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/2021/10/speculation-of-epic-deal-with-nhs-england/
Speculation of national Epic deal with NHS England
Could we see a national deal for the Epic electronic patient record? Jon Hoeksma speculates and explores what this could mean for the healthcare system.
Jon Hocksema – 7 October, 2021
Speculation about a national deal between NHS England and US electronic patient record (EPR) supplier Epic were fanned last week a decade on from the end of the NHS National Programme for IT.
Rumours have been circulating over the summer that Tim Ferris, the new head of digital transformation at NHS England, is a big advocate of the system and has told colleagues it should be used by many more trusts.
Highly regarded Ferris joined NHS England from Massachusetts General Hospital, which in 2016 deployed Epic in a programme reportedly costing almost a billion dollars.
Ian O’Neil, the current director of transformation at NHS England, indicated at an industry conference in London last week that there have been recent high-level meetings with Judy Faulkner, the founder of Epic, but declined to give details of the topics under discussion.
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After the buzz, AI finding its place in health care
By DARIUS TAHIR
10/06/2021 10:00 AM EDT
Data Dive
READY FOR ITS CLOSE-UP: Artificial intelligence has long been hyped as a game changer in health care: Remember this 2012 prediction that computers will replace 80 percent of doctors?
But it’s been much harder to get a sense of the real-world scale of the phenomenon. Is AI a perpetual technology of the future? Or is it starting to get a toehold?
A recently released Food and Drug Administration database starts to get at that question. The agency combed records to find every agency-approved device using artificially intelligent technology. And it turns out there’s substance to accompany the buzz.
AI has taken off, with 100 devices approved last year alone amid the pandemic. But numbers don’t tell the whole story, says Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who’s thought deeply about the AI effects in health care and believes there are more telling metrics.
“It’s much more about innovation, validation and transformative impact,” he wrote to Future Pulse. “Few of these devices have prospective studies and publications with their data [to demonstrate their capabilities].”
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FDA’s Best Practices on Communicating Medical Device Vulnerabilities
The FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health released best practices for communicating medical device vulnerabilities to patients and caregivers.
By Jill McKeon
October 08, 2021 - The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health recently released best practices for communicating medical device vulnerabilities to patients and caregivers in light of growing concerns about medical device security.
The document provides actionable tips for industry stakeholders to communicate connected medical device risks adequately and efficiently.
Medical device security is a growing concern in the healthcare security space. Medical devices tend to be portable and connected to a hospital’s network, making them significantly vulnerable to bad actors.
McAfee researchers recently discovered a vulnerability in two types of infusion pumps that could potentially enable hackers to remotely administer double doses of medications, causing injuries or death.
While no cases have been reported regarding the specific infusion pump, the vulnerability shed light on the fragility of medical device security and the risks the devices pose to patient safety.
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VA turns to third party to analyze true cost of Cerner EHR modernization project
The Department of Veterans Affairs has partnered with the Institute for Defense Analyses to capture end-to-end costs of the program.
By Kat Jercich
October 08, 2021 11:25 AM
The Department of Veterans Affairs has partnered with the Institute for Defense Analyses to provide an analysis and full cost estimate of the agency's beleaguered electronic health record modernization program.
During a House Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing Thursday, VA Office of Information and Technology Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Paul Brubaker said he estimated the effort will take 12 months to complete once it's launched later this month.
The contract, he said, is aimed at ensuring that "once and for all, we capture all of these end-to-end costs and can present them to the committee as requested."
WHY IT MATTERS
Brubaker said the agency supported HR 4591, or the VA Electronic Health Record Transparency Act, with some important caveats.
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A Unique View on AI Assistants in Healthcare and Ambient Clinical Voice
October 8, 2021
As many of you know, I’ve been a big fan of ambient clinical voice for a while. Although, I’m really just a fan of relieving the documentation burden that the healthcare industrial complex has placed on doctors. That’s the real problem and ambient clinical voice is aiming to improve that situation. Of course, with ambient clinical voice, we all know that at least for now ambient clinical voice solutions are more like a remote scribe that’s enabled by AI vs a true AI solution. Will AI improve enough to get there so prices can drop dramatically? That’s the million (maybe billion) dollar question.
Taking a different approach to this problem is the Suki AI Assistant. Similar to ambient clinical voice, it’s a voice powered solution. However, it uses a mix of real time dictation, macros, and even requests for previous documentation along with touch and tap to automate those things doctors do over and over again. Better than my explanation, check out a demo of Suki here.
Given my passion for trying to understand how we can reduce the clinician documentation burden, I sat down with Punit Soni, CEO of Suki, to talk about their approach to this problem. Given Soni’s work previously at Google and then an e-commerce giant in India, he brings a unique outsider perspective to the problem with some great technical skill.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/chime-survey-shows-covid-19-digital-health-transformation-surge
CHIME Survey Shows COVID-19 Digital Health Transformation Surge
CHIME Digital Health Most Wired survey participation grew 20 percent compared to 2020, highlighting COVID-19’s impact on the digital health transformation.
October 07, 2021 - The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ (CHIME) Digital Health Most Wired survey awarded 10 healthcare organizations the highest level of certification for their commitment to digital health transformation.
The survey and certification program evaluates health IT adoption and processes as well as organizational digital health philosophies.
To receive a level 10 certification, organizations must “show an outstanding record of leveraging the power of digital technology within a visionary corporate strategy,” CHIME representatives noted.
“The Digital Health Most Wired program recognizes the outstanding digital leaders who have paved the way for this imminent revolution in healthcare,” Branzell continued. “Their trailblazing commitment to rapid transformation has set an example for the entire industry in how to pursue a leadership vision with determination, brilliant planning and courage to overcome all challenges.”
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/some-docs-still-harbor-concern-about-open-notes-access
Some Docs Still Harbor Concern About Open Notes Access
A survey of ophthalmologists showed some clinicians are still worried open notes access will make patients confused and harm patient-provider relationships.
By Sara Heath
October 07, 2021 - Some medical providers are still worried about the consequences of open notes access, even as federal regulations mandate digital patient access to clinical notes, according to research published in Nature.
Particularly, clinicians worry their patients will not understand the content in their clinical notes, or that the notes will impair the patient-provider relationship, a survey of 30 clinicians at the University of Colorado’s Department of Ophthalmology showed.
Open clinical notes, a philosophy branded in part by advocacy group OpenNotes, has been a key concept in patient engagement for decades. Some experts assert patients who can view their own clinical notes will become more educated about and engaged in their medical care, improving the patient experience and self-management.
More recently, federal regulations under the 21st Century Cures Act has mandated all medical providers offer digital patient data access and access to clinical notes. That mandate has been met with some pushback, with stakeholders arguing that patients won’t understand what’s inside those notes and that they may not always like what they see.
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Data standardization emerges as a critical need during the pandemic
The inability to have common definitions of medical terms put roadblocks in place that hampered national strategies.
The need for data standardization has been made obvious this past year by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a panel of experts speaking at the Virtual Tech Forum hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
In a session entitled, “Automation and the Future State of Quality Measures: New Initiatives to Transform Health Care,” panelist Michele Schreiber, MD, deputy director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said there have been “pockets of lack of information during COVID,” and this information is fundamentally important to clinical care, individual patients and to policy decisionmakers.
Describing last year, Blackford Middleton, MD, chief informatics and innovation officer at Apervita, said, “We awoke to the realization that we had the inability to measure what was happening on the ground. We needed to connect the dots” in a rapid timeframe, but it was an incomplete feedback loop.”
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https://info.healthdatamanagement.com/leap-award-focuses-on-sdoh-and-referral-management
LEAP award focuses on SDOH and referral management
Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin will create a closed-loop referral system to integrate data.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has awarded the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin (Dell Med) a Leading Edge Acceleration Project in Health IT award to advance health equity by integrating social determinants of health data with clinical information.
The grant, announced in August, will enable Dell Med to develop an application programming interface-enabled SDOH platform using the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard to integrate a closed-loop referral system between clinical providers and social services organizations.
The initiative is important because it holds the promise of building an approach that can be used by other communities to develop similar closed-loop referral systems.
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Oct 6, 2021 ,06:25pm EDT|274 views
1 In 10 Americans Turn To Social Media For Health Information, New Survey Shows
I write about how healthcare business and policy impact consumers.
Amid culture wars over masking, Covid-19 treatments, and vaccine mandates, many Americans are at a loss for who to trust when it comes to healthcare information.
With Facebook under new fire for putting profits over people based on a whistleblower’s testimony before Congress, it’s a wonder that anyone trusts social media platforms at all, especially in a healthcare context.
But according to new data released this week from PatientsLikeMe, an online patient community, 11% of Americans surveyed said they turn to social media when looking for reliable health information. Nearly one in ten (9%) also said they use social media to evaluate new treatment options and 7% seek information about medication side effects from social media.
While these numbers are relatively small, they represent a substantially higher proportion of respondents than the share that says they trust social media for health information. That group was just 2% of respondents.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/articles/direct-standard-approved-by-ansi-as-a-national-measure
Direct Standard approved by ANSI as a national measure
The organization that oversees the development of consensus standards brings new visibility to largely hidden capabilities.
Oct 06 2021
Anne Ziegler
The American National Standards Institute has approved DirectTrust’s Direct Standard as a national standard, bringing a new level of trust and visibility to a key function within electronic health records systems.
The Direct Standard is the foundation of the Direct Secure Messaging protocol, which supports efforts to support secure, identity-verified electronic exchanges of protected health information. The standard was developed through DirectTrust, which was born out of a partnership with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology about a decade ago.
During the last several years, Direct has built out its infrastructure through a consensus-building process, but despite the group’s having achieved internal agreements about its direction, these agreements had no outside binding authority. However, the approval from ANSI brings a new level of authority and credibility to the Direct Standard.
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Beyond 'male, female, unknown' – informaticists propose gender-inclusive HL7 model
Researchers, including ONC Deputy National Coordinator Steven Posnack, noted that existing sex and gender data collection practices do not meaningfully reflect patient identity and diversity.
By Kat Jercich
October 07, 2021 12:24 PM
A team of informatics experts have developed a gender-inclusive Health Level Seven logical model aimed at more inclusive and representative clinical systems.
The model follows more than two years of work by the HL7 Gender Harmony Project, a collaborative international effort to specify standards that can be used by systems and clinicians in the provision of care.
"We have known for two decades that implementing inclusive sex and gender data-collection practices in clinical systems is a critical first step to eliminating data invisibility and addressing health disparities for gender-marginalized people," said the researchers in a paper published in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association presenting the model.
"But accurate representation of sex and gender diversity in clinical systems and standards is a challenge for many reasons, and adoption has been slow and sporadic," they said.
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What Were the Top Conversation Points and Learnings from the HIMSS 2021 Conference?
October 7, 2021
As we wrap up our coverage from the HIMSS 2021 conference in Las Vegas, we wanted to share a great video montage from a wide variety of experts we talked to on the final day of HIMSS. We asked these experts to tell us something that they’d learned at HIMSS or what were some of the main insights they found at the conference.
What’s great about a conference the size of HIMSS is that everyone has a unique experience as they attend different sessions and have unique conversations. So, it should come as no surprise that the health IT experts we talked to shared everything from where we’re at in healthcare interoperability, the prominence of data in solutions, data bias, AI and machine learning evolution, the pipeline of women in health IT, how long COVID will be with us, the value of community, remote patient monitoring’s maturity, and more.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/10/07/we-still-have-much-to-learn-from-the-banking-industry/
We Still Have Much To Learn From The Banking Industry
October 7, 2021
For most of my career, I have been one of those annoying nags pointing out over and over how large the gap between financial services technology and healthcare is. Like many others in the healthcare IT industry, I still feel a twinge of annoyance when I reflect upon how hard it still is to get healthcare information versus how easy it is to take my money out of a bank using an ATM.
The gap has only grown larger over the last decade or two. As the rate things are going, financial IT will run rings around us in the healthcare field for some time to come. While we struggle still to share data amongst healthcare organizations, financial institutions are steadily moving to models which bring multiple financial sources to a single consumer portal and deliver neatly packaged data.
Admittedly, the drive to make financial data more useful and accessible — particularly to consumers — doesn’t seem to be driven by the big organizations themselves. While the solutions are often white-labeled, if you look closely you’ll see that fintech intermediaries are springing up which deliver our consumer interfaces to multiple financial institutions.
Still, even if intermediaries are getting the job done, it’s getting done. For example, I’ve begun to see impressive levels of integration with various financial organizations featured in new budgeting and financial tools. While banks and other financial entities aren’t fully integrated with these tools, the extent to which they even present this data is impressive.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/health/depression-treatment-deep-brain-stimulation.html
A ‘Pacemaker for the Brain’: No Treatment Helped Her Depression — Until This
It’s the first study of individualized brain stimulation to treat severe depression. Sarah’s case raises the possibility the method may help people who don’t respond to other therapies.
By Pam Belluck
Published Oct. 4, 2021Updated Oct. 5, 2021
Driving home from work in Northern California five years ago, a young woman was so overwhelmed with depression that all she could think about was ending her life.
“I couldn’t stop crying,” recalled Sarah, now 38. “The thought that consumed me the entire way on that road was just driving my car into the marshland so I can drown.”
She made it home, but soon after, moved in with her parents because doctors considered it unsafe for her to live alone. No longer able to function at work, she quit her health technology job.
She tried nearly every treatment: roughly 20 different medications, months in a hospital day program, electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation. But as with nearly a third of the more than 250 million people with depression worldwide, her symptoms persisted.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/data-analytics-artificial-intelligence-lower-hospital-infections
Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence Lower Hospital Infections
By switching to a data analytics and AI-powered hygiene monitoring system, Novant Health decreased its number of hospital-acquired infections.
October 05, 2021 - As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread worldwide, hospitals are searching for ways to keep their patients safe from potential hospital-acquired infections. Different methods have included hygiene monitoring, data analytics, and artificial intelligence technology.
According to Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for Novant Health, Eric Eskioglu, MD, about 1.7 million hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) occur each year. Additionally, around a hundred thousand of those result in death. One way to tackle this problem is through hand hygiene monitoring.
While Novant had the goal of bringing their rate of HAIs down to zero, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the team tried to accelerate the process. “The way most hospitals do hand hygiene monitoring is somebody has to stand behind you and observe you wash your hands and grade you,” Eskioglu told HealthITAnlaytics.
However, Eskioglu explained that the system of hygiene monitoring was not effective in the time of COVID-19. While the hospital was already short-staffed, it was inefficient to pull staff members away from their work so they could watch other nurses and physicians wash their hands. With artificial intelligence technology, Novant partnered up with SwipeSense.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/nhsx-confirms-37-42-icss-have-shared-care-records
NHSX confirms 37 of 42 ICSs have shared care records
Five systems missed the national target to establish shared care records by the end of September.
By Tammy Lovell
October 06, 2021 07:45 AM
NHSX has revealed that 37 of 42 integrated care systems (ICSs) now have basic shared care records in place, meaning that five missed the national target.
The shared care record system officially replaced the local health and care record (LHR) programme in April, in a bid to improve NHS staff’s access to patient data.
NHSX gave the ICSs one year from September 2020 to establish shared care records, following a report by the National Audit Office, which said many trusts could not view or update records held by other local organisations.
According to a blog post by NHSX unit programme director for shared care records, Ashley Hannah, a further two ICSs are on target to establish the records by the end of 2021-22. The three remaining ICSs will receive extra support and funding to help them reach the target.
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KLAS Report Weighs Clinical Decision Support Costs, Health IT Benefits
High costs and outdated interfaces among clinical decision support market share leaders led some customers to choose other health IT solutions.
October 05, 2021 - Wolters Kluwer is a market share leader for clinical decision support (CDS) solutions, but a high price tag and outdated user interface is bringing some customers to explore other health IT options, according to a new KLAS report.
Healthcare organizations usually leverage multiple CDS systems for various use cases, but COVID-19 cost pressures and the desire to standardize care have led organizations to reevaluate their CDS strategy, the KLAS authors noted.
Wolters Kluwer
While market share leader Wolters Kluwer is well-loved by physicians, healthcare organizations noted that Wolters Kluwer is by far the most expensive CDS solution compared to other health IT vendors. Organizations reported leaving Wolters Kluwer due to a lack of affordability, and some prospective customers noted that they did not select Wolters Kluwer due to cost concerns.
Additionally, Wolters Kluwer customers called for a more up-to-date user interface and greater visibility into where the CDS content comes from and how reliable it is.
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https://info.healthdatamanagement.com/direct-standard-approved-by-ansi-as-a-national-measure
Direct Standard approved by ANSI as a national measure
The organization that oversees the development of consensus standards brings new visibility to largely hidden capabilities.
Anne Ziegler
The American
National Standards Institute has approved DirectTrust’s Direct Standard as a
national standard, bringing a new level of trust and visibility to a key
function within electronic health records systems.
The Direct Standard is the foundation of the Direct Secure Messaging protocol,
which supports efforts to support secure, identity-verified electronic
exchanges of protected health information. The standard was developed through
DirectTrust, which was born out of a partnership with the Office of the
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology about a decade ago.
During the last several years, Direct has built out its infrastructure through
a consensus-building process, but despite the group’s having achieved internal
agreements about its direction, these agreements had no outside binding
authority. However, the approval from ANSI brings a new level of authority and
credibility to the Direct Standard.
Direct is already used widely by individuals to send authenticated encrypted
health information to known, trusted recipients across the Internet. To
participate in Direct exchanges, users must have a Direct address, as these
messages cannot be sent by email or other Internet communications technologies.
The standard specifies a profiled use for public key infrastructure (PKI) and
deployed Internet scale infrastructure for message structure and security.
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AMA spins out AI-based clinical decision support company
– 04 October, 2021
Health2047, the American Medical Association's innovation subsidiary, on Oct. 4 unveiled its latest spinout company: RecoverX, which seeks to support decision-making for physicians in over 30 specialties through its artificial intelligence platform.
Five details:
- RecoverX provides physicians with a short list of insights and next-best action suggestions based on information from clinical charts, patient conversations and test results.
- The startup partnered with BMJ Best Practice, which gives hospitals worldwide access to research, guidelines and expert opinions. Information is updated daily.
- RecoverX's platform reacts to physicians' actions in real time through voice transcription, live note taking and one-click action.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/legislators-aim-shore-critical-infrastructure-cyber-defense
Legislators aim to shore up critical infrastructure cyber defense
Members of Congress introduced several bills geared toward identifying critical infrastructure and requiring certain organizations to report cyber incidents in a timely manner.
By Kat Jercich
October 05, 2021 03:24 PM
Members of Congress have introduced several bills aimed at bolstering the nation's cybersecurity when it comes to critical infrastructure – and requiring victims to report quickly when incidents do occur.
Identifying critical infrastructure
On Tuesday, Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., and Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., put forward legislation that would designate systemically important critical infrastructure.
A disruption to such infrastructure, the bill says, would have a "debilitating effect on national security, economic security, public health or safety, or any combination thereof."
"Over the past year, we’ve seen the devastating real-world impacts of sophisticated cyber attacks on our nation’s critical infrastructure,” said Katko in a statement.
"To mitigate risks to our economic and national security going forward, we need a clear process for identifying which infrastructure constitutes systemically important critical infrastructure. Disruption to this infrastructure – ranging from pipelines to software – could have an outsized impact on our homeland security," he added.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/anz/new-zealand-pilots-nfc-tags-covid-19-tracking
New Zealand pilots NFC tags for COVID-19 tracking
The trial seeks to enhance the government's COVID-19 track and trace programme.
By Adam Ang
October 05, 2021 02:51 AM
The New Zealand Ministry of Health has started trying out near field communication tags as part of its COVID-19 track and trace programme.
WHAT IT DOES
The NFC tags are used with the government's NZ COVID Tracer app. Placed near existing QR code posters, it will detect a user's NFC-supported smartphone and open their contact tracing app to automatically record their presence.
According to a media release, digital entries via NFC tag have the same privacy protections as scanning and using Bluetooth tracing via the NZ COVID Tracer. Users have control over their data but will be asked to share information when they test positive for COVID-19.
The tap-in tags are now placed in public spaces around the Kelburn, Pipitea and Te Aro campuses of Victoria University of Wellington, as well as in two cafes and a fitness centre in capital Wellington.
WHY IT MATTERS
The New Zealand government has been seeking technologies that enhance and support its COVID-19 response, said Shayne Hunter, deputy director-general of Data and Digital at the Ministry of Health. He noted that keeping a digital log of visited places helps with the rapid contract tracing when a COVID-19 case is detected.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/asia/passion-ai-healthcare
A passion for AI in healthcare
As group chief technology officer and deputy chief medical information officer at National University Health System Singapore (NUHS), Dr Kee Yuan Ngiam’s career has been defined by his work developing and deploying AI platforms.
October 05, 2021 03:21 AM
Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a major role in the future of healthcare, according to Dr Ngiam.
"Being able to support clinical decisions based on highly accurate predictions of patients' outcomes would be a game changer. If this is done at population scale, I think that will change the way we practice medicine as we know it," he says.
Over the years, Dr Ngiam has been awarded numerous awards for his work in research and education, including the ExxonMobil-NUS research fellowship for clinicians in 2007.
Innovation in healthcare
At NUHS, he is responsible for overseeing technology deployment in the western healthcare cluster and serves as chief advisor to the NUHS Centre for Innovation in Healthcare.
"Being able to launch some of these platforms and realise the potential of the AI tools in clinical practice is probably one of the key highlights of my career," Dr Ngiam says. "Specifically in the last four years, we've managed to build, launch and operate Discovery AI, which is a platform that allows our clinicians and researchers to use the data we have to develop AI tools."
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Involving Clinicians & Understanding Patient Demand are Key to Implementing Care-at-Home
October 5, 2021
More patients prefer to recover and receive care at home than at a medical facility. COVID-19 accelerated the demand as visits to facilities were restricted. Implementing care-at-home services is surprisingly challenging and is much more than people + technology. Key success factors include involving clinicians and understanding actual patient demand.
Care-at-Home Trend
The Home Health/care-at-home market is one of the fastest growing sectors in healthcare. According to Grand View Research, the global home healthcare market was valued at USD 281.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.9% to 2027.
A recent survey of health plan executives revealed that 97% believed that more care at home would be better for both their organizations and their members. That survey included a very interesting statement: “COVID accelerated acceptance of care-at-home and the adoption of the technology, staffing and processes necessary to make it happen.”
The statement highlights that it takes more than just technology to care for patients in their homes. As much as Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) technology has taken off, it alone cannot provide the level of care that patients need.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/telehealth/telehealth-expansion-comes-growing-pains
For Telehealth, Expansion Comes with Growing Pains
Analysis | By John Commins | October 05, 2021
A new J.D. Power survey suggests that service limitations, access hurdles, and quality-of-care issues dampen consumer enthusiasm.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Overall, 36% of patients have accessed telehealth services during the past year, up from just 9% in 2020 and 7% in 2019.
· Usage is consistent across all generational groups, with the highest usage among members of Generation Y and Pre-Boomers.
· Overall satisfaction with both direct-to-consumer and payer-sponsored telehealth services decline in 2021 from 2020.
· Barriers encountered by patients include: limited services; lack of awareness of costs; confusing tech requirements; and lack of information about providers.
The telehealth sector has seen broad expansion during the first 18 months of the coronavirus public health emergency, but that surge has been accompanied by growing pains, one survey shows.
J.D. Power's newly released 2021 U.S. Telehealth Satisfaction Study identified service limitations, access hurdles, and quality-of-care issues have dampened consumer enthusiasm for telehealth.
The survey showed that while 36% of the more than 4,600 respondents said they'd used telehealth in the past year – up from 9% in 2020 and 7% in 2010 -- overall satisfaction with both direct-to-consumer and payer-sponsored telehealth services decline in 2021 from 2020.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/clinical-research-requires-ehr-optimization-data-interoperability
Clinical Research Requires EHR Optimization, Data Interoperability
Stakeholders should promote EHR optimization for health data interoperability in support of pragmatic clinical research, a new study says.
October 04, 2021 - EHR optimization to support data interoperability could improve the value of pragmatic clinical research, according to a study published in JAMIA.
Pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) leverage existing data streams in EHR systems and usually involve multiple clinical sites with wide eligibility criteria to generate real-world evidence.
The Healthcare Systems Research Collaboratory team collected survey responses from 20 PCT projects and found challenges in six main categories:
· Inadequate collection of patient-reported outcome data
· Lack of structured data collection
· Data standardization
· Resources to support customization of EHRs
· Difficulties aggregating data across sites
· Accessing EHR data
Based on these findings, the researchers created six prerequisites for the successful conduction of PCT trials.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/ocr-clarifies-hipaa-rules-surrounding-vaccination-status
OCR Clarifies HIPAA Rules Surrounding Vaccination Status
OCR issued guidance emphasizing that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not prohibit anyone from asking an individual about their vaccination status.
By Jill McKeon
October 04, 2021 - The COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout have brought HIPAA into the spotlight, but many Americans continue to misunderstand how HIPAA relates and does not relate to vaccination status. As a result, HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently released guidance clarifying what health information HIPAA protects and who it applies to.
HIPAA applies strictly to covered entities, defined as health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and healthcare providers. OCR emphasized that despite common misconceptions, the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not prohibit any individual, business, or HIPAA covered entity from asking whether an individual has received a vaccine.
The rule also does not regulate a covered entity’s ability to request such information from patients and visitors. The rule simply regulates how and when covered entities and business associates are allowed to use and share the protected health information (PHI)that those covered entities create, maintain, receive, or transmit.
“Thus, the Privacy Rule does not prohibit a covered entity (e.g., a covered doctor, hospital, or health plan) or business associate from asking whether an individual (e.g., a patient or visitor) has received a particular vaccine, including COVID-19 vaccines, although it does regulate how and when a covered entity or its business associate may use or disclose information about an individual’s vaccination status,” OCR explained.
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Telehealth use is surging but patient satisfaction with the service has declined, new study finds
Oct 4, 2021 12:48pm
As the use of telehealth has become more widespread, consumer satisfaction has fallen, according to a recent survey.
J.D. Power conducted a telehealth satisfaction study, looking at factors including customer service, consultation, enrollment and billing among direct-to-consumer and payer-sponsored telehealth services. More than 4,600 consumers who used a telehealth service in the past year, from June 2020 through July 2021, responded.
The study found that despite 36% of patients using telehealth, four times higher than the previous year, they also report limited services and inconsistent care and lower satisfaction than in 2020.
“As the industry grows, it is critical to address these challenges,” said James Beem, managing director of global healthcare intelligence at J.D. Power, in a statement.
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Sep 30, 2021,10:28am EDT|1,343 views
Artificial Intelligence Myth Vs Reality: Where Do Healthcare Experts Think We Stand?
The “AI in healthcare: myth versus reality” discussion has been happening for well over a decade. From AI bias and data quality issues to considerable market failures (e.g., the notorious missteps and downfall of IBM’s Watson Health unit), the progress and efficacy of AI in healthcare continues to face extreme scrutiny.
As President of the Mayo Clinic Platform, John Halamka, M.D., M.S., is “not disappointed in the least” about AI’s progress in healthcare. “I think of it as a maturation process,” he said. “You’re asking why your three-year-old isn’t doing calculus. But can your three-year-old add a column of numbers? That’s actually not so bad.”
In an industry as complicated and high-stakes as healthcare, the implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning comes with challenges that have created a credibility gap. Among the many challenges that Halamka and others acknowledge and are working to address include:
- Data quality, availability, labeling and transparency issues
- Insufficient AI model and algorithm training and AI bias
- The lack of standards, certification processes and general oversight
It’s not all gloom and doom, though, especially when it comes to AI and machine learning for healthcare administration and process efficiency. For example, hospitals and health systems have successfully employed AI to improve physician workflows, optimize revenue cycle and supply chain management strategies, and improve the patient experience.
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https://thehill.com/changing-america/opinion/574886-better-data-will-help-us-fight-the-next-pandemic
Better data will help us fight the next pandemic
There is one consistent and common thread that has undermined America’s ability to prepare for and respond to this ongoing public health crisis.
By Brian C. Castrucci and William J. Kassler
, Opinion Contributor
With 70 million eligible Americans still unvaccinated and the delta variant continuing to drive more than 115,000 new infections a day, our nation finds itself back to the grim task of counting hospital beds and ventilators. And while there are many factors contributing to COVID-19’s resurgence and unrelenting hold on communities nationwide, there is one consistent and common thread that has undermined America’s ability to adequately prepare for and respond to this ongoing public health crisis.
A disjointed, chronically underfunded public health data infrastructure stymied our efforts to gather, interpret and act on early vital warning signs that could have helped prevent immeasurable personal and economic suffering and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Throughout this pandemic, the dearth of reliable community data forced a reliance on guesswork and assumptions to guide the pandemic response, which too often lacked direction and nuance. Accurate, comprehensive and real-time data that reflect the needs of every community has never been more clear or urgent.
This entire pandemic is a monument to our failed data systems. The majority of our grocery stores have more sophisticated IT systems than our public health departments. Early on in this pandemic, life-saving decisions, such as where to send ventilators, PPE and support teams were based on inconsistent, outdated and incomplete information. Critical choices on the closing or reopening of schools and businesses, managing hospital capacity and supplies and imposing or lifting rules about mask use and public gatherings demand detailed and verified data in real time. While important steps are being taken to better predict ongoing threats, a comprehensive national data infrastructure is needed to inform our pandemic response within local communities and the nation as a whole.
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Online Patient Self-Scheduling Drives Growth of Inspira Health
Analysis | By Scott Mace | September 29, 2021
54% of appointments booked online have been for new patients.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Jammed call center and pandemic conditions prompted months-long leadership-physician dialogue leading to culture change, letting patients self-schedule
· Scheduling software hands off appointment slots to EHR software
· New patient surge has prompted system to hire 100 physicians
Technology-driven culture change at Inspira Health Network was the key ingredient to a growth spurt in outpatient activity at the New Jersey healthcare nonprofit.
Specifically, leaders at Inspira Health persuaded physicians to allow patients to schedule their own appointments, which previously had been booked the traditional way, by having patients call or otherwise communicate with physicians' staffs, who had, until that time, sole possession of the available time slots for appointments.
The innovation required expansion in August 2020 of a technology working in conjunction with Inspira Health's Cerner Millennium electronic health record (EHR) software.
The technology whose use expanded was Kyruus, which was brought in at Inspira Health to power search the system's healthcare provider directory on the web and in Inspira Health's MyInspira mobile app. "We started with that," says Thomas Pacek, vice president and chief information officer at Inspira Health. "People can find a physician by specialty, location, or if you want a female or male physician. Once that was operational, we added the [Kyruus] self-scheduler capability."
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https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58761324
DeepMind faces legal action over NHS data use
Published 2 October, 2021
A legal case has been launched on behalf of more than a million people whose confidential medical records were obtained by Google.
In 2015, Google's AI firm DeepMind was given the personal records of 1.6 million patients at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
The law firm handling the case said it was launched to address public concerns about the use of private health data by tech firms.
DeepMind has not commented.
But the BBC understands that no claim has formally been served at this time.
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https://histalk2.com/2021/10/01/weekender-10-1-21/
Weekly News Recap
- Microsoft invests in Truveta, the health system-owned data-selling company.
- Walgreens is rumored to be considering the acquisition of Evolent Health.
- A GAO report says three big donors of President Trump violated federal law by exerting improper influence on VA decisions, including their recommendation that the VA sell patient data.
- Walmart announces that it will implement Epic across all of its health and wellness business lines.
- ONC finds that third-party health apps have been slow to adopt the HL7 FHIR standard as mandated by the Cures Act.
- Clinical research network vendor Elligo Health Research raises $135 million in a Series E funding round, with existing investor Cerner participating.
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Enjoy!
David.
4 comments:
We don't need MORE and MORE clear obvious evidence of the clear obvious Covid SCAM of what has long been clear and obvious from the very start.
The relentless focus on this new area of fraud or that new piece of information on the Covid scam going on every day in the alternative media is at this VERY LATE stage A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME AND DISTRACTION from what everyone needs to immediately LEARN about to CONSTRUCTIVELY fight this obvious pseudoscientific Scamdemic, I mean how much MORE evidence do you need to see the obvious? UNLESS people take it to the next level it's just describing more in a slightly different way of the same obvious fraud....
For people to GET to FIGHT against their destruction through Covid jabs they first need to have a proper grasp of the nature of the world they live in --- they need to (want to) "see the light" first --- because if they do they will be MOTIVATED to fight.
The most vital and urgent DEEP understanding everyone needs to gain is that a bunch of psychopaths are governing big businesses (eg official medicine), nations and the world and that the Covid Scamdemic is a VERY DESTRUCTIVE WAR AGAINST NON-RULING PEOPLE EVERYWHERE --- you and I. But that's only ONE part of the equation.
The true, WHOLE, but "politically inconvenient" and “culturally forbidden” reality is more encompassing. Review “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room –The Holocaustal Covid-19 Coronavirus Madness: A Sociological Perspective & Historical Assessment Of The Covid “Phenomenon”” by Rolf Hefti at https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
Without a proper understanding, and full acknowledgment, of the true WHOLE problem and reality, no real constructive LASTING change is possible for humanity.
"Finding individuals who can think for themselves now is like finding diamonds in a sewer." -- Unknown
Some may wish to point out this is a somewhat 'fringe' view!
Pity the poster hides in anonymity!
David.
Interestingly much of this misinformation is repeated in a similar pattern going back to even the days of the black death. The reach of the internet simply amplifies the potential.
As for the above comment it reminds me this old charmer
It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids, without the knowledge of the individual, certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids
Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper
The reality is David that in some cases evolution has simply passed them by. - me
re "Some may wish to point out this is a somewhat 'fringe' view!"
It's not only a fringe view, it's a failure of logic.
The argument put forward by the commenter is based upon orthomolecular medicine.
This is a theory that promotes an optimal nutritional environment in the body and suggests that diseases reflect deficiencies in this environment
There is a word missing in that statement. It should say "that SOME diseases reflect deficiencies in this environment" which is "true".
I looked at the evidence supplied in the documents the commenter references and it is quite possibly valid, but only in a very narrow set of circumstances.
The failure of logic happens when the theory is generalised and then applied to all diseases.
Another way of putting this is that orthomolecular medicine may help some problems, but not all. Trying to apply it to all diseases is akin to blind unquestioning belief.
David's quote keeps on being useful
H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
And the thought that "a bunch of psychopaths are governing big businesses (eg official medicine), nations and the world" is laughable.
If you have ever seen big business and government up close trying to do anything well, let alone secretly rule the world you would know how fanciful the idea is.
It shows a distinct lack of experience and understanding of the real world.
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