this is being utilized to lambaste governments for not keeping systems up to date and current, and for laughing at them for not using good enough technology. It’s part of a long-standing narrative on attacking them perpetuated by people who have their interests in mind, not ours. The real issue is with the sheer volume of unemployment applications. According to CNBC, 26.45 million people have filed for unemployment in the past five weeks. That has erased all job gains since the Great Recession of 2008-2009. The volume of unemployment claims has set records, according to the New York Times, including a record 6.6 million in the week ending April 4 as recorded by the US Department of Labor. This has strained an infrastructure used to dealing with under 2 million claims and low unemployment. COVID-19 and the corresponding furloughs and job loss has strained our system past the point of breakage.
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New Healthcare Interoperability Solution Leverages Age-Old Technology
April 28, 2020
We may scoff at fax technology, but it remains one of the lowest-cost, lowest barrier ways to exchange patient records. Despite repeated attempts to axe-the-fax in healthcare, it continues to be relied upon by healthcare organizations. J2 Global’s Consensus interoperability solution leans into and leverages this age-old technology to help organizations more easily (and securely) send and receive patient information while layering on new technologies liked Direct Messaging as they’re available.
Fax Usage Increasing in Healthcare
Many healthcare organizations still rely on fax machines as their primary way to send patient information to other providers external to their network. In fact, the use of fax for data exchange in healthcare is increasing. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) State of Interoperability among U.S. Non-federal Acute Care Hospitals in 2018 Report, released in March 2020, shows 5% increase in the use of mail or fax for sending summary of care records from 2017 to 2018:
2017 2018 Change
Send summary of care records by mail or fax 66% 71% +5%
Receive summary of care records by mail or fax 73% 76% +3%
Send summary of care records by efax using EHR 63% 66% +3%
Receive summary of care records by efax using EHR 45% 52% +7%
At first glance this rise in fax usage is perplexing. By 2017, the ONC reported that 96% of acute care hospitals had adopted an EHR. However, we all know that the guidelines for certified EHRs at the time did not have provisions for seamless data exchange. As a result, we ended up with electronic data silos in healthcare and the current interoperability challenge.
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How OSF's 6 Digital Approaches Handle More than 50,000 COVID Encounters
By Mandy Roth | April 28, 2020
The Peoria, Illinois, healthcare system turns to digital innovations to better serve patients and protect its employees.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· An AI chatbot has fielded the lion's share of digital encounters, helping to triage patients, enabling healthcare professionals to focus on patients who need them most, and protecting patients and clinicians from in-person exposure.
· In partnership with the state of Illinois, OSF is participating in a home monitoring program, which allows symptomatic patients to stay at home and receive twice-daily digital check-ins.
As the countdown to COVID-19 began in the state of Illinois, OSF HealthCare rallied its digital assets and prepared them for the surge.
The 14-hospital integrated health system based in Peoria, Illinois, and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, has a strong commitment to innovation, says Michelle Conger, chief strategy officer for OSF HealthCare and chief executive officer for OSF Saint Gabriel Digital Health. The system had recently rolled out an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot and piloted a behavioral health app. In short order, these innovations were adapted, and other solutions were devised, to address the challenges of the pandemic.
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Contact-tracing apps: Why the NHS said no to Apple and Google's plan
Despite the privacy and performance concerns, the UK government has decided to build a contact-tracing app that will not be built on the tech giants' new API. Here is why.
By Daphne Leprince-Ringuet | April 28, 2020 -- 13:33 GMT (23:33 AEST) | Topic: Digital Health and Wellness
With traditional public health contact-tracing methods unable to keep up with the pace of the pandemic, the UK government has been working on a tool to digitally track and warn people who have been around someone who is showing symptoms of the coronavirus.
But the health service's innovation agency NHSX has now confirmed that it will not be following the approach jointly put forward by Apple and Google to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, and will be taking a different approach.
Despite the performance and privacy concerns that have emerged at the prospect of departing from the model proposed by the tech giants, a spokesperson for NHSX told ZDNet that the organization's engineers have developed an app using standard Google and Apple published API, while adhering to the Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) standard.
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Contact-tracing apps are not a solution to the COVID-19 crisis
April 27, 2020
The unprecedented threat from the novel coronavirus has confined many Americans to their homes, distancing them from one another at great cost to local economies and personal well-being. Meanwhile the pressure grows on American institutions to do something—anything—about the pandemic.
Encouraged by the White House, much of that pressure to act has focused on Silicon Valley and the tech industry, which has responded with a fragile digital solution. Tech companies and engineering departments at major universities are pinning their hopes of returning Americans to work and play on the promise of smartphone apps. Coronavirus? There’s an app for that.
We are concerned by this rising enthusiasm for automated technology as a centerpiece of infection control. Between us, we hold extensive expertise in technology, law and policy, and epidemiology. We have serious doubts that voluntary, anonymous contact tracing through smartphone apps—as Apple, Google, and faculty at a number of academic institutions all propose—can free Americans of the terrible choice between staying home or risking exposure. We worry that contact-tracing apps will serve as vehicles for abuse and disinformation, while providing a false sense of security to justify reopening local and national economies well before it is safe to do so. Our recommendations are aimed at reducing the harm of a technological intervention that seems increasingly inevitable.
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France launches AI voice assistant to help coronavirus patients
By Staff Writer on Apr 28, 2020 12:27PM
Will keep anonymised data for seven days.
French researchers on Monday launched a voice assistant that can help callers suffering from potential coronavirus symptoms and direct them towards emergency services or their doctors using artificial intelligence.
Anybody in France can now ring the "AlloCovid" service developed by French research institute INRIA, the University of Paris and French railway company SNCF, the group said.
On the line, a female voice greets callers with "Bonjour, I'm your virtual AlloCovid assistant ... Are you ready to start the questionnaire?"
Callers are asked for their postcode but not their name. Depending on their symptoms and pre-existing conditions, they are directed to the right professionals.
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NYC Launches Telehealth Program in Hard-Hit Housing Developments
City and state officials are working with a mobile integrated health provider to launch a telehealth program, offering COVID-19 testing and other healthcare services, in several low-income housing complexes.
April 24, 2020 - New York state officials are partnering with a home healthcare services provider to extend telehealth care to public housing residents facing access issues during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced earlier this week that the state is working with New Orleans-based Ready Responders to deliver connected health and COVID-19 testing services to low-income residents in some of the hardest-hit areas of New York City. Ready Responders uses EMTs, paramedics and nurses to deliver mobile integrated health services to the home, and has been pressed into use in several locations across the country to deal with resident affected by the pandemic.
‘We have a need and responsibility to get the assistance we need to people in low income communities,” Cuomo said during his April 20 press conference, in which he announced the pilot program in conjunction with the New York City Housing Authority. “That's where the virus spreads. We are going to set up a test program in NYCHA, where we're going to have on-site health services and testing in the New York City area, with New York City Housing Authority projects, working with local officials. We're doing it as a pilot program to see how it works. If it works well, we will go further with it.”
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EHR Data Reveals Common Chronic Diseases in COVID-19 Patients
After analyzing EHR data, researchers found that hypertension, diabetes, and obesity are the most common chronic diseases among COVID-19 patients.
By Jessica Kent
April 23, 2020 - In the largest study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the US, researchers leveraged EHR data to find that hypertension, diabetes, and obesity are key chronic diseases in the acuity of the virus.
The study, published in JAMA, examined the clinical course and outcomes of 5,700 Northwell Health patients hospitalized between March 1 and April 4.
A team from the Northwell Health COVID-19 Research Consortium and the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research collected data on the patients from the enterprise EHR reporting database. Researchers collected information on patient demographics, home medications, triage visits, initial laboratory tests, inpatient medications, treatments, and other key data points.
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COVID-19 Rapid Evidence Review: Exit through the App Store?
Exit through the App Store? A rapid evidence review of the technical considerations and societal implications of using technology to transition from the COVID-19 crisis was undertaken with a view to supporting the Government and the NHS as it adopts technical solutions to aid in the transition from the COVID-19 crisis.
The review focuses on three technologies in particular: digital contact tracing, symptom tracking apps and immunity certification. It makes pragmatic recommendations to support well-informed policymaking in response to the crisis. It is informed by the input of more than twenty experts drawn from across a wide range of domains, including technology, policy, human rights and data protection, public health and clinical medicine, behavioural science and information systems, philosophy, sociology and anthropology.
The purpose of this review is to open up, rather than close down, an informed and public dialogue on the technical considerations and societal implications of the use of technology to transition from the crisis.
Key findings
There is an absence of evidence to support the immediate national deployment of symptom tracking applications, digital contact tracing applications and digital immunity certificates. While the Government is right to explore non-clinical measures for transition, for national policy to rely on these apps, they would need to be able to:
- Represent accurate information about infection or immunity
- Demonstrate technical capabilities to support required functions
- Address various practical issues for use, including meeting legal tests
- Mitigate social risks and protect against exacerbating inequalities and vulnerabilities
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Vet telehealth surges as first US pets test positive for coronavirus
Published Thu, Apr 23 20209:23 AM EDT Updated Thu, Apr 23 20209:43 AM EDT
Key Points
- On Wednesday, the first cases of positive coronavirus tests in U.S. pets, in two New York area cats, were confirmed.
- The Bronx Zoo has also confirmed that five tigers and three lions have the virus.
- In late March the FDA temporarily suspended a requirement for veterinarians to examine animals in person before beginning telemedicine to help limit human-to-human interaction and potential spread of COVID-19.
- Telehealth platform Medici has seen veterinarian registration and pet telehealth consultations spike.
As human telehealth visits are forecast to surge past 1 billion this year, the veterinary industry is following suit, at least for now, in order to reduce the spread of coronavirus.
On March 24 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it would temporarily suspend a requirement for veterinarians to examine animals in person before beginning telemedicine in order to “limit human-to-human interaction and potential spread of COVID-19.”
The decision came at a good time: On Wednesday the first cases of positive coronavirus tests in U.S. domestic pets, in two New York area cats, were confirmed, along with four more tigers and three lions at the Bronx Zoo. On April 6 the first tiger to test positive for the virus, at that same zoo, tested positive.
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27 Apr 2020 News
Experts Detect 30,000% Increase in #COVID19 Threats
Phil Muncaster UK / EMEA News Reporter , Infosecurity Magazine
A security firm is claiming to have seen a staggering 30,000% increase since January in detected phishing, malicious websites and malware designed to capitalize on the COVID-19 crisis.
Zscaler VP of security research, Deepen Desai, revealed in a blog post that the firm’s cloud security platform had stopped 380,000 attacks targeting home workers in March, up from just 1200 at the start of the year.
This included the registration of 130,000 new suspicious domains featuring COVID-related keywords such as “test,” “mask,” “Wuhan” and “kit.”
The firm recorded a 25% increase in the number of malicious files and websites it blocked and an 85% increase in phishing attacks targeting remote workers over the three-month period.
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The impact of COVID-19 on health tech adoption in the UK
The COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed the uptake of digital health solutions in a way not hitherto experienced by the sector.
April 21, 2020 08:18 AM
The digital-first health strategies adopted by several countries to control the spread of the virus have irrevocably rerouted the way healthcare systems function. Remote monitoring and telehealth platforms, AI-powered assessment apps and devices; these have all become the new norm.
The UK is a prime example. With strong inroads already into digital health, its growing partnerships encouraged a healthy tech sector meaning that, when COVID-19 struck, many companies were offering solutions by adapting software that already existed, rather than starting from scratch.
Partner adoption
One such partner was Ada Health, the personal health companion provider that helps identify ailments by responding to symptoms and data supplied by patients. With a strong focus on the UK and Germany, they recognised the need to adapt their product as the virus started to spread beyond China. “Several weeks ago we modelled COVID-19 in our knowledge base so that it was one of the conditions that would be considered [in] a standard Ada assessment,” explains Dr Claire Novorol, Ada Health’s co-founder and chief medical officer, in an exclusive interview with Healthcare IT News.
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Cerner, AWS partner to make COVID-19 data available to researchers
Healthcare technology company Cerner and Amazon Web Services are teaming up to offer researchers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic access to de-identified patient data.
By Nathan Eddy
April 27, 2020 11:57 AM
Healthcare technology company Cerner and Amazon Web Services are joining to offer access to de-identified patient data to researchers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
WHY IT MATTERS
Stored on Cerner's HealtheDataLab platform, which is hosted on AWS, the de-identified patient data will offer healthcare researchers a slew of COVID-19-related demographics to help track the spread and surge.
Stored on Cerner's HealtheDataLab platform, which is hosted on AWS, the de-identified patient data will offer healthcare researchers a slew of COVID-19-related demographics to help track the spread and surge.
The data sets will also include lab results, underlying illnesses and chronic conditions, and clinical complications, among other statistics. An advisory committee will choose recipients of the free offer.
By combining and utilizing different types of clinical, patient, social determinant and other open source data, researchers can build intelligent models, which could in theory anticipate patient outcomes or help improve predictive analytics.
THE LARGER TREND
Cerner recently joined the list of multiple healthcare consortiums and technology companies that are collaborating on EHR-powered COVID-19 databases using de-identified patient data.
Cerner recently joined the list of multiple healthcare consortiums and technology companies that are collaborating on EHR-powered COVID-19 databases using de-identified patient data.
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North Dakota HIE creates longitudinal health records for patients
Further, the network’s clinical portal has served in times of crisis as a backup system for health systems in the case of unexpected EHR outages or planned upgrades.
By Bill Siwicki
April 27, 202011:56 AM
North Dakota Health Information Network, the state’s health information exchange, works to enhance statewide data connectivity to understand patients’ conditions better and speed up diagnoses for 1.2 million patients. The HIE helps rural providers share patient data.
NDHIN grants more than 1,700 users access to 11,000 patient records per month, giving smaller organizations the power to compete with larger health systems coordinating care. Beyond daily exchange activity, NDHIN has been able to automatically populate a patient autism registry, launch a formal smoking cessation program and create a statewide advance directives repository allowing providers to view all clinical documents through a single portal.
THE PROBLEM
North Dakota’s healthcare system needs were common to many other states. Patients had multiple medical records located at various healthcare institutions. Access to the medical information was limited to each health system.
Assembling these multiple medical records into one longitudinal health record and making that information accessible to the right people at the right time was the primary goal. Provider access to this aggregated information could result in reduced costs, proper timely treatments, reduced redundant services and better patient outcomes.
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Four Tasks that Might Save You from Cybersecurity Landmines In The “New-Normal”
April 27, 2020
The following is a guest article by Drex DeFord CI Security’s Chief Healthcare Strategist, and President of Drexio Innovation Network.
The optimist in me wanted to believe the stories I read a few weeks ago: several hacker organizations had pledged to lay off healthcare after the pandemic started, but the pessimist cyber-guy in me was extremely doubtful, it turned out, for good reason.
When I look at the Health & Human Services “Wall of Shame” – it’s pretty easy to see why the pessimist-me was right. If you draw the line on or about March 15th, there’s been a LOT of new additions to the wall under the category of “Hacking/IT Incident”.
Conversations with CISOs at health systems tell me the same thing – they’re being pounded right now. The bad guys have some amazing scams associated with COVID. Thankfully cyber leaders are working hard to hold the fort.
But I do worry about what’s next given what’s just happened. The COVID-19 emergency caused us to change business/clinical practices almost over-night. We rolled out work-from-home (WFH) for employees, drove exponential increases in telehealth visits, and urgently acquired and installed (sometimes non-standard) equipment (including IoT/IoMT or other gear not following normal procurement processes). We extended capacity by quickly on-boarding previously retired clinicians, and temporary employees; added new locations for drive-thru testing, and connected to new suppliers in an effort to shore up the supply chain.
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COVID-19 Pandemic Hitting US Hospital Finances Hard
April 27, 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, hospitals are beginning to face major financial problems which could in some cases threaten their ability to stay in business, according to a new survey.
To conduct its research, management consulting firm Kaufman Hall reached out to more than 800 U.S. hospitals and asked them about their financial situation. The news the hospitals shared was grim.
Kaufman Hall’s National Hospital Flash Report, which draws on data from March, said that respondents were seeing falling volume and revenue as expenses stayed flat or began to rise. This has resulted in a massive dip in margins over just the past few weeks, the hospitals reported. And as the researchers pointed out, this has been particularly hard on not-for-profit hospitals, whose margins were slim even before the pandemic hit.
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Weekly News Recap
- Banner Health’s judge-approved $8.9 million payout for a massive data breach in 2016 includes $500 for each patient in the class and $2.9 million for plaintiffs’ attorneys.
- The federal government announces that it will delay enforcing compliance with final interoperability rules so that healthcare stakeholders can focus on COVID-19-related operations.
- Cognizant alerts customers that a ransomware attract is disrupting some of its services.
- Several companies work together to create a database of de-identified, patient-level data for COVID-19 researchers.
- The VA and DoD launch a health information exchange that allows providers from both organizations to exchange patient information with community partners.
- Google announces GA of the Google Cloud Healthcare API.
- CMS announces that hospitals in areas that have low coronavirus outbreak risk can start offering routine services again.
- FDA waives limitations on using digital health for treating psychiatric disorders.
- UW Medicine (WA) publishes its IT experience in dealing with the health system’s coronavirus response.
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Fighting the COVID-19 Crisis with Technology; PALO IT Develops "Virtual Bed" App For Remote Patient Care
SINGAPORE, April 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- PALO IT, an international 'Tech for Good' consultancy specialising in human-centered design, Agile software development, and tech transformation, is delighted to announce that it has developed an app to help healthcare professionals provide care for large numbers of COVID-19 patients remotely.
Known as Virtual Bed, the app also aims to ease the pressure on overburdened healthcare systems by keeping patients with mild symptoms at home, so that frontline staff such as doctors and nurses can focus on more severe cases that require hospitalisation.
Following initial conversations with eHealth (the Australian Digital Health Agency), and the technology arm of the United Nations, the company will be offering it to governments and healthcare providers for free.
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Enjoy!
David.
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