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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55% of Telehealth Providers Frustrated With Overblown Patient Expectations
Providers also cited their ability to provide quality care and technical difficulties as among their top frustrations with telehealth, a new survey shows.
By Anuja Vaidya
March 18, 2022 - More than half of providers (55 percent) said that managing unrealistic patient expectations for their virtual visit is a top frustration of providing telehealth services, according to a new survey.
Commissioned by UnitedHealth Group's Optum and conducted using Qualtrics software, the survey polled 240 healthcare providers between Oct. 25 and Nov. 2, 2021. About 75 percent of survey respondents practiced primary care, 18 percent practiced specialty care and 4 percent urgent care.
Along with unrealistic patient expectations, respondents noted that the quality of care they are able to provide via telehealth (58 percent) and quality of audio/video technology (50 percent) are key sources of frustration.
Only 25 percent said their job satisfaction improved due to using telehealth, and 23 percent said that patient health improved. Providers are also divided regarding telehealth's effect on burnout, with 30 percent saying it increases and another 30 percent saying it decreases their feelings of burnout.
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How Will Biden’s $1.5 Trillion Spending Bill Impact Healthcare Cybersecurity?
President Biden signed a $1.5 trillion spending bill containing legislation that will impact healthcare cybersecurity.
By Jill McKeon
March 18, 2022 - President Biden signed a $1.5 trillion spending bill including legislation that will impact healthcare cybersecurity and critical infrastructure as a whole. The spending bill, which includes aid for Ukraine and keeps the government funded through September, also contained the Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act.
The act requires critical infrastructure entities to report cyber incidents to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) within 72 hours of discovery. In addition, entities will be required to report ransomware payments to DHS within 24 hours.
The healthcare and public health (HPH) sector is one of 16 critical infrastructure sectors that will be impacted by the new legislation.
“The term ‘significant cyber incident’ means a cyber incident, or a group of related cyber incidents, that the Secretary determines is likely to result in demonstrable harm to the national security interests, foreign relations, or economy of the United States or to the public confidence, civil liberties, or public health and safety of the people of the United States,” the act stated.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/ocr-provides-tips-for-fending-off-common-healthcare-cyberattacks
OCR Provides Tips for Fending Off Common Healthcare Cyberattacks
OCR’s Q1 newsletter offered tips for defending against common healthcare cyberattacks like phishing and known vulnerability exploits.
By Jill McKeon
March 18, 2022 - The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued its quarter one newsletter, containing tips for defending against some of the most common healthcare cyberattacks.
The newsletter stated that healthcare entities and business associates reported 45 percent more data breaches (impacting more than 500 individuals) to OCR in 2020 compared to 2019. More than 65 percent of reported 2020 healthcare data breaches were due to hacking or IT incidents.
Despite the uptick in healthcare data breaches, OCR suggested that most cyberattacks could be prevented if organizations implemented HIPAA Security Rule requirements to address common attack types, including phishing, exploitation of known vulnerabilities, and weak authentication protocols.
Phishing remains one of the most common and successful cyberattack methods. However, it is also relatively easy to prevent with the proper safeguards.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2022/03/tim-ferris-digital-maturity-patchy/
Tim Ferris says current state of digital maturity across NHS is ‘patchy’
The director of transformation at NHS England and Improvement told the Digital Health Rewired audience that the current level of digital maturity across the NHS is “patchy”.
Jordan Soloff – 16 March 2022
Speaking on the second day of Digital Health Rewired, Dr Timothy Ferris spoke about the shakeup of NHS organisations, the differing levels of digital maturity, capacity challenges, what we learned from the pandemic and moving forward.
Ferris was appointed director of transformation at NHS England and Improvement in March 2021 and since then, he shared with the Rewired audience what has been most surprising for him so far.
He said: “One of the most surprising things that I’ve found that I didn’t expect is the level of digital maturity across the NHS. The current state is patchy – there are really amazing examples of digital excellence but there are also places that have very few systems.
“I think 19% of acute trusts don’t have an EPR. That’s not okay in this day and age and in 2022 it’s not okay to be personally witnessing mistakes being made on paper. The advantages to patients of having electronic systems safeguard for written errors is now so well established.”
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These four types of ransomware make up nearly three-quarters of reported incidents
Any ransomware is a cybersecurity issue, but some strains are having more of an impact than others.
Written by Danny Palmer,
on | Topic: Security
Ransomware causes problems no matter what brand it is, but some forms are noticeably more prolific than others, with four strains of the malware accounting for a combined total of almost 70% of all attacks.
According to analysis by cybersecurity company Intel 471, the most prevalent ransomware threat towards the end of 2021 was LockBit 2.0, which accounted for 29.7% of all reported incidents. Recent victims of LockBit have included Accenture and the French Ministry of Justice.
Almost one in five reported incidents involved Conti ransomware, famous for several incidents over the past year, including an attack against the Irish Healthcare Executive. The group recently had chat logs leaked, providing insights into how a ransomware gang works. PYSA and Hive account for one in 10 reported ransomware attacks each.
"The most prevalent ransomware strain in the fourth quarter of 2021 was LockBit 2.0, which was responsible for 29.7% of all reported incidents, followed by Conti at 19%, PYSA at 10.5% and Hive at 10.1%," said the researchers.
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/gastroenterology/hepatitis/97719
Default Order in Hospitals' EHR Doubles Hepatitis C Screening
— About 70% of patients completed screening with intervention versus 38% with conventional alert
by Zaina Hamza, Staff Writer, MedPage Today March 17, 2022
Adding hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening as a default order within the electronic health record (EHR) led to more eligible patients receiving screening during hospitalization compared with a conventional interruptive alert, a stepped-wedge randomized trial found.
Among over 7,600 patients at two hospitals, 69.9% of those in the intervention group completed HCV screening compared with 38.1% of those in the control group (P<0.001), reported Shivan Mehta, MD, MBA, of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues.
"Because this was an EHR-based intervention, there was minimal incremental cost to clinicians or the health system after implementation, and it potentially saved clinician time by reducing clicks," the authors wrote in JAMA Network Open.
HCV can lead to cirrhosis, liver transplant, and cancer, but use of direct-acting antivirals can result in sustained virologic response in most treated patients. Pennsylvania, along with other states, has mandated HCV screening for all eligible inpatients, despite prior age-specific recommendations, Mehta's group noted.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/90732039/data-shows-telehealth-is-more-of-a-luxury-good-right-now
03-18-22 12:00 am
Data show telehealth is more of a luxury good right now
Our healthcare system has a long way to go before the full potential of telehealth is realized.
By Sanjula Jain
Did the COVID-19 pandemic accelerate the adoption of telehealth? Yes, but that growth is largely attributable to the law of small numbers, and utilization has already begun to taper. Did more individuals experience telehealth? Yes, but did telehealth reach the individuals it was intended to expand access for? Mostly not yet.
Two years into the pandemic, policymakers at all levels of government still lack a clear picture of who utilizes telehealth, where utilization is concentrated, and how individuals prefer to access healthcare services.
As a health economist and health-services researcher, I wondered who were the primary users of telehealth over the past couple of years: Has it actually expanded access to care, as it was intended and suggested by some of the prevailing industry narratives and recent surveys? The truth is, national utilization trends suggest telehealth appears to have not expanded broader healthcare access, with only a small number of people, in a certain segment, making up the majority of users.
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Russian Cyber Actors Exploit MFA Protocols, PrintNightmare Vulnerability
CISA and HHS issued warnings about Russian state-sponsored cyber actors who exploited MFA protocols and PrintNightmare, a known vulnerability.
By Jill McKeon
March 17, 2022 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint advisory to warn organizations of Russian state-sponsored threat actors who exploited default multifactor authentication (MFA) protocols. CISA and the FBI also observed the cyber actors exploiting PrintNightmare, a known software vulnerability.
HHS’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) echoed the warning with its own advisory to the healthcare and public health (HPH) sector.
As early as May 2021, the Russian state-sponsored threat actors targeted a non-governmental organization and exploited a misconfigured account set to default MFA protocols. The actors were able to enroll a new device to the MFA system and access the organization’s network.
Next, the threat actors leveraged PrintNightmare, a previously discovered Windows Print Spooler vulnerability, to run arbitrary code. The threat actors were able to use Cisco’s Duo MFA to gain access to the organization’s cloud environment and email accounts to exfiltrate documents.
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Medical Misinformation Exposure Reduces Patient Health Literacy
More than 70 percent of Americans have been exposed to medical misinformation with nearly half unable to distinguish accurate information from false, underscoring a lack of patient health literacy.
March 17, 2022 - Medical misinformation has been spreading rapidly nationwide, causing many Americans to struggle to identify the difference between fact and fiction and hampering patient health literacy, according to new research from GoodRx.
Close to three-quarters of the 1,000 adult survey participants had been exposed to inaccurate medical or health information. Furthermore, 16 percent stated they were unable to decide if they had been exposed.
The volume of medical misinformation has negative consequences, including vaccine hesitancy and medical mistrust, researchers said.
The spread of misinformation has impacted individuals’ skills to decipher health information, researchers stated. The findings showed that 44 percent of people reported low confidence in their ability to distinguish the accuracy of medical information.
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https://www.statnews.com/2022/03/16/google-translate-health-care-english/
Doctors often turn to Google Translate to talk to patients. They want a better option
By Katie Palmer March 16, 2022
The patient had just undergone a cesarean section, and now was struggling to put words to her pain in her native Taiwanese. The physician making rounds, Natasha Mehandru, was used to communicating with patients who didn’t speak English as a first language at her county hospital in Phoenix. But this time, calling in an interpreter by phone wasn’t working.
“The service was not really good,” she said — and soon, she realized the patient and the interpreter weren’t even speaking the same dialect. “It was difficult to communicate, even with the interpreter.”
So Mehandru turned to a familiar tool: Google Translate. Typing translations back and forth — Taiwanese to English, English to Taiwanese — she and the patient slowly came to an understanding with the help of the interpreter still on the line. Her pain wasn’t from the C-section, in her abdomen, but from a separate and long-standing issue, lower in her body. “That changed how I managed her that day,” said Mehandru, who was at the time a gynecological resident and is now a surgeon at Kaiser San Jose Medical Center. With the help of the machine translation tool, “we changed around medications, and then over the course of a couple days she ended up feeling better.”
Like many health systems, the hospital complied with federal requirements for meaningful access to language services by staffing in-person interpreters for frequent needs like Spanish, and could call up interpreters for less commonly spoken languages. But it was an imperfect system — there were sometimes delays, or a dialect that it was difficult to track down a translator for — and Google Translate came to serve as a fallback.
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Challenges with mHealth Apps for Depression and Suicide Prevention
March 17, 2022
Sara Robinson, MSN, RN, PMHNP-BC, Pamela S. Kallmerten, PhD, DNP, RN, CNL
Learn what potential challenges come with mHealth apps and how to overcome them to best fit patient needs.
In the previous 2 parts of this series on mHealth apps, we examined the barriers in access to care and what apps are available to assist in treatment of depression and suicide prevention. In this installment, we will cover the potential challenges and unintended consequences of utilizing this technology.
Unintended Consequences: Inaccurate Information and Self-Diagnosis
Apps of all kinds in the Android Google Play and Apple Store calculate ratings based on independent user feedback. User feedback is subjective and does not involve a review process or other rigor. An app may have a 5-star rating based on user feedback; however, this rating does not require any third-party verification of the quality, security, efficacy, or validity of the app.1 Given the lack of consistent oversight or regulation, there is no penalty for mHealth apps providing non-evidence-based and/or inaccurate information.2 A lack of reliable oversight means there is no verification of information quality. A study by Stawarz et al3 found that many of the apps with high user ratings had an inconsistent evidence base, demonstrating that priorities to the user that would translate to a higher app rating do not indicate solid validity and sound evidence.
More In This Series
Part 1: mHealth Apps for Depression: Overcoming Challenges
Part 2: Treating Depression and Preventing Suicide: The Impact of mHealth Apps
Another potential challenge specifically with mHealth apps for depression is that of patient self-diagnosis. Patients may self-identify that they are depressed, but in the absence of a full psychiatric evaluation by a trained mental health professional, they could very well meet criteria for a different condition that would require specific intervention and treatment tailored to that disorder. This can lead to negative treatment outcomes and misdirection of efforts supporting treatment of a condition that may not apply to a given consumer.
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https://www.techrepublic.com/article/sensitive-mobile-app-data-unprotected-in-cloud/
Sensitive mobile app data found unprotected in the cloud
by Lance Whitneyin Security
on March 16, 2022, 3:21 PM PDT
Exposed data discovered by Check Point Research included chat messages in gaming apps, personal photos, token IDs in healthcare apps and data from cryptocurrency platforms.
Experienced developers who use the cloud to create mobile apps typically try to harden their apps to protect them against different types of attack. But one aspect that sometimes gets ignored in the security protection is the cloud database behind an app. Such databases need to be secured to guard against unwanted access. And that’s not always the case, according to cyber threat intelligence provider Check Point Research.
In a new report released on Tuesday, Check Point said it discovered thousands of mobile apps that left data exposed. Looking at apps that use the cloud-hosted Firebase database, Check Point found 2,113 different ones in which the backend data was unprotected and accessible to hackers. Some of the exposed information included chat messages in gaming apps, personal files such as family photos, token IDs for healthcare apps and data from cryptocurrency exchange platforms.
For its research, Check Point ran a query at the VirusTotal service, which allows you to submit files and apps to see if they contain any malicious elements. The service also lets you search for unprotected resources, such online databases. Through its query, Check Point researchers found unsecure databases using Firebase.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/articles/three-themes-from-vive-2022-conference?id=129601
Three themes from ViVE 2022 conference
The impact of vendor mergers, the search for unicorns and coping with staff burnout
Mar 16 2022
CIO/Founder, DavidChou.Health
The recent ViVE 2022 conference in Miami offered an excellent opportunity for healthcare leaders to come together to share their insights on the industry's most pressing issues.
ViVE is a collaborative between the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), and the digital marketplace HLTH, which focuses on the business of healthcare systems. Here are three themes that emerged at the event.
Mergers and acquisitions
In recent months, several significant healthcare technology vendor acquisitions have been announced, including:
- Oracle’s pending purchase of Cerner.
- Microsoft’s acquisition of Nuance.
- Harris Computer Corp.’s purchase of several units of Allscripts.
- Baxter’s acquisition of Hillrom.
- Stryker’s buy of Vocera.
The impact of those deals was a hot topic at ViVE 2022. That’s because these moves are making healthcare CIOs re-evaluate their portfolio of products to align better strategically and establish new or deeper partnerships.
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CEOs begin push for a broader assessment of interoperability
The Healthcare Leadership Council is looking to create an assessment approach that measures the capabilities of data exchange and identifies areas for improvement.
Mar 17 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
Measuring interoperability in healthcare typically has meant determining how many hospitals and physicians’ offices can perform certain data exchange functions.
An organization representing a broad nationwide coalition of healthcare organization CEOs is looking to expand the breadth and depth of interoperability analysis, asserting that a new set of measurement criteria will provide more value to the industry.
The Healthcare Leadership Council has outlined a first set of proposed measures that would provide a different way to assess interoperability. The organization is in discussions with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to fine-tune assessment criteria.
The council unveiled a report offering an initial set of assessment criteria Wednesday at the HIMSS22 conference in Orlando, Fla.
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https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/fhir-may-be-future-healthcare-data-payers-want-more
Mar 17 2022
FHIR may be the future of healthcare data, but payers want more
Former National Coordinator for Health IT Don Rucker says the future will belong to those who move first.
Jeff Lagasse, Associate Editor
ORLANDO, Fla. – Healthcare has undergone a number of policy and technology shifts in recent years, and at the intersection of these changes is Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR. It's a standard that describes data formats and an API for exchanging electronic health records, and while many in the data business consider it the future of healthcare, payers say they need something more.
Don Rucker, chief strategy officer for 1upHealth and the former National Coordinator for Health IT, called FHIR "transformational."
Speaking at the session "FHIR is the Future of Healthcare, But Payers Need More" at HIMSS22 in Orlando, Rucker said that while healthcare has traditionally had its own standards when it comes to data and data exchange, FHIR was built on the standards of the internet, and so for the first time, those in the industry get to use the tools of the broader economy, "which, if you're a computer nerd, is very exciting," he said.
The trick, said Rucker, is to make FHIR work in a consumer-centric environment. In order to effectively provide data to patients and providers, it's important to think about how to make the data exchange in real time.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/va-officials-talk-lessons-learned-spokane-ehr-rollout
VA officials talk lessons learned from Spokane EHR rollout
In a HIMSS22 panel, leaders from the Department of Veterans Affairs discussed the implementation of the agency's new electronic health record and their hopes for the future of the project.
By Kat Jercich
March 17, 2022 08:32 AM
ORLANDO, Fla. - The Department of Veterans Affairs is a pioneer in the field of electronic medical records.
Long before the ubiquity of commercial EHRs, the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA, acted as a homegrown solution to meet the needs of veterans and providers.
By the time it became the official VA EHR in the 1990s, there were many iterations across the system.
"The history is important as we move forward in a different direction," Dr. Terry Adirim, program executive director of the EHR Modernization Integration Office at the VA, said in a HIMSS22 session Wednesday.
"As the new leader of this modernization effort, I am sensitive to the history and appreciate VA's spirit of innovation," she said.
At the same time, she said, it's a decades-old system meeting the end of its lifespan.
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As Eprescribing Grows, Medication History as-a-Service Plays Crucial Role
Analysis | By Scott Mace | March 16, 2022
New services are filling in where HIEs and national EHR exchange data fall short.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI technology resolves discrepancies in medication history caused by data entry or transmission errors.
- Providers can save clicks and keystrokes by having technology standardize medication instructions accompanying prescription fill information.
- Reconciling medication history leads to avoiding preventable ICU stays.
Eprescribing continues to grow, and with it, healthcare IT organizations face new challenges and opportunities to share the information associated with it.
Eprescribing provider DrFirst recently announced that its iPrescribe service continues to grow steadily. In 2021, nearly 6.5 million prescriptions were processed through iPrescribe, representing more than 100% growth year-over-year. Its user base grew to more than 26,000 prescribers, an 80% jump over the previous year.
Two years ago, DrFirst hired Colin Banas, MD, as its chief medical officer. Banas had previously served as the chief medical information officer of VCU Health from 2010 to 2019. HealthLeaders spoke to Dr. Banas about the growth of eprescribing and related issues. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/health-it-vendors-announce-interoperability-advancements-at-himss22
Health IT Vendors Announce Interoperability Advancements at HIMSS22
Health IT vendors such as MEDITECH and Philips announced new interoperability solutions at the 2022 HIMSS Global Conference and Exhibition.
March 15, 2022 - Several health IT vendors have announced new interoperability partnerships and offerings at the 2022 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Health Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Florida.
MEDITECH
EHR vendor MEDITECH and Google Health announced their intent to partner on an integrated solution within MEDITECH's Expanse EHR platform.
The solution will leverage Google Health's search and summarization capabilities which are set to enhance clinical decision support by providing clinicians with easy access to a longitudinal view of a patient's health history.
Google Health's intelligent summarization extracts data from different parts of the patient record to produce a patient health summary. Providers can then explore a deep-dive view of critical information including lab results, vitals, and medications.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/microsoft-teams-adds-new-virtual-care-features
Microsoft Teams Adds New Virtual Care Features
The features, which include enabling organizations to collect patient triage information, and access analytics, aim to enhance the virtual visit experience within Teams.
By Anuja Vaidya
March 16, 2022 - Microsoft is adding several new features to its Teams platform to support virtual visits.
These include a feature that enables patients to request appointments with their providers within Teams. Organizations using the feature will be able to monitor the on-demand appointments in a queue view through the Microsoft Bookings app in Teams.
Microsoft will also enable the collection of patient triage information in Teams through the integration of Microsoft Forms and the Microsoft Bookings app.
Other new features include a device tester that allows patients to test their hardware settings before their virtual appointment and access to analytics insights regarding virtual visit performance in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, including insights on metrics like lobby wait time and the impact of text-based notifications.
As telehealth use skyrocketed in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, existing teleconferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams saw spikes in usage as well. Between March 2020 and November 2021, the monthly use of Teams in the healthcare industry grew by 560 percent, according to data from Microsoft.
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https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/970187
Staffing Shortages Are Top Patient Safety Concern: Report
Staffing shortages are the top patient safety issue on ECRI's 2022 list of safety concerns, released on March 14.
Besides the pandemic-related stress that has induced some nurses and doctors to leave their jobs, the nonprofit safety watchdog notes that a high proportion of nurses are at or near traditional retirement age. The median age of registered nurses in 2020 was 52 years.
Nursing schools are unlikely to be able to supply enough nurses to replace those retiring, the report states. ECRI notes that 80,000 qualified nursing school applicants were turned away in 2019 because of insufficient resources.
Physicians are also in short supply, and the situation is expected to grow worse, the report says.
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NIH Developing Data Access Tool for Maternal Health
March 14, 2022
Several federal agencies are involved in developing MaternalHealthLink, a data sharing tool focused on maternal health.
The National Institute of Health is developing a new tool to help make data on maternal health readily accessible, part of a supplement technology to the broader electronic health record adoption.
Federal researchers are designing MaternalHealthLink to be able to share, retrieve and store health data for expectant mothers. The project is a collaboration between the NIH, the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nahida Chakhtoura, a medical officer with the Maternal and Pediatric Infectious Disease Branch at the NIH, said that the goal of the MaternalHealthLink is to develop a tool that will be publicly available.
“What we're trying to do is develop a guide that looks at maternal health care in a sort of longitudinal fashion,” Chakhtoura told Nextgov. “So that's the basis for developing the guide, and…the Maternal Health Link is a sort of an easier way for researchers to implement and be able to use the guide.”
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51% of Clinicians Worry That Telehealth Hinders Ability to Show Empathy
The importance of soft skills, like empathy, is rising alongside a need for enhanced technical skills, and as a result, medical training will need an overhaul, a new report shows.
By Anuja Vaidya
March 15, 2022 - Though a majority (63 percent) of clinicians worldwide expect most of their consultations to be remote within the next decade, 51 percent believe that telehealth will negatively impact their ability to demonstrate empathy with their patients, a new report revealed.
Developed by Elsevier Health and Ipsos, the Clinician of the Future report includes a quantitative survey, qualitative interviews, and roundtable discussions with nearly 3,000 practicing physicians and nurses worldwide. Of the total number of respondents, 434 were from the US.
Among the 51 percent of clinicians who agreed that telehealth would adversely affect their ability to show empathy to their patients, 54 percent were physicians, and 49 percent were nurses.
"Digital technology will put an additional screen – literally and metaphorically – between the clinician and their patient, requiring new approaches to delivering empathy," the report states.
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https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/ethics-are-heart-frances-digital-health-strategy
Ethics are at the heart of France's digital health strategy
Panelists at HIMSS21 discuss the importance of putting the patient first and thinking about the environmental impact when considering a digital health program.
By Laura Lovett
March 16, 2022 02:44 pm
With a plethora of stakeholders in the healthcare space and an expanding list of digital tools, it can be a challenge to find a starting place for a national digital health strategy. France decided to put ethics at the center of its approach to creating digital health services.
"In France we have a patient-centered approach … We want the patients to be full members of their healthcare team. So we want the patient to be informed, we want the patient to be involved in the digital process, we want the patient to be in control of their data and we want them to be really engaged," Dr. Brigitte Séroussi, Director of Projects in charge of digital health ethics at the eHealth Delegation of the French Ministry of Health, said this during a panel discussion of HIMSS22.
"There are some concerns about the counterparts of digital health. Patients are very conscious about the fact there should be a face-to-face relationship when they request it. They want to have real transparency of the data processing. Who has access to their data, when and why? They want AI solutions guaranteed to have no bias. They also want to have digital health that is conscious of the environmental impact."
The team took into account the four principles of medicine: beneficence, autonomy, non-maleficence, justice and the Hippocratic Oath. They then combined these with digital health principals.
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National Coordinator: TEFCA will enable 'North Star' architecture for public health
ONC chief Micky Tripathi spoke at HIMSS22 alongside Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the CDC's deputy director for public health science and surveillance. Both see long-needed improvements ahead for data exchange and public health reporting.
By Mike Miliard
March 16, 2022 12:28 PM
ORLANDO, Fla. – During a Tuesday evening Views from the Top session at HIMSS22, National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi shared the stage with Dr. Daniel Jernigan, deputy director for public health science and surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The topic was how the nationwide data exchange system can be shored-up and streamlined to enable more seamless and robust information-sharing with public health agencies – and ease the burden on healthcare providers.
The patchwork data reporting systems and strategies deployed in the U.S. as the novel coronavirus first spread two years ago were adequate in some respects. But clearly many of them – cobbled together on an ad hoc basis, often relying on phone and fax – left much room for improvement.
"It was really clear during those first moments of the pandemic response how unprepared we were," said Jernigan. "There were lots of reasons why we weren't. It was not something that just came up at that time, but it was something that had been developing for a number of years prior to that. For many years, we've been developing these siloed systems that didn't speak with one another and could not scale."
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/technology/himss22-opens-top-5-tech-concerns-healthcare
HIMSS22 Opens With Top 5 Tech Concerns in Healthcare
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | March 16, 2022
As the conference kicks into gear this week in Orlando, Gartner vice president analyst Mandi Bishop offered five jarring predictions for healthcare and five steps that healthcare leaders should take to address those trends.
Lack of access to virtual care is killing people.
That stark pronouncement was delivered this week by Gartner vice president analyst Mandi Bishop during a virtual presentation by Philips at the HIMSS22 conference in Orlando. It underscores the rapidly shifting healthcare landscape caused in part by the global pandemic and the importance of integrating virtual care with in-person services.
Bishop, called in by Philips to set the tone for its unveiling of the new Philips Healthcare Informatics platform, described "an industry that has been truly disruptive." Affected in no small part by COVID-19, healthcare organizations are adopting digital health technologies at a rapid pace to meet consumer demand and counter growing staffing shortages. At the same time, they're dealing with competition from telehealth companies and retail giants like Amazon and Google, countering cybersecurity threats, and accommodating a trend that sees more services delivered outside the hospital, clinic, or doctor's office and in places like the home.
The industry is learning that the fee-for-service structure that has been in place for decades "is not resilient," Bishop said, and value-based healthcare is finally gaining traction. The challenge lies in making that sustainable.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/health-it-vendors-announce-interoperability-advancements-at-himss22
Health IT Vendors Announce Interoperability Advancements at HIMSS22
Health IT vendors such as MEDITECH and Philips announced new interoperability solutions at the 2022 HIMSS Global Conference and Exhibition.
March 15, 2022 - Several health IT vendors have announced new interoperability partnerships and offerings at the 2022 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Health Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Florida.
MEDITECH
EHR vendor MEDITECH and Google Health announced their intent to partner on an integrated solution within MEDITECH's Expanse EHR platform.
The solution will leverage Google Health's search and summarization capabilities which are set to enhance clinical decision support by providing clinicians with easy access to a longitudinal view of a patient's health history.
Google Health's intelligent summarization extracts data from different parts of the patient record to produce a patient health summary. Providers can then explore a deep-dive view of critical information including lab results, vitals, and medications.
To enable this search and summary functionality, the EHR vendor will utilize Google Health's tools to create a longitudinal health data layer, which unites data from different sources into a standard FHIR format.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/surescripts-report-reveals-2021-health-it-interoperability-gains
Surescripts Report Reveals 2021 Health IT Interoperability Gains
Surescripts 2021 National Progress Report revealed significant growth in the use of health IT to support healthcare interoperability.
March 15, 2022 - Healthcare interoperability is gaining momentum, according to the Surescripts 2021 National Progress Report, which revealed significant increases in the use of clinical direct messaging and ePrescribing health IT.
Overall, healthcare professionals exchanged 20.4 billion secure transactions across the Surescripts network in 2021, a 16.6 percent increase from 2020.
“This year’s National Progress Report demonstrates nationwide momentum toward interoperable, digital health intelligence sharing,” Tom Skelton, Surescripts chief executive officer, said in a press release.
“By leveraging the Surescripts network, healthcare professionals of all kinds are getting clinical intelligence at the right time, in the right place, so that they have the trusted insights they need to serve patients,” he added.
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51% of Clinicians Worry That Telehealth Hinders Ability to Show Empathy
The importance of soft skills, like empathy, is rising alongside a need for enhanced technical skills, and as a result, medical training will need an overhaul, a new report shows.
By Anuja Vaidya
March 15, 2022 - Though a majority (63 percent) of clinicians worldwide expect most of their consultations to be remote within the next decade, 51 percent believe that telehealth will negatively impact their ability to demonstrate empathy with their patients, a new report revealed.
Developed by Elsevier Health and Ipsos, the Clinician of the Future report includes a quantitative survey, qualitative interviews, and roundtable discussions with nearly 3,000 practicing physicians and nurses worldwide. Of the total number of respondents, 434 were from the US.
Among the 51 percent of clinicians who agreed that telehealth would adversely affect their ability to show empathy to their patients, 54 percent were physicians, and 49 percent were nurses.
"Digital technology will put an additional screen – literally and metaphorically – between the clinician and their patient, requiring new approaches to delivering empathy," the report states.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/top-challenges-to-multi-cloud-adoption-in-healthcare
Top Challenges to Multi-Cloud Adoption in Healthcare
Multi-cloud adoption is growing in healthcare, but data integration, application mobility, and cost continue to pose challenges, a survey found.
By Jill McKeon
March 15, 2022 - Multi-cloud adoption is steadily growing in healthcare, but challenges remain as organizations grapple with tough IT deployment decisions, Nutanix found in its Enterprise Cloud Index survey and report, conducted by research firm Vanson Bourne.
Vanson Bourne surveyed 250 IT professionals working in the healthcare industry to garner insights about cloud priorities, plans, and experiences. A vast majority of respondents agreed that a hybrid multi-cloud architecture was ideal for their organizations. Over 50 percent of respondents said that they expect to be using a multi-cloud environment within one to three years.
Multi-cloud implies that a business is using multiple different public clouds rather than mixing private and public clouds together. While the pros and cons of each cloud architecture are worth considering, multi-cloud environments can be more cost-effective than other options while allowing for additional scalability and security in healthcare.
“Fourth Annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) research indicates that while the adoption of multiple clouds, private or public, is rigorously underway across the globe, deployment progress varies among industries and geographies,” the report stated.
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Provider/vendor partnership – not 50-50 split but each 100% committed.
“Too often, discussions about working together become one-sided relationships. To succeed, partnerships require gains for both parties,” says Nordic’s Jim Costanzo
Mar 07 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
Talk of partnerships in healthcare, between a variety of players, often comes off as mere marketing speak – a way to get a quick win, a new customer.
It’s often not successful, because the partners aren’t both committed to working together, to making the joint effort beneficial to both parties. In the vernacular of a marriage, it’s like trying to make a marriage successful by having both partners vow to put in 50 percent of themselves.
Marriages succeed when both partners are all in – the same, too, with partnerships in the healthcare space, says Jim Costanzo, CEO of Nordic Consulting Partners.
“To make partnership successful, it has to be a two-way street,” he adds. That goes for a vendor serving a healthcare organization, as well as the provider organization itself. “Usually, when partnerships work best is when you start with strategy – you work through that strategy together to determine…how we work together so that we’re doing things more effectively and more efficiently.”
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Where will healthcare be in 2 years…20 years? Epic’s Judy Faulkner shares insights.
With the COVID-19 pandemic waning, Epic and CEO Judy Faulkner expect increasing reliance on tech solutions to improve care and deal with pressures.
Mar 14 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
There’s a lull in the interview, and Judy Faulkner stands up to grab a red sheet of paper near her desk. She wants to illustrate a point.
“We have something called a red flag, and it’s bright red,” she says, holding the paper so it can be seen. “It lists the problem that a customer may have.” The sheet contains information detailing the extent of an issue, the specific criticality of the risk, and who within Epic is responsible for addressing it and the projected timeframe for resolution.
“That’s what I like about it,” Faulkner says. “The important part is that it doesn’t just say there’s a problem.”
That’s the programmer DNA in Epic’s CEO – illustrating the attention to detail in the fact that a specific customer problem alert is within arm’s length of a CEO of a company with 11,500 employees.
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HIMSS22 opening keynote: 'What will we do to reimagine health together?'
HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf highlighted the urgency of health equity and brought greetings from Pope Francis, while former Disney executive Ben Sherwood celebrated the power of storytelling, innovation and human connection.
By Mike Miliard
March 15, 2022 11:56 AM
ORLANDO, Fla. – At the opening keynote of the 2022 HIMSS Annual Global Health Conference & Exhibition Tuesday morning, HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf welcomed the crowd of healthcare, information and technology professionals, and urged them to "reengage and reimagine health."
After two years of a tragic and disruptive worldwide pandemic that has shone a harsh light on many inefficiencies in the global healthcare delivery system and the ways social structures can adversely influence health outcomes, this gathering of healthcare professionals "is a real opportunity," said Wolf.
"As you reimagine health, you should have a focus on global health equity," he said. "We really do not have a choice to be complacent."
As Wolf explained, "If we don't think about this globally – think about population health management, access to affordable care, taking care of people wherever they are – we leave intact a fundamental environment that is going to be susceptible to all the risks we had before."
He added: "We simply can't afford to miss these lessons that we've learned. It's not just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. You have to ask yourselves: What will you do to reimagine health? What will we do to reimagine health together?"
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Despite Preponderance of Threats, Healthcare Cybersecurity Budgets Still Tight
March 15, 2022
While last year was disastrous for healthcare security incidents, it seems that cybersecurity budgets still haven’t risen to meet demand. New research from HIMSS looking at the status of cybersecurity found that while significant security incidents were widespread last year, many healthcare organizations still have no specific carveout for cybersecurity needs in the budgets or continue to maintain modest spending levels to combat the problem.
To conduct the survey, HIMSS researcher spoke with 167 healthcare security professionals, the majority of whom had primary responsibility for cyber security programs at their institutions.
One of the topline findings from the survey was that 67% of the respondents saw their organizations face significant security incidents in the past 12 months. The severity of the most significant security incident during that period generally were medium, accounting for 35% of reports, followed closely by high severity events (32%). Twelve percent of events were classed as critical and 20% as low severity.
Respondents reported that the most significant security event was typically either a phishing attack (45%) or a ransomware attack (17%). Breach or data leakage accounted for only 7% of episodes, and negligent insider activity was just 5%.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/himss22-takes-healthcares-biggest-challenges
HIMSS22 Takes on Healthcare's Biggest Challenges
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | March 15, 2022
From addressing stress and burnout to understanding value-based care, this week's conference asks attendees to reimagine healthcare.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· As HIMS22 convenes this week in Orlando, attendees are being asked to toss out old ideas about healthcare and rethink how it can be delivered and defined.
· The conference is also addressing what healthcare organizations are doing to address high rates of stress and burnout among providers.
· The event is highlighting the value of virtual care, which is pushing health systems to reconsider how they define value—both to consumers and care providers.
Healthcare leaders are looking for ways to reimagine healthcare at HIMSS22. For many of them, that may begin by looking inward.
Stress and burnout have been a problem in healthcare even before the pandemic, but the COVID-19 crisis has pushed that problem into hyperdrive. Healthcare organizations are dealing with low morale, an exodus of tired and dispirited staff, and a shortage of new care providers to bolster the ranks. And administrators are looking for new ideas to make the workplace better.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/directtrust-launches-consensus-body-patient-matching-data-standard
DirectTrust Launches Consensus Body, Patient Matching Data Standard
DirectTrust seeks consensus body members for a new initiative that aims to develop a data standard for a nationwide patient matching ecosystem.
March 14, 2022 - DirectTrust has launched an initiative to develop a new data standard to support a voluntary nationwide patient matching ecosystem.
The Privacy-Enhancing Health Record Locator Service (PEHRLS) Ecosystem Consensus Body aims to profile existing data standards and create new standards as needed for a privacy-enhancing record locator.
The new standard will define electronic interactions among identity providers, EHR platforms, health information exchanges (HIEs), health information networks (HINs), and a record locator service (RLS).
"Managing identity and health information interoperability in healthcare is a special problem unlike other identity and identifier topics," Scott Stuewe, DirectTrust President and CEO, said in a press release. "To be useful as a mechanism for assembling a longitudinal health record, a system also needs to enable access to the locations where records are available for the individual."
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/clinical-decision-support-associated-with-improved-patient-outcomes
Clinical Decision Support Associated with Improved Patient Outcomes
Researchers found that the use of clinical decision support resulted in a 38 percent reduction in mortality among pneumonia patients, improving patient outcomes.
March 14, 2022 - Clinical decision support tools were associated with better patient outcomes as the tools assisted clinicians in providing better care with lower mortality rates for emergency departments with pneumonia, according to a recent study.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, pneumonia was the leading cause of death from infectious diseases.
“Treating pneumonia in emergency departments is challenging, especially in community hospitals that don’t see severe pneumonia as often as urban academic medical centers,” said Nathan Dean, MD, section chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Intermountain Medical Center.
The study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine examined the effects clinical decision support had on unnecessary variation and healthcare quality.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/klas-satisfaction-levels-for-closedloop.ai-beats-out-epic-cerner
KLAS: Satisfaction Levels for ClosedLoop.ai Beats Out Epic, Cerner
All ClosedLoop.ai customers said that they would buy its AI platform again, as compared with 91 percent of Epic and 84 percent Cerner customers who said the same.
March 14, 2022 - Upon reviewing how artificial intelligence impacted healthcare stakeholders in 2022, researchers from KLAS revealed a relatively high customer satisfaction rate, particularly among customers of ClosedLoop.ai.
KLAS is a research organization working to improve healthcare through collaboration, insights, and transparency. The organization's recently released AI performance report focuses on various entities providing artificial intelligence-focused health services.
Although reviews for each organization were mixed, ClosedLoop.ai reportedly excelled. All its customers said that the company keeps its promises and that they would buy from the company again. Further, it achieved an overall performance score of 96.5 in December 2021, up from 91.7 in December 2020. It also helped customers achieve positive outcomes such as improved medication adherence and recognizing at-risk patients.
However, areas for improvement for ClosedLoop.ai included utilization of prebuilt models, close monitoring, and the prioritization of use cases.
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ONC’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee: A Year in Review and a Look Ahead
Mike Berry | March 9, 2022
The
Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) plays an important
role in ONC activities and objectives. Required by the 21st Century
Cures Act, the HITAC has been operational since 2018 and represents a wide
range of health IT stakeholders who inform ONC’s policies and programs.
The HITAC recommends policies, standards, implementation specifications, and
certification criteria to the national coordinator across four target areas:
interoperability, privacy and security, patient access to information, and use
of technologies that support public health.
The HITAC had a busy 2021! In total, the HITAC held 10 full committee meetings including a Public Health Data Systems Hearing, 67 subcommittee meetings, produced 133 recommendations, and welcomed two new members. Check out this HITAC infographic [PDF – 4.4 MB] for more details.
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March 11, 2022
Could Russian Hackers Cripple U.S. Health Care Systems?
FRIDAY, March 11, 2022 -- Sick people seeking lifesaving care in the United States could fall victim to a hidden part of Russia's war on Ukraine -- vicious cyberattacks aimed at sowing disruption, confusion and chaos as ground forces advance.
Cybersecurity experts warn that attacks launched against Ukrainian institutions have the potential to spill over into America's health care systems, potentially endangering patients' lives.
The cybersecurity program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week issued an analysis warning health care IT officials about two pieces of Russian malware that could wipe out hospital data vital to patient care.
And since early December, the American Hospital Association has been warning about increased risk related to Russian cyberattacks, said John Riggi, the association's national adviser for cybersecurity and risk.
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AI can play a key role in turning unstructured data into actionable insights
Panelists at HIMSS22 said machine learning can help unearth trends from the troves of unstructured information in healthcare.
By Kat Jercich
March 14, 2022 01:49 PM
ORLANDO - Studies show that roughly 80% of the data collected in healthcare organizations is unstructured or conversational, including radiology images, physicians' notes or even social media posts.
Within that data, said presenters at HIMSS22's Machine Learning & AI for Healthcare Forum on Monday, lies incredible potential – which ML and AI can play a key role in unlocking.
"There's a whole framework for capturing data that's being generated at exponentially greater rates … and it's likely to be more unstructured," said Brad Ryan, chief product officer at the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
"We really goofed as an industry, when we did electronic health record implementations a while back, at capturing clinical data in a way that was useful," he said.
However, he said, this also presents a chance for improvement.
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https://histalk2.com/2022/03/11/weekender-3-11-22/
Weekly News Recap
- Symplr acquires GreenLight Medical.
- Oracle shares drop after earnings miss, questions about its healthcare ambitions tied to acquiring Cerner for $28 billion.
- EU will publish a governance framework for health data that will support cross-border health information exchange.
- Epic announces Garden Plot, an Epic version for independent medical groups.
- Former Livongo executives launch Homeward Health.
- Consensus Cloud Solutions acquires Summit Healthcare.
- Microsoft closes its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance.
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Enjoy!
David.
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