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/2022/05/tres-in-the-nhs-how-health-data-sharing-is-saving-lives/
TREs in the NHS – how health data sharing is saving lives
NHS Digital’s director of research and clinical trials, Michael Chapman, looks at the organisation’s development of a trusted research environment (TRE) in the NHS. He is joined by Health Data Research UK’s Susheel Varma who explains the benefits of using TREs for data sharing and Professor Angela Wood and Dr Will Whiteley of consortium CVD-COVID-UK to discuss how the new environment is working for them on the front line of clinical research.
DHI News Team – 13 May 2022
There has been much debate in the past twelve months about the future of health data sharing. The announcement last spring of a proposed change to the way primary care data will be collected in England has energised public debates with conversations across the country about the need for sharing health data in a transparent, ethical and secure way and how to best achieve that.
Partly as a result of that debate, we are changing how we share data, by moving from a data release system to data access system.
In a data release system, we produce a minimised cut of data that has been requested and send it to the requestor who then analyses it in their own system. This approach has been in place for many years, with contractual safeguards around the data, oversight of releases by independent bodies to ensure appropriate decision-making, and a robust audit process to make sure that data is handled by recipients ethically and securely.
In a data access system, we flip this on its head by keeping the data within the full control of the data custodian (such as ourselves) and only providing secure access to data to approved researchers within the security perimeters of a Trusted Research Environment (TRE).
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accuRx launches first national patient-centred record viewing system
accuRx is rolling out the first nationally-available patient record sharing system that places patient permission at its heart and supports the sharing of medical records to improve patient care, Digital Health News can exclusively reveal.
Cora Lyndon – 19 May 2022
Record View is the only record viewing system that has patient permission built into its core, enabling patients to be in control of their information and choose who it is shared with.
It allows any NHS healthcare professional to request access to, and view a read-only summary of a patient’s GP medical records. Patient permission is provided via a multi-factor authentication which lasts for 24-hours, before permission must be sought again.
Following a successful pilot with four ICSs the system is now being rolled out across the country,
Jacob Haddad, CEO and co-founder of accuRx said: “Record View saves huge amounts of clinical time by removing the laborious process of staff across different healthcare providers having to wait on hold to a GP practice, or wait for an email response, to get vital patient information.
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https://khn.org/news/article/private-sector-self-regulation-health-data-online-privacy-apps/
The Private Sector Steps In to Protect Online Health Privacy, but Critics Say It Can’t Be Trusted
Most people have at least a vague sense that someone somewhere is doing mischief with the data footprints created by their online activities: Maybe their use of an app is allowing that company to build a profile of their habits, or maybe they keep getting followed by creepy ads.It’s more than a feeling.
Many companies in the health tech sector — which provides services that range from mental health counseling to shipping attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder pills through the mail — have shockingly leaky privacy practices.
A guide released this month by the Mozilla Foundation found that 26 of 32 mental health apps had lax safeguards. Analysts from the foundation documented numerous weaknesses in their privacy practices.
Jen Caltrider, the leader of Mozilla’s project, said the privacy policies of apps she used to practice drumming were scarcely different from the policies of the mental health apps the foundation reviewed — despite the far greater sensitivity of what the latter records.
“I don’t care if someone knows I practice drums twice a week, but I do care if someone knows I visit the therapist twice a week,” she said. “This personal data is just another pot of gold to them, to their investors.”
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Use of Virtual Care Tools in Some Underserved Populations is Rising
Though various underserved populations, like those living in rural areas, are still lagging in digital health adoption, some groups are using these tools at higher rates.
May 19, 2022 - While evaluating consumer adoption of digital health in 2021, researchers from Rock Health found that certain populations, such as Medicaid members and LGBQA+ individuals, are using tools like live video telemedicine and wearables at higher rates than their counterpart.
Rock Health has conducted a survey every year since 2015 that aims to uncover trends in digital health adoption and use. The 2021 Digital Health Consumer Adoption Survey was completed last August and polled 7,980 adult consumers. Researchers acknowledged that the report does not consider factors such as disabilities, nor is it representative of all communities.
The first main takeaway was that rural communities are still facing barriers to virtual care. Specifically, the survey found that those who reside in rural areas do not partake in video telehealth visits as often as their urban and suburban counterparts, own fewer wearables, and do not track health metrics digitally as often.
Further, 88 percent of rural residents trust health information from a doctor, higher than the 52 percent who trust online resources.
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https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/value-based-care-creating-new-era-interoperability
May 19 2022
Value-based care creating a new era of interoperability
The switch to value, along with legislative and technological advances, is modernizing interoperability for payers and providers.
, Associate Editor
Interoperability in healthcare, it would seem, is at an important inflection point.
Rules around data exchange have been around for years and regulate what patient information gets shared between payers, providers and the patients themselves. There are also standards around how that information is shared and the forms it can take. But the transition to value-based care has caused a shift in terms of the standards that apply to the data exchange, and new rules and technology mean there's less chance for redundancy, administrative waste and roadblocks to patient access.
Joerg Schwarz, head of healthcare interoperability strategy at cloud software company Infor, said the 21st Century Cures Act, first passed in 2016, was instrumental in bringing interoperability into the modern era. The 21st Century Cures Act is a huge piece of legislation with varying pieces enacted on different timelines, including key components enacted this year.
Before that law passed, data exchange was regulated largely by HIPAA, which stipulated that payers and providers were allowed to share information with one another. That data sharing was not a requirement, however. So, oftentimes, payers and providers would decide it was not in their best interest to do so.
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Get Well unveils digital health meditation initiative for veterans and others
The new offering is designed to boost whole health through evidence-based guided imagery and meditation.
By Bill Siwicki
May 20, 2022 12:22 PM
Digital health company Get Well has partnered with Health Journeys, a publisher of guided imagery and meditation audios, to offer its programs to Get Well's clients, with a special focus on veterans.Health Journeys targets specific behavioral health challenges that military service members face, including anxiety, sleep deprivation, burnout, chronic pain, depression, anger, PTSD, grief, addiction, traumatic brain injury and injury rehabilitation.
Health Journeys' guided imagery will be made available to veteran patients, a population that disproportionately experiences behavioral health conditions. Get Well said this partnership builds on its work with the VA and advances the company's commitment to serving veterans and service members in need of behavioral health services.
The percentage of adults with recent symptoms of anxiety or a depressive disorder has recently increased to 41.5%, and the percentage of those reporting an unmet behavioral healthcare need increased to 11.7%. Get Well said empowering people with self-management tools, like guided meditation, is key to improving mental health.
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The great digital health reset – and how IT leaders should plan for what’s next
As a high-flying startup ecosystem comes back down to earth, health systems with the financial resources will be able to double down on their digital transformation efforts.
May 20, 2022 01:03 PM
Back in 2020, in the immediate wake of the pandemic, we were celebrating the coming of age of digital health – the 25X to 50X increase in telehealth visits, the explosion in VC funding for digital health startups delivering point solutions for digital engagement and access to care, the sense of the dawn of a new and exciting era in healthcare.Indeed, that sense of optimism would pervade the startup ecosystem for the next year and a half. Digital health startup investments reached a new high in 2021, closing the year with more than $30 billion in venture capital funding. VCs couldn’t get enough, plowing vast sums into unproven companies like Noom, which provided weight-loss advice and received $540 million in a mega-funding round in 2021.
Unicorns to 'uni-gones'?
Over the past couple of months, the sobering news of high-flying startups coming back to earth has been a steady drumbeat in the background. While companies have continued to raise money into the current year, the prevailing sentiment is that we won’t surpass 2021 funding levels; in fact, the contrary as VCs start to pull back on funding. No one anticipated the sudden turn in fortunes for once high-flying startups, especially those anointed with “unicorn” status. Many will be gone soon.
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Miami Cancer Institute Expands Tech Partnership to Address Social Determinants of Health
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | May 18, 2022
The institute is expanding its partnership with COTA to analyze how demographics like zip code, ethnicity, and other socio-economic factors affect cancer care outcomes.
The Miami Cancer Institute is expanding its use of data analytics technology to identify gaps in care caused by social determinants of health.
The institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, is extending its partnership with COTA, a developer of oncology-based data and analytics tools, to analyze how demographics like zip code, ethnicity, and other socio-economic factors affect care outcomes.
“Delayed cancer diagnosis for a patient frequently leads to poorer outcomes,” Leonard Kalman, MD, the institute’s executive deputy director and chief medical officer, said in a press release. “Our hope is that this collaborative research will identify the patients who are most at-risk for delayed diagnosis so we can increase education and expand access to routine cancer screenings for these populations.”
The issue is in the spotlight now as the nation moves away from the pandemic, which saw a shift from in-person care to virtual care and prompted many people to skip check-ups, wellness visits and other healthcare services they considered unimportant. Healthcare officials say that has led to an alarming decrease in cancer screenings, which could lead to a sharp increase in cancer diagnoses when people finally get around to those check-ups they should have had a year or two ago.
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GE Healthcare aims to bring prenatal ultrasound to the home, with investment in smartphone-scanner developer
By Conor Hale
May 13, 2022 01:58am
Make more room for pictures on the refrigerator: GE Healthcare and the handheld ultrasound developer Pulsenmore aim to give expectant parents the opportunity to chart their pregnancies at home and perform the scans themselves.
Pulsenmore’s device docks with a smartphone, allowing women to conduct their own exams and potentially skip an in-person doctor’s visit. The user can be guided online through a telehealth service or offline by following the steps in an app.
The Israeli startup aims to offer fast clinical feedback for periodic fetal ultrasound scans, and GE Healthcare is now supporting the company through an equity investment worth up to $50 million—to help the medtech enter what it describes as a rapidly expanding market of homecare and telemedicine services.
“Healthcare providers are predicting a significant shift of care services from traditional facilities to the home, which will require an increase in the level of quality or access,” GE Healthcare Ultrasound President and CEO Roland Rott said in a statement. “We also recognize the desire of patients—in this case, pregnant women—to be more empowered and involved in their healthcare.”
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https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/974242
Medicine, AI, and Bias: Will Bad Data Undermine Good Tech?
Natalie Sabin
May 18, 2022
Imagine walking into the Library of Congress, with its millions of books, and having the goal of reading them all. Impossible, right? Even if you could read every word of every work, you wouldn't be able to retain or comprehend everything — even if you spent a lifetime trying.
Now let's say you somehow had a super-powered brain capable of reading and understanding all that information. You would still have a problem: You wouldn't know what wasn't covered in those books — what questions they'd failed to answer, whose experiences they'd left out.
Similarly, today's clinicians have a staggering amount of data to sift through. Pubmed alone contains more than 34 million citations. And that's just the peer-reviewed stuff. Millions more data sets explore how factors like bloodwork, medical and family history, genetics, and socioeconomic traits impact patient outcomes.
Artificial intelligence (AI) lets us use more of this material than ever. Emerging models can quickly and accurately synthesize enormous amounts of data, predicting potential patient outcomes and helping doctors make calls about treatments or preventive care.
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7 key steps for protecting against cyberattacks
Healthcare organizations must be proactive to minimize and better manage the attack surface. See these 7 steps to get started.
May 19 2022
Drex DeFord Executive Healthcare Strategist, CrowdStrike
Cyberattacks targeting healthcare facilities are on the rise with no end in sight, threatening patient care, personal data, clinical outcomes and hospital resources.
Ransomware attacks as well as data breaches are prevalent. Adversaries are fine-tuning their techniques and weapons to target valuable information.
Healthcare information technology, which provides critical life-saving functions, can be vulnerable because it consists of connected, networked components – from legacy to modern-day systems – with varying levels of security. Vulnerabilities in software, such as the Apache Log4j2 flaw, and hardware platforms continue to expand attack surfaces.
To minimize risks, the No. 1 goal is to reduce an organization’s attack surface.
The following seven recommendations from the CrowdStrike 2022 Global Threat Report offer ways for healthcare facilities to achieve that goal.
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Moving healthcare from the theoretical to the personal
While technology is a tool that can aid the care delivery process, it’s easy to run the risk of losing the important focus of the patient-clinician connection.
May 19 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
As a science, healthcare can be pretty theoretical, until the moment it becomes personal.
There’s no great time to catch COVID, but I have been glad that it’s now and not two years ago, when there was so much that wasn’t known about the virus, how it was transmitted, how to protect against it and how to treat it.
This is a truism that we tend to forget. It’s easy to get caught up in statistics and analytics, population segmentation, evidence-based medicine and trendlines for revenue, and believe that data, and data alone, constitutes medicine. Those are crucial tools for clinicians that have the potential to make medical care better. But they are only tools. They don’t span that last mile, that connection that links the caregiver to the patient.
I gravitate toward the theoretical in healthcare as a writer who has covered the industry for more than three decades. It’s easy to think in terms of trends and stories and forget the personal component. Especially over the past two years with the pandemic, there’s a certain detachment that occurs in writing about the healthcare response, the healthcare impact.
That was refocused for me Sunday morning, when I got a text message containing a link to my positive COVID result. Then a double-slap the next morning, when my wife got her positive result.
I’ll quickly mention that we’re both doing well. We’ve been both vaxed and boosted, have generally been very careful about wearing masks and keeping distances from people in public settings. It appears that our first return to church in two years (a distances ironically maintained because of COVID concerns) was the point of exposure. But a large number of protected, previously uninfected people seem to be catching this latest variant quite frequently.
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Using technology to improve workflows; reduce clinical burnout
AI-powered sensing tech can assist care teams and prevent patient falls while improving nurse workloads and mitigate risks of patient injury.
May 19 2022
Karen Nelson, RN VP of Clinical Services, Larksfield Place Retirement Communities
Tom Hale, MD Chief Medical Officer, VirtuSense Technologies
Faced with a national shortage of nurses, healthcare organizations are hoping new technologies can help reduce nurses’ workloads, minimize staff burnout and lower costs.
monitoring patients for fall prevention represents a significant day-to-day nursing workflow burden and staffing expense.
For example, using artificial intelligence-powered sensing technology has the potential to prevent patient falls, and that can relieve nurses’ observation burdens while reducing the risk of patients getting injured.
In 2020, there were more 170,000 patient falls in U.S. hospitals, with more than 42,000 of those incidents resulting in mild or moderate harm, and more than 800 resulting in severe harm or death, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has calculated that annual U.S. spending on non-fatal fall injuries totals $50 billion, while $754 million is spent on fatal falls.
Clearly, monitoring patients for fall prevention represents a significant day-to-day nursing workflow burden and staffing expense.
Case study: Putting technology to use
A post-acute care organization in Wichita, Kan., is using the latest AI-powered sensing technology to help prevent resident falls, reduce expenses and mitigate adverse effects of nurse burnout.
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Ben Goldacre opted-out of UK data sharing scheme due to privacy fears
Trusted research environments would help ‘mitigate risks and earn public trust,’ in use of GP data Goldacre says.
By Tammy Lovell
May 19, 2022 12:11 PM
Professor Ben Goldacre admitted that he opted-out of the controversial GP data sharing scheme.
The author of The Goldacre Review, into the use of health data for research and analysis, addressed the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on 11 May.
When asked if he had withdrawn consent for his GP records to be shared, he replied: “I did, because I know so much about how this data is used and how people can be de-anonymised, and also in part because in the past, to a greater extent, I have been in the public eye from doing public engagement work and I have friends who have had their data illegally accessed through national datasets, not health datasets.”
Goldacre said that a ministerial letter to GPs in July 2021 stated the data sharing programme would continue “only after they had built a national trusted research environment (TRE) that could hold the data securely and make it accessible to all legitimate users, while mitigating the risks.”
He added: “I am confident that by doing that, you can not only mitigate risks, but begin to earn public trust.”
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Cerner working with Elligo, Frenome on multiomics for early cancer detection
With real-world data from its Learning Health Network, Cerner hopes to advance oncology innovation and expand access to clinical trials.
By Mike Miliard
May 19, 2022 10:10 AM
Cerner this week announced that it is collaborating with Elligo Health Research and Freenome for a clinical trial project that seeks to advance early cancer detection via insights derived from Cerner's Learning Health Network.
WHY IT
MATTERS
The three companies will be harness real-world data from the network's
participating health system and use Freenome's "multiomics"
technology for the Sanderson Study, an forthcoming clinical trial designed to
detect multiple types of cancer.
Freenome’s platform uses machine learning models to analyze tumor and non-tumor signals, with the goal of detecting cancer in its earliest, most treatable stages with a single blood draw. The aim is to innovate a more patient-centric approach to multi-cancer detection, reducing diagnostic complexity and optimizing processes for clinical efficiency.
Elligo Health Research, will work with Learning Health Network members to speed site activation and enroll a large volume of patients much faster than traditional recruitment models, officials say, enabling diverse nationwide patient participation, spanning many demographics and communities.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/cfos-weigh-roi-new-tech-investments
CFOs Weigh In On The ROI Of New Tech Investments
Analysis | By David Weldon | May 18, 2022
The cost of investing in tech solutions isn't cheap, but the returns can be significant.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Most new technological investments in healthcare have been focused on maintaining and accessing the electronic health record.
· Hospitals need to assess whether they have the internal staff required to adopt new technologies and train healthcare workers on them.
· One way to reduce labor costs is to invest in automation software that can perform many of the routine tasks now done by people.
Many organizations in nearly all industries are now involved with digital transformation efforts, or with some level of upgrading technologies and applications. All this investment comes with a price in terms of hardware, software, and human capital.
As hospitals and healthcare systems adopt new or more advanced digital technologies, many will have to upskill employees, reskill employees, or hire outside help. These organizations must consider the cost implications of these strategies and understand how to get the most bang for their buck.
But some organizations may find the answers lie not in the implementation of more advanced technologies, but by automating as many processes as possible and eliminating the need to add to their labor force.
Growth of telehealth driving many tech investments
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/telehealth-remains-popular-among-adults-over-50
Telehealth Remains Popular Among Adults Over 50
A 2022 study revealed that one-third of adults 50 years or older are interested in using telehealth themselves or for a loved one, which is similar to interest levels among older adults in 2020.
May 18, 2022 - An AARP study found that interest in telehealth use among older adults in 2022 was similar to 2020 rates, with women, Black people, and those between 50 and 64 more likely to use virtual care services.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, AARP found that 21 percent of adults 50 and older used telehealth in March 2020. The new survey, which collected data between Feb. 24 and March 4, found that 51 percent of adults claimed that they or someone in their family used telehealth within two years prior.
For the 2022 survey, AARP polled 1,149 US adults aged 50 and over.
The survey showed that 32 percent of adults indicated they were highly interested in using telehealth for themselves or a loved one, relatively similar to 2020, when 30 percent of older adults expressed interest in virtual care.
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https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(22)00048-6/fulltext
Identifying who has long COVID in the USA: a machine learning approach using N3C data
Open Access Published: May 16, 2022 DOI :https://doi.org/10.10
Summary
Background
Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, known as long COVID, have severely affected recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic for patients and society alike. Long COVID is characterised by evolving, heterogeneous symptoms, making it challenging to derive an unambiguous definition. Studies of electronic health records are a crucial element of the US National Institutes of Health's RECOVER Initiative, which is addressing the urgent need to understand long COVID, identify treatments, and accurately identify who has it—the latter is the aim of this study.
Methods
Using the National COVID Cohort Collaborative's (N3C) electronic health record repository, we developed XGBoost machine learning models to identify potential patients with long COVID. We defined our base population (n=1 793 604) as any non-deceased adult patient (age ≥18 years) with either an International Classification of Diseases-10-Clinical Modification COVID-19 diagnosis code (U07.1) from an inpatient or emergency visit, or a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR or antigen test, and for whom at least 90 days have passed since COVID-19 index date. We examined demographics, health-care utilisation, diagnoses, and medications for 97 995 adults with COVID-19. We used data on these features and 597 patients from a long COVID clinic to train three machine learning models to identify potential long COVID among all patients with COVID-19, patients hospitalised with COVID-19, and patients who had COVID-19 but were not hospitalised. Feature importance was determined via Shapley values. We further validated the models on data from a fourth site.
Findings
Our models identified, with high accuracy, patients who potentially have long COVID, achieving areas under the receiver operator characteristic curve of 0·92 (all patients), 0·90 (hospitalised), and 0·85 (non-hospitalised). Important features, as defined by Shapley values, include rate of health-care utilisation, patient age, dyspnoea, and other diagnosis and medication information available within the electronic health record.
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Politico Future Pulse
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Michael Albert @MichaelAlbertMD: “I’m going to be honest, digital health companies publish a lot of fluff and praise each other for publications, despite the results being trivial and the quality of the data low. Digital health needs to recruit actual research scientists to improve the quality of research done.” |
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Biden’s Plan To Expand Broadband Will Be A Huge Help To Older Adults
May 12, 2022,11:14am EDT
On Monday, President Biden announced a deal with 20 Internet service providers, such as AT&T T -1.7% and Comcast CMCSA -1.7%, to provide high-speed broadband to low-income households for no more than $30-a-month. That’s less than half the average 2021 cost of $61 and far less in many areas. That initiative, and an even bigger companion program to build out broadband in communities that do not have it, will be hugely important for older adults and younger people with disabilities.
While much of the attention on expanded broadband is focused on how it will help young families with children, it also will improve access to medical care and monitoring as well as social supports and services—critical benefits for older adults who have difficulty leaving their homes.
Just a few examples:
Telehealth: For people with a limited ability to access in-person health care and supportive services, telehealth has the potential to be a major advance in medical care. It allows doctors and other medical professionals to diagnose and monitor medical conditions remotely and order treatment without patients having to leave their homes.
For some chronic conditions, telehealth can deliver care faster and at less cost than in-person visits. Patient satisfaction appears to be as high for telehealth as in-person care. It may be able to prevent avoidable emergency department visits and even hospital admissions. However, we still are learning about quality of care delivered remotely.
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Removing Medical Abbreviations Can Boost Patient Portal Understanding
A new study shows that removing medical abbreviations within patient health records can improve patient portal understanding and digital health literacy.
May 18, 2022 - Medical abbreviations and acronyms have adverse effects on patient understanding of information during patient portal use, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health found.
This is happening as more patients access their health records than ever before.
In 2020, nearly 100 million people in the US accessed their health records through a patient portal. That number likely increased upon the implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act. The mandate called on medical providers to allow patients to access the notes written by their clinicians via a digital tool.
Patient portals are meant to benefit patients, giving them a window into which they can view their health data and be more involved in their own care.
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Avoiding abbreviations boosts patient understanding of their health records
May 18, 2022
Study shows a marked improvement when medical abbreviations and acronyms are spelled out instead
A study of patient comprehension showed that when medical abbreviations and acronyms were avoided, patients were significantly more likely to understand the information being provided to them by physicians.
When 10 common medical abbreviations were expanded, researchers found a significant increase in overall comprehension from 62% to 95%. The findings suggest that expanding medical abbreviations and acronyms can improve patient understanding of their health information and may benefit ongoing national efforts to provide patients with electronic access to their own documentation.
The study appeared in JAMA Network Open.
Even though study participants had substantial prior exposure to the health care system, comprehension of common abbreviations such as MI or HTN remained below 40%, which is lower than clinicians estimated.
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Addressing A Lack of Funding In Pediatric Digital Health
May 18, 2022
The following is a guest article by Brad Sitler from the Bear Institute for Health Innovation. Be sure to check out their Bear Institute PACK, a pediatric accelerator challenge for kids.
The digital health innovation space has grown exponentially over the past 10 years, with $2 billion invested in 2011 and $44 billion invested in 2021 by the global financial and corporate markets. This represents a 20x increase, however, the increase has not been equal across all segments of healthcare. One segment of healthcare that did not see an increase in investment is children’s digital health, which received less than 1% ($167 million) of global digital health funding ($22 billion) in 2020, according to StartUp Health’s annual report on digital health funding.
Start-ups focused on pediatric digital health face unique challenges because the market is stratified by children’s age and weight, leading to small market segments and lower investments by VC and angels. Scaling to market is also challenging with no sizable pediatric provider organizations, no HCA and over 250 standalone pediatric hospitals to individually pursue. Understanding and complying with the special ethical and regulatory protections for children constitutes another challenge. All these factors lead to the immense gap in children’s digital health funding.
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Cybersecurity Authorities Issue Advisory on Common Initial Access Tactics
Cybersecurity authorities from the US, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand outlined common practices that threat actors use to gain initial access to victim networks.
By Jill McKeon
May 17, 2022 - Cybersecurity authorities from the US, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand issued an advisory detailing initial access tactics that threat actors frequently use to infiltrate victim networks.
“Cyber actors routinely exploit poor security configurations (either misconfigured or left unsecured), weak controls, and other poor cyber hygiene practices to gain initial access or as part of other tactics to compromise a victim’s system,” the advisory began.
The statement highlighted a simple truth—threat actors do not necessarily need elaborate and sophisticated tactics to successfully take advantage of victims. Basic misconfigurations and poor cyber hygiene often give threat actors the leverage they need to exploit their victims.
Addressing common security weaknesses and implementing a robust security architecture can help organizations effectively mitigate cyber risk.
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Data Modernization Initiative aims to meet lofty goals for public health
Federal agencies aim to improve health data sharing among state and federal agencies, but GAO questions progress and others contend the effort is underfunded.
May 10 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of data sharing – as well as the frustrating consequences of unpreparedness when public health information is siloed and cannot be easily exchanged.
Information sharing woes were recognized early on in the pandemic as an impediment to successful management. For example, just months into the crisis, hospitals and public health agencies often had to rely on spreadsheets to exchange critical public health data. While some public-private initiatives sought to fill the gap, improvements in data sharing took months to achieve.
Given all the data sharing difficulties, the government’s ongoing Data Modernization Initiative, is critical. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched DMI in 2020 to modernize the sharing of core data and surveillance information across federal and state public health agencies.
According information provided by the CDC, the DMI is aiming to “move from siloed and brittle public health data systems to connected, resilient, adaptable and sustainable ‘response-ready’ systems” that can get in front of future health crises. It intends to “deliver real-time, high-quality information on both infectious and non-infectious threats.”
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More than 100 organizations urge Congress to pave way for a national patient ID
The latest in a series of efforts, ID advocates ask congressional appropriations committees to end the ban on government support for a national ID standard.
May 16 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
Dozens of healthcare organizations are yet again urging Congress to not impede efforts to create a national unique patient identifier.
In a letter sent to the House and Senate appropriations committees, some 119 organizations ask legislators to not include language in any legislative proposal that would prohibit the Department of Health and Human Services from spending federal money “to promulgate or adopt a national unique patient health identifier standard.”
HIPAA, enacted in 1996, called for creation of a national patient identifier. Since 1999, however, Congress has prevented federal agencies from pursuing an identifier, citing concern about patient privacy risks. But a growing phalanx of healthcare organizations says an ID would lead to far better healthcare coordination, which was lacking in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. John Lee, CMIO, Allegheny Health Network
“If you have dozens of different ways of identifying patients, you don’t have a system."
The lack of a uniform patient ID also results in expensive and unnecessary records duplication that puts patient safety at risk, according to the Patient ID Now Coalition, which includes the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, and others that signed the letter.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/what-can-europe-do-bridge-digital-health-divide
What can Europe to do bridge the digital health divide?
The EU is pushing to move health data online. But can member states — and their citizens — keep up, asks Frieda Klotz.
May 17, 2022 06:28 AM
Policy-makers in the EU are promoting an array of digital health programs, such as the European Health Data Space unveiled earlier this month. But lack of awareness and knowledge could stymy their impact. Kristine Sørensen, a digital health literacy expert based in Denmark says digital health literacy varies across countries, regions — even within families. “I prefer to call it a digital spectrum,” she said.
Recent Eurostat data show that people are increasingly turning to the internet to seek health information online in Europe. But the rates are uneven. In Finland, 80% of adults sought information about their health online last year; in Germany just 45%. A 2021 WHO report found that over the past seven years, despite a slight upwards bump during the pandemic, health literacy in Germany had actually declined.
Birgit Bauer is a patient expert and health communication specialist in Germany, who will speak at a panel on patient empowerment and digital health ecosystems at HIMSS22 Europe in Finland next month. Many older Germans are hesitant about digital tools, and sometimes do not even have WiFi. But healthy younger people don’t see a need for it either, she said.
“When you come to say, digital health, a lot of them say, ‘I’m healthy. I don’t need that.’ So they are maybe not so interested in it.”
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Consumers May Not Be Well Informed About Uses Of Patient Health Data
May 17, 2022
Over the last several years, concern has grown among healthcare professionals over the ways patient data is being used, and just as importantly, how well patients understand what those uses are.
However, if a new study is any indication, a minority of consumers understand the extent of the health data being shared, and many have only modest levels of concern about these uses of their health data.
The study, which was commissioned by Q-Centrix, surveyed 1,191 Americans during December of last year to look at their attitude and beliefs around the sharing of patient health data.
On the whole, the respondents seemed fairly well informed about commercial uses of other data gathered about them. when asked what type of data is collected and shared, the majority of respondents datasets knew what data was typically used in marketing efforts, including personal information such as name, address and phone number (87%), demographic information (74%) and location tracking (73%). in contrast, just over 50% selected health information as a type of data being collected far and wide.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/referential-algorithms-boost-patient-matching-accuracy
Referential Algorithms Boost Patient Matching Accuracy
Referential algorithms include additional health data sources to support patient matching by building a more complete profile of each patient.
May 16, 2022 - Referential patient matching algorithms demonstrated greater accuracy than the traditional probabilistic approach, according to a study published in JAMIA.
Probabilistic software implements a weighted similarity algorithm that uses blocking schemes to gather candidates sharing at least a portion of matching fields.
“Candidate matches are scored attribute-by-attribute using a weighted similarity based on discriminating power, summed across matching attributes,” the authors explained.
“The set of attribute data is evaluated using heuristic rules for specific conditions that increase or decrease the likelihood of the match and adjust the weighted score accordingly,” they added. “The system declares the records a match if the final match score exceeds a configurable threshold.”
Referential algorithms are similar to probabilistic software, but they use additional data sources.
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CDC: Children with Chronic Conditions More Likely to Use Telehealth
Children with chronic conditions, like asthma or a developmental condition, were more likely to use telehealth because of the pandemic, according to new CDC data.
May 16, 2022 - In the second half of 2020, only 14.1 percent of children used telehealth due to the pandemic, but use was higher among those with asthma, a developmental condition, or a disability, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found.
To assess telehealth's impact on the pediatric population, the CDC conducted a study that examined the frequency of use and the types of cases that most often appeared in virtual settings.
Using information from a National Health Interview Survey, which included data from July to December 2020, the CDC studied whether a child participated in a visit through audio or video platforms and if the virtual visit occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In total, about 12.6 million children, or 17.5 percent, used telehealth in the past 12 months, which included a period before the coronavirus pandemic. Approximately 10.2 million children, or 14.1 percent, used telehealth due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the data showed.
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Despite concerns, most Americans are willing to share health data in some cases, survey finds
May 13, 2022 01:00am
Q-Centrix, a clinical data management company, conducted its first Health Care Data Sharing Survey in December 2021, reaching 1,191 Americans. The sample is representative of the U.S. adult online population, according to the company.
It found that most Americans are concerned about their personal data being shared. However, a greater portion interprets personal data as being names or addresses, with only about half interpreting personal data as health information. Nonetheless, most are very or somewhat concerned with how health information is being shared.
“Hospitals have an opportunity to educate their patients on how they ensure their data is accurate, and why that is important for improving outcomes,” Brian Foy, chief product officer at Q-Centrix, said in a statement. “This not only requires clinician transparency but also the implementation of modern data solutions throughout hospitals and health systems to maintain data quality and security.”
Despite respondents’ concerns, most (71%) are open to sharing de-identified health data for various reasons, including to improve their own or other patients’ healthcare, for research, to improve hospital services or to advance equity. The entities with which they would feel comfortable sharing include providers and pharmacies that have treated them directly. When it comes to whether they feel comfortable sharing with providers and pharmacies that have not treated them or insurance companies, more respondents said no than yes.
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May 13, 2022
Is Telemedicine Closing the 'Race Gap' in Primary Care?
FRIDAY, May 13, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Here's one way in which the pandemic did not exacerbate health care disparities: A new study shows that telemedicine has closed the gap in access to primary care between Black and non-Black Americans.
The use of telemedicine boomed during the pandemic, so University of Pennsylvania researchers decided to examine how that affected Black patients' historically lower access to primary care.
"We looked through the entire year of 2020, not just the first half of the year when telemedicine was the only option for many people, and the appointment completion gap between Black and non-Black patients closed," said study senior author Dr. Krisda Chaiyachati, an assistant professor of medicine at Penn Medicine.
"Offering telemedicine, even though it was for a crisis, appears to have been a significant step forward toward addressing long-standing inequities in health care access," he said in a university news release.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/how-healthcare-orgs-can-protect-their-supply-chain-cyber-risks
How healthcare orgs can protect their supply chain from cyber risks
A new report from the Cloud Security Alliance explains that it's essential to apply a risk rating, using predefined criteria, to all subscribers.
By Kat Jercich
May 16, 2022 12:35 PM
The Cloud Security Alliance this past week released a report outlining the cyber risks faced by healthcare delivery organizations when it comes to supply chain management.
Experts from CSA explained that healthcare organizations face two main concerns:
- Risk management involving the cyber supply chain, which includes IT networks, hardware and software.
- Risk management involving the conventional supply chain.
"With the move to the cloud and edge computing, HDOs are finding it increasingly challenging to secure their infrastructure," read the report.
"Cyberattacks target HDOs and their suppliers in this expanded attack surface," it continued.
WHY IT MATTERS
As the report authors noted, cyberattacks can be very costly, particularly as healthcare organizations and suppliers present juicy targets for bad actors.
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Telehealth can be a safe technique in high-risk pregnancies, study shows
A recent meta-analysis found that telemedicine interventions had a positive impact on many maternal and neonatal health measures.
By Kat Jercich
May 16, 2022 03:03 PM
A recent study published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare found that telehealth can be safe and effective when it comes to managing high-risk pregnancies.
The meta-analysis, which examined 12 studies published in English and Turkish from 2016 through 2021, sought to examine how virtual care apps could affect maternal and neonatal health outcomes, as well as costs.
"It has actually been seen that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of telehealth applications in the monitoring and care of high-risk pregnancies has increased substantially in antenatal health services," wrote the researchers.
"It is for this reason that the need arose for a strong evidence-based examination of the effectiveness of telehealth, and this became the basis for the planning of the present study," they said.
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American College of Cardiology Study Tests Value of Digital Health in Care Management
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | May 13, 2022
The latest version of the ACC's three-year-old series of TRANSFORM studies, being conducted in Boston and Kansas City, will test whether underserved patients living with chronic cardiovascular concerns can be better managed through a digital health platform that includes wearables and AI tools.
The American College of Cardiology is studying whether digital health technology like wearables and AI can be used to improve care management for people with chronic cardiovascular conditions.
The ACC is partnering with Boston-based Biofourmis on the third and latest phase of its TRANSFORM study, which was launched in 2019 to “leverage EHR data, office-based interventions and partnerships to include the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, health plans, employers, clinicians, and patients.” The latest phase focuses on improving guideline-directed medication therapy (GDMT) in care management.
“TRANSFORM3 will provide real-world data on how cardiologists and other clinicians can more effectively and efficiently manage chronic cardiovascular conditions in underserved populations,” Megan Welch, MD, TRANSFORM3 investigator team member and cardiovascular disease fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a press release issued by Biofourmis. “Through technology-enabled approaches, we are hopeful that providers will have timely, meaningful awareness of their patients’ health status and adherence to guideline-recommended therapies. Ultimately, what we learn from TRANSFORM3 could lead to accelerated adoption of effective, evidence-based care plans that optimize outcomes and help patients lead longer, healthier lives.”
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Enjoy!
David.
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