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://ehrintelligence.com/news/executives-report-ehr-health-it-solutions-stifling-innovation
Executives Report EHR, Health IT Solutions Stifling Innovation
Current health IT solutions such as the EHR lack sufficient care coordination and customization capabilities according to industry executives.
July 02, 2021 - Despite the rapid evolution of the digital health transformation, current health IT solutions – including the EHR – may be stalling innovation, according to research conducted by Sage Growth Partners on behalf of Lumeon.
The researchers found that less than one in five healthcare executives are satisfied with their current digital health solutions; 19 percent are satisfied with their remote patient monitoring technology and 14 percent are satisfied with the existing technology for care journey automation.
The research revealed that 68 percent of healthcare leaders seek a customizable digital transformation solution. Currently, just 16 percent of care organizations can customize their EHR to meet the facility’s individual transformation needs.
More than half (57 percent) of executives reported that health IT solutions should span many use cases.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2021/06/sajid-javid-faces-huge-task-on-digital-and-data-in-nhs/
Sajid Javid faces ‘huge task’ on digital and data in NHS
Sajid Javid faces a “huge task” in his new role as health secretary with a number of major data and technology programmes to oversee in the NHS.
Andrea Downey 28 June 2021
The former chancellor replaced Matt Hancock as health secretary over the weekend following Hancock’s resignation over an affair with his aide.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said Javid has a “huge and urgent task ahead”.
“He must ensure completing the roll-out of the adult vaccination programme at rapid pace to control spiralling infection rates. He must also put forward a credible plan to tackle a backlog of care of unprecedented scale whilst at the same time rebuilding the trust of doctors and the wider healthcare workforce,” Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the council at the BMA said.
Speaking over the weekend Javid said the new position comes with “huge responsibility” and that his “immediate priority” was ending the Covid-19 pandemic.
Javid’s appointment comes at a time when the use of data and technology in the NHS is at a pivotal moment.
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HHS: 130 health systems might be exposing 2 million patients' medical images, data online
– 01 July, 2021
Millions of patients may be exposed because of vulnerabilities in medical imaging archiving software.
Four details:
1.
Picture archiving communications systems are used by hospitals to share medical
images and data. Research discovered in 2019 that a vulnerability in these
systems can be exploited to expose patient data.
2. Hundreds of healthcare organizations continue to have unpatched PACS servers
visible, and HHS recommends hospitals review their inventory to determine if
PACS are still being used, according to a June 29 news
release.
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Second Opinions Via Telehealth Have Value to Patients and Providers
The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic is using telehealth to offer second opinions, a service that benefits not only the patient but the primary care provider as well.
July 01, 2021 - Telehealth is making the second opinion much more meaningful.
While patients and healthcare providers have been using connected health for years to both research and support diagnoses and treatment plans, the platform has gained value over time as a way to not only make sure everything is proper, but to more fully explain complex medical care to patients and give providers the access to specialists they need to bolster care management. Nowadays that so-called second opinion is really just the next step in care coordination.
At The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic, the nationally known health system is expanding its telehealth reach with a platform, developed by AmWell, that’s designed to give patients advice on their diagnoses and help providers map out the right care plan. They’re one of dozens of high-profile health systems around the world using telehealth to make their experts available to anyone anywhere.
“We’re removing any and all barriers for the patients,” says Peter Rasmussen, MD, Chief Medical officer at The Clinic. By engaging with a patient via virtual care, “the patient has the opportunity to talk directly to the expert.”
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/klas-top-healthcare-security-privacy-consulting-firms
KLAS: Top Healthcare Security, Privacy Consulting Firms
KLAS researchers spoke with healthcare security and privacy leaders to understand which security consulting firms are true partners with organizations.
By Jill McKeon
July 01, 2021 - In a new KLAS report, researchers aimed to separate perceptions from reality by determining what makes a healthcare security and privacy consulting firm a true partner. Researchers spoke to over 70 healthcare security and IT leaders to decipher how perceptions differ from client experiences and how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted security programs.
Meditology Services, CynergisTek, and Clearwater are the most likely security and privacy consulting firms to be seen as true partners by healthcare organizations, the report found.
Midsize and large organizations appreciated the expertise, staff, and response times of Meditology Services, while smaller organizations were more likely to find a partnership in Clearwater. CynergisTek clients were mostly from large organizations and valued the firm’s broader areas of expertise outside of healthcare.
Most leaders considered expertise, firm responsiveness, and quality of consultants as top reasons for considering the firms true partners. Meanwhile, project flexibility, monetary value, and quality of work were low on the list of priorities.
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/focusonpolicy/93368
Google's Rise in Healthcare
— The tech giant's innovation is sure to disrupt the status quo
by David Nash, MD, MBA, FACP June 30, 2021
Google has become thoroughly embedded in our daily lives since its introduction in late September 1998. By 2006, it had so permeated our culture and language that the word "google" found its way into the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as both a noun and a verb. Today -- at a whopping 88.65% share -- Google continues to dominate the search engine market in the U.S.
Back in 2006, the company quietly began to explore potential business opportunities in the healthcare sector. The initial intention of Google Health was to create a repository of health records and data that would provide direct connections between doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. The project failed to gain momentum and was tabled in 2012.
Fast forward to 2019, when David Feinberg, MD, assumed the newly minted position of vice president at Google Health. On his appointment as its leader, Feinberg announced a new initiative to "improve the quality of health-focused search results across Google and YouTube." New efforts were undertaken in the areas of health-related artificial intelligence (AI) research, machine learning, clinical tools and other healthcare tools and services -- all with an emphasis on developing strategic partnerships in the healthcare sector.
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https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/benefits-using-genomic-data-health-systems-and-patients
Jul 01 2021
The benefits of using genomic data for health systems and patients
Widespread use requires greater reimbursement and an enterprise-wide strategy.
Susan Morse, Managing Editor
Genomic data is giving insights into just what will work for a particular patient. This precision medicine is being used in pharmacogenomics, oncology, and immunotherapy.
But widespread use requires reimbursement and getting to a scale in which genomic data is integrated across the health system and the patient's care journey.
On Tuesday, August 10, at 11 a.m. in the Venetian Murano 3204, Dr. Phillip Empey and Dr. Robert Bart will describe at the HIMSS21 annual conference how they're using genomic data in personalized oncology treatments and pharmacogenomics in "Genomic Data in Health Systems: The Importance of an Enterprise-Wide Strategy."
They'll also discuss the results of survey data from A Centers for Connected Medicine/HIMSS survey of informatics, genomics and IT leaders published in August 2020, which indicates near unanimous respondent focus on a genomic data management strategy.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/va-will-stick-cerner-ehr-modernization
VA will stick with Cerner for EHR modernization
Following a three-month review of the program, Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said this week that the department would stay the course with the Millennium-based platform, despite scheduling setbacks.
By Kat Jercich
July 01, 2021 11:55 AM
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced this week that it would be staying the course with its electronic health records modernization strategy.
Following a 90-day review, VA Secretary Denis McDonough reaffirmed in a press conference Wednesday that the agency would move forward with Cerner's Millennium records management platform.
"We are going to stick with this technology … [We] are ready to continue with that," said McDonough, as reported by FedScoop.
WHY IT MATTERS
Questions have lingered over the future of the VA's EHR modernization initiative after an initial go-live at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, was met with consternation and confusion.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/top-10-healthcare-it-news-stories-2021-so-far
Top 10 Healthcare IT News stories of 2021 so far
Believe it or not, we're already halfway through the year. Here's what HITN readers have been clicking.
By Mike Miliard
July 01, 2021 10:47 AM
The four types of COVID-19 vaccine – a snapshot
It should surprise precisely no one that the top story of the year so far is an explainer describing the specifics of vaccine candidates. This particular January piece from our Dubai-based correspondent was focused specifically on the Middle East and North Africa region, but the headline's enormous popularity with readers worldwide spoke to the pent up public excitement about these miracles of science and their promise of pointing to a way out of the pandemic.
Biden nominates Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant secretary of health
Shortly before his inauguration, President Joe Biden made history by nominating Dr. Rachel Levine, a pediatrician and a professor at Penn State College of Medicine, to be assistant secretary of health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. When confirmed by the Senate two months later, Levine became the first openly trans federal official in U.S. history.
Privacy fears over NHS plans to share GP medical records with third parties
A controversial plan to share medical records from patients in England's National Health Service with third-party developers drew controversy earlier this month. A database with the medical histories of more than 55 million people would support "public health monitoring and interventions (including COVID-19) and enable many different areas of research," as NHS Digital explained. There has been news since then: Patients were given an extra three months to opt out of the program, and U.K. health secretary Matt Hancock resigned after breaching COVID-19 rules.
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Bias-Free AI and Algorithms in Healthcare Remain Elusive Goal
Analysis | By Scott Mace | June 30, 2021
Datasets still contain bias and hold back the ability of machine learning to improve healthcare.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Data used by algorithms and machine learning to improve healthcare often contains inherent bias.
· Existing FDA pharmacovigilance process provides an example of how similar vigilance should apply to AI and algorithms used in healthcare.
· More representative samples of individuals and their experiences in healthcare can help reduce or eliminate bias.
Artificial intelligence (AI)–driven healthcare is widely expected to transform medical decision-making and treatment, but AI algorithms must be thoroughly tested and continuously monitored to avoid unintended consequences, including bias, to patients.
In a commentary published in JAMA Network Open, Regenstrief Institute President Peter Embí, MD, calls for algorithmovigilance—a term he coined for scientific methods and activities relating to evaluation, monitoring, understanding, and prevention of adverse effects of algorithms in healthcare—to address inherent biases in healthcare algorithms and their deployment.
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WHO Report Targets AI in Health, Cautions Against Health Disparities
The report released by WHO explains the uses of AI in health and six principles to prevent health disparities.
June 30, 2021 - The World Health Organization (WHO) released the first global report on artificial intelligence in healthcare and six principles to avoid health disparities in the field.
The report, Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health, is the outcome of two years of consultations held by a panel of WHO appointed international experts.
“Like all new technology, artificial intelligence holds enormous potential for improving the health of millions of people around the world, but like all technology it can also be misused and cause harm,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, MSc, WHO director-general, said in a press release. “This important new report provides a valuable guide for countries on how to maximize the benefits of AI, while minimizing its risks and avoiding its pitfalls.”
Artificial intelligence can be used to “improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and screening for diseases; to assist with clinical care; strengthen health research and drug development, and support diverse public health interventions, such as disease surveillance, outbreak response, and health systems management,” WHO stated in a press release.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/gao-hhs-must-collaborate-to-ensure-healthcare-cybersecurity
GAO: HHS Must Collaborate to Ensure Healthcare Cybersecurity
A GAO study shows that while HHS has defined roles and responsibilities within its security arm, further collaboration is needed to ensure healthcare cybersecurity.
By Jill McKeon
June 30, 2021 - HHS clearly defined roles and responsibilities within its security departments, but a lack of collaboration between these entities is preventing adequate healthcare cybersecurity, according to a study conducted by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
GAO was tasked with reviewing HHS’s organizational approach and reflecting on its roles, responsibilities, and collaboration efforts. Researchers evaluated roles and responsibilities and scanned for any overlap, duplication, or fragmentation that went against GAO’s leading collaboration practices.
Under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014, HHS implemented a cybersecurity program and identified roles and responsibilities within the Office of Information Security, which is responsible for overseeing cybersecurity across HHS.
HHS also defined roles and responsibilities for the Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) and the Healthcare Threat Operations Center (HTOC). But GAO was informed by private-sector partners that HC3 would benefit from receiving threat information more frequently. Since HC3 does not regularly receive information from HTOC, the potential for collaboration is often lost.
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https://hbr.org/2021/06/how-to-measure-the-value-of-virtual-health-care?ab=hero-subleft-3
How to Measure the Value of Virtual Health Care
by Meg Barron, Vimal Mishra, Stacy Lloyd, and Jared Augenstein
June 24, 2021
Summary. The pandemic spurred a huge increase in the use of virtual health care. But its place in the post-pandemic world is up in the air. To help policymakers, payers, providers assess the various ways in which virtual care programs could have a positive impact for...
The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred a dramatic increase in virtual health care in the United States. The rise has been driven by the need for social distancing and enabled by a wide range of policy flexibilities implemented by federal and state legislators, regulators, and payers. However, many of these allowances are temporary. As the pandemic ebbs, policymakers and payers are deciding whether and how much to pay for virtual care services in the future, leaving clinicians uncertain about whether they will be able to afford to continue their virtual care programs. But parties are often making these decisions based on outdated or limited measures of success that do not holistically reflect the realities of how value is being generated.
To address this need, the American Medical Association (AMA) and Manatt Health, a legal and consulting firm, have developed a framework for assessing the value of digitally enabled care. It accounts for the various ways in which virtual care programs may increase the overall “return on health” by generating benefits for patients, clinicians, payers, and society going forward. The framework can be used by care providers to develop and evaluate new digitally-enabled-care models, by payers to inform coverage and payment decisions, and by policymakers to establish regulations that guide the future of virtual care.
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Jun 29, 2021 - Technology
A Hippocratic Oath for your AI doctor
Bryan Walsh, author of Future
A broad new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) lays out ethical principles for the use of artificial intelligence in medicine.
Why it matters: Health is one of the most promising areas of expansion for AI, and the pandemic only accelerated the adoption of machine learning tools. But adding algorithms to health care will require that AI can follow the most basic rule of human medicine: "Do no harm" — and that won't be simple.
Driving the news: After nearly two years of consultations by international experts, the WHO report makes the case that the use of AI in medicine offers great promise for both rich and poorer countries, but "only if ethics and human rights are put at the heart of its design, deployment and use," the authors write.
- AI is already being used in medicine to detect tumors in radiological scans, predict how outbreaks will unfold and analyze doctors' case notes and patient conversations.
- In the future, it could help speed the process of drug discovery, give real-time diagnosis from better health wearables and even act as "virtual nurses" to remote patients.
Between the lines: The power of AI in health care is also its peril — the ability to rapidly process vast quantities of data and identify meaningful and actionable patterns far faster than human experts could.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/apis-may-boost-ehr-optimization-pediatric-care-functionalities
APIs May Boost EHR Optimization, Pediatric Care Functionalities
Vendors can optimize their EHR systems for pediatric use through the integration of application programming interfaces and web services.
June 29, 2021 - Application programming interfaces (APIs) and web services can help optimize EHRs for pediatric use, according to a recent policy statement published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
Currently, many EHR systems lack pediatric features such as growth charts, anthropometric percentiles, weight-based dosing, and well-child visit and immunization schedule tracking.
Additionally, it can be challenging for EHR vendors to stay up-to-date with clinical content, as agencies continuously put out new pediatric policies and guidelines. For instance, in August of 2017, AAP made significant changes to high blood pressure screening and management guidelines.
Implementing such changes directly in the EHR requires functionality development investment. Often, vendors will leverage content development tools to integrate pediatric functionalities into the EHR, but each individual customer must pay for the service.
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Excited to share Apple Health Records with a doctor? Thank data interoperability standards like SMART and FHIR
by Dave Muoio
Jun 30, 2021 11:00am
EHR vendors supporting an upcoming Apple feature that brings patients' health records to their iPhones was a breeze due to their investments in standardized APIs. As more patients seek to take control of their care, the vendors expect these types of integrations to play a role in attracting practice and health system customers. (Apple)
Back in early 2018, Apple entered the personal health record (PHR) space with its Apple Health Records platform.
Built directly into the iPhone’s operating system, the tool was designed to help consumers manage their health information by downloading health data directly from participating providers with compatible electronic medical records systems—a list that today includes more than 700 health organizations.
Now more than three years on, the tech company has announced plans to tackle the other side of the coin with a new data-sharing feature for Apple Health Records.
The feature will allow users to choose a participating organization and select which metrics they would want to share with their doctor—a list that ranges from device-collected daily activity and vitals to immunization histories and clinical lab results. From there, the platform will begin periodically collecting a snapshot of the user’s health information that doctors can open within a patient's health record.
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Re-Designing Electronic Healthcare Records to Reduce Clinician Burnout
June 30, 2021
The following is a guest article by Amy Heymans, Founder and Chief Experience Officer, Mad*Pow.
Electronic Healthcare Records were supposed to be the wave of the future, allowing clinicians more time to spend with patients, and offering individuals access to their personal health data. But is it working the way we intended?
Clinician burnout, and its tie to mental health, has long been a top concern in the healthcare industry. This insidious problem worsened exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic and is threatening not only the wellbeing of clinicians and caregivers themselves but ultimately the patients in their care as well. The strain of this unprecedented emergency is piled on top of stressors that have been plaguing the healthcare industry for years, driving valuable personnel from the field.
The rise of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) should have mitigated some of this stress. One would assume that with technology at their fingertips clinicians would have less paperwork to manage, leaving more time for holistic care, making healthcare more efficient and accessible. Unfortunately, we’re finding quite the opposite. Hidden in the promise of EHRs are difficult interfaces, confusing customization options, and usability challenges.
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What Apple iOS 15 Means for Clinicians and the Patient Experience
June 30, 2021
The following is a guest article by Dr. Mike Petersen, Chief Clinical Innovation Officer, NTT DATA Services.
Recently, at the Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company announced a series of features and updates focused on personal health and wellness including the new Apple iOS 15 new health data sharing.
Apple iOS 15 new health data sharing capabilities are the next logical step in the evolution in providing the consumer the power of controlling aspects of their health data. Currently, you can’t share health data via Apple Health and this will now provide clinicians a view of certain aspects of your personal health outside the four walls of the hospital. It also demonstrates a growing demand for having secured control for their own data and having the option to share salient aspects of their health.
This announcement serves as the barometer to what has been an expected trend in the health industry which is to respond to a growing demand for a consumer experience that is informed by various digital experiences outside health and wellbeing. This new feature provides the consumer the control they want but will force healthcare systems, electronic health record vendors, and other healthcare vendors to adapt to consumer expectations, but more importantly, nudge companies to evolve their digital pursuits to enable data sharing and interoperability with the EMR’s and health systems. It also brings forward the notion that it shouldn’t matter what health system I use and that my medical data follows me wherever I go…”bye bye medical record fax permission forms or radiology CD’s” where I’m forced to physically obtain or sign which of course takes time.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2021/06/special-report-ai-and-data/
Special Report: AI and Data
With the pandemic shifting views on AI and data use across industries, Maja Dragovic investigates how much those views have been altered in the NHS.
Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention and during Covid necessity was fundamental in adopting inventions already available. In particular, the use of AI and data and the tools that were readily available, were embraced with more readiness than they might have been greeted before.
“There was no alternative,” says Ben Court, head of analytics at Civica. “We had to use some form of data to make decisions, and we had a clear list of problems, and we had access to technologies that allowed us to do it.”
As Court points out, often with new technologies, be that business analytics, raw data and reporting, AI or machine learning, people can focus on technology and what it does rather than the problem that needs to be solved. But this rule does not apply in healthcare, especially during a pandemic.
“Our experience certainly is that good AI solutions or good data solutions derive from a problem,” Court says.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/direct-messaging-boosts-interoperability-for-covid-19-vaccination
Direct Messaging Boosts Interoperability For COVID-19 Vaccination
Pharmacists have used Surescripts Clinical Direct Messaging to send over seven million COVID-19 vaccination notifications to primary care providers.
June 29, 2021 - Surescripts Clinical Direct Messaging has played a vital role in the country’s COVID-19 vaccination effort by boosting interoperability between pharmacies and primary care providers.
Since December 2020, pharmacies have used the health IT to send over seven million COVID-19 vaccination notifications to primary care providers.
This electronic data exchange sets to reduce the need for pharmacies to fax paper forms or depend on patients to notify their PCP themselves about their COVID-19 vaccination status.
"Participants across the Surescripts Network Alliance continue to find innovative ways to leverage existing technology to answer the nation’s call for help with COVID-19," Tom Skelton, chief executive officer of Surescripts, said in a press release.
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Patient Trust, Health Equity Among Leading Post-COVID Health Trends
Healthcare organizations need to reconcile COVID-era solutions with long-term goals of patient trust and health equity to continue improvements.
By Sara Heath
June 29, 2021 - Building patient trust and addressing health equity are among the leading healthcare trends as the industry grapples with its post-COVID state, according to analysis from consulting firm Forrester.
This comes as healthcare organizations work to recalibrate their strategies in a new landscape defined by the COVID-19 public health crisis. Although the virus has not gone away, the industry recognizes it needs to adapt its workflows to account for the novel coronavirus in the long term.
That, coupled with the push to get the nation vaccinated, has allowed organizations to return to their pre-COVID priorities, integrate pandemic imperatives, and iterate forward.
Success will hinge on that second step. COVID-19 revealed deep cracks in the healthcare ecosystem—health disparities, lagging health IT infrastructure, and propensity for workplace burnout—and it will need to reconcile the solutions healthcare quickly propped up with longer-term priorities in order to continue moving forward.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/nist-defines-critical-software-per-cybersecurity-executive-order
NIST Defines “Critical Software” Per Cybersecurity Executive Order
NIST published its definition of “critical software” as directed in President Biden’s executive order aimed at improving the nation’s cybersecurity.
By Jill McKeon
June 29, 2021 - The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published its official definition of “critical software,” as instructed by President Biden’s executive order (EO) on improving the nation’s cybersecurity. NIST solicited feedback and position papers from the community to settle on a reasonable definition.
The executive order also directs the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to use the “critical software” definition to create a list of categories of software that might fall under the first phase of the executive order’s implementation. NIST proposed a phased implementation approach to give the government and software industry time to secure the supply chain of critical software.
In a white paper released on June 25th, a day before the EO’s official deadline, NIST explains that “One of the goals of the EO is to assist in developing a security baseline for critical software products used across the Federal Government. The designation of software as EO-critical will then drive additional activities, including how the Federal Government purchases and manages deployed critical software.”
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June 28, 2021
Costs from ransomware attack against Ireland health system reach $600M
The Ireland Health Service Executive (HSE) is continuing to operate under electronic health record (EHR) downtime procedures and experiencing continued care disruptions, after suffering a ransomware attack more than six weeks ago.
The June 28 update shows patients are still being warned to expect significant care delays and to bring health information that could help support their care, also pointing to investments to ensure more comprehensive network monitoring for malware in the future.
The recovery is slow-going with the HSE Director General Paul Reid projecting the costs to exceed $600 million, Reid recently explained during a Joint Committee on Health meeting.
Reid was joined by HSE Chief Operating Officer Anne O’Connor, Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Colm Henry, Chief Information Officer Fran Thompson, and Clinical Lead of the COVID-19 Vaccination Programme Damien McCallion, shedding light on the ransomware attack that has driven much of the country’s health system offline.
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EHR snooping: 7,000+ Ohio health system patients potentially victimized
A former employee may have inappropriately accessed patient data for more than 11 years, according to local reports.
By Kat Jercich
June 29, 2021 11:41 AM
An Ohio-based health system began notifying patients this past week that a former employee may have inappropriately accessed their private records.
Aultman Health Foundation, which is headquartered in Canton, Ohio, said that the former employee could have snooped on patient data for more than a decade, according to the Daily Record.
"Upon discovering this, the employee’s access to Aultman’s electronic health record system was suspended, and an investigation was conducted to determine the nature and scope of the incident," said company representatives.
WHY IT MATTERS
As reported by the Daily Record, about 7,300 patients across Aultman's health system had their information involved in the incident.
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Problems With Epic’s Sepsis Prediction Model Underscore Larger Issues With Algorithmic Prediction Models
June 29, 2021
Recently, a small blaze of negative publicity erupted when research was published suggesting that Epic’s deterioration index designed to predict the onset of sepsis performs far worse than the vendor claims.
Researchers behind the study, which appears in JAMA Internal Medicine, examined a cohort of 27,697 patients undergoing 38,455 hospitalizations, concluding that sepsis occurred in 7% of the hospitalizations. The Epic proprietary sepsis model had predicted a hospitalization-level area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.63, which is substantially worse than that reported by Epic.
Under these circumstances, clinicians would have needed to check in with 109 Epic-flagged patients to find one that needed an intervention to avoid sepsis.
Not only that, the Epic technology didn’t do a good job of managing alerts, generating them for 18% of all of the hospitalized patients studied. This double failure – to accurately predict sepsis and the tendency to create high volumes of needless alerts – is a matter of concern, the authors note.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/what-providers-should-know-for-cms-interoperability-rule-compliance
What Providers Should Know for CMS Interoperability Rule Compliance
CMS will enforce the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule requirements starting on July 1, 2021.
June 28, 2021 - As part of the 21st Century Cures Act, the federal government will require that all healthcare providers grant patients access to their personal health information starting July 1.
The CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule requires payers and providers to remove the industry siloes that prevent seamless patient data exchange across the care continuum.
While the final rule has been in effect since January 1, 2021, CMS put off enforcement of the new requirements until July 1, 2021 due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The regulation aims to benefit patients and providers alike. Increased interoperability will help ensure providers have access to an individual’s care history to make informed clinical decisions, which may lead to improved patient outcomes. Similarly, increased access to personal health information may lead patients to become more engaged in their care decisions.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/covid-19-sparks-decline-in-life-expectancy-highlights-disparities
COVID-19 Sparks Decline in Life Expectancy, Highlights Disparities
A new analysis reveals a reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19, underscoring health disparities impacting Black and Latino populations.
June 28, 2021 - In an updated analysis, data showed that COVID-19 reduced life expectancy in the United States by 1.3 years in the year 2020. Especially impacted were Black and Latino populations, revealing significant disparities regarding race and ethnicity. The study was published in JAMA Network.
Lead author Theresa Andrasfay, a postdoctoral scholar at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, and coauthor Noreen Goldman of Princeton University first studied the pandemic’s impact on life expectancy in October 2020. The initial study predicted the largest single-year drop in life expectancy in about 40 years, hitting its lowest average since 2003.
The analysis compared more the 380,000 US COVID-19 deaths in 2020 to the life expectancies in 2018. The results indicated a decrease in life expectancy by 1.31 years, bringing the average down to 77.43 years. However, larger reductions in life expectancy were present among Black and Latino populations. While White populations saw a reduction of 0.94 years off their life expectancy, the Latino population’s loss was three times higher at 3.03 years. For Black populations, they saw a reduction of life expectancy twice as large at 1.90 years.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/survey-reveals-how-leaders-are-overcoming-cybersecurity-hurdles
Survey Reveals How Leaders are Overcoming Cybersecurity Hurdles
A recent survey of cybersecurity leaders across all sectors reveals that most organizations see compliance with data privacy regulations as a top priority.
By Jill McKeon
June 28, 2021 - Over 70 percent of cybersecurity leaders from various sectors have transferred at least half of their organization’s data to the cloud, according to a recent survey conducted by Corinium Intelligence. The survey shows how data privacy leaders are enabling cybersecurity transformations within their organizations.
Research revealed that 94 percent of respondents ranked data privacy compliance as their organization’s top priority. However, 45 percent are not concerned about regulatory fines and penalties despite the growing amount of cyberattacks across all sectors.
“The explosion of remote working has created borderless networking in a way that we have never seen. Services that were done in-house are now being moved to the cloud. That’s redefining what traditional network boundaries look like,” Michael Owens, survey participant and business information security officer at Equifax, said in the survey report.
“The move to the cloud means companies are relying more and more on third parties, which extends and increase the number of external entities that are involved in every supply chain.”
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Windows 11 and Security – Why 8th Generation Core Processors and AMD Zen 2 Processors are Required, and What CIOs Can Do to Mitigate the Issue
June 28, 2021
Since Microsoft has announced the new version of Windows, Windows 11, which has more onerous CPU requirements than its predecessors, there has been significant outcry. These changes shut out a significant number of machines already in use from receiving this update. There has been outcry over the requirements, mainly focusing on Trusted Platform Management. Microsoft has not been very clear either. The baseline CPU support for Windows 11 is an 8th generation Intel Core or AMD Zen 2 processor. These are machines that were released in late 2018 (Intel) and mid-2019 (AMD).
What is clear now, after doing some research, is that between the 7th and 8th generation of Intel Core architectures and Ryzen Zen/Zen+ and Zen 2 architectures is that both included significant hardware security enhancements due to Meltdown, Spectre, and other issues discovered by security researchers. These discoveries came about during the release cycle of Windows 10. Microsoft was not able to address the changes needed to implement the needed security changes without breaking backward compatibility.
This would have been a very bad business decision to do this while an operating system was current. Moving the version number to 11 allows Microsoft to make a break from hardware that does not have mitigations for critical security vulnerabilities. It also allows them to implement many of the security enhancements both Intel and AMD have made without breaking legacy environments.
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https://histalk2.com/2021/06/25/weekender-6-25-21/
Weekly News Recap
- Health Catalyst announces its acquisition of Twistle.
- Doximity shares surge on their first day of NYSE trading, valuing the company at $7 billion.
- Tegria acquires KenSci.
- Researchers say that Epic Sepsis Model performs poorly in identifying potential cases of sepsis.
- GE Healthcare names Pater Arduini as its next president and CEO.
- England’s NHS publishes a draft patient data strategy.
- NextGen Healthcare announces that President and CEO Rusty Frantz will leave the company.
- Amazon announces a four-week, virtual AWS Healthcare Accelerator program for startups.
- California launches a digital COVID-19 vaccination record system.
- ONC invites colleges and universities to apply for its $80 million public health IT workforce program.
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Enjoy!
David.
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