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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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/12/how-the-unthinkable-led-to-the-unimaginable/
How the unthinkable led to the unimaginable
When coronavirus arrived in the UK, The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust advanced its IT by “four years in four months” to support clinicians and patients. Chief information officer (CIO) Adam Thomas told a Digital Health webinar what it learned along the way.
Hanna Crouch – 10 December, 2020
The unthinkable happened in March, when we woke up to the reality of Covid-19. None of us should ever lose sight of the fact that there is an enormous, human cost to this disease that continues to this day.
But the unimaginable happened because in preparing to confront the consequences of the pandemic, we realised that a lot of things that had seemed like big issues were no longer major problems.
Take virtual access to outpatient clinics, for instance. About six months before Covid arrived, I was in a meeting about whether we could do this and still deliver good care. It was an aspiration in the NHS Long-Term plan, but in that meeting it felt like it was a long way off.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/12/wachter-believes-world-will-enter-a-golden-era-of-health-it/
Wachter believes world will enter ‘a golden era’ of health IT
A US ‘digital doctor’ has said he believes the world is about to enter ‘a golden era’ of health IT which will lead to better care for patients.
Hanna Crouch – 9 December, 2020
Speaking at the openEHR 2020 digital event on November 24, Robert Wachter, a professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco, gave his view on ‘healthcare’s digital revolution’.
Wachter is a known figure in NHS IT after he led a 2016 review into how the health service can harness the power of technology in order to improve care.
The author gave a keynote which included looking at what lies ahead in terms of healthcare IT.
“I think we are going to enter a golden era where healthcare is going to be better, safer and less expensive and more satisfying, ultimately for not only patients, but clinicians as well,” Wachter said.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/how-real-world-data-can-help-eliminate-cancer-care-disparities
How Real-World Data Can Help Eliminate Cancer Care Disparities
A new initiative directed by experts from academic, pharmaceutical, and healthcare organizations will leverage real-world data to reduce cancer care disparities.
By Jessica Kent
December 08, 2020 - While the healthcare industry has made significant strides in leveraging data and technology to treat cancer, gaps in treatments and outcomes continue to persist. Cancer care disparities still pervade the oncology sector, showing that industry improvements don’t extend to all population groups.
According to an October 2019 report from the American Cancer Society, the overall cancer death rate declined by 27 percent between 1991 and 2016. However, during that time socioeconomic disparities in cancer mortality only grew larger.
“Over time, we've seen that cancer mortality rates are declining across the board. But the gap between racial and ethnic minorities – in particular, people who identify as Black or African American – and White Americans continues to be large. We aren't making the progress that we would like to see,” Erica Warner, ScD, MPH, assistant professor, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, told HealthITAnalytics.
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Phishing emails: More than 25% of American workers fall for them
by in on December 9, 2020, 9:28 AM PST
A new global report on phishing attempts shows how the workforce has responded to security threats since COVID-19, and the new vulnerabilities that have resulted from the remote work landscape.
Since arrived on the scene in the spring of 2020—a global health crisis that has upended the way we think of life and work—employers have been forced to reckon with the idea of a "normal" workplace, and, whenever possible, have moved work to the digital realm.
Terranova Security's new "2020 Gone Tournament," part of its , looks at the impact of phishing attacks on the remote workforce, citing an increase in phishing simulation clicks, as well as compromised data. Because of so many new home office environments, new ways of collaborating, and rapidly evolving guidelines for security, threats like phishing campaigns, malicious websites, and fake apps have proliferated during the early days of the virus. In fact, in the three months of 2020, according to the report, remote workers were hit with 30,000 more "suspicious messages," and a 667% increase in -related spear phishing.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/cerner-boosts-digital-health-monitoring-solutions-ordering-in-ehr
Cerner Boosts Digital Health, Monitoring Solutions Ordering in EHR
Cerner is building off its existing partnership with a digital health vendor to help its clients choose, manage, and deploy digital ordering and monitoring tools and applications.
December 10, 2020 - Cerner Corporation is making it easier for clinicians to prescribe digital health technologies to patients within the EHR, the EHR vendor has announced.
The new capabilities will provide streamlined digital ordering and monitoring solutions, aiming to help health systems choose, manage, and deploy tools and applications while increasing remote monitoring and patient engagement.
These added capabilities stem from Cerner and Xealth’s August collaboration, which intended to boost patient care experience and enable patients to be active treatment participants throughout the healthcare process. Furthermore, the partnership intended to help clinicians integrate, prescribe, and monitor EHR-integrated tools for patients into a single workflow.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/10/google-search-panels-tackle-misinformation-about-covid-vaccines.html
Google launches knowledge panels in search results to tackle misinformation about Covid vaccines
Published Thu, Dec 10 20208:09 AM EST
Key Points
- Google has launched new knowledge panels to show people accurate information about coronavirus vaccines.
- The feature is only available in the U.K. but will be rolled out to other countries once they’ve begun approving vaccines.
- Tackling misinformation about the vaccines is going to be mammoth task for tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
LONDON — Google on Thursday rolled out new information panels in search results aimed at countering false claims about the coronavirus vaccines.
The internet giant said in a blog post that the feature would launch first in the U.K., which has begun vaccinating people with the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
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NDG announces new principle on Caldicott Guardians
The National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care (NDG) has recently published the revised outcomes from a public consultation.
December 11, 2020 09:01 AM
Earlier this week, Dame Fiona Caldicott that she ran to seek views on her intention to revise the existing seven Caldicott Principles.
The consultation response resulted in an expanded and revised set of , as well as a commitment to issue guidance about Caldicott Guardians in 2021.
WHY IT MATTERS
First introduced in 1997, the Caldicott Principles are guidelines applied across the field of health and social care information governance to ensure that people's data is kept safe and used ethically.
Commissioned by the Chief Medical Officer of England, the focus of the report was to review how patient information is used in the NHS.
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'Smarter AI can help fight bias in healthcare'
A panel of global experts showcased how AI can be developed and used to tackle inequities in health during the recent meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
December 11, 2020 03:06 AM
Leading researchers discussed which requirements AI algorithms must meet to fight bias in healthcare during the 'Artificial Intelligence and Implications for Health Equity: Will AI Improve Equity or Increase Disparities?' session which was held on 1 December.
The speakers were: Ziad Obermeyer, associate professor of health policy and management at the Berkeley School of Public Health, CA; Luke Oakden-Rayner, director of medical imaging research at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Australia; Constance Lehman, professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, director of breast imaging, and co-director of the Avon Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital; and Regina Barzilay, professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science and member of the Computer Science and AI Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The discussion was moderated by Judy Wawira Gichoya, assistant professor in the Department of Radiology at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta.
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New Healthcare Truths for 2021
December 11, 2020
The following is a guest article by Mike Noshay, MSE, Founder and Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at .
As 2020 comes to a close, healthcare industry leaders are looking ahead to 2021 with excitement and anticipation. This year has brought a number of challenges and opportunities for innovation, but how will they shape the future of healthcare data? I’ve put together a list of 12 new truths for 2021 – bold predictions about healthcare data that may shape the industry for years to come. In addition to predictions about COVID-19 and the future of telehealth, I dive into more complex healthcare challenges that payers and providers should consider as they round the corner into the next year.
1. The number of Americans willing to be vaccinated against COVID will be less than 50%.
In the past few weeks, two frontrunners have emerged in the race to a COVID-19 vaccine. While both have promised to protect upwards of 90% of those properly vaccinated, many are still skeptical about the prospect of a new vaccine and list negative vaccine reactions as their main barrier toward accepting a future vaccine.
It would serve payers and providers well to begin speaking about the benefits and importance of the vaccine to dispel any misconceptions prior to the vaccine’s wide distribution. Using mediums that will reach both members and providers can help spread education about vaccine candidates and can help improve adoption when the vaccine is available.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/the-10-biggest-healthcare-data-breaches-of-2020
The 10 Biggest Healthcare Data Breaches of 2020
Much like in 2019, the biggest healthcare data breach of 2020 was caused by a third-party vendor, while ransomware and other risks dominated the threat landscape.
December 10, 2020 - Cybersecurity proved to be a massive challenge for many in the healthcare sector in 2020 as providers worked to combat the COVID-19 crisis, while simultaneously being pummeled with targeted cyberattacks. These led to some of the biggest healthcare data breaches seen in recent years.
While the first half of the year saw a reduction in the number of reported incidents, active threats continued to plague the sector, from ransomware to insiders, which came to a head in September with a steady onslaught of ransomware attacks.
As previously noted to HealthITSecurity.com, the fewer number of reported incidents in the sector during the first half of the year did not, in any sense, mean hackers were forgoing targeted attacks.
Instead, threat actors worked to take advantage of the national crisis and expanded remote work, developing a host of COVID-19 fraud schemes, phishing attacks, and related cyber threats designed to prey on natural fears.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/epic-systems-hits-record-221m-patient-data-exchanges-in-october
Epic Systems Hits Record 221M Patient Data Exchanges in October
Following another COVID-19 surge in October, Epic Systems noted a 40 percent increase in patient data exchanges from October 2019.
December 09, 2020 - Epic Systems has announced it facilitated over 221 million patient data exchanges through its Care Everywhere platform in October, a roughly 40 percent increase from the same time last year.
As the country is currently in the midst of what some experts call the second wave of COVID-19, patient data exchange continues to be vital in healthcare. This is a record number of exchanges for the EHR vendor, Epic said, and that level of performance will be necessary as the industry stares down a likely influx of COVID-19 cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts between 690,000 and 1,700,000 COVID-19 cases will be reported during the week ending on December 26.
These rising numbers will continue to push the limits of provider capacities and create a stressful situation for healthcare workers and patients. Since COVID-19 is sometimes forcing patients to travel to unfamiliar hospitals, interoperability and precise patient data exchange are essential to maintain patient safety.
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https://aws.amazon.com/healthlake/
Amazon HealthLake (Preview)
Store, transform, query, and analyze health data in minutes
Amazon HealthLake is a HIPAA-eligible service that enables healthcare providers, health insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies to store, transform, query, and analyze health data at petabyte scale.
Health data is frequently incomplete and inconsistent, and is often unstructured, with information contained in clinical notes, laboratory reports, insurance claims, medical images, recorded conversations, and time series data (for example, heart ECG or brain EEG traces) across disparate formats and systems. Every health care provider, payer, and life sciences company is trying to solve the problem of structuring the data, because if they do, they can make better patient support decisions, design better clinical trials, and operate more efficiently.
Amazon HealthLake removes the heavy lifting of organizing, indexing, and structuring patient information to provide a complete view of the health of individual patients and entire patient populations in a secure, compliant, and auditable manner. Using the HealthLake APIs, healthcare organizations can easily copy health data in the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) industry standard format from on-premises systems to a secure data lake in the cloud. HealthLake transforms unstructured data using specialized machine learning models, like natural language processing, to automatically extract meaningful medical information from the data and provides powerful query and search capabilities. Organizations can use advanced analytics and ML models, such as Amazon QuickSight and Amazon SageMaker to analyze and understand relationships, identify trends, and make predictions from the newly normalized and structured data. From early detection of disease to population health trends, organizations can use Amazon HealthLake to conduct clinical data analysis powered by machine learning to improve care and reduce costs.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/google-ceo-weighs-ai-ethicists-controversial-departure
Google CEO weighs in on AI ethicist's controversial departure
Sundar Pichai promised to look into the case of Timnit Gebru, a co-lead on Google's ethical AI team, who says she was fired following her involvement with a paper on the risks of natural language processing models.
By Kat Jercich
December 10, 2020 12:07 PM
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai sent an internal memo on Wednesday pledging to further investigate a recent controversy involving the departure of one of the company's top artificial intelligence ethicists, Timnit Gebru.
In early December, Gebru – who had previously collaborated with MIT Media Lab researchers on bias in facial recognition software – posted on Twitter that she had been fired from Google. The company says that it accepted her resignation after she gave them conditions for her continued employment that it could not fulfill.
"I’ve heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru’s departure loud and clear: It seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google," wrote Pichai in the memo, which was obtained by Axios. "I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the responsibility of working to restore your trust.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/uk-hospital-first-use-ai-cancer-treatment-tool
UK hospital first to use AI cancer treatment tool
The pioneering treatment from Project InnerEye, which could relieve the UK’s cancer treatment backlog, is being offered for free at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge, UK.
December 10, 2020 01:21 AM
Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge is set to be the first hospital in the world to use InnerEye, an AI deep-learning tool from Microsoft Research Cambridge that accelerates the treatment of cancer patients. The technology computes hospital data to accurately identify tumours on patient scans, cutting CT processing times and treatment planning by up to 90%.
The toolkit could potentially reduce the waiting time for cancer treatment that has built up over the pandemic without compromising on the quality of care. Microsoft has also made the InnerEye software opensource and freely available in order to democratise care and ensure that as many people as possible can benefit from the tool.
WHY IT MATTERS
When performed manually, a clinical oncologist or specialised technician must segment CT images obtained during a screening individually in a process called contouring. The medical professional outlines what are tumours and what are healthy organs on the scan, a process that can take several hours. The InnerEye toolkit processes these images 13 times faster than when done manually, utilising the hospital’s own data to improve accuracy and presenting the data to be carefully checked by the consultant oncologist.
Up to half of people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life. According to Cancer Research, the pandemic has meant an estimated three million people in the UK have missed out on cancer screenings due to hospital restrictions, creating a severe backlog of patients waiting for treatment. The InnerEye toolkit, which is hosted securely on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, enables clinicians to spend more time with more patients whilst ensuring their treatment plans are tailored to them individually.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/hhs-floats-major-changes-hipaa-privacy-rule
HHS floats major changes to HIPAA Privacy Rule
The new proposed rule would "break down barriers that have stood in the way of commonsense care coordination and value-based arrangements for far too long," says HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
By Mike Miliard
December 10, 2020 03:01 PM
The HHS Office for Civil Rights on Thursday proposed substantial new changes to HIPAA Privacy Rule, with the goal, the agency says, to further value-based reimbursement and improve care coordination by enabling greater patient and family access to health data.
WHY IT MATTERS
The notice of proposed rule-making, drafted as part of HHS' Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care initiative, aims to remove regulations that might impede communication and data exchange between provider organizations and health plans.
The agency says the proposed changes would expand individuals' rights to access their own digital health information, boost information-sharing and case management across the care continuum, and enable greater family and caregiver involvement during emergencies or health crises.
The changes would also offer more flexibilities for disclosures in situations such as opioid overdoses and the COVID-19 public health emergency.
In addition, the hope is that a streamlined new rule would reduce administrative burdens on HIPAA-covered entities while continuing to protect patient privacy.
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Poor Digital Health Experience May Push Patients to Change Docs
The number of patients changing providers because of a poor digital health experience is up 40 percent from 2019, a survey showed.
By Sara Heath
December 08, 2020 - More than a quarter of patients switched medical providers because of a poor digital health experience, according to new data from Forrester collected on behalf of Cedar. These findings underscore the spotlight health IT has gained during the pandemic, and how that technology can make or break the patient experience.
By and large, patient engagement technologies have seen a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, the survey of about 1,500 adult patients showed. With regards to digital patient billing alone, text-based billing increased by 200 percent. Meanwhile, email and patient portal payment options increased by 82 and 34 percent, respectively.
But despite those increases in patient engagement technology use, medical consumers are looking for more from their providers. Thirty-one percent of respondents said they don’t think their medical providers have gone to great enough lengths to improve the patient medical billing process, and about half said they want healthcare to be more seamless.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/data-analytics-tool-helps-design-covid-19-testing-strategies
Data Analytics Tool Helps Design COVID-19 Testing Strategies
The free data analytics tool can help schools and businesses develop effective COVID-19 testing programs.
By Jessica Kent
December 08, 2020 - A data analytics tool shows organizations how different COVID-19 testing strategies and other mitigation methods can help reduce the spread of the virus.
Funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NBIB), the COVID-19 Testing Impact Calculator is a free resource that can help schools, businesses, and other entities pick a COVID-19 testing strategy that best fits their needs.
The Consortia for Improving Medicine with Innovation and Technology (CIMIT) at Massachusetts General Hospital developed the tool in collaboration with researchers at MIT.
The technology models the costs and benefits of COVID-19 testing strategies for individual organizations. Using just a few details about the organizations, the tool can generate customized scenarios for surveillance testing.
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How Healthcare Systems Can Stem the Tide of a Growing Wave of Ransomware Attacks
Sponsored by Sophos
Dec 7, 2020 8:00am
Dan Schiappa, Chief Product Officer, Sophos
It
was easy to overlook in a news cycle increasingly dominated by the election,
but on October 28th, a trio of federal agencies – the FBI, Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
(CISA) – issued a warning
notice of an “imminent and increased cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals
and healthcare providers.”
This wasn’t just a forward-looking alert, either; according to White House
officials, some hospitals had
already been attacked by ransomware at the time of the advisory.
2020 has been a rough year on a lot of fronts, and certainly cyberattacks aimed at hospitals and health systems has been one of those. In September, ransomware struck a German hospital, leading to a delay in patient care and one woman’s death. This ransomware attack is most likely the first form of malware linked to a human fatality. The perpetrator behind that incident was Ryuk, a ransomware gang that has racked up millions in extortion cyberattacks over the last two years, and has increasingly shifted focus to hospital and health systems in 2020.
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Google moves into health research with mobile app, starting with respiratory illnesses like COVID
Dec 9, 2020 10:40am
The new Google Health Studies app provides a platform for researchers to reach a large and diverse population so they can better understand human health, while providing the public with greater opportunities to contribute to medical research. (achinthamb/Shutterstock)
Google is upping its focus on health research with a new mobile app that lets smartphone users participate in virtual health studies.
The tech giant announced Wednesday its new Google Health Studies app with an initial focus on respiratory illnesses, including influenza and COVID-19.
Google also launched a study of respiratory illnesses in partnership with Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital to identify how these types of illnesses evolve in communities and differ across risk factors. The study is open to adults with an Android phone in the U.S., and study participants will use the Google Health Studies app to regularly self-report how they feel, what symptoms they may be experiencing, any preventive measures they’ve taken and additional information such as COVID-19 or influenza test results, according to Google Health.
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Digital health startup Ro expands into home-based care with Workpath acquisition
Dec 9, 2020 12:49pm
Virtual health company Ro is venturing into home-based healthcare market by acquiring software company Workpath.
Richmond, Virginia-based Workpath is a software platform that enables healthcare companies to offer on-demand, in-home care and diagnostic services with a simple application programming interface (API).
The technology can send providers to patients' homes to draw blood instead of sending patients to the doctor's office. Workpath, founded in 2015, developed technology that enables healthcare companies to dispatch phlebotomists and other providers to perform services ranging from blood draws to vaccinations from a patient's home.
The company’s full-service platform includes scheduling and dispatch software, a nationwide network of healthcare professionals, diagnostic processing, and reporting.
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Amazon launches new tool to help healthcare organizations standardize data
Dec 9, 2020 12:49pm
Amazon's cloud division rolled out a new tool to make it easier for healthcare organizations to search and analyze data.
Amazon HealthLake is a HIPAA-eligible service for healthcare and life sciences organizations that aggregates an organization’s complete data across various silos and disparate formats into a centralized American Web Services (AWS) data lake and automatically normalizes this information using machine learning, the tech giant announced Tuesday.
The tool makes it easier for customers to query, perform analytics and run machine learning to derive meaningful value from the newly normalized data, the company said. Organizations such as healthcare systems, pharmaceutical companies, clinical researchers and health insurers can use this service to help spot trends and anomalies in health data so they can make much more precise predictions about the progression of disease, the efficacy of clinical trials and the accuracy of insurance premiums, AWS executives said.
The service identifies each piece of clinical information, tags and indexes events in a timeline view with standardized labels so it can be easily searched, and structures all of the data into the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) industry-standard format for a complete view of the health of individual patients and entire populations, according to Taha Kass-Hout, M.D., director of machine learning and chief medical officer at AWS, while speaking at the company's virtual AWS re:Invent event Tuesday.
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New Data Reveal Which Hospitals Are Dangerously Full. Is Yours?
December 9, 20205:00 AM ET
The federal government on Monday released detailed hospital-level data showing the toll COVID-19 is taking on health care facilities, including how many inpatient and ICU beds are available on a weekly basis.
Using an analysis from the University of Minnesota's COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, NPR has created a tool that allows you to see how your local hospital and your county overall are faring. (Jump to look-up tool.)
It focuses on one important metric — how many beds are filled with COVID-19 patients — and shows this for each hospital and on average for each county.
The ratio of COVID-19 hospitalizations to total beds gives a picture of how much strain a hospital is under. Though there's not a clear threshold, it's concerning when that rate rises above 10%, hospital capacity experts told NPR.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-a-smart-ehr-system-can-boost-health-it-add-real-world-events
How a Smart EHR System Can Boost Health IT, Add Real World Events
A Smart EHR system would alert patients about real world health events that could negatively impact an individual’s health.
December 08, 2020 - A new study published in Informatics in Medicine Unlocked took a stab at some of the more philosophical questions in the health IT space, like what actually defines health and a true Smart EHR System.
A Smart EHR is an EHR system on a regional or national scale that utilizes a Virtual Health Record (VHR) that gives providers patient health information that offers solutions and diagnoses on an individual’s health, Luca Dan Serbanati, the study author, and colleagues said.
The EHR needs to create a holistic view of the patient’s health and reconstruct the patient’s medical history. This type of EHR, called the Smart EHR, could boost patient care by proposing better solutions. The Smart EHR would base these solutions on prior care led by providers.
To clarify, a Smart EHR is not a specific EHR vendor or brand. Instead, it’s a set of EHR design best practices that an individual EHR vendor might adopt to ensure its product best serves clinician users and patients.
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https://journal.ahima.org/requesting-medical-records/
Requesting Medical Records
The Cures Act gives consumers unprecedented control over their health information. It is up to health organizations and HIM leaders to ensure patients wield that power safely and responsibly.
Editor’s Note: In October, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT extended the compliance dates the information blocking final rule. Read more about the extension here.
By Grace Cordovano, PhD, BCPA, and Shahid N. Shah, M.Sc.
Perhaps the most revolutionary implication of the information blocking provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act Final Rule (Cures Act) is that it shifts control of health information from providers and payers to consumers.
Traditional methods for patients to request medical records still exist; HIPAA mandates the consumer’s right to access their medical records, receive copies of them, and request amendments to them.
However, state and institutional policies vary in request processes, fulfillment costs, and the time between when a request is made and honored (up to 30 days per HIPAA, with a one-time 30-day extension).
The Cures Act removes much of the complexity of medical record requests and gives patients unprecedented power to select a third-party app to securely access, store, and share their own health information.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/telehealth-one-size-wont-fit-all
With telehealth, one size won't fit all
Mature health systems recognize the importance of context and design virtual care programs accordingly: Telehealth looks different for millennials and retirees, rural and urban patients and population groups with fundamentally different healthcare needs.
December 09, 2020 02:55 PM
The pandemic has given us, among other things, a new buzzword: the "next normal." As health systems adjusted to dramatic increases in virtual visits, they experienced a steep learning curve in a very short time. Some of this shift to virtual care will be permanent. A significant percentage of ambulatory care will never return to a clinic.
My firm's work with health systems on their digital health and digital transformation programs suggests that while telehealth technologies have matured rapidly in the wake of the pandemic, the implementation of virtual care programs has been a struggle.
It's not just caregivers and clinicians who have had to master the new modality for delivering care; healthcare consumers and their extended network of family and friends now have to adapt to telehealth as a new normal in accessing and receiving care.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/3-types-of-ehr-training-key-for-mitigating-clinician-burden-burnout
3 Types of EHR Training Key for Mitigating Clinician Burden
EHR training is one of the most crucial practices that a health system can do when implementing a new EHR system
December 03, 2020 - Quality EHR training is essential to provider users, especially those new to the technology. An effective EHR training program can reduce the likelihood of clinician burden and boost satisfaction.
According to a KLAS survey, sufficient EHR training may be the key to improving EHR user satisfaction rates.
“We as an industry have an opportunity to improve EHR adoption by investing in EHR learning and personalization support for caregivers,” wrote researchers in the study.
“If health care organizations offered higher-quality educational opportunities for their care providers — and if providers were expected to develop greater mastery of EHR functionality — many of the current EHR challenges would be ameliorated,” researchers stated.
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December 7, 2020
AHA News: For Many People, Surviving COVID-19 Doesn't Mean Getting Better
MONDAY, Dec. 7, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Alexis Crumbley flew home from London with her family in March, just as the coronavirus crisis was beginning, before masks and other precautions were widespread. She's pretty much been sick ever since.
"I figured, I've got COVID but I'll be OK," Crumbley said. "I'm young and healthy and physically fit, and I don't have any pre-existing conditions."
Instead, the 44-year-old former policy analyst who lives in Austin, Texas, is still weak and in pain, with ailments doctors are still trying to treat. She's worried about the future.
"I've never had the trajectory that I've felt better," she said. "That's so missing in the conversation about COVID. You hear about people who have no symptoms or have them for a week or two, and then you jump to people who are on ventilators or dying. There's no talk of the people in between."
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How an AI Assistant is Advancing EHR Documentation, Decreasing Burden
Providence is implementing an artificial intelligence EHR documentation solution to mitigate clinician burden and enhance EHR documentation.
December 07, 2020 - Clinicians at Providence, one of the country’s most extensive health systems, are feeling the clinical impact of COVID-19 and clinician burnout is becoming widespread across its 51 hospitals and 1,085 physician clinics.
Once COVID-19 hit, more and more patients were coming to the system’s clinics and hospitals, forcing clinicians to spend more time in front of the EHR.
EHR documentation, when clinicians record clinical information as provider notes in real-time during an encounter, help providers share patient information among health providers. However, the practice has its drawbacks.
“EHR documentation is probably the single greatest burnout issue for our clinicians,” BJ Moore, CIO and executive vice president of Providence, said in an interview with EHRIntelligence. “We've done everything, including hire scribes to help with that process. It's something doctors just worked through and that, unfortunately, adds to their burnout.”
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Endpoint security is vital, even as 'the definition of endpoint itself has changed'
The COVID-19 telehealth boom has expanded health systems' perimeters – inside and outside the network – and in the process it's made them more vulnerable to breaches.
By Kat Jercich
December 08, 2020 03:42 PM
As health systems become increasingly connected, the number of potential vulnerabilities also arise in the form of endpoints.
Experts at the HIMSS Healthcare Security Forum this week outlined the security hygiene practices necessary to safeguard a system's endpoint perimeter – including grouping assets, leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence, and implementing robust threat responses when necessary.
"Even before COVID-19, we started seeing a lot more endpoint devices in healthcare, specifically around wearable medical technology, handheld devices [and] medical apps on cell phones and iPads," said Heather Roszkowski, assistant vice president of cyber defense and enterprise chief information security officer for Augusta University, during a HIMSS Security Basics segment available on demand.
"But with COVID-19, we saw an immediate expansion with a lot of that," Roszkowski said. "We had requests coming in left and right for new technologies, especially around telemedicine."
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Amazon Web Services to launch HIPAA-eligible data management service
Healthcare organizations can use Amazon HealthLake to aggregate information into a centralized, searchable lake and normalize it using machine learning and FHIR.
By Kat Jercich
December 08, 2020 03:27 PM
Amazon Web Services announced on Tuesday the launch of HealthLake, a cloud storage and analysis service available to healthcare and life sciences organizations.
According to the company, the service allows organizations to store, tag, index, standardize, query and apply machine learning to analyze data in the cloud, as well as automatically structuring information into HL7's FHIR standard.
"There has been an explosion of digitized health data in recent years with the advent of electronic medical records, but organizations are telling us that unlocking the value from this information using technology like machine learning is still challenging and riddled with barriers," said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon Machine Learning for AWS, in a statement.
"With Amazon HealthLake, healthcare organizations can reduce the time it takes to transform health data in the cloud from weeks to minutes so that it can be analyzed securely, even at petabyte scale," Sivasubramanian added.
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A Deeper Look at the Ryuk Ransomware Threat Targeted at Healthcare
December 8, 2020
A little while back the government put out a cybersecurity advisory about an “imminent cybercrime threat” that was targeting hospitals using Ryuk ransomware. To dive deeper into this threat, what this announcement means for healthcare, and what healthcare organizations can do to be prepared for this and other threats we sat down with Dan L. Dodson, CEO, Fortified Health Security.
What’s your reaction to the healthcare specific Ryuk ransomware threat announcement?
The joint cybersecurity advisory issued recently on the threat of an imminent ransomware attack is a call to arms for healthcare. The escalation of the alert was driven by two different factors. The first being credible evidence gathered by CISA, the FBI and HHS that there was in fact an increased threat to healthcare. This included lists with names of hospitals being targeted. The second, which isn’t as widely discussed, is that this ransomware exploit has been around for several years. What is unique, is that it has greatly evolved over time, so that the duration from initial entry to impact has been shortened to less than five hours. It’s really the combination of those two things that we believe were catalysts for the increased threat announcement. Healthcare organizations must take this threat seriously. It has become quicker and more difficult to catch given the short duration – especially if an organization isn’t executing basic security fundamentals.
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Blackstone scoops up Ancestry
Dec 7, 2020 12:00pm
Deal size: $4.7 billion
Announced: Aug. 5
Closed: TBD
Why it matters: Private equity firm Blackstone announced in August it was acquiring a majority stake in direct-to-consumer genetics company Ancestry from its former equity holders for $4.7 billion.
According to Blackstone, Ancestry has $1 billion in annual revenue and over 3 million paying customers from more than 30 countries. The company got its start in genealogy and has expanded into DNA testing and, more recently, advanced genetic health screening, in a bid to compete with 23andMe.
The deal with Blackstone could help Ancestry as it looks to strengthen its position in the health space and expand into international markets.
“Looking ahead, in collaboration with Blackstone, we will continue to leverage our unique content, powerhouse consumer brand and technology platform to expand our global Family History business while bringing to life our long-term vision of personalized preventive health,” said Margo Georgiadis, president and chief executive officer of Ancestry, in a statement.
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https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20201202.453916/full/
The Risks Of Moving Health Care Delivery To The Internet
December 4, 2020 10.1377/hblog20201202.453916
Of the numerous disruptions to health care delivery forced upon us by COVID-19, the push toward virtual care and remote work may be the longest lasting. But this new era is not without challenges. Downtime for the virtual meeting company “Zoom” on August 24—which, prior to COVID-19, would be a non-event for health care organizations—led to canceled appointments, delayed visits, and countless frustrations at our institution and others. In this piece, we describe the risks and advantages of moving health care delivery to the internet and a path forward for ensuring safe and effective clinical care delivery.
That the US health care system is dependent on technology is not a secret—almost 90 percent of US physicians use an electronic health record (EHR), fueled in part by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Historically, however, most technology management has been internal. EHRs ran within a hospital data center, often on site. Operational software—used both for productivity (for example, email) and to support human resources and finance—were also usually internally managed. Health care organizations invested in the hardware and personnel to manage this software but could administer with few external dependencies beyond the walls of the hospital.
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As hospitals cope with a COVID-19 surge, cyber threats loom
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — By late morning on Oct. 28, staff at the University of Vermont Medical Center noticed the hospital’s phone system wasn’t working.
Then the internet went down, and the Burlington-based center’s technical infrastructure with it. Employees lost access to databases, digital health records, scheduling systems and other online tools they rely on for patient care.
Administrators scrambled to keep the hospital operational — cancelling non-urgent appointments, reverting to pen-and-paper record keeping and rerouting some critical care patients to nearby hospitals.
In its main laboratory, which runs about 8,000 tests a day, employees printed or hand-wrote results and carried them across facilities to specialists. Outdated, internet-free technologies experienced a revival.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/emea/lessons-2020-digital-transformation-and-2021-predictions
Lessons from 2020 in digital transformation and 2021 predictions
We start 2021 with hope and well-founded optimism, despite the ravages of the pandemic, reflects Dr Charles Alessi, chief clinical officer at HIMSS.
December 07, 2020 02:16 AM
2020 was a year like no other and the first signs of impending trouble were in December 2019 which is when the first reports of a new pandemic emanating in Wuhan, China, became public. The rest is history and indelibly etched in every human on earth as we have witnessed a year of disruption and change to a degree which was unimaginable only a few months previously.
The SARS2-COV19 virus which caused the COVID-19 pandemic has been described as a child of its age, where, because of its infectivity and asymptomatic transmission was ideally suited to take full advantage of the interconnected 21st-century global village. It will also be remembered as the pandemic which largely outpaced the ability of nations’ health and care systems to contain and manage it.
As we approach 2021, there is some hope at last. Vaccine announcements have been very positive and there is at last a ray of hope that we can start to rebuild and reconnect with colleagues and friends all over the world after months of lockdown.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/nhsx-identifies-international-approach-ai-healthcare
NHSX identifies international approach to AI for healthcare
The report was commissioned in light of AI-driven technology in healthcare 'outpacing' the creation of policy frameworks.
By Sara Mageit
December 07, 2020 07:07 AM
The NHS AI Lab was commissioned by the Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) to identify gaps and opportunities for international governance towards ensuring AI-driven technologies are regulated and used for maximal benefit in health systems.
The resulting white paper is called AI for healthcare: Creating an international approach together.
The report builds on policy reviews, interviews with Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) member countries and a focus group with experts in digital health to aggregate a set of policy recommendations on how to support the use of AI-driven technologies in healthcare.
WHY IT MATTERS
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the rapid increase of AI data-driven technologies at both national and international levels.
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Telehealth, vaccines will be big cybersecurity challenges in 2021, experts predict
The latest security industry forecast from Experian warns that bad actors will continue to take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis next year.
By Kat Jercich
December 07, 2020 12:46 PM
A new report predicts that cybercriminals will use strategies honed in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis to wreak havoc in 2021.
The report, released this week from consumer credit reporting company Experian, notes that the pivot to new technologies necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic will continue to leave businesses, including those in the healthcare industry, vulnerable to data breaches.
"Healthcare organizations are evolving for the better, offering patients easier and faster ways to conduct business, but it will come at a price if entities don’t pay attention to cybersecurity," said Experian researchers in the report.
"Hospitals and clinics must continue to be vigilant in keeping their cybersecurity programs up-to-date and under regular review," it continued.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/top-10-healthcare-it-news-stories-2020
Top 10 Healthcare IT News stories of 2020
It's been a busy year. As health systems continue to grapple with the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis, we look back on the tech lessons learned these past many months – with cautious optimism for a better year ahead.
By Mike Miliard
December 07, 2020 05:00 AM
At few times in recent memory has the resolve of hospitals and health systems across the U.S. – and the wherewithal of the information systems and digital data that keep them running – been put to the test quite like it was in 2020.
An all-hands-on-deck push from heroic physicians and nurses to save the lives of as many COVID-19 inpatients as possible. A massive nationwide scale-up of telehealth and remote patient monitoring unlike anything yet seen. A system-wide shift to remote work and virtual, cloud-enabled collaboration. Ramped up ransomware incursions from aggressively opportunistic cyber crooks. Ongoing interoperability challenges as testing sites, labs, providers, payers and public health agencies tried to manage fast-moving waves of new patient data. Major new federal rulemakings meant to enable more seamless data exchange in the future.
But through it all, the resilience, persistence and innovation have been remarkable as health systems continue the digital transformations they'd embarked on in the "beforetimes" – and redoubled their efforts to accelerate them in earnest in response to this public health emergency.
The hope, of course, is that the galvanizing technology innovations that have emerged from the stress and disruption of the past year will be foundational to a better, brighter world in 2021 and beyond. In the meantime, here are some of the most-read Healthcare IT News stories of 2020 so far.
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Consumers Pushing Hard for Better Digital Bill Paying Arrangements
December 7, 2020
A new research study has concluded that consumers are getting far choosier about their digital interactions with their providers than they had been before.
The survey, which was conducted by Forrester Research and commissioned by patient financial management vendor Cedar with 1,502 online respondents over the age of 18 who had visited a health care provider in the last 12 months and were responsible for paying the bill for their visit.
As a backdrop, it’s worth noting that consumer expectations for their digital interactions with providers have risen dramatically over the past year. For example, 28% of consumers reported having switched or stopped going to a health care provider because of a poor digital experience, which represents a whopping 40% increase since 2019.
Cedar’s general point – which is still valid despite its vested interest in the results – is consumers are becoming increasingly more aggravated with the ways digital billing arrangements are being handled. Plus, the survey highlights some of the ways patient billing is being impacted by the rising cost of care:
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/12/07/changes-to-stark-law-and-anti-kickback-statute/
Changes to Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute
December 7, 2020
On November 20, 2020, CMS together with OIG announced some long anticipated changes to the Stark Law and to the Anti-Kickback statute. Considering the law was enacted in 1989 and has had very little change since, many people had wanted changes. The process of revising the Stark Law started with an RFI in June 2018 followed by a proposed rule in October 2019 which then was delayed thanks to COVID-19. Delays aside, you can now see the full 1600+ pages of the Stark Law final rule on the Federal Register.
At its core, the changes to the Stark Law make sense. In a fee fore service world, it’s easy to see how referrals can be abused by clinicians who overutilize the system if they’re getting paid for those referrals. Thus the need for a law to prevent such abuse. However, in the value based care world, this doesn’t make sense. If a clinician is already at risk for the patient’s health, then being able to provide inducements to patients to utilize needed services is a great way to keep costs down. Plus, when a healthcare organization is at risk, they have a financial incentive to avoid overutilization. This is the focus of CMS’s efforts to modify the Stark Law.
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Coronavirus: Study Measures Telemedicine Growth and Outpatient Visit Contraction
By Christopher Cheney | December 07, 2020
In the first half of 2020, the total number of telemedicine and in-person outpatient visits decreased 9.1%, raising concern about deferred care.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· From the weeks of Jan. 1 to June 10, the rate of telemedicine visits increased 2,013%, a recent study found.
· From the weeks of Jan. 1 to June 10, in-person outpatient visits decreased 30.0%, the study found.
A recent research article gauges the increase in telemedicine patient visits and decrease in outpatient in-person visits in the first half of the year.
Largely to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus, hospitals and physician practices have increased utilization of telemedicine for patient visits and decreased in-person visits. The increase in telemedicine visits has been colossal. For example, a FAIR Health analysis of commercial insurance claims data found telehealth claims lines increased 3,552% from August 2019 to August 2020.
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https://histalk2.com/2020/12/04/weekender-12-4-20/
Weekly News Recap
- Healthcare process automation vendor Olive acquires prior authorization platform provider Verata Health.
- McKesson launches Ontada, an oncology technology and data business.
- Imprivata acquires FairWarning.
- The former GM of Uber Health launches home care provider MedArrive.
- ONC, HL7, and other groups launch Project US@, which hopes to publish a healthcare standard for representing patient addresses.
- Salesforce acquires Slack for $28 billion.
- HealthStream acquires Change Healthcare’s capacity management business, including its Ansos staff scheduling system, for $67.5 million.
- A Stat review finds that health systems are using AI to create patient COVID-19 risk scores despite a lack of evidence of real-world correlation or assurance that the training of those systems was adequately broad.
- University of Vermont Health Network restores full access to Epic after nearly a month of malware-caused downtime.
- Informatics pioneer Reed Gardner, PhD dies.
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Enjoy!
David.
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