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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What does the merger of NHS Digital and NHSX with NHS England mean?
Following the announcement that NHS Digital and NHSX is to merge with NHS England and Improvement, Digital Health’s editor-in-chief, Jon Hoeksma, explores what the consequences will be for the NHS IT community.
John Hoeksma – 25 Nov, 2021
NHS Digital and NHSX staff deserve a lot of sympathy this week. Having worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic, their reward is to be told the axe is to fall on their organisations, with many facing uncertainty surrounding their jobs.
News of the axing of NHS Digital (6000 staff) and NHSX (around 900 staff and contractors), was sudden and was delivered via a staff announcement from NHS England and Improvement CEO, Amanda Pritchard.
While a rationalisation of the many duplicate roles and responsibilities was widely expected, the full-blown take-over of NHS Digital caught many by surprise.
By making NHS Digital its in-house tech team, NHS England and Improvement will almost doubles its 6,500 staff overnight, in the short-term at least. There is a strong suspicion that the sheer size of NHS England and Improvement could lead to more job cuts.
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Long-awaited Wade-Gery review into NHS IT organisations is published
The review of NHS IT organisations by Laura Wade-Gery has finally been published, and as exclusively revealed by Digital Health News, recommends the axing of NHS Digital and NHSX.
John Hoeksma – 24 Nov, 2021
Instead, the review says that NHS England and Improvement must take over responsibility for digital and data within the wider transformation agenda and embed it at all levels. The decision to implement the core recommendation was announced by NHS England and Improvement CEO, Amanda Pritchard, to staff on November 22.
The review states that despite much good work, digital transformation is currently fragmented across the system, split between different agencies and is “often overshadowed by requirements of the day-to-day”.
It continues: “Many senior leaders see digital as a separate not embedded enabler and there needs to be greater clarity on the roles of national, regional and local in driving transformation.”
The review goes on to state there is “variable commitment, experience and interest amongst senior leaders in digitally enabled system transformation, with too few integrative leaders able to effectively bridge managerial, clinical and digital”.
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Roundup: Medanta adopts Qure.ai's x-ray software, India to open a medical cobotics centre, and more briefs
Also, Philips Foundation is funding a cardiac rehab centre in Singapore.
By Adam Ang
November 26, 2021 02:34 AM
Medanta taps Qure.ai for AI-driven chest x-ray analysis
Medanta, a multi-speciality medical group in India, has partnered with Qure.ai to implement the latter's artificial intelligence software to enhance chest x-ray analysis.
The hospital group will be adopting the qXR software which automatically analyses chest x-rays and spots findings for better diagnosis and treatment. The AI tool can detect 30 abnormalities of the lungs, pleura, heart, bones and diaphragm.
"Medanta strives to deliver world-class healthcare through its high-end medical equipment and superior infrastructure. State-of-the-art technology is an essential aspect of healthcare delivery," Dr Naresh Trehan, chairman and managing director of Medanta, was quoted as saying in a news report.
The Qure.ai software has also been adopted by Fujifilm Corporation for its portable X-ray FDR Xair system. Through its recent partnership with AstraZeneca Malaysia, the startup has brought its x-ray software to some primary care clinics in Malaysia to support the early detection of lung cancer there.
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French researchers reveal chatbot skills to override vaccine hesitancy
Interactive technology could help solve the problem of low vaccination rates in Europe.
By Anna Engberg
November 25, 2021 10:08 AM
A team of French cognitive scientists has addressed the urgent issue of vaccine hesitancy within many EU countries and proposes a new approach. With a study published in October this year, the researchers successfully demonstrated that the reluctance to be vaccinated could be decreased by deploying chatbot technology.
WHY IT MATTERS
The chatbot study involved researchers from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research INSERM and ENS-PSL.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, found that interaction with a chatbot developed by CNRS, ENS-PSL and INSERM was able to reduce vaccination refusal by 20 per cent within a test group of 338 participants.
In the control group, which received only brief information about the COVID-19 vaccination, there were no comparable results in terms of general views and willingness to vaccinate.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/amazon-health-it-partnership-aims-to-enhance-clinical-communication
Amazon Health IT Partnership Aims to Enhance Clinical Communication
Amazon has partnered with a health IT company to create an ambient clinical intelligence tool that is set to streamline clinical communication.
November 24, 2021 - Health IT vendor Vocera has announced a collaboration with Amazon to build an ambient clinical intelligence solution in efforts to enhance the patient experience and streamline clinical communication.
The HIPAA-eligible solution will leverage a set of technologies from Alexa Smart Properties to allow patients and families to receive information about their stay through simple voice requests spoken to an Amazon Echo in the patient’s room.
The health IT will automatically answer common questions from patients that do not need clinical intervention, like visitor hours.
For requests that require clinical intervention, the tool will recognize keywords and phrases to route the message to the appropriate care team member. This is expected to streamline clinical communication by reducing unnecessary care team interruptions.
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Patient-Generated Clinical Notes, OpenNotes Yield Patient Satisfaction
Most patients and providers agreed patient-generated clinical notes via OpenNotes was a positive for appointments.
By Sara Heath
November 24, 2021 - Patient-generated health data and appointment agenda-setting via OpenNotes—a process that OpenNotes had dubbed OurNotes—can lead to both clinician and patient satisfaction, as well as increased patient engagement during clinical visits, the organization reported in a recent Journal of Medical Internet Research report.
These findings build on the literature confirming OpenNotes, or the practice of patients having free access to their clinical notes, as improving patient engagement and satisfaction. Starting in April of 2021, healthcare organizations have been beholden to providing open clinical notes as part of the 21st Century Cures Act and ONC information blocking final rule.
OurNotes is a little different, foremost because it is not a regulatory requirement. The practice allows patients to contribute some of their own medical information to their health records to be integrated with clinician notes.
The JMIR study looked at OurNotes efficacy at four academic medical centers, particularly testing the system for eliciting patient recollections of their previous medical encounter and three priority points for their upcoming medical encounter
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/95788
Medicine Has Become the Great Patient Handoff
— Patients pay the price for our fragmented healthcare system
by Kathleen A. Hallinan, MD, MPH November 21, 2021
Americans have become the commodity in their own healthcare system. A patient has gone from being a person who has a relationship with a physician to a sheep that is herded through, with the corporate medical world making money off them with every move. Gone are the days when a physician would do rounds in the hospital in the morning, see patients in the office, follow them into the nursing home, and do home visits as they came to the end of their journey.
"Care" has now become a fragmented web of hospitalists, intensivists, and mid-level care that only remotely reflects the relationships that were the bedrock of the American medical system just 20 years ago.
What is the most substantial impact of this fragmented care? No one provider is the sole caregiver with total responsibility. Medicine has become the great handoff, with no one seeing the whole picture of the person in front of them. Patients have become a conglomeration of body systems and body parts to be fixed or addressed in a fragmented fashion, reminiscent of an assembly line.
Pretend for a moment you're a patient and you go to the emergency room for an acute issue. There, staff need only to verify that you will not expire within 24 hours, and out you go. If the risk is too high, then they hand you off to the hospitalist who will admit you, but if your condition worsens, there is often another handoff to an intensivist who manages the ICU. If more than one or two organ systems are affected then subspecialists will come and pore over the computer (rarely over the human) to see if the numbers in the electronic medical record are within their wheelhouse.
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https://www.mdlinx.com/physiciansense/what-can-be-done-to-fix-ehrs/
What can be done to fix EHRs?
By Lara Becker on November 23, 2021
EHRs can make or break a physician’s efficiency, as well as their longevity in medical practice. The proof is in the research. For example, a 2020 Journal of Medical Internet Research study found that 74.5% of queried physicians said EHRs contributed to their burnout.
It was never supposed to be this way.
In 2009, President Barack Obama delivered a speech at an AMA conference saying EHRs “will not only mean less paper-pushing and lower administrative costs, saving taxpayers billions of dollars; it will also mean all of you physicians will have an easier time doing your jobs.”
Research demonstrates that EHRs have improved certain aspects of medical practice, however. For example, a 2012 CDC survey found that 88% of doctors thought EHRs produced clinical benefits for practice, and 75% felt that EHRs allowed a physician to deliver better patient care. Along these perceived benefits, however, comes the clerical burden of EHR data entry, which takes an undeniable toll on doctors.
What would solve the problem? PhysicianSense consulted several experts on the subject. The answer, it seems, must incorporate physician input, user experience (UX) design, and healthcare policymakers.
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Race Equality Foundation says UK review into medical device bias is not enough
Government review will examine the impact of devices such as oximeters on patients from different ethnic groups.
By Tammy Lovell
November 24, 2021 02:23 AM
The UK government has launched a “far-reaching review” into the impact of potential bias in the design and use of medical devices.
Race Equality Foundation CEO Jabeer Butt welcomed the review, but said it was not enough to explain the disproportionate deaths of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people from COVID-19.
The review will examine medical devices currently on the market to identify where systematic bias and risk exist and make recommendations on how these issues should be tackled in the creation of medical devices from design to use.
It will also consider the enhanced risk of bias in the emerging range of algorithmic based data / artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Medical devices such as oximeters will be examined to identify potential discrepancies in how they work for different ethnic groups and whether regulations mean there is a systemic bias inherent in medical devices.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Shows RPM Improves Patient Outcomes
November 24, 2021
A randomized controlled trial across 8 acute care hospitals showed patients that were part of a Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) program after surgery, were 5.3% less likely to be readmitted, 13.9% less likely to report pain 7 days after surgery, and 24.2% safer because medication errors were detected early on.
Background
The trial was conducted by Dr. Michael McGillion and Dr. PJ Devereaux of the Population Health Research Institute and McMaster University. They recently published their results in the British Medical Journal – “Post-discharge after surgery Virtual Care with Remote Automated Monitoring-1 (PVC-RAM-1) technology versus standard care: randomised controlled trial.”
The objective of the study was to determine if virtual care, coupled with RPM had an impact on the outcomes of and reduced readmissions for patients discharged after non-elective surgeries versus standard care (no virtual care, no RPM). The study involved 905 adult patients across 8 acute care hospitals.
Participants in the experimental group received a tablet computer and RPM technology (provided by Cloud DX) that measured blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, and body weight. For 30 days participants took daily biophysical measurements and photographs of their wound three times a day. This information was transmitted to the care team back at the hospital.
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Data Cleanup Keeps Idaho Health Information Exchange Alive
Analysis | By Scott Mace | November 24, 2021
New management targets social determinants of health integration.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Data cleanup saved HIE from insolvency and continues to play a role in its goal of break-even operations by the end of 2022.
· First-in-nation statewide license of Findhelp.org expands HIE's role in integrating social determinants of health with data integration goals.
· FHIR-based data warehouse is poised to help insurers meet HHS 2022 nationwide regulation to exchange data in FHIR format.
· Beyond HIE partnership with Utah HIE expands regional effort to coordinate data exchange.
The Idaho Health Data Exchange (IHDE) overcame an existential crisis by modernizing its patient matching technology and reducing data duplication to less than 1%.
In this process, IHDE matched more than 5.1 million messages while reducing patient data duplication rates by 94%, going from 18% to 1% on identity resolution, yielding more than 2.8 million searchable patient records, and improving care across the state.
The 10-year-old data exchange began its turnaround two years ago, when it asked Capital Health Associates to modernize the exchange, says Hans Kastensmith, the contracted executive director of IHDE and a managing partner at Capital Health Associates.
Building upon a base stack of technology from Orion Health, Capital Health Associates adopted 4medica's Big Data MPI [master-patient index] and 4medica's “1% as a Service“ to provide a real-time, transaction cloud-based service to quickly assess, normalize and cleanse mismatched patient identity data as a foundation for patient safety, data integrity, and interoperability.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-documenation-styles-may-impact-work-hours-clinician-burden
EHR Documenation Styles May Impact Work Hours, Clinician Burden
Writing clinical notes in a localized time period in the morning or afternoon may lead to decreased clinician burden and EHR documentation times.
November 23, 2021 - First-year medicine residents who wrote clinical notes in a localized time period during the morning or afternoon spent less time at work, according to a study published in JAMIA. The study suggests the need for further research to examine how different EHR documentation styles may impact clinician burden.
Researchers examined progress note production styles for Internal Medicine residents at the University of California, San Francisco who started their first year on June 21, 2018, using unsupervised machine learning methods.
The progress notes covered 279 inpatient encounters in which patients were admitted during three two-week periods (last two weeks of June, first two weeks of July, and first two weeks of October) to capture a sample of periods in the academic year.
The study revealed several distinct user styles and potential relationships between these styles and work hours.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/zero-day-attacks-threaten-healthcare-cybersecurity
Zero-Day Attacks Threaten Healthcare Cybersecurity
Zero-day attacks pose a serious threat to the healthcare sector and can be difficult to mitigate, HC3 warned in its latest threat brief.
By Jill McKeon
November 22, 2021 - The Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) issued a threat brief outlining risks and mitigation tactics associated with financially motivated zero-day attacks on the healthcare sector. By nature, it is impossible to eliminate zero-day attack risks, but patching systems regularly is the strongest form of defense.
The term “zero-day” indicates that there is no time between when the vulnerability is discovered by developers and when it is exploited by bad actors.
It can refer to a few different mechanisms, HC3 noted. A zero-day attack occurs when threat actors exploit a vulnerability before a patch can be developed and applied. Meanwhile, a zero-day exploit is a method that weaponizes a discovered vulnerability, and a zero-day vulnerability is an unknown flaw in a software program.
Notable zero-day attacks, regardless of industry, include a 2010 attack on an Iranian nuclear program that successfully caused centrifuges to self-destruct, and the 2021 SonicWall zero-day ransomware attack in which threat actors exploited a vulnerability and subsequently deployed FiveHands ransomware.
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How a clearer view of healthcare price data will shake markets
Price transparency in commercial health plans makes cost reduction an imperative for healthcare providers
Nov 23 2021
Healthcare operating model expert , PA Consulting
The recent CMS hospital price transparency ruling requires providers to release negotiated rates for 300 “shoppable services” for each of their contracted payers. The ruling aims to help Americans understand the cost of a hospital item or service before receiving it.
CMS has also finalized the payer equivalent; payers will have to make their negotiated rates with in-network providers public in January 2023. As a result, payers, providers, and consumers will be able to compare rates across the healthcare system, making healthcare costs more transparent.
Price transparency will drive both providers and payers to understand their own businesses through the data they collect; which is a good thing. It is fair to say that businesses in all markets are becoming more data driven as they understand the value that data analytics can produce.
Organizations that seek to navigate this transition should start by finding the internal product owner for the chosen system and understanding the reports that can be generated. Often, the business and IT work together so that the business suggest areas they need analysis in or the problem they are trying to solve, then IT can advise on the potential solutions.
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Patients who use EHR portals have shorter hospital stays, analysis finds
Having an active patient portal account is linked to a shorter average length of stay in the hospital for both COVID-19 patients and heart failure patients, according to a recent analysis of data from Epic's Health Research Network.
For the study, researchers examined patient admissions for COVID-19 and heart failure alongside patients' engagement with patient portals. Results showed that having a patient portal account was associated with a shorter length of stay in the hospital.
COVID-19 patients with an active portal account had an average length of stay shorter by 0.09 to 1.1 days, while heart failure patients with portal accounts were associated with an average length of stay shorter by 0.3 to 0.6 days, according to the analysis.
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'Patch early, patch often': HHS cyber arm issues warning on zero-day attacks
HC3 researchers say these hacks – where new vulnerabilities exploited before a patch can be applied – are on the rise.
By Kat Jercich
November 23, 2021 04:21 PM
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' cybersecurity arm issued a threat briefing this past week about "zero-day attacks" and their potential risk to the healthcare system.
"Mitigating zero-day attacks completely is not possible – by nature, they are novel and unexpected attack vectors," said the Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center in a public presentation.
One helpful mitigation? "Patch early, patch often, patch completely."
WHY IT MATTERS
As the agency outlined in the briefing, a zero-day attack is defined as a vulnerability exploited by threat actors before a patch is developed and applied.
The number of zero-day exploits caught in the wild has skyrocketed this year: By September 2021, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers had tracked at least 66.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-sepsis-alert-volume-raises-clinician-burden-concerns
EHR Sepsis Alert Volume Raises Clinician Burden Concerns
While hospital census declined during COVID-19, EHR sepsis alert volume increased by 43 percent, highlighting clinician burden concerns.
November 23, 2021 - Healthcare organizations that leverage the Epic Sepsis Model (ESM) experienced a 43 percent increase in EHR alerts during COVID-19, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open that raises clinician burden concerns.
Sepsis early warning systems aim to provide timely clinical decision support for recognizing and treating sepsis. Traditionally, these early warning systems have relied on simple clinical rules, like systemic inflammatory response syndrome criteria, to identify patients with possible sepsis. However, these systems have not been shown to reliably improve patient outcomes.
Systems like the ESM aim to improve sepsis detection through artificial intelligence algorithms. However, concerns have arisen recently regarding the potential for sepsis models to overwhelm clinicians with EHR alerts.
The University of Michigan paused ESM alerts in April 2020, about three to four weeks after its first COVID-19 hospitalization, when nurses reported that the system was over-alerting them and causing fatigue.
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Epic-generated sepsis alerts increased during COVID-19, study shows
Researchers note that providers have raised concerns about alert fatigue from artificial intelligence-enabled sepsis models.
By Kat Jercich
November 23, 2021 12:18 PM
A research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open this week examined the number of alerts generated by the Epic Sepsis Model at 24 hospitals before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School and Washington University School of Medicine found that the total alerts per day increased by 43% in the three weeks before and after the first case of COVID-19 in each health system.
"Although the increase in the proportion of patients generating sepsis alerts in this study can be explained by the cancellation of elective surgeries and a higher average acuity among the remaining hospitalized patients, the 43% increase in total alerts illustrates the increased alerting burden imposed by COVID-19 on a sepsis model," they wrote.
Epic declined to respond to requests for comment.
WHY IT MATTERS
As noted by the researchers, concerns have been raised about the potential for sepsis models to cause alert fatigue, leading to the University of Michigan to pause Epic-generated alerts in April 2020.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/indiana-hie-announces-data-sharing-network-nearly-covers-state
Indiana HIE Announces Data Sharing Network Nearly Covers State
After large health systems joined the nonprofit HIE this year, the data sharing network now encompasses clinical data of 18 million patients.
November 22, 2021 - Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) has announced that its data sharing network is close to covering the entire state of Indiana, according to reporting from The Hamilton County Reporter.
Large health system contributors in the Fort Wayne area joined the nonprofit HIE this year, filling a data sharing gap in the northeast region of the state.
“The COVID pandemic certainly highlighted the need for a statewide health information exchange to support public health, and each new facility added is a step towards a consolidated and statewide data exchange in Indiana,” Drew Richardson, vice president of product and business development at IHIE, told The Hamilton Country Reporter.
“While the focus has been primarily on public health and COVID, we are seeing tremendous value in these new data sources for all participants including health systems, providers, payers, and labs,” Richardson continued.
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32% of Healthcare Organizations Have a Comprehensive Security Program
Core components of a comprehensive security program include regular reporting of security deficiencies and having a designated CISO.
By Jill McKeon
November 22, 2021 - Just 32 percent of surveyed acute and ambulatory care organizations had a comprehensive security program in 2021, according to the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) “Digital Health Most Wired” survey.
CHIME surveyed thousands of ambulatory, acute, and long-term/post-acute (LTPAC) facilities to assess how and to what extent healthcare organizations are implementing information technology. Only 26 percent of LTPAC organizations were considered to have a comprehensive security program.
In 2020, 34 percent of organizations met the standards for a comprehensive security program. However, CHIME updated some of its standards in 2021 to reflect industry advances, raising the bar for surveyed organizations. In 2019, only 24 percent of organizations met the standards for a comprehensive security program.
Under the new standard, organizations must report security deficiencies and progress quarterly rather than annually, and they must give the board a security update semi-annually rather than annually. In addition, organizations must have a dedicated chief information security officer (CISO) with presence in the executive suite rather than just a director of security.
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Public Health Admins Are Prioritizing Interoperability with EHR Modernization
November 19, 2021
Federal agencies using electronic health records systems are hoping standardizing EHR interfaces will lead to greater cross-departmental and patient access.
Federal public health administrators are emphasizing interoperability as government agencies continue to implement electronic health records (EHRs) across federal public health agencies.
A litany of officials from government organizations including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense joined a panel discussion Thursday talking about the health IT goals between federal organizations and the ongoing effort to implement EHRs into their daily business processes.
EHRs are digital copies of patient health records that turn a patient’s medical history into a single, shareable file to reduce the administrative and cost burdens and optimize clinicians’ ability to deliver positive health care outcomes.
A major goal of the current efforts to modernize and implement EHRs across several federal agencies hinge on sophisticated data collection and cross-department sharing capabilities, with a focus on helping patients access their records. As more vendors develop their own applications to access and transfer EHRs, compatibility issues between interfaces make it challenging to share patient data. Standardization of these platforms would facilitate patient data sharing between health care providers.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/tackling-challenge-integrating-telehealth-seamlessly-ehr
Tackling the challenge of integrating telehealth seamlessly into the EHR
Ophir Lotan from telemedicine company TytoCare walks readers through this key task now that virtual care has gone mainstream because of COVID-19.
By Bill Siwicki
November 22, 2021 12:37 PM
Making caregivers' lives easier should be one of the primary goals of any healthcare provider organization's IT shop. Throwing too many solutions with too many workflows and too many log-ins at physicians and nurses is a recipe for failure.
With telehealth a mainstream technology today because of the necessities of the COVID-19 pandemic, caregivers need the technology to be a natural part of their workflow and an easy way to connect with patients. And many in healthcare have concluded the best place for telehealth to be initiated by caregivers is within a patient's electronic health record.
This has become the modus operandi of many healthcare provider organizations across the country. But it's not necessarily an easy get. That's why Healthcare IT News interviewed Ophir Lotan, vice president of product and customer success at telemedicine company TytoCare. Here, Lotan shares his expertise with the combined forces of telehealth and EHRs.
Q. When attempting to integrate telehealth with an EHR, what is the importance of synchronous versus asynchronous virtual care workflows?
A. When health systems are looking to integrate telehealth with the EHR, it's crucial they factor in both synchronous and asynchronous workflows. Synchronous telehealth appointments would be a typical virtual visit where the physician and patient are on a video call together in real time. When it comes to asynchronous telehealth, the patient would record any vital signs with a telehealth device on their own prior to the virtual appointment.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/nhsx-and-nhs-digital-be-axed
NHSX and NHS Digital to be axed
The two tech bodies will merge with NHS England as part of restructure.
By Tammy Lovell
November 22, 2021 02:21 PM
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is due to announce that tech bodies NHSX and NHS Digital will merge into NHS England as part of a major restructuring.
In an internal email, seen by Healthcare IT News, NHSX CEO Matthew Gould said the brands would be “retired” to accelerate the digital transformation of the NHS.
According to Gould, NHS Digital will be incorporated into NHS England as soon as legislation allows. Ahead of legislative reform, NHS Digital will work in an integrated way with NHS England, and its CEO Simon Bolton will become the CIO of NHS England.
Bolton will report to Dr Tim Ferris, with a reporting line to Amanda Pritchard as well, and will sit on the NHSE executive team.
NHSX will evolve into the strategy function of the new transformation directorate. The strategy function will keep the joint unit status, and also include staff drawn from across the wider directorate. The strategy function’s role will continue to include the digital transformation of social care.
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Athenahealth bought by private equity firms Hellman & Friedman, Bain Capital
The $17 billion deal marks the second time the cloud health IT vendor has been acquired in the past three years.
By Kat Jercich
November 22, 2021 11:04 AM
Cloud computing vendor athenahealth announced Monday that it would be jointly acquired by affiliates of Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman for $17 billion.
The company, which offers electronic health record and physician practice tools, said the investment was expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2022.
Chair and CEO Bob Segert will continue in his position, said athenahealth in a press release, as will the current management team.
"Our employees, customers and partners are the source of our success and inspiration as we create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality and sustainable healthcare for all," said Segert in a statement.
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https://histalk2.com/2021/11/19/weekender-11-19-21/
Weekly News Recap
- Athenahealth’s private equity owners are reportedly in final discussions to sell the company for up to $20 billion.
- Healthcare payment options platform vendor PayZen raises $15 million.
- HIMSS estimates that modernizing public health IT systems will cost $30 billion.
- The US Coast Guard completes its Cerner implementation.
- Healthcare API company Ribbon Health raises $43.5 million.
- QGenda acquires Schedule360.
- Lightbeam Health Solutions acquires CareSignal.
- Medidata Solutions co-founder Glen de Vries dies in a plane crash.
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Enjoy!
David.
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