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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Electronic system to improve patients’ end of life care shared nationally
Details about an electronic system which supports those who are receiving end of life care in the Humber, Coast and Vale Care Partnership area, have been published nationally.
Hanna Crouch 20 November, 2020
The Electronic Palliative Care Co-ordination System (EPaCCS) is a palliative care shared record which enables different health and care organisations to share information about a patient’s end of life preferences and care plans. The system is now being used by GP practices, hospices, hospitals and other health and care providers across the area.
John Mitchell, associate director of IT for the Humber NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups said: “EPaCCS is a great example of a digital solution that enables clinicians to make the right decisions, based on the most up to date information and honour the choices of patients. This initiative spans the whole geography of the Humber, Coast and Vale, and takes a system wide approach, that includes all of the organisations involved in the delivery of end of life care.
“From a digital perspective, we will be making information from EPaCCS available via the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR) to both the Yorkshire Ambulance Service and East Midlands Ambulance Service, which will be a significant milestone both for our region and the YHCR programme.”
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/cardiology/prevention/89985
Heart Group: Hospitals Must Help in Improving Population Cardio Health
— Geisinger, Kaiser Permanente held up as models
by Nicole Lou, Staff Writer, MedPage Today December 3, 2020
Healthcare systems committed to data-driven quality improvement and interdisciplinary collaboration are crucial to restoring progress in population cardiovascular health, according to a statement from the American Heart Association (AHA).
"A learning healthcare system, in which population cardiovascular health metrics are measured, evaluated, intervened on, and re-evaluated, can serve as a model for developing the evidence base for developing, deploying, and disseminating interventions," wrote Randi Foraker, PhD, MA, of Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues.
The authors laid out how knowledge can be continuously generated and applied by healthcare systems in a five-step cycle:
- Collect metrics for quality improvement and refinement of clinical algorithms
- Analyze data
- Interpret potential impact of results and communicate with stakeholders
- Implement cardiovascular health interventions to the healthcare system with input from stakeholders
- Change practice by aligning evidence-based care processes and documentation
The AHA scientific statement was published online in Circulation and comes in response to years of stalled progress on heart health in the U.S.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/idaho-health-information-exchange-boosts-telehealth-solution
Idaho Health Information Exchange Boosts Telehealth Solution
The Idaho statewide health information exchange will integrate a remote patient monitoring platform to increase its telehealth capabilities and remote care to its rural areas.
December 03, 2020 - Idaho Health Data Exchange (IHDE), Idaho’s statewide health information exchange, has announced it is implementing a remote patient monitoring (RPM) platform to boost telehealth services and remote patient care.
IHDE will integrate Connect America’s RPM platform, intending to deliver the platform to connect individuals to their respective providers remotely.
Prior to the novel coronavirus outbreak, a limited number of patients were actively using telehealth, and even some providers were wary of adopting the tool. However, HIEs, EHR vendors, and health IT organizations have worked to help curb the pandemic by making telehealth a mainstream option.
With Idaho being a rural state, individuals and providers across the state can benefit from this platform. Implementing a telehealth alternative increases safety and convenient care options for older patients or those who live far away from their provider.
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Conversational technologies can be rapidly deployed for pandemic response
A new JAMIA study found that more than 6 million messages related to COVID-19 were sent using the Watson Assistant platform between March 30 and August 10 of this year.
By Kat Jercich
December 04, 2020 12:23 PM
New research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that chatbots and other conversational agents can be used to provide up-to-date facts about COVID-19.Researchers from IBM Watson Health and Vanderbilt University Medical Center explored the ways governmental agencies, employers, provider organizations and health plans used the Watson Assistant platform to deliver COVID-19-related information to users.
"Given the enormous demand for information about COVID-19, many stakeholders have leveraged emerging conversational technologies to automate responses to common COVID-19 related questions and information needs specific to their organizations," wrote the team.
WHY IT MATTERS
As the researchers noted, chatbots have been used in healthcare to aid in performing specific tasks, determining social needs, and prompting behavior change.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/unpacking-the-right-words-for-covid-19-public-health-messaging
Unpacking the Right Words for COVID-19 Public Health Messaging
COVID-19 public health messaging should be delivered by science and public health leaders and lean on certain language to be most effective.
By Sara Heath
December 02, 2020 - When it comes to public health messaging, words matter. In a new report from veteran GOP pollster Frank Luntz and the non-partisan de Beaumont Foundation, certain verbiage stands out as being more effective for public health messaging about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Effective communication is always important in public health, but it's never been more important for health leaders to understand the perceptions of Americans and modify their language accordingly,” Brian C. Castrucci, DrPH, the president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, said in a statement.
The survey of 1,100 respondents, including an oversample of 300 African Americans to account for the significant racial health disparities seen in the pandemic, showed that much of the language currently being used by local, state, and federal officials is not resonating with Americans.
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How to Integrate a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program into the EHR
Executing a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) EHR integration only takes a number of steps.
December 02, 2020 - Every time a prescriber writes a prescription, she taps a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) if it is available at her health organization. This platform gives prescribers a complete understanding of a patient’s full prescription drug history within the EHR workflow and has been a key tool in combatting the opioid epidemic.
The PDMP assembles pharmacy and patient data through a more extensive, state-run electronic database about controlled substances and prescription drugs from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). PDMPs help prescribers keep track of patients who are at high risk of becoming opioid-dependent.
The platform is currently available in all states, excluding Missouri.
These tools help streamline a key prescribing workflow for clinicians and other medical personnel who may prescribe a prescription drug, experts say. Prior to EHR integration, providers experience burden because of how long the query process was in the past.
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Google Health and HHS' AHRQ detail new pilot project helping patients prep for their doctor's appointment
The tool would help patients develop health questions for their clinician, and reminds them to bring along any necessary test results or other materials.
By Dave Muoio
December 02, 202003:33 pm
Google Health has teamed up with the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to pilot an online tool that helps patients build a visit plan for their upcoming healthcare visit. The project was detailed in a Google blog post published yesterday, but subsequently removed by the tech company until it was republished this afternoon with no substantial changes.
So far only available "to a limited number of people in the United States," the tool is built on a list of recommended questions and other resources developed by AHRQ, according to the post. It allows users to ask questions about their upcoming encounter or select from a list of questions such as "What is this test for?"
With this, the tool provides a visit plan via print or email that helps patients remember what to ask the clinician, as well as a list of medications, lab results or other materials that they'll need to have on hand.
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AMA Warns of Telehealth Cyber Risks, Insider Threats Tied to COVID-19
AMA sheds light on strained security resources, cyber risks, and the expanded threat landscape in the healthcare sector brought on by COVID-19, including insider threats and telehealth flaws.
December 02, 2020 - Hospitals, health systems, and other providers should reassess their security posture in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has increased the number of cyber risks within the sector, such as telehealth flaws, insider threats, and the rise of targeted cyberattacks, according to the American Medical Association.
AMA released insights on the technology considerations these healthcare organizations should consider as the year draws to a close. Laura Hoffman, AMA assistant director of federal affairs, recently shed light on some of the biggest issues facing the sector during an AMA update on COVID-19.
As noted by a range of federal agencies and security researchers, the pandemic has burdened provider organizations, not only with patient care, but with the number of targeted cyberattacks and the expanded threat landscape brought on by telehealth and remote work.
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Hackers taking aim at crucial COVID-19 vaccine 'cold chain,' says IBM
A worldwide spear phishing effort, with bad actors impersonating biomedical researchers and targeting company execs, holds "potential hallmarks of nation-state tradecraft," according to a new security report from IBM Security X-Force.
By Mike Miliard
December 03, 2020 01:52 PM
A "global phishing campaign" is underway, targeting companies involved with the refrigerated supply chain infrastructure needed for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, a new report from IBM X-Force shows.
The report, which has been amplified by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (whose director was ousted by President Trump just weeks ago), says unknown bad cyber actors are launching phishing and spear phishing emails to company executives and other organizations involved in the sub-zero storage and transport – or "cold chain" – needed for distribution of vaccines developed by AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer and others.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/12/03/a-look-at-eprescribing-adoption-in-the-uk-vs-the-us/
A Look at ePrescribing Adoption in the UK vs the US
December 3, 2020
While primary care physicians in the UK have been using e-prescribing technology for quite some time, hospitals in the NHS are still relatively behind, despite having what appears to have relatively mature IT infrastructure otherwise.
That is why the news that the NHS is still rolling out digital prescribing as of this month may come as something of a surprise to U.S. healthcare organizations. The new program, which is doling out the equivalent of roughly $21.3 million in US dollars, is distributing the funds across 16 hospitals across England to foster the adoption of e-prescribing.
This funding is part of a roughly $104 million dollar effort to eliminate paper prescribing in hospitals and introduce digital prescribing across the whole NHS by 2024.
In contrast, Colin Banas, M.D., MSHA, Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst, offered these insights on the US market’s adoption of ePrescribing:
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-to-boost-interoperability-during-a-natural-disaster-covid-19
How to Boost Interoperability During a Natural Disaster, COVID-19
When a natural disaster strikes, interoperability and patient data exchange are essential to maintain patient care.
December 01, 2020 - Through 11 months, 2020 has been a monumental year for all the wrong reasons, including a deadly pandemic and a record-breaking number of natural disasters. COVID-19 continues to spread across the country with no true end in sight, wildfires ripped through the western region, and tropical cyclones ran through the Gulf Coast.
When a natural disaster or a pandemic occurs, it is typical for the impacted area to set up pop-up hospitals for volunteer clinicians to help when hospitals are overcrowded.
With individuals arriving at these pop-up hospitals from neighboring cities or states, interoperability is crucial, but it is also tricky to attain.
Developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) in 2014, The Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies (PULSE) platform provides secure health data exchange during an emergency. The platform can integrate directly through the eHealth Exchange.
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CMS Unveils New Telehealth Program to Treat Acute Care Patients at Home
The Acute Hospital Care at Home program would allow participating hospitals to qualify for Medicare waivers to treat patients at home via telehealth, reducing the strain on EDs and in-patient services.
November 25, 2020 - Six health systems across the country are expanding their telehealth platform to treat patients at home under a new program launched by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The Acute Hospital Care at Home program will give participating hospitals the ability to reduce inpatient volume by treating certain acute care patients at home through a telehealth platform that allows for daily check-ins and monitoring. The program builds off of CMS’ Hospitals Without Walls program, which was launched in March 2020 to expand connected health programs to the home during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re at a new level of crisis response with COVID-19 and CMS is leveraging the latest innovations and technology to help health care systems that are facing significant challenges to increase their capacity to make sure patients get the care they need,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a press release. “With new areas across the country experiencing significant challenges to the capacity of their health care systems, our job is to make sure that CMS regulations are not standing in the way of patient care for COVID-19 and beyond.”
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/healthcare-artificial-intelligence-requires-data-access-standards
Healthcare Artificial Intelligence Requires Data Access, Standards
To ensure the successful use of healthcare artificial intelligence, leaders will need to expand data access and develop industry standards.
By Jessica Kent
December 01, 2020 - Data access and industry standards may help leaders eliminate potential bias in healthcare artificial intelligence tools, as well as improve implementation of the technology, according to a report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
GAO noted that artificial intelligence has many possible uses in healthcare, in both the clinical and administrative areas of the industry.
“Developers have demonstrated AI tools in a number of clinical applications, such as supporting clinical decision-making. These tools are at varying stages of maturity and adoption, but with the exception of population health management tools, many have not achieved widespread use,” the report stated.
“Use of AI tools for administrative applications could also affect patient care, including by reducing provider burden, and are also at varying stages of maturity and adoption, ranging from emerging to widespread.”
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https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/30/deepmind-protein-folding-artificial-intelligence/
DeepMind’s protein-folding AI stuns with a solution to one of biology’s biggest challenges
By Casey Ross
November 30, 2020
At the start of a biennial contest to predict the structure of proteins, the expectations for Google’s artificial intelligence unit DeepMind couldn’t have been higher. Think Mike Tyson in the mid-1980s: Everyone was expecting a knockout.
The results of the contest, known as CASP, came out Monday — and DeepMind didn’t disappoint, stunning the field by essentially solving one of biology’s most enduring challenges: quickly and accurately predicting the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence. The discovery stands to accelerate drug discovery by giving scientists more precise information about how proteins function within cells, allowing them to better target those proteins to counteract the mechanisms underlying disease.
Even John Moult, a computational biologist at the University of Maryland who co-founded the contest in 1994, said DeepMind’s performance this year doesn’t leave much left to figure out.
“This is a big deal,” Moult told Nature. “In some sense the problem is solved.”
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Industry Voices—Pandemic realities have accelerated the growth of promising new telehealth models
Dec 2, 2020 8:55am
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the pressures and prerogatives of a global pandemic can have a profound effect on lives and livelihoods everywhere.
In healthcare, where new technologies were already introducing new models and modalities of care, we are seeing some of those COVID-19-driven priorities play out in real time. The desire to deliver safe, socially distanced medical care and consultations to a large number of patients has dramatically accelerated the telehealth trend.
Even in a pre-pandemic world, telehealth was on the rise. Growing numbers of healthcare professionals and institutions were warming to the appealing efficiency and effectiveness of telemedicine appointments. But today, telemedicine has quickly taken on new prominence and prevalence, with both patients and providers embracing telehealth options as the new standard.
Even more intriguing is the fact that telehealth is proving to be more than just an emergent necessity: Data recently released by Escalent reveal 82% of patients who have already used telehealth expect to use it again in the future.
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The future holds more and bigger data - and demands better ways of managing it
At the HIMSS Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Digital Summit, experts said effective data governance requires visibility and clear ownership.
By Kat Jercich
December 01, 2020 12:35 PM
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have huge potential as digital health continues to evolve. But experts speaking at this week's HIMSS Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Digital Summit pointed out that AI and ML are built on a bedrock of data – and managing that data is a major endeavor, in and of itself.
"It's a very exciting time," said Jonathan Weiner, founding codirector of the Johns Hopkins Center for Population Health IT, during a leadership panel on Tuesday. "We've never had more data."
At the same time, "we can't lose sight of what we're here about. We're here to improve a person's health, a community's health," he said.
While AI and ML will be central to that goal, he said, "they become sort of a label for something much bigger, and that is the use, appropriately, of data of all types: the curation of the data, the collection of the data."
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Say “Hey!” to Project US@ – a Unified Specification for Address in Health Care
Steven Posnack | December 1, 2020
Standards come about for many reasons. They make things more efficient, cost effective, and safer to name a few. Often you’ll hear witty banter in the standards community (I know…right!?) about whether something is “fit for purpose.” This is also accompanied by the question, “what’s your use case?”
Among the outliers and edge cases there are some things on which we really do need to agree across the health care ecosystem and implement consistently. How we represent a patient’s address is one of them. In particular, as mundane as address may seem it is often one of the key elements used for the purposes of patient matching and linking records, though other data like email and cell phone number are gaining in their use.
Today, as part of ONC’s API Year in Review virtual event, I announced that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in collaboration with Health Level 7 (HL7), the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), and X12 (along with the other standards development organizations (SDOs) and members of the Health Standards Collaborative (HSC)) have agreed to develop a unified specification for address in health care. We call our new initiative Project US@ and it will formally launch at the start of 2021. The project’s goal is to issue a unified, cross-SDO, health care industry-wide specification for representing address within the year.
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https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/02/the-dawn-of-digital-medicine
The dawn of digital medicine
The pandemic is ushering in the next trillion-dollar industry
Dec 2nd 2020
NEW YORK
IN JANUARY Stephen Klasko, chief executive of Jefferson Health, which runs hospitals in Philadelphia, chatted to a bank boss. The financier told him that 20 years ago health care and banking were the only industries yet to embrace the consumer and digital revolution. “Now”, Mr Klasko recalls him adding, “you are alone.”
The banker had a point. The McKinsey Global Institute, the in-house think-tank of the eponymous consultancy, reckons that when it comes to digitisation, health care has lagged behind not just banking but travel, retail, carmaking and even packaged goods. Some 70% of American hospitals still fax and post patient records. The CEO of a big hospital in Madrid reports virtually no electronic record-sharing across Spain’s regions when the first wave of covid-19 washed over the country this spring.
By exposing such digital deficiencies, the pandemic is at last spurring change. Confronted with shutdowns and chaos, doctors have embraced digital communication and analytics of the sort that has for years been common in other industries. Patients are growing more comfortable with remote and computer-assisted diagnosis and treatment. And enterprising firms, from health-app startups and hospitals to insurers, pharmacies and tech giants such as Amazon, Apple and Google, are scrambling to provide such services.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/best-practices-for-patient-portal-use-covid-19-test-results
Best Practices for Patient Portal Use, COVID-19 Test Results
Healthcare organizations need to make patient portal use simple and easy as more patients utilize the technology to access COVID-19 test results.
By Sara Heath
November 30, 2020 - As healthcare organizations, retail clinics, and urgent care centers continue to support coronavirus testing efforts, they are overwhelmingly leaning on the patient portal to issue COVID-19 test results.
This trend is putting pressure on organizations and technology companies alike to ensure patients can access the patient portal, it is usable, and patients can make sense of the lab information they view on the portal.
Fortunately, many of the best practices for issuing COVID-19 lab results via the patient portal are the same as posting results from any other type of lab testing.
Healthcare organizations offering widespread patient portal access have had some time to test out the best methods using the patient portal for lab notifications, and can apply those lessons learned as more patients use the tool to learn their COVID-19 status.
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UVM Health Brings EHR Back Online, One Month After Ransomware Attack
The latest ransomware update shows multiple health providers are continuing to operate under EHR downtime procedures following attacks; UVM Health Network restored EHR access.
November 25, 2020 - The University of Vermont Health Network restored access to its Epic EHR, following a month of downtime procedures brought on by a massive ransomware attack across its care network.
A November 24 update reports access has been restored to its electronic medical record system at the UVM Medical Center inpatient and ambulatory sites, as well as the ambulatory clinics at Central Vermont Medical Center, Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital, and Porter Medical Center.
“Bringing Epic back online means our staff will no longer need to manually log patient information, and medications, treatment, and clinical orders can be recorded electronically once again,” officials said in the update.
“This is a significant step forward and will improve our operations, however, much work remains ahead and our teams continue to work around the clock towards full restoration as quickly and safely as possible.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/patients-need-further-knowledge-on-apis-mobile-apps
Patients Need Further Knowledge on APIs, Mobile Apps
Developers need to focus on interoperability, increased detail, accuracy, and timeliness when developing APIs and mobile applications.
November 30, 2020 - Stakeholders reported consumers have limited knowledge of available application programming interfaces (APIs) and mobile phone applications that enable patients to coordinate their care through a third-party app, according to a new Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) report.
ONC facilitated a discussion with health IT stakeholders about their respective costumers’ experiences and the future of patient-facing APIs and applications.
Although EHR adoption is becoming more widespread throughout the healthcare industry, interoperability and patient data sharing are still struggles for providers.
As a result, the ONC final rule takes a hard stance on information blocking. It also calls on medical providers and device developers to promote patient data access using third-party apps and APIs.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/big-data-analytics-may-lead-to-more-precise-cancer-treatments
Big Data Analytics May Lead to More Precise Cancer Treatments
Healthcare leaders are working to discover accurate, targeted cancer treatments using big data analytics tools.
By Jessica Kent
November 30, 2020 - As big data analytics technologies continue to move from research labs to clinical settings, organizations are increasingly leveraging these tools to design more comprehensive cancer treatments.
Across the US, cancer is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases. The National Cancer Institute reports that the rate of new cancer cases is 442.4 per 100,000 men and women per year, and approximately 39.5 percent of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetimes.
In addition to being pervasive, cancer is also incredibly complex. Treating patients with cancer requires providers to consider an enormous amount of data – often too much for human clinicians to analyze on their own.
To accelerate the development of better cancer treatments, researchers are building big data analytics tools that can quickly draw meaningful insights from cancer data.
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https://hbr.org/2020/11/put-doctors-at-the-center-of-health-care-tech
Put Doctors at the Center of Health Care Tech
November 30, 2020
Summary: With the Covid-19 pandemic, telehealth use has exploded with consequences for clinicians already overburdened by the demands health IT (EHRs in particular) is making. Future telehealth capability must be designed with practitioners’ needs in mind, assuring that the technology improves patient care without contributing further to burnout.
The medical field is in the midst of a major transformation, fueled by a combination of legislation and rapid adaptation. This trend has been most apparent in the rapid expansion of telehealth. A review of 16.7 million medical visits conducted from January to June 2020 revealed a staggering 2,000% increase in telemedicine visits. For some of my patients, this ability to conduct a visit through their computer or smartphone has been life changing. It is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic, despite providing some of the toughest challenges, has also brought out some of the best traits in healthcare organizations: agility, adaptability, and innovativeness.
However, we still do not know the full impact of telehealth. Will it be good for patients? For some, it will mean access to care that would otherwise be impossible because of limited transportation, excessive distance, and other prohibitive costs. But the risks, including potential for missed diagnoses and physical exam findings, remain a concern. Will it be good for providers? For some, it will mean the convenience of not commuting into the office and the peace of mind of working remotely during a pandemic. But a study over a million e-visits revealed that the adoption of telehealth nearly doubles the number of work hours per week, with the bulk of work occurring on nights and weekends, while questions about telehealth’s implications for malpractice claims remain. Of course, the telehealth explosion was born out of extreme necessity. But if necessity is the mother of invention, is all invention good? The answer may depend on how we envision success.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/data-can-be-force-evil-ai-and-machine-learning-experts-say
Data can be a 'force for evil,' AI and machine learning experts say
Biased algorithms are bad for patients – but with more awareness of potential AI disparities, experts say there's reason for optimism.
By Kat Jercich
December 01, 2020 02:33 PM
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing disparities in the healthcare system, including the consequences of bias on racialized or marginalized groups.
Some of the ways racial bias in the healthcare system emerge are more obvious, such as horror stories of Black people being turned away at emergency departments.
Others, experts said during the HIMSS Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Digital Summit this week, are less visible – but can still be incredibly harmful.
"There are other ways this bias manifests structurally that are not as potentially sort of obvious," said Kadija Ferryman, industry assistant professor of ethics and engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, at a panel on Tuesday. "That is through informatics and data."
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/mayo-clinic-cio-says-ai-has-been-key-understanding-covid-19
Mayo Clinic CIO says AI has been key to understanding COVID-19
From genetic sequencing to symptom tracking to vaccine development, machine learning algorithms have been instrumental in helping uncover hidden clues about the novel coronavirus, says Cris Ross.
By Mike Miliard
December 01, 2020 03:02 PM
In his opening keynote Tuesday at the HIMSS Machine Learning & AI for Healthcare Digital Summit, Mayo Clinic CIO Cris Ross enumerated some of the many ways artificial intelligence has been crucial to our evolving understanding of COVID-19.
Way back in March, for instance, researchers were already using an AI algorithm – trained on data from the 2003 SARS outbreak – for "a recurrent neural network to predict numbers of new infections over time," he said. "Even from the beginning of COVID-19, artificial intelligence is one of the tools that scientists have been using to try and respond to this urgent situation."
And just this past month, Boston-based Conference – whose clinical-analytics platform is used by Mayo Clinic – sifted through genetic data from 10,967 samples of novel coronavirus. Along the way, researchers discovered "a snippet of DNA code – a particular one that was distinct from predecessor coronaviruses," said Ross. "The effect of that sequence was it mimics a protein that helps the human body regulate salt and fluid balances.
"That wasn't something that they went looking for," he said. "They simply discovered it in a large dataset. It's since been replicated and used to support other research to discover how genetic mutations and other factors are present in COVID-19 that help, both with the diagnosis of the disease, but also its treatment."
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Artificial Intelligence: The Good, The Bad, and Potential Policies to Guide It
By Mandy Roth | December 01, 2020
A report from GAO and the National Academy of Medicine assesses the AI healthcare landscape and signals regulatory oversight may emerge down the road.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· AI may have the potential to improve treatment, reduce burden on providers, and increase efficiency.
· The technology poses ethical, legal, economic, and social concerns.
· Potential policies could address interdisciplinary collaboration, data access, best practices, and oversight mechanisms.
Once the realm of science fiction, artificial intelligence is making inroads into many aspects of healthcare, with one recent report from UnivDatos predicting the technology will attain a market value of $26.6 billion by 2025. Some may fear AI has entered a Wild West phase, unfettered by proper policies and oversight.
A report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), in concert with the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), signals that the government and healthcare professionals are taking a closer look at the AI phenomenon, and that regulatory oversight may emerge down the road.
Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Benefits and Challenges of Technologies to Augment Patient Care, a 106-page report to "congressional requesters," addresses the promise of AI in healthcare, as well as the need to exercise caution.
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https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/diagnoss-launches-ai-assistant-to-reduce-medical-coding-errors
Diagnoss launches AI assistant to reduce medical coding errors
Nov 30, 2020 10:21am
Startup Diagnoss has developed an artificial intelligence-based coding assistant to help automate the painstaking process of medical coding and billing.
The Diagnoss AI medical coding engine acts as a “sidebar” to electronic health records (EHRs) and uses machine learning to improve a clinician’s accuracy. The tool provides real-time feedback to medical practices during the administrative process and helps to reduce coding errors on claims.
Abboud Chaballout, founder and CEO of Berkeley, California-based Diagnoss, compares the AI tool to an assistant whispering in a doctor’s ear.
The AI tool works similarly to the Grammarly AI grammar-checking tool. It uses natural language processing to evaluate doctors’ notes while they are being typed or when they are uploaded to an EHR. It then suggests to the user the correct codes to use, according to the company.
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Google Cloud intros new program to help with 21st Century Cures API regs
Its Healthcare Interoperability Readiness Program aims to help healthcare organizations understand and prep for the new rules, assess their own interoperability maturity and build new API-based exchange capabilities.
By Mike Miliard
November 30, 2020 03:45 PM
Healthcare organizations got a six-month extension in October, but the compliance date for the information blocking provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act will be here sooner than many think – and the requirements around API-centric data exchange architecture will follow soon after.
The work required to build out an infrastructure toward that API ecosystem by 2022 will be substantial. So Google Cloud today launched its new Healthcare Interoperability Readiness Program to help health systems manage the transition.
"As we approach rolling implementation deadlines, healthcare organizations are wrestling with how to liberate data from siloed systems – not only to give patients more granular control of their data, but also to improve outcomes by giving doctors a more complete view into their patients’ conditions," said Aashima Gupta, Google Cloud's global director, healthcare strategy and solutions, and Amit Zavery, VP of its business application platform, in a blog post.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/not-all-ehr-use-measures-are-created-equally-study-finds
Not all EHR use measures are created equally, study finds
A recent JAMIA study found that Epic, Cerner and Allscripts make EHR use measures available in a platform to clients – but athenahealth, eClinicalWorks and NextGen have not.
By Kat Jercich
November 30, 2020 09:46 AM
A paper published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that vendors vary in their development maturity of outpatient EHR use measures.
Although Epic, Cerner and Allscripts have developed EHR use measures in client-available platforms, researchers found that athenahealth's are still in development, and eClinicalWorks and NextGen have no existing EHR use measures.
Furthermore, the researchers found that the vendor-provided EHR use measures often differ from previously proposed measures of EHR use.
WHY IT MATTERS
Without standardized measures of EHR use across vendors and systems, it will remain difficult to study the impact of EHRs on burnout, the researchers contend.
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Leveraging The Immense Potential Of Patient Complaint Data
November 30, 2020
As anyone who reads this site would know, it’s become steadily more important for providers to capture and use patient-directed data.
Increasingly, hospitals and clinics live or die on how patients respond to and engage with their care. This extends far beyond whether patients had a nice warm fuzzy feeling after their medical visit, out into the real world where their complaints are perhaps even more important than the positive grades they award to providers.
I’ve come to believe that this complaint data – particularly complaints made and tackled while patients are still undergoing care – could be the next leap forward in understanding patient experiences. (Full disclosure: That’s why I’m building a start-up, still in its underground stages, to do just that.)
As I see it, this data could offer a new and powerful source of insight on how patients travel through their care. It could also, when correlated with other forms of patient care measurement, give providers a far better understanding of where some of their key processes fail.
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https://histalk2.com/2020/11/28/weekender-11-27-20/
Weekly News Recap
- Telemedicine kiosk vendor HealthSpot winds down its five-year bankruptcy with just $47,000 left to pay creditors after having raised $47 million.
- The University of Vermont Health Network restores full access to Epic at all sites after a month of malware-caused downtime.
- Germany-based health IT company CompuGroup Medical announces its intention to acquire ambulatory-focused health IT vendor EMDs for $240 million.
- Phone-connected ultrasound transducer manufacturer Butterfly IQ will go public on the NYSE via a SPAC merger that values the company at $1.5 billion.
- Cloudbreak Health and UpHealth Holdings use a SPAC merger to create a telemedicine company that is valued at $1.35 billion.
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Enjoy!
David.
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