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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AI tool can identify risk of heart attack ‘years before it strikes’
An artificial intelligence tool that can identify people at risk of a heart attack years before it strikes is now ready to be rolled out across the NHS.
Andrea Downey – 20 April, 2021
The CaRi-Heart tool, developed by Caristo Diagnostics and based on research funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), predicts possible heart disease using routine heart scans.
It works by scanning “ticking-time-bomb” arteries that could become clogged to cause a heart attack. Looking at regular heart scans the artificial intelligence (AI) technology produces a ‘fat attenuation index score’ (FAI-Score), which accurately measures inflammation of blood vessels in and around the heart.
It’s this inflammation that could eventually lead to a heart attack.
Those identified at high risk of a future heart attack can then be given personalised medication, as well as being monitored more closely, to prevent a life-threatening situation.
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New partnership to develop AI platforms for faster diagnosis and treatment
Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms which can provide faster diagnosis and treatments for clinicians are to be developed as part of a new partnership.
Hanna Crouch – 19 April, 2021
The London Medical Imaging and AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare and digital transformation consultancy Answer have teamed up to help pave the way for AI-enabled hospitals.
The platforms will be developed to support clinicians with faster diagnosis and treatments, personalised therapies, and effective screening across a range of conditions and procedures.
Federated learning – a model seeking to address the problem of data governance and privacy by training algorithms collaboratively without exchanging the data itself – will also be used to help address long standing privacy issues.
Beverley Bryant, chief digital information officer for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and senior responsible owner for the London Medical Imaging and AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, said: “This is a unique programme to implement AI at scale within the NHS.
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How Real-World Data Can Help Us Better Prepare for the Next Pandemic
Rapid testing is important, but there’s a wealth of other information that could have offered us quicker insight into the spread of COVID
When we look back at the COVID pandemic, what will hindsight tell us? Will we remember the turn of the decade as the year that finally brought real change to pandemic preparedness, or will our eventual return to “normal” stymie our progress?
Although epidemiologists have long warned about the potential for global pandemics, their admonitions have largely gone unheeded. However, industrialized animal farming practices, increased human-animal contact, globalization, decreasing biodiversity and other factors all point to the likelihood of another zoonotic disease (one transmitted from animals to humans) with pandemic potential .
A slim silver lining of the current COVID-19 pandemic is that it can help us better prepare for future outbreaks—if we harness what we’ve learned correctly. In particular, we can better leverage one of the most crucial resources we have when it comes to pandemic preparedness: real-world data.
THE IMPORTANCE OF REAL-TIME INSIGHT
The pandemic has created a trove of data that can help us plan for future disease outbreaks. The abundance of research on the U.S. pandemic response provides insight into the benefits and consequences of various courses of action, and we can leverage this knowledge for future response.
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Telehealth's awkward waiting room problem, and how one company aims to solve it
Mend, a Florida-based telemedicine platform, has released its "enhanced virtual waiting room" to keep patients engaged.
Kat Jercich April 23, 2021
Even as telehealth has made many aspects of care more seamless, a few elements have routinely emerged as points of difficulty.
Among them is the waiting room. A new survey from LifeLink Systems out this week found that the vast majority of patients said they'd prefer a virtual waiting room that allowed them to complete paperwork on their phones before they got to a doctors' office.
But as with in-person services, providers are sometimes running behind, regardless of how much preparation the patient has undertaken.
And unlike in a brick-and-mortar facility, patients waiting at a computer in front of an open window screen can wonder if they've correctly followed instructions. They may be tempted to click away – or get up and leave altogether.
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Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
After-hours charting significantly associated with physician burnout
A new study links organizational EHR support with lower levels of physician burnout – especially among cardiologists and neurologists.
By Kat Jercich
April 23, 2021 11:25 AM
A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that less after-hours charting was associated with lower burnout scores.
The study, which relied on survey responses from more than 25,000 physicians, found that satisfaction with organizational EHR support was also significantly associated with lower levels of burnout overall.
"EHR factors are not solely responsible for after-hours charting, and other efforts besides EHR improvements, such as team documentation and new approaches to care team models for clinical support, may reduce after-hours charting," noted the researchers.
WHY IT MATTERS
Physician burnout is a serious problem in the medical industry, associated with poor clinical care, medical mistakes and caregiver attrition. Researchers estimate its economic impact at $4.6 billion each year.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/apac/taiwan-s-advancement-digital-health-emram-stage-6-7
Taiwan’s advancement in digital health: From EMRAM Stage 6 to 7
In this webinar, insights were gained on the steps Taiwan has taken towards creating a cohesive digital healthcare ecosystem as well as what is required to create a strong foundation in digital health.
By Roy Chiang
April 23, 2021 04:27 AM
The HIMSS Digital Maturity Series seeks to understand if healthcare organisations are aware of their capacity and capabilities to effectively tap into the power of digital health. During this session which took place in early April, healthcare experts from Taiwan shared their digital transformation stories and thoughts on how to advance towards a digital health ecosystem.
Establishing a strong foundation in digital health
Expenditure on healthcare has experienced a huge surge over the years in order to cater to burgeoning demand. This, in part, can also be attributed to the need to invest in new technologies to increase the quality of care delivered to patients.
"The shift towards digital – many global health systems have almost shifted overnight to virtual visits which now opens up a very interesting opportunity for helping people stay healthy and well," shared Anne Snowdon, Chief Scientific Research Officer at HIMSS. A robust digital health ecosystem is required to support and augment this huge surge in demand for online medical care and services, she continued.
The building block of a digital healthcare ecosystem as outlined by Snowdon, starts with a strong governance and workforce; followed by interoperability of data and analytics combined with the strong ability to track outcomes; and lastly, the digital capacity to engage with patients meaningfully. Through the Digital Health Indicator (DHI), healthcare organisations can keep track of how digitally enabled they are. The DHI measures progress towards a digital health ecosystem based on four building blocks. This ecosystem connects clinicians and provider teams with people, allowing them to manage their health and wellness using digital tools in a secure and private environment whenever and wherever care is needed.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/hhs-fda-backtrack-from-plan-to-deregulate-mhealth-devices-apps
HHS, FDA Backtrack From Plan to Deregulate mHealth Devices, Apps
The federal agencies are reversing course after a Trump administration proposal to end oversight of dozens of mHealth apps, devices and platforms drew strong opposition from within and outside government.
April 22, 2021 - Federal officials are quietly withdrawing a Trump administration plan to end regulatory review of 83 types of mHealth devices, saying the original plan was flawed and could have put the lives of Americans using that technology in danger.
In a notice posted last week in the Federal Register, the Health and Human Services Department and the Food and Drug Administration announced that they won’t enforce an HHS notice posted on January 15 that, among other things, would have exempted 83 class II devices and one unclassified device from premarket notification. Another 50 devices would have been exempted from review because there had been no reports of deaths associated with their use.
The decision affects dozens of connected health tools, including mHealth apps, smart devices and digital therapeutic services.
Officials said the devices were selected based on a lack of adverse events reported in the FDA’s Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database. But just because adverse events aren’t reported, officials said, doesn’t mean they aren’t happening or could happen.
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CMS and CDC/NCHS Discuss Possible Biannual ICD-10-CM/PCS Code Implementation Dates
By Sue Bowman, MJ, RHIA, CCS, FAHIMA
The ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance (C&M) Committee, co-chaired by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the National Center for Health Statistics/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC/NCHS), met March 9-10 this year to discuss proposals for new or modified ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS codes. All ICD-10-PCS code proposals presented at the March ICD-10 C&M Committee would, if approved, go into effect on October 1, 2021. All but one of the ICD-10-CM code proposals were presented for consideration of an October 1, 2022 implementation date. The exception is discussed below.
CMS and CDC/NCHS announced their consideration of an April 1 implementation date for ICD-10-CM/PCS code updates, in addition to the current October 1 annual update. If an April 1 code implementation is adopted, requesters of new or modified codes would indicate whether they are submitting their code request for consideration of an April 1 or October 1 implementation date. The ICD-10 C&M Committee would make efforts to accommodate the requested implementation date for each request submitted, however, the committee would determine which requests would be presented for consideration of an April 1 vs. October 1 implementation date. The first April 1 code update would be April 1, 2022.
The current established process would be used to implement an April 1 code update, which would include presenting proposals for April 1 consideration at the September ICD-10 C&M Committee meeting, requesting public comments, reviewing public comments, finalizing codes, and announcing the new codes, consistent with the new Grouper release information. The code update process for an April 1 implementation date would also involve the release of new code files, coding guidelines, and coding advice on the use and reporting of new codes through the American Hospital Association’s Coding Clinic for ICD-10-CM/PCS publication.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/549081-is-telemedicine-the-de-evolution-of-medicine
Is telemedicine the de-evolution of medicine?
By Jaspreet Rayat, Toby Chan, Richard Weinstein and James Cooper, opinion contributors — 04/20/21 05:30 PM EDT 13
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill
Having passed a year’s worth of COVID-19 lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, self-quarantines and other social distancing strategies, it is a good time to reflect on the extent to which we have shifted our lives online. We shop for groceries, consume entertainment, get schooling and attend our yoga classes via the web. During this rapid transformation, telemedicine became one of the major industries that forcibly advanced. According to McKinsey & Company, in 2020, 46 percent of consumers were using telehealth services to replace canceled health care visits, compared to 11 percent who used such services in 2019. We pushed doctors’ office visits online and freed patients from the shackles of waiting rooms into the comfort of their own homes, all in the name of reducing COVID-19 exposure.
And while this “brave new world” of telemedicine has been deemed a good thing, it is not a panacea. Telemedicine initially was created to fill the void in medical care accessibility for patients in remote environments. But it has become more about survival for doctors. Like any business during the pandemic, fewer services could be rendered because of stay-at-home orders, resulting in less income. Physicians were not immune to this model of compensation. The Canadian Institute for Health Information reported a 50 percent reduction in emergency room visits in April 2020. This presents a potentially dangerous scenario in which medical practices were near the brink of bankruptcy until virtual visits quickly became the norm. Although this appears as a win-win for patients and physicians, there is much more here than meets the eye. From price wars to outsourcing to substandard care, we should consider all the unintended consequences of the telemedicine trend.
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https://www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog/precision-medicine/health-it-advances-precision-medicine
Health IT Advances Precision Medicine
Kevin Chaney, MGS; Teresa Zayas Cabán, PhD; Courtney C. Rogers, MPH; Joshua C. Denny MD, MS and Jon White | April 20, 2021
Precision medicine creates treatment and prevention strategies that meet patient needs by considering individual variability in their genome, environment, and lifestyle. While precision medicine can revolutionize health care, it requires access to an unprecedented volume and variety of data, and an infrastructure that rapidly brings new discoveries to bear. Recently, we published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association that describes health IT’s vital role in precision medicine based on key insights from a series of ONC projects supporting the Precision Medicine Initiative.
Four key health IT needs for precision medicine are:
- Determining requirements for data
- Building robust infrastructure
- Integrating precision medicine into clinical care
- Developing relevant policies
Data Requirements
Electronic health data are widely available thanks to the prevalence of health IT, but not all data are standardized or include the metadata needed for precision medicine. To increase the availability of rich data sets, ONC’s projects developed methodologies for collecting and exchanging diverse data types using standardized APIs.
These projects also highlighted data quality issues such as accuracy, consistency, completeness, and usefulness. In particular, these projects highlighted a trade–off between richness of data and simplicity of standards.
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Ezekiel Emanuel wants big thinking for new government health IT projects
"We don't need patchwork solutions. We need structural solutions," said Emanuel, a member of President Biden's COVID-19 advisory board, in a wide-ranging HITN interview.
By Kat Jercich
April 22, 2021 10:22 AM
When President Joe Biden announced his intention to launch a national website to facilitate COVID-19 vaccinations by May 1, many in the health IT industry had flashbacks.
Some probably had recent memories of the Trump administration's haphazard coronavirus response – not least its move to a new data reporting system, whose two-day turnaround in the summer of 2020 led to "chaos" for many U.S. hospitals.
Others might have thought back to the 2013 launch of the Healthcare.gov insurance exchange portal, which initially crashed repeatedly thanks to complex coding and crushing public demand.
"We know that when the government tries to create IT systems, they've been plagued with bugs," said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, former health advisor to President Barack Obama, who also served on President Biden's COVID-19 advisory board.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/qa-year-down-road-what-has-epr-accomplished-switzerland
Q&A: A year down the road - What has the EPR accomplished in Switzerland?
Healthcare IT News asks Stefan Hunziker, CIO at the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital (LUKS), how the EPD has developed in Switzerland and how the hospital has managed it.
By Anna Engberg
April 22, 2021 03:23 AM
By April 2020 all Swiss hospitals should join a "stammgemeinschaft", a regional community to offer a national EHR, the so-called EPR (electronic patient record) throughout Switzerland, according to the Federal Electronic Patient Dossier Act (EPDG).
A year on, Healthcare IT News asks Stefan Hunziker (pictured below), CIO at the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital (LUKS), how the EPR has developed in Switzerland and how the hospital plans to implement it.
HITN: The LUKS is considered a pioneer in the Swiss healthcare system - and the EPR is part of the Swiss digitisation strategy. How is the nationwide implementation of the EPR going?
Hunziker: To cut a long story short: The EPR is not yet up and running in Switzerland and we therefore have no experience with it at LUKS. The partly controversial discussion and the pandemic have clearly shown deficits and are giving the digital transformation in the healthcare system a strong push. As things stand, we assume that we will really be able to use the EPR from autumn 2021.
However, via our hospital information system (HIS), which we have been using at the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital for 1.5 years, we have already been exchanging data with the outpatient sector for some time and have also been serving the patient side since June 2020.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/4-ways-health-it-ehrs-can-advance-precision-medicine
4 Ways Health IT, EHRs Can Advance Precision Medicine
The ONC is attempting to propel precision medicine through API utilization, EHR integration, policy development, and data standardization.
April 21, 2021 - Healthcare stakeholders must enhance and address health IT data, health IT infrastructure, EHR integration, and policy development to achieve precision medicine, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) said in a new blog post.
Precision medicine aims to improve healthcare by customizing patient care to specific patient needs.
Advancing precision medicine requires establishing an evidence base through extensive research built on genomic data at a unique scale. But as precision medicine data becomes increasingly complex and available, health IT and EHRs must evolve to integrate, interpret, and deliver this data.
ONC outlined four critical health IT needs to advance precision medicine: determining data requirements, building robust health IT infrastructure, integrating precision medicine data into the EHR, and developing relevant policies.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/machine-learning-tacks-evolution-of-covid-19-misinformation
Machine Learning Tracks Evolution of COVID-19 Misinformation
A new machine learning tool could help public health officials prevent the spread of COVID-19 misinformation.
By Jessica Kent
April 21, 2021 - A machine learning algorithm could help public health officials identify COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on social media, potentially reducing the spread of misinformation online, a study published in JMIR revealed.
“A lot of machine-learning studies related to misinformation on social media focus on identifying different kinds of conspiracy theories,” said Courtney Shelley, a postdoctoral researcher in the Information Systems and Modeling Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the study.
“Instead, we wanted to create a more cohesive understanding of how misinformation changes as it spreads. Because people tend to believe the first message they encounter, public health officials could someday monitor which conspiracy theories are gaining traction on social media and craft factual public information campaigns to preempt widespread acceptance of falsehoods.”
Researchers used publicly available, anonymized Twitter data to characterize four COVID-19 conspiracy theory themes and provide context for each through the first five months of the pandemic.
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The digital mental health market is booming. Here’s why some experts are concerned
Apr 21, 2021 1:03pm
The digital mental health space was growing rapidly even before the COVID-19 pandemic but stress and anxiety brought on by the health crisis have accelerated demand for virtual behavioral health services.
The success of digital mental health startups means that more people can access mental wellness than were potentially able to do so before.
“I think the benefits are clear. We can increase access to care, at our fingertips, and we can hopefully personalize care to our exact needs. There is the potential to provide care that is more affordable, personalized and accessible,” John Torous, M.D. director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston told Fierce Healthcare.
Broadly, the digital mental health space includes direct-to-consumer apps, such as Talkspace and Calm, apps that are designed for a clinician to prescribe, such as reSET, which is used to treat substance use disorders and also mental health platforms that work with employers and health plans, such as Ginger, Lyra Health and Modern Health.
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Here's why hospitals are looking to take a tech-enabled approach to hand hygiene compliance
by Dave Muoio
Apr 20, 2021 11:49am
It’s been more than 150 years since Ignaz Semmelweis, the so-called “father of hand hygiene,” highlighted the benefits of handwashing among healthcare workers, and yet there’s still room for improvement among provider organizations large and small.
According to a 2018 study cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were an estimated 687,200 healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in the U.S. during 2015, and about 72,000 patients with HAIs died during their hospitalizations.
Alongside the clinical impact, these infections have a very real cost on the healthcare system. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) hospitalizations can cost about $38,500 per event, for example, while Clostridium difficile will cost about $24,000 per event without taking into account other accompanying care.
Handwashing is a core component of any hospitals’ infection control strategy, and there’s little shortage of literature outlining various hand hygiene compliance interventions and the cost savings they can bring to an organization.
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Global investment in telehealth, artificial intelligence hits a new high in Q1 2021
Apr 20, 2021 3:45pm
Telehealth investment hit an all-time high of $4.2 billion in just 139 deals in the first quarter, almost doubling the $2.2 billion raised in the same quarter a year ago, according to CB Insights.
That's the highest global funding for telehealth during one quarter on record, according to the company's first-quarter 2021 report. Funding also was up 18% from the $3.6 billion raised in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Industry executive discussions around telehealth and its role in care delivery remain active, based on mentions of telehealth during company earnings' calls, CB Insights reported. During the second quarter of 2020, there were close to 1,200 mentions of telehealth on earnings calls. And, while that dropped to 517 mentions in the first quarter of 2021, it's still much higher than pre-COVID levels.
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European data protection board to strengthen sharing of health data between EU and UK
The European Commission has published its draft on the adequate protection of personal data in the UK.
By Sara Mageit
April 21, 2021 06:05 AM
In February 2021, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published two opinions on the European Commission draft Implementing Decisions on the adequate protection of personal data in the United Kingdom.
The EDPB has since announced that it has adopted its opinion on the draft adequacy decision issued by the European Commission.
Although the EDPB opinion is not binding, the adequacy decision will be formally implemented if approved by the EU member states.
WHY IT MATTERS
Adequacy decisions are critical in granting data flows between the EU and the UK, particularly in the post-Brexit environment. The process enables the EU to decide whether countries outside the bloc offer an adequate level of protection for the data of EU citizens.
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Hospitals and health systems post-pandemic, and how to prepare for future outbreaks
Dr. Muhammad Ali Chaudhry, CEO of Emerging Health International, discusses the future of healthcare and how technology needs to transform the industry to prepare.
By Bill Siwicki
April 21, 2021 11:29 AM
It's been more than a year since the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. According to a McKinsey report, an estimated 25% of outpatient services could move to telemedicine, which is among the necessary changes that could mean preparation and prevention for future health epidemics and pandemics, said Dr. Muhammad Ali Chaudhry, CEO of Emerging Health International, a healthcare technology and services company.
Further, the pandemic has caused a massive impact on the healthcare industry, accelerating transformations and hospital design needed to address the medical priorities of their populations and respond effectively to emergencies such as epidemics and pandemics, he added.
To get an idea of what needs to happen in healthcare in the years to come, Healthcare IT News interviewed Chaudhry to gain his expertise in healthcare transformation and healthcare technology.
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Congressional watchdog issues recommendations for VA IT system overhaul
The agency has been attempting to replace its decades-old core financial system with an integrated one for years.
By Kat Jercich
April 21, 2021 12:25 PM
The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report this week making recommendations for the ongoing Department of Veterans Affairs' IT modernization program.
As noted in the GAO report, the VA has been attempting to replace its aging financial and acquisitions systems with an integrated system for years.
The latest deployment, in November 2020, followed some IT best practices – but the cost and schedule estimates "only minimally or partially met" many others, said the report.
"Following information technology management best practices on major transformation efforts … can help build a foundation for ensuring responsibility, accountability, and transparency," wrote report authors.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/04/21/meditech-integrates-genomics-into-their-ehr/
MEDITECH Integrates Genomics Into Their EHR
April 21, 2021
Genomics is one of the most exciting parts of healthcare. It’s also one of the most complex and challenging topics out there. As genomic sequencing prices have dropped and genomic research has accelerated, I know of no area of healthcare that’s more exciting than genomics.
While genomics has shown so much progress and promise, I’ll admit that any genomics discussion gets complex really quickly. With that complexity, I’ve always wondered how EHR vendors were going to approach genomics. We all know that genomic medicine will eventually get to the bedside, but how it was going to get there wasn’t clear to me. In fact, I’d often talk about EHR APIs and say that these APIs were needed because there was no way an EHR vendor was going to do all that was needed for genomic medicine (let alone hundreds of other third party apps).
While I still think this is true when it comes to APIs, MEDITECH recently announced their new MEDITECH Expanse Genomics solution that gives a great view on how MEDITECH is working to move genomic medicine to the clinician. I’d describe their approach as making the key genomic data available to clinicians at the bedside and layering on specific genomic decision support (that’s my new term for clinical decision support based on genomics) using their partner FDB (First Databank).
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/pandemics-wake-healthcare-it-faces-new-realities
In Pandemic's Wake, Healthcare IT Faces New Realities
Analysis | By Scott Mace | April 21, 2021
Care is morphing to mix of real and virtual, powered by cloud and consumer demands. The desktop phone may be fading.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· As virtual care activity subsides somewhat, the new normal appears to be a mix of virtual, real, synchronous, and asynchronous communication with patients.
· Prospects look favorable for payers to continue to offer reimbursement for virtual care, said the CIO of Mass General Brigham.
· Cook Children's is building a "tech bar" into new hospital, where physicians will refer patients for mobile, digital apps to manage their health.
New realities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic are reshaping healthcare IT in ways that affect leadership, employees, and patients, according to a panel of healthcare system executives convened virtually during the recent virtual CHIME21 Spring Forum, presented by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).
Various changes include:
- Moving to a hybrid of virtual and
in-person meetings
- Shifting to certain patient
monitoring and visits at home instead of in hospitals or clinics
- Consumerization of healthcare
- Accelerating a move to and dependency
on cloud-based platforms
- Questioning the expense of traditional desktop phones
"As people are starting to go back into getting care, which is good, we're seeing virtual care numbers now going down," said Rasu Shrestha, MD, MBA, chief strategy and transformation officer and executive vice president at Atrium Health.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/using-team-based-approaches-to-ehr-usability-ehr-optimization
Using Team-Based Approaches to EHR Usability, EHR Optimization
Sixty-one percent of clinician respondents said the EHR SWAT team initiative improved EHR usability.
April 20, 2021 - A multidisciplinary team focused on EHR optimization is effective at improving EHR usability and ultimately mitigating clinician burnout, according to a Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) Open case report.
It is common for clinicians and health IT experts to emphasize EHR vendor and EHR implementation. However, sustaining the technology and enhancing EHR usability comes down to EHR optimization.
Better EHR usability leads to higher EHR adoption rates, fewer clinical errors, lower clinician burnout rates, financial benefits, and improved patient safety.
A group of researchers established a multidisciplinary “EHR SWAT Team” to combat clinician burden and improve EHR usability. This team consisted of ten individuals, including one chief medical information officer, two clinical informatics nurses, three clinical applications team members, one health information management specialist, and one pharmacy informatics specialist.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/tripathi-patient-data-access-about-culture-not-compliance
Tripathi: Patient Data Access About Culture, Not Compliance
Patient data access under the 21st Century Cures Act is a first step in building a culture of patient empowerment, ONC Head Micky Tripathi said.
By Sara Heath
April 20, 2021 - The latest moves out of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) directly target patient data access by requiring healthcare organizations to host open access to a patient’s own medical record. But that’s just the first step in a long road toward better patient empowerment and engagement, according to ONC’s newly minted leader Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP.
Mere days before the world turned upside down from the novel coronavirus, ONC dropped its final information blocking rule delivering on certain parts of the 21st Century Cures Act. Among other things, the rule calls on healthcare providers to utilize application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow patients to connect to their own EHRs.
This portion of the ONC information blocking rule intends to improve patient data access, ultimately boosting patient empowerment and engagement in her own care. The logic follows that patients who understand their own current health and wellness levels are able to better engage in patient-provider communication, shared decision-making, and ultimately chronic care self-management or prevention.
After a brief delay to let healthcare organizations focus more on the COVID-19 pandemic, the patient data access provision under the information blocking rule went into effect earlier this month, a first step in an overall cultural change that will put the patient at the center of care.
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https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210413.13025/full/
In Digital Health, Partnerships Between Business And Academia Are Needed To Advance Health Equity
April 16, 2021 10.1377/hblog20210413.13025
We have witnessed multiple digital health inequities in the past year, from disparities in access to health care video visits to challenges in scheduling COVID-19 vaccination online. It is clear that we need digital health transformation that is focused on reducing these gaps.
During the past 18 months, we—health care researchers with expertise in health technology and implementation science—launched a digital health incubator at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Called UCSF S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech, the incubator is focused explicitly on health equity; it connects public health and medical expertise with digital health companies to adapt, test, and evaluate products to better reach and meet the needs of diverse populations.
The incubator is rooted in our work in the public health care delivery system in San Francisco. Specifically, UCSF S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech focuses on ensuring that digital health tools work better for individuals with high medical and social needs who face structural barriers to health and health care, such as individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups and those facing poverty or other socioeconomic challenges in the US. These are the patients served in our delivery system at the San Francisco Health Network, and they are not a small segment of the health care landscape in the United States, given the growing linguistic and racial/ethnic diversity of the US and the substantial market share of Medicaid nationwide (for example, Medicaid provides insurance for one-third of all Californians).
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/nurses-give-ehr-usability-f-new-study
Nurses give EHR usability an 'F' in new study
The report also finds that poor electronic health record user-experience is associated with nurse burnout.
By Kat Jercich
April 20, 2021 02:07 PM
A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that more favorable electronic health record usability scores are associated with lower odds of burnout – and those usability scores have tanked.
Researchers found that among 1,285 nurses who responded to a November 2017 survey about usability and burnout the mean nurse-rated EHR usability score was 57.6.
The research team categorized this with a grade of "F."
"To our knowledge, this is the first study to measure nurses’ perceptions of EHR-usability nationally using a standardized metric," wrote the researchers.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/practice/call-arms-story-vaccine-hunters
A call to arms: The story of the 'vaccine hunters'
Ordinary citizens in the US are using technology to ensure left-over COVID-19 vaccines don't go to waste
12th April 2021
Say what you like about the US health system (there’s a lot that can be said), but it has managed to get more than 130 million COVID-19 vaccine doses into people’s arms.
At least a small proportion of those are because of groups calling themselves ‘vaccine hunters’.
These hunters target vaccine doses left over from cancelled appointments.
Sometimes they physically hang around clinics; sometimes they just keep an eye on online booking sites.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/modifying-ehr-prescribing-settings-can-improve-prescribing-patterns
Modifying EHR Prescribing Settings Can Improve Prescribing Patterns
A simple and effective way to curb opioid prescriptions is to modify the EHR default prescribing settings.
April 19, 2021 - Optimizing EHR opioid prescribing default settings can boost prescribing patterns, according to a study published in JMIR Publications. Furthermore, reducing the duration of an opioid prescription and cutting down the quantity of pills could minimize the chance of opioid dependence and overdose.
The opioid epidemic continues to be a significant issue across the United States. According to HHS, over 70,000 people died from a drug overdose in 2019, and over 10.1 million people misused prescription opioids throughout 2019.
Increased chronic opioid use is linked to higher doses and longer opioid therapy durations. To combat the opioid epidemic, clinicians can reduce prescription rates. Health systems can also leverage prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems to reduce prescribing rates and simplify the prescribing process.
To reduce opioid quantities and reduce overprescribing, the research team evaluated the default Epic Systems EHR prescription settings at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals. The health system’s CPOE consists of four opioid prescription entry fields: dose, frequency, duration, and quantity.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/supporting-equitable-vaccine-distribution-with-ehr-data
Supporting Equitable Vaccine Distribution with EHR Data
Leaders at Jefferson Health are leveraging EHR data to develop strategies around equitable vaccine distribution.
By Jessica Kent
April 19, 2021 - With the broadening availability of COVID-19 vaccines, it seems the US is finally beginning to see the light at the end of the pandemic-enveloped tunnel. After more than a year of uncertainty and unease, the vaccines represent the opportunity to return to some semblance of normalcy.
However, this optimism has been clouded by concerns about equitable vaccine distribution and access. The virus’s disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minorities, as well as socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, has established a need for strategies around vaccine distribution.
At Jefferson Health, a system with 14 hospitals throughout greater Philadelphia, leaders took action to meet this need.
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Fed Joint Advisory: Patch These 5 Vulnerabilities Under Active Attack
Nation-state threat actors with ties to Russia are actively exploiting five publicly known vulnerabilities to compromise a range of entities within the US and its allies.
April 19, 2021 - The National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI released a joint alert, warning that nation-state threat actors from Russia are actively targeting and exploiting five publicly known vulnerabilities to compromise US networks.
The news followed the Biden Administration’s sanctions against the Russian government, which formerly attributed SolarWinds Orion supply-chain attack to the country’s foreign service: the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) actors, also known as APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.
“The U.S. Intelligence Community has high confidence in its assessment of attribution to the SVR,” according to the White House statement. “The SVR’s compromise of the SolarWinds software supply chain gave it the ability to spy on or potentially disrupt more than 16,000 computer systems worldwide.”
“The scope of this compromise is a national security and public safety concern,” it added. “Moreover, it places an undue burden on the mostly private sector victims who must bear the unusually high cost of mitigating this incident.”
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/geisinger-lowers-click-rate-phishing-emails-more-50
Geisinger lowers click rate on phishing emails by more than 50%
David Stellfox, a cybersecurity communications specialist at the Pennsylvania-based health system, offers an in-depth look at how they did it.
By Bill Siwicki
April 19, 2021 10:51 AM
As an art of cyber subterfuge, phishing keeps getting more crafty. Bad actors continue to create malicious emails that are convincing innocent workers at healthcare and other organizations the messages are authentic. And many workers click on them, starting a stream of problems.
This is why it's up to CISOs and other cybersecurity professionals to train workers how to identify phishing emails and not click on them or download their malware-infested attachments.
Danville, Pennsylvania-based Geisinger has had great success with its anti-phishing training, lowering the click rate on malicious emails by 50%.
Healthcare IT News interviewed David Stellfox, cybersecurity communications specialist in the information security office at Geisinger, to get the lowdown on how exactly Geisinger achieved its success against phishing.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/04/19/cios-confirm-healthcare-startups-have-a-tough-road/
CIOs Confirm Healthcare Startups Have a Tough Road
April 19, 2021
A panel of healthcare CIOs at the CHIME Spring Forum confirmed what startups have known for a long time – the odds are stacked against them. The panel confirmed that health systems prefer to work with incumbents on new solutions rather than adopt ones from startups. However, startups with strong clinical champions, seamless integration with existing systems and that truly address an unmet need, will get a shot at earning their business.
The “How Providers and Health Tech Startups are Transforming Care” panel at the CHIME Spring featured 3 CIOs from US health systems:
- Lisa Stump, Sr Vice President and CIO at Yale New Haven Health System
- Randy Gaboriault, Chief Digital and Chief Information Officer at ChristianaCare
- Joel Vengco, Sr Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer at Baystate Health
The panel was moderated by Carina Edwards, CEO of Quil Health.
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https://histalk2.com/2021/04/16/weekender-4-16-21/
Weekly News Recap
- Digital health vendor K Health, insurer Anthem, and investment firm Blackstone form Hydrogen Health.
- CHIME will integrate its Spring Forum into Vive, an annual health IT event it will co-host with the HLTH conference beginning next March.
- Mayo Clinic launches Remote Diagnostics and Management Platform.
- The VA reaffirms that it will not bring its second Cerner site live in Columbus, OH until it has completed a strategic review of the project and shared the results with Congress.
- AI solutions vendor Olive acquires Empiric Health, which offers AI-powered surgical analytics software.
- Google will conduct a user feedback study as it prepares to develop a consumer-facing health record tool similar to Apple’s Health Record app.
- Microsoft announces that it will acquire Nuance in a deal worth nearly $20 billion.
- HHS extends TeleTracking’s COVID-19 hospital operating data collection and reporting for a third six-month term.
- US News & World Report highlights the legal efforts of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian to leave the 51-hospital Providence system, with a key issue being clinical standardization as enforced by configuration of Epic.
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Enjoy!
David.
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