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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AI Approach Offers Higher Rate of Diabetes Remission Than Standard Care
Researchers found that an artificial intelligence-based intervention offered significant rates of remission compared to standard care alone for type 2 diabetes patients.
June 10, 2022 - Use of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool has shown the highest reported rate of type 2 diabetes remission to date, according to research presented at the 82nd Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) earlier this month in New Orleans.
Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that impacts the way the body utilizes glucose, or sugar. In patients with type 2 diabetes, the pancreas does not produce enough of the sugar-regulating hormone, insulin, and cells respond poorly to insulin, causing them to take in less sugar. This impairment in glucose regulation results in too much sugar in the bloodstream, which can cause circulatory, nervous, and immune system disorders, according to Mayo Clinic.
Remission for patients with type 2 diabetes was defined in the study as “sustaining normal blood glucose (blood sugar) levels for at least three months without taking diabetes medication.” To evaluate rates of remission, along with changes in the diabetes-related hemoglobin A1C, researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial to measure the effect of Twin Precision Treatment technology (TPT) versus standard care (SC) at 90-day intervals.
The TPT intervention relied on the Whole-Body Digital Twin Platform, a predictive analytics model which utilizes AI and Internet of Things (IoT) functionalities to gather patient data and provide guidance surrounding precision nutrition, physical activity, breathing, and sleep. These can then be used by clinicians and their patients to guide treatment.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/a-review-of-common-hipaa-administrative-safeguards
Common HIPAA Administrative Safeguards Under The HIPAA Security Rule
HIPAA administrative safeguards are crucial measures that all covered entities must consider under the HIPAA Security Rule.
June 10, 2022 - Under the HIPAA Security Rule, covered entities must implement physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to safeguard electronic protected health information (ePHI). These safeguards help covered entities mitigate risk and ensure that sensitive health data remains secure and out of the reach of unauthorized individuals.
The HIPAA Security Rule is purposefully flexible and scalable to account for varying organization sizes and security needs. As is the case with HIPAA physical safeguards and technical safeguards, healthcare organizations will need to review their own policies, daily workflows, and existing security programs to determine what works best for them.
What Are HIPAA administrative safeguards?
“Administrative safeguards are administrative actions, and policies and procedures, to manage the selection, development, implementation, and maintenance of security measures to protect electronic protected health information and to manage the conduct of the covered entity's or business associate's workforce in relation to the protection of that information,” HIPAA states.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2022/06/tech-innovation-framework-invitation-tender-nhs-digital/
Tech Innovation Framework for primary care launched by NHS Digital
NHS Digital has launched a new framework which has been designed to increase innovation and choice across the primary care IT market.
8 June 2022
The Tech Innovation Framework aims to give GPs and commissioners access to a wider range of technology, enabling them to deliver better care. It will be a blueprint for introducing the next generation of standards for IT systems.
Any organisation can apply to become part of the framework, which has been designed to inspire new methods of working, and commissioners will be able to use this framework to buy user-focused GP systems and associated products and services.
Helen Clifton, executive director for product delivery at NHS Digital, said: “This is a key step forward on our journey to putting patients at the heart of everything we do by ensuring primary care benefits from the very latest technology.
“The new framework will introduce new solutions into the market to work alongside our current GP offer, providing greater choice and different user experiences.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2022/06/northern-ireland-digital-health-record-programme/
Northern Ireland gains support for digital health record programme
The Encompass programme from Health and Social Care Northern Ireland is being bolstered by the support of two digital health firms.
Cora Lydon 6 June, 2022
Global healthcare technology specialist, Tegria and digital health consultancy, Cloud21 will be providing strategic guidance, programme readiness and EPR implementation expertise to help Northern Ireland become the first UK country to implement a fully integrated electronic health and care record.
The Encompass programme is a 10-year national digital transformation initiative that aims to improve patient outcomes by better supporting health and care professionals. Its vision is for a digital health and care record for every citizen. The platform, which will be powered by Epic, it is built on will streamline services, patient journeys and ensure connected healthcare across primary, secondary, community and social care.
Dan West, chief digital information officer for Health and Social Care Northern Ireland, said: “Tegria and Cloud21 stood out because of their strong understanding of the challenges that we face with such a large-scale and radical digital transformation initiative.
“They quickly provided us with strategic leadership at a challenging time in the programme, while health and care systems across the world were dealing with the impact of the COVID pandemic. They brought people who understand large scale implementation and clinical transformation programmes to help us build a more sustainable and resilient service through digital.”
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June 09, 2022
Telerehabilitation yielded positive outcomes for low back pain during COVID-19 pandemic
Results showed telerehabilitation for patients with low back pain was equally as effective as in-person physical therapy, with a trend of higher effectiveness when used for all visits throughout the entire episode of care.
Mark W. Werneke, PT, MS, and colleagues used propensity score matching to analyze functional outcomes and satisfaction in patients with low back pain (LBP) who received telerehabilitation (TR) for “any,” “few,” “most” or “all” therapy visits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among 91,117 total episodes of physical therapy, 5,013 (5.5%) had TR involvement in some capacity. According to the study, researchers also analyzed three matched samples of patients who received synchronous, asynchronous or mixed TR modes.
Overall, the only significant differences in functional score (FS) outcomes between matched samples were found among patients who had “few” (1.7) and “all” (+2) TR frequencies or among patients who received asynchronous (2.6) TR modes. Despite a slim trend toward increased effectiveness with TR, these point differences “suggest limited clinical importance,” the researchers noted in the study.
Except for those patients with the “most” TR frequency – who had “non-significantly fewer visits” – patients with “any” TR frequency had “significantly fewer visits” compared with patients with no TR. Researchers noted most patients were very satisfied with treatment results; however, a smaller proportion of TR patients reported being very satisfied with treatment results, except for those with the “all” TR frequency.
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'Telemedicine Untethered' Looks to Eliminate Virtual Waiting Room
Analysis | By John Commins | June 07, 2022
UC San Diego Health borrows strategies from the restaurant and airline industries and text messages patients when their providers are available.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Nearly two dozen patients from a stroke clinic were given the option of either getting a text with a visit link when their provider was ready or logging in at a scheduled time and waiting in front of a camera in a virtual waiting room.
· After the 10-week pilot, the researchers found that no patients were seen late, while 55% were seen early, with an average 55-minute time savings in clinic operations due to patients being seen early. Study metrics also included demographics, visit rates, and satisfaction surveys.
Staring at a blank computer screen while awaiting a telehealth consultation is not the best way to endear patients to virtual care.
With that in mind, providers at UC San Diego Health borrowed strategies used by the restaurant and airline industries and launched a 10-week pilot project that text messaged patients when their provider were available. The "telemedicine untethered" program proved so successful that the health system is expanding the option into various high-volume primary and surgical care clinics this summer.
Brett C. Meyer, MD, a neurologist and clinical director of telehealth at UC San Diego Health, led the pilot and said "the goal of the feasibility study was to determine if this flexibility lead to improved perception of waiting time and an enhanced experience, while assessing for time saving for both patients and providers."
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How U.S. healthcare leaders are shifting course to navigate a changed world
Health system execs are updating strategies to meet new imperatives, Philips' new Future Health Index 2022 report shows. Their priorities: expanding digital transformation, managing a human capital crisis and closing the equity gap.
By Bill Siwicki
June 09, 2022 01:16 PM
As the healthcare industry emerges from the pandemic, its leaders are embarking on a major reboot of their priorities in order to improve the delivery of patient care.That is one of the big findings of the Future Health Index 2022 report, entitled "Healthcare hits reset: Priorities shift as healthcare leaders navigate a changed world." This seventh annual edition of the report from global technology vendor Philips analyzes feedback from nearly 3,000 healthcare leaders across 15 countries on the impact of digital health technology in the adoption of connected care. (Click here for the U.S. edition of the report. Click here for the global edition.)
Many healthcare leaders are refocusing on both new and existing priorities, from addressing staff shortages and extending care delivery to leveraging big data and predictive analytics, revealed Jan Kimpen, chief medical officer at Philips.
Urgent need to address burnout
Staffing challenges in healthcare are well-publicized. In January 2022, 20% of U.S. hospitals reported critical staff shortages, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, while a recent Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post poll found that around three in 10 healthcare workers had considered leaving their profession.
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Using Health IT to Support Safer Use and Management of Controlled Substance Prescriptions
Chelsea Richwine and Christian Johnson | June 8, 2022
New ONC data show that, as of 2021, nearly all non-federal acute care hospitals were enabled to electronically prescribe controlled substances (EPCS).
According to the American Hospital Association (AHA) Information Technology (IT) Supplement Survey, the proportion of non-federal acute care hospitals enabled for EPCS increased from 67% in 2018 to 96% in 2021. Increased adoption of EPCS by hospitals is significant because e-prescribing enhances hospitals’ capability to ensure patient safety, avoid errors associated with paper-based prescribing, reduce prescription drug fraud and abuse, mitigate provider burden, and improve care coordination and workflow efficiency.
Moving from Paper to E-Prescribing
Health care providers have historically relied on paper-based methods to prescribe controlled substances, while those prescribing non-controlled substances have benefited from e-prescribing technologies. Decreasing reliance on paper prescriptions helps improve care coordination among providers and clinical workflow efficiencies by streamlining all prescribing into a single workflow. E-prescribing helps prevent data entry errors, reduces pharmacy calls to prescribers to clarify written instructions, and eliminates the need to coordinate and manage paper prescriptions between doctors, patients, pharmacies, and other care sites. Most importantly, e-prescribing promotes patient safety by enabling health care providers to take advantage of safety features built into health IT products that can alert prescribers of potential drug interactions, inappropriate doses, allergies, and underlying patient conditions.
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Roundup: The Royal Marsden NHS FT expands Hyland Healthcare suite, clinical trial uses digital education platform to understand genetic diseases in children and more briefs
Also, AstraZeneca partners with WEF EDISON Alliance to enhance digital inclusion.
By Tammy Lovell
June 10, 2022 02:09 AM
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust expands Hyland Healthcare suite
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust has selected Hyland’s PACSgear image capture solution to integrate with its existing OnBase content services platform and new Epic electronic patient record (EPR) system.
The new digital health record (DHR) falls under the hospital’s digital transformation programme and began in August last year, with Epic going live across the trust from March 2023.
Lisa Emery, chief information officer, The Royal Marsden, said: “These technologies all work seamlessly together to create a comprehensive patient record, which helps us achieve one of our ultimate goals – for our care providers to be able to make the most informed decisions possible.”
Clinical trial uses digital education platform to understand fatal genetic diseases in children
A clinical trial researching a class of rare inherited disorders will incorporate online educational resources to improve participant understanding of the study.
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Optimize Provider Operations: The Key to Minimize Burnout, Increase Satisfaction
June 10, 2022
The following is a guest article by Patrick Hunt, MD, is a practicing emergency physician and the Chief Medical Officer at QGenda.
Workforce optimization has suddenly become an everyday necessity in healthcare organizations. The concept has always been a best-practice ideal, of course. Still, the sharp increase in provider burnout and resignations lately has made workforce retention and optimization an essential part of patient care.
To put the matter into context, a study led by the American Medical Association suggests that one out of every five doctors and two out of every five nurses plan to leave their practice within two years due to stressors such as burnout, anxiety, depression, and workload. Patients already wait an average of 24 days for an appointment. How much more will that wait time rise if providers continue to leave their organizations—or abandon medicine altogether?
We owe it to both patients and providers to optimize provider operations to improve providers’ work/life balance and increase patients’ access to care. But that demands complete visibility into workflows ranging from provider onboarding to compensation management. With the ability to view and understand workforce trend data holistically—including patterns in staffing, overtime, and room usage—such optimization is possible.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2022/06/10/the-evolution-of-roi-in-health-it/
The Evolution of ROI in Health IT
June 10, 2022
I was recently able to attend a press briefing with LeanTaaS and a couple CIO and Chief Transformation officers. During the event, Aaron Miri, SVP & Chief Digital and Information Officer at Baptist Health, said something quite powerful “It’s hard to argue with hard ROI and that’s what we got with LeanTaaS. The CFO asks you why you didn’t do it sooner.”
This seems so obvious when you read it. The problem is that this hasn’t always been the case for healthcare technology. Think about the history of IT. What’s the right ROI measurement for phones? How did you measure the ROI of implementing desktops? How did you measure the ROI of wireless internet? You didn’t really have to as people often compared it to cleaning staff that didn’t require an ROI, but were necessary.
Moving forward, how do you measure the ROI of EHRs? When I first started writing about EHRs, we were still working on that ROI calculation. It was starting to become more clear as I saw many move from wondering if they should implement an EHR to which EHR should they implement it and how they should implement it to get the most value. Then, we all know what happen. Meaningful Use and $36 billion of stimulus money blew everything up.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-apis-streamlined-covid-19-case-reporting-enhanced-data-quality
How APIs Streamlined COVID-19 Case Reporting, Enhanced Data Quality
Automatic data transfer via an application programming interface (API) improved data quality for COVID-19 cases and death rates and reduced the COVID-19 case reporting process by over 25 minutes.
June 09, 2022 - The use of application programming interfaces (APIs) overall enhanced the COVID-19 case reporting process, once integrated APIs improved the data quality of COVID-19 case and death numbers and decreased processing time, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found.
Particularly during the pandemic, timely disease surveillance has been important to making decisions on interventions and crafting public health responses.
However, patient data exchange and public health reporting were two major health IT problem areas during the pandemic that needed to be addressed.
During the COVID-19 public health response, CDC created a system to track COVID-19 aggregate case and death data, known as aggregate case and death surveillance (ACS).
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Healthcare Orgs Report Improved Processes, Patient Experience with AWS
A new report examining payer and provider experiences with Amazon Web Services’ artificial intelligence offerings found that 62 percent of organizations reported better and faster processes.
June 09, 2022 - A new report from KLAS Research found that a majority of healthcare organizations reported better and faster processes, improved clinician and patient experience, and reduced costs while using Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The report outlines how some healthcare organizations are using AWS and its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) offerings, in addition to their perceptions of AWS, the Google Cloud Platform, and the Microsoft Cloud.
The report evaluated responses from 13 providers and payers regarding the AWS offerings they use, how they use them, the outcomes they achieve, their loyalty to AWS, how AWS can support usability for healthcare customers, and their perceptions of AWS competitors Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Cloud.
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SNOMED Strikes Partnership to Support Healthcare Research Opportunities
SNOMED and the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics collaborative have finalized a five-year partnership designed to support clinical and informatics research.
June 09, 2022 - SNOMED International announced a five-year partnership with the non-profit global research collaborative Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) to open new opportunities for healthcare research communities.
OHDSI, coordinated by the Columbia University Department of Biomedical Informatics, provides open-source solutions to enable the analysis and sharing of healthcare and observational data. Its mission is to “improve health by empowering a community to collaboratively generate the evidence that promotes better health decisions and better care,” according to the press release.
OHDSI’s common data model, Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP), utilizes SNOMED Clinical Terms (CT) as a core terminology, which allows the use of other terminology and classification models through computable linkages.
The collaboration with SNOMED provides OHDSI and its users with comprehensive conceptualizations of healthcare areas and content, such as social determinants of health (SDOH), devices, and disease severity scores. OHDSI will also have access to better concept definitions used in large-scale research. As OHDSI users utilize these resources, they can provide SNOMED with information related to clinical validation, frequency of use data, and validation of SNOMED CT content modeling.
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Clinician Perception of Quality Linked to Telehealth Modality Use Rates
Researchers found that high telehealth utilization rates were associated with clinicians’ attitudes toward virtual care quality and ease of use.
June 09, 2022 - Telehealth utilization rates correspond with how clinicians perceive the effectiveness level, ease of use, and quality of virtual care services, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
As the use of telehealth sharply increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, many factors influenced provider preference for specific virtual care modalities.
To determine whether telehealth use rate corelated with clinician perceptions of telehealth, researchers conducted a study that included 866 participants, who worked in clinics that specialized in either mental health (MH), primary care (PC), or specialty care (SC).
The 866 clinicians participated in a 32-item survey conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs New England Healthcare (VANEHS) from August to September 2021.
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Physician Buy-In for Patient Self-Scheduling Tools Remains Elusive
Although 88 percent of organization leaders plan to invest in patient self-scheduling tools to respond to healthcare consumerism, 22 percent said physician buy-in stands in the way.
By Sara Heath
June 09, 2022 - Eighty-eight percent of health system executives are eyeing patient self-scheduling tools as high-priority patient engagement technology investments, but they’re facing roadblocks in drumming up physician buy-in, according to new surveying from the Center for Connected Medicine (CCM) and KLAS Research.
The small survey of 51 respondents from 47 healthcare organizations nationwide showed that although healthcare organizations prioritize the convenient care access that often stems from self-scheduling tools, it’s going to be hard to get clinicians to relinquish that control.
“Many physicians believe that by allowing patients to self-schedule appointments they are giving up control of their own calendar,” Joon S. Lee, MD, executive vice president of UPMC, which partners with CCM, said in a statement emailed to journalists.
“Self-scheduling is a big part of improving patients’ access to care. It is up to organizational leaders to work with physicians to find solutions that address their concerns while still meeting the demands and expectations of our patients.”
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54% of CISOs Struggle to Convince Board to Prioritize Cybersecurity Investments
A new report shows that while communication with the board is improving at many organizations, CISOs still struggle to obtain cybersecurity investments.
By Jill McKeon
June 09, 2022 - Chief information security officers (CISOs) play a crucial role in advocating for cybersecurity investments and communicating risk to the board. Although significant progress has been made, 54 percent of surveyed CISOs reported feeling that their board did not provide ample investments in cybersecurity, a survey conducted by Censuswide and commissioned by Encore found.
Researchers surveyed 500 office workers, 100 C-level executives, and 100 CISOS from the UK and the US.
“Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are the face of cybersecurity within an organization, and expectations of this role have reached new heights as a result,” the report noted.
“For years, they have been the source of all cyber knowledge, the in-case-of-emergency contact, and the clean-up crew after a breach. The pressure on their shoulders has been—and continues to be—substantial.”
Communicating cyber risk to C-suite executives is clearly improving—only 4 percent of executives said that they did not discuss cybersecurity in the boardroom. However, only half of the surveyed C-suite executives said that cybersecurity was a top priority, and over 60 percent of security leaders reported not feeling supported by the board when it came to mitigating cyber risk.
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Wearable shipments drop first time in 1Q except Apple, IDC says
By Matt Hamblen
Jun 8, 2022 06:46am
Shipments of wearable electronics including smartwatches and earbuds declined for the first time ever in the first quarter of 2022 thanks to cooling consumer demand following fast growth during the pandemic, IDC said.
Of the top four companies in the vertical, only Apple saw growth for the quarter of 6.6% over the prior year, partly due to 2 million shipments of Apple Watch SE, which has been on the market more than 18 months.
“Cooling demand will force companies to further differentiate themselves,” said Ramon Llamas, research director for mobile devices at IDC in a statement.
“Competition is also on the rise as smaller brands ramp up their basic health and fitness tracing watches at the low end and as Google along with Samsung and other Wear OS partners finally become more competitive with Apple at the high end of the spectrum,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC.
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Rural Providers Weigh Telehealth Investment Against Regulatory Uncertainty
Holly Vossel | June 8, 2022
Hospices are leveraging expanded telehealth options to maximize access for hard-to-reach rural patients despite lingering regulatory uncertainties.
Case in point, the Providence Institute for Human Caring last year launched a tele-palliative care program aimed at addressing rural patients’ unmet needs. Thus far, the initiative has yielded positive results, but the process hasn’t always been easy, according to Dr. Gregg VandeKieft, executive medical director of the institute’s Palliative Practice Group.
Snags along the way included dairy cows blocking staff from reaching patients.
“For the first time we’re able to offer equitable access to specialty palliative care services for patients who need and want them in this rural setting,” VandeKieft told local news. “But we often have to balance providing health care with the time schedules and welfare of livestock, crops and other realities of rural living.”
Washington-based Providence Health System provides a range of facility- and home-based care, including senior services and hospice. The company has more than 119,000 employees serving communities in six states.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/anz/rmit-university-launches-digital-health-hub
RMIT University launches digital health hub
It also offers online training to upskill health workers.
By Adam Ang
June 09, 2022 03:21 AM
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology or RMIT University has opened a hub to drive digital health innovation in Australia and beyond.
The RMIT Digital Health Hub seeks to bring advanced digital health research and expertise from RMIT to the health sector with the view of transforming healthcare delivery and improving health outcomes.
It was launched in partnership with ANDHealth, a digital health commercialisation organisation, and the federal government-backed Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre.
WHY IT MATTERS
The digital health hub was launched to help bring the stakeholders of the health ecosystem together to solve unmet needs "from virtual care and artificial intelligence to diagnostic and monitoring wearables and sensors".
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/oracle-completes-28.4b-acquisition-of-ehr-vendor-cerner
Oracle Completes $28.4B Acquisition of EHR Vendor Cerner
The acquisition of Cerner will allow Oracle to utilize the EHR vendor’s extensive health information data, helping the vendor expand its cloud business in the health system market.
June 08, 2022 - Cloud giant Oracle Corporation has officially finalized its $28.4 billion acquisition of EHR Vendor Cerner, according to reporting from FedScoop.
The all-cash deal was completed after Oracle’s tender offer to purchase all issued and outstanding Cerner shares for $95 per share expired after midnight, eastern time, on June 6.
“Working together, Cerner and Oracle have the capacity to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with better information—enabling them to make better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes," Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle, said in a press release after Cerner received all required antitrust approvals on June 1.
"With this acquisition, Oracle's corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications,” Ellison continued
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Patient Portal Use Disparities Suggest Need for Judicious Enrollment
Understanding patient portal use disparities will help providers tailor their enrollment strategies to specific patient populations.
By Sara Heath
June 08, 2022 - Some groups remain more likely to use the patient portal than others, and healthcare organizations will need to consider that as they lean on the technologies to boost patient engagement, according to research published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Particularly, men, older adults, those living in rural areas, and racial minorities were less likely to use the patient portal than their peers. Folks on public insurance were also less likely to use the patient portal, save for a handful of specific portal features.
The patient portal has long been a key part of patient engagement strategies. The technologies, hurtled to prominence by meaningful use requirements, allow patients to view their medical information—prescriptions, lab results, and longitudinal medical records—digitally.
In recent years, innovations like Apple Health Records and a similar effort from Android, CommonHealth, have made it so patients could aggregate information from multiple patient portals into one singular location. And just last spring as part of the ONC information blocking rule, patients were granted access to clinician notes via digital format, like the patient portal, too.
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https://www.natlawreview.com/article/digital-health-metaverse-three-legal-considerations
Digital Health in the Metaverse: Three Legal Considerations
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
The metaverse has been described as the “next frontier” and the “new era” of healthcare. Although still a loosely defined and relatively broad term, the “metaverse” generally refers to a shared virtual environment accessed by individuals via the Internet. Individuals generally enter the metaverse through the following four technologies: virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and extended reality.
As the metaverse market continues to grow, with some estimates potentially approaching $800 billion in 2024 (or a $300 billion increase from 2020 estimates), technology leaders in various industries, including healthcare, have begun to expand their presence in this new platform.[1] The metaverse has numerous potential applications for healthcare, ranging from virtual immersive therapy experiences to digitally evaluating drug interactions. These advancements, present challenges and raise novel questions as to how the current healthcare and life sciences legal regime would apply to the metaverse.
Data Privacy and Security
Underlying the metaverse is a potential massive collection of user data. As users “exist” in the metaverse as avatars performing activities, various types of data, including some that may be deemed “personal” or “sensitive” (by law), may be generated.
Developers and other players in the metaverse offering health-related products and services will face an ever-growing patchwork of state and federal privacy and data security laws. Among other laws, this might include state biometric privacy laws, state “comprehensive laws” (California, and forthcoming in Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and Utah), and considerations under unfair and deceptive practice laws at the state and federal level. The FTC’s increasing interest in health information that sits outside of HHS/OCR’s reach is likely to only expand in light of health-related metaverse use cases. However, traditional healthcare players, subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”), may also find themselves innovating in this space (and grappling with how to stand up a HIPAA compliance program in the metaverse). In addition, companies may struggle with how to implement specific technical controls and robust data security programs (required under certain state and federal laws) in this evolving infrastructure.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/90756713/failed-promises-of-digital-health
05-31-22
Digital health has failed, but that doesn’t mean the future is hopeless
Digital health must ground its functions not just in AI and basic diagnostics, but in expert-informed clinical guidance.
By Andrew Le
Virtually everyone can articulate one of healthcare’s myriad issues: it’s expensive, feels impersonal and corporate, and confronts people with cascading folios of options and choices they’re not prepared for. From my years of working in this space, I might summarize all these issues under the umbrella term of “uncertainty”—that is, the converse of assurance and peace of mind.
Uncertainty runs deep in this industry. Patients, sensing (correctly) that there’s no easy way to tap into the vast knowledge of healthcare services, feel like they’re going it alone in a web of complex coverage stipulations, referrals, specialists, and co-pays. About half of Americans source their healthcare coverage through their employers, and yet, 80% of employees say they’re confused about their benefits.
Feeling like a number in the system and far removed from the old national memory of the “hometown doc” who knows them well and understands their circumstances, patients don’t know what care options and services make the most sense for them as individuals. And rather than dive into the confusing mess themselves and possibly incur unplanned costs, many forgo the care they need altogether.
The patients aren’t the only ones who feel this way. Employers are also burdened under the weight of too many options and services that they don’t know how to navigate. Finding a provider package or insurance solution that’s valuable to their employees can seem nearly impossible, while the balancing act of quality vs. cost-effectiveness continues to churn out results neither party is thrilled about.
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Study: Electronic symptom tracking improves cancer patients' quality of life, physical function
If patients reported severe or worsening symptoms, their care teams were alerted.
By Emily Olsen
June 06, 2022 11:54 am
Weekly electronic symptom-tracking surveys improved physical function, symptom control and health-related quality of life among cancer patients, according to a study published in JAMA.
In a randomized trial that included 52 practices and 1,191 patients receiving treatment for metastatic cancer, researchers found statistically significant improvements in secondary outcomes like function and quality of life after a three month follow-up compared with usual care. Results on the primary outcome, overall survival, weren't yet available.
In the survey group, patients were asked to complete a weekly survey online or through an automated phone system for one year. They were asked about symptoms like pain, nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, dyspnea, insomnia and depression.
The survey also included questions about eating and drinking, falls, financial challenges and their ability to care for themselves and do daily tasks. If a patient reported severe or worsening symptoms, an alert was triggered for the care team.
"In this report of secondary outcomes from a randomized clinical trial of adults receiving cancer treatment, use of weekly electronic PRO surveys to monitor symptoms, compared with usual care, resulted in statistically significant improvements in physical function, symptom control and HRQOL at 3 months, with mean improvements of approximately 2.5 points on a 0- to 100-point scale. These findings should be interpreted provisionally pending results of the primary outcome of overall survival," the study's authors wrote.
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At the frontlines of precision medicine: Data and IT challenges
Numerous challenges, such as capturing genetic data in EHRs, need to be addressed to achieve the promised value of precision medicine.
Jun 07 2022
Contributing Editor
David Jones, Ph.D., offers a vision of how precision medicine will evolve in the next 20 years to transform healthcare.
By 2042, many babies will have their genome sequenced soon after birth, revealing their risk for hundreds of diseases and conditions, both rare and common, says Jones, chief scientist at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City. Healthcare providers will have this genetic data at their fingertips to help them develop customized prevention and treatment plans for each patient, he predicts.
“We’re going to move from a reactionary style of patient care, where we wait until people get sick before doing something, to a more proactive approach,” the scientist says. We’ll know the diseases people may get, so we can get those people screened regularly and prevent them from getting those diseases.”
The first steps
Initial steps toward achieving that long-term goal are being made today. For example, genetic tests are available to identify a modest number of genes and gene mutations linked to certain diseases and conditions, including cancers and high cholesterol. In addition, physicians can order pharmacogenomic tests to determine if patients, based on their genomic profile, likely will respond to a drug or have side effects. About 100 drugs have been identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as having gene-drug interactions.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/technology/why-geisinger-moving-its-ehr-cloud-now
Why Geisinger Is Moving its EHR to the Cloud Now
Analysis | By Scott Mace | June 08, 2022
The Pennsylvania-based health system is partnering with Amazon Web Services to move its electronic health record platform and other services into the cloud.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Amazon AWS beat out two other contenders for the cloud platform project.
· Roughly 900 applications will be moved to the cloud with help from Deloitte.
· Officials say they're making the move to improve agility, disaster recovery, and business recovery.
Geisinger recently announced it has chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its strategic cloud provider. The project, one of the largest migrations of electronic health record systems to AWS, will save the Pennsylvania health system several million dollars a year, which executives say they'll use to make investments in improving the health of its patients.
Geisinger Chief Information Officer John Kravitz, MHA, CHCIO, spoke to HealthLeaders about this partnership and how it will impact innovation at Geisinger. This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Health Leaders: Your move to the cloud -- why now? Why not earlier or later?
John Kravitz: For us, as an organization, the time was appropriate to start. We looked at the cloud for the last two years, did an RFP process with the three major public cloud providers, and we decided we wanted to get to the cloud, so we're doing some things like setting up an API management platform to provide better integration with APIs. The ability to move to the cloud, to be agile, to be scalable, to move our applications quickly, to deploy applications quickly, that makes sense to move our strategy for the organization forward.
In the meantime, we're looking to simplify, as much as possible, our environment, as we're starting to migrate to the cloud. We're in early stages. We've just done the design and some other things for it, and started to collaborate on some small applications. It will take us a while to get to Epic, probably 18 months to 24 months before we get to an Epic production cloud. It’s going to be a three- to four-year journey before we get there.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-integration-boosts-primary-care-clinician-pdmp-query-rate
EHR Integration Boosts Primary Care Clinician PDMP Query Rate
An EHR integration helped streamline access to a PDMP by removing the need for primary care clinicians to log into a separate web portal.
June 07, 2022 - EHR integration of a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) increased primary care clinician adherence to recommended prescribing practices for controlled substances such as opioids, according to a study published in JAMA Health Forum.
PDMPs are state-run electronic databases that assemble pharmacy and patient data from Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) controlled substances and prescription drugs. PDMPs help prescribers keep track of patients at high risk of becoming opioid-dependent.
Researchers randomized access to an intervention that directly integrated the Minnesota PDMP into the EHR. Of the 43 participating clinics, 21 clinics received the PDMP EHR integration.
The intervention potentially alleviated the hassle of querying the PDMP in two ways: by removing the need to log into a separate web portal for every query and by lowering the attention cost of remembering to query the PDMP.
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Parents Largely Comfortable with Artificial Intelligence Use in Pediatric Care
Researchers determined that using artificial intelligence for pediatrics resulted in a relatively high rate of approval from parents.
June 07, 2022 - Despite a slight inconsistency in satisfaction rates among different ethnic groups, a study from Academic Pediatrics reported a relatively high rate of approval from parents regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in pediatrics.
The study consisted of a survey polling 1,620 parents within a big city in the US, all of whom had a child receiving treatment for a respiratory illness that involved the use of AI. Researchers used a population-weighted household panel survey method.
Researchers found that most respondents indicated a relatively high level of comfort in AI-based computer programs being used for various clinical processes in the emergency department. These included antibiotics (77.6 percent), bloodwork (76.5 percent), and the interpretation of radiographs (77.5 percent).
Despite parents' relatively high level of comfort, researchers found that parents within certain demographics were not as trusting of AI.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/apple-watch-to-add-medication-tracking-afib-history-features
Apple Watch to Add Medication Tracking, AFib History Features
The new operating system update will enable users to manage their medications and allow those diagnosed with atrial fibrillation to monitor their heart rhythm trends.
By Anuja Vaidya
June 07, 2022 - Apple will add several new features to its smartwatch, including atrial fibrillation (AFib) history recording and medication tracking capabilities.
The new Apple Watch operating system, watchOS 9, will include these features.
The Food and Drug Administration-cleared AFib History feature will enable users diagnosed with AFib to access critical information, such as an estimate of how frequently their heart rhythms show signs of the condition. Users will also receive weekly notifications on their heart rhythm trends.
Further, they will be able to view a detailed history of their condition, including lifestyle factors like sleep and exercise that may influence it, in the Health app.
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RSA Conference: Experts Say Medical Device Security Trending in Right Direction
Experts still point to the prominence of legacy devices as a bottleneck to improving medical device security on a larger scale.
By Jill McKeon
June 07, 2022 - At the RSA Conference, currently being held in San Francisco and virtually, panelists gathered for a session to discuss medical device security challenges.
Audience members posed questions about the current threat landscape and experts addressed common security concerns.
Panelists Discuss Current State of Medical Device Security
The consensus among panelists was relatively positive—all three agreed that medical device security is trending in the right direction. But as previously discussed on HealthITSecurity, the lack of standards and shared responsibility in the space may be stifling well-meaning efforts to improve medical device security on a large scale.
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AI tool corrects wrongly coded diagnosis in EHRs
Twitter– 6 June 2022
An artificial intelligence tool that flags clinical documentation teams with information about wrongly coded or misspelled data in EHRs to correct them is now available, according to a June 1 press release.
The tool, called DxPrime, was developed by health tech startup Aesop Technologies to reduce the number of errors made in patient health records, which can often lead to claim denials down the line. The DxPrime machine learning tool was trained on 3.2 billion patient visits and uses this knowledge to predict and correct missed diagnoses.
"Physicians, CDI team, and coders have to spend a lot of time poring through medical records to find the key clinical diagnoses among the vast amount of information available," said Jim Long, CEO of Aesop. "After that, they have to follow a series of inefficient steps on the computer to complete the input process, and search functionality for ICD codes often is not helpful. When using DxPrime, we have helped physicians often notice they did not correctly code complications"
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/patientcenteredmedicalhome/99086
To Bill or Not to Bill, That is the Question
— When should we charge patients for phone calls, or even for complex responses to emails?
by Fred N. Pelzman, MD June 6, 2022
With the increased penetration of the patient portal and remote access among our patients, there has been a dramatic increase in the quantity of messages we receive every day, and many different types of requests come to us through this portal. Before we had a portal within our electronic health record, pretty much the only way for patients to reach us was through the telephone, which, as you know, has been a major sticking point at our academic practice for many years (i.e., no one ever answered the phone).
Now, with a large majority of our patients enrolled in the online portal, we are easier to reach, with a few clicks of a mouse or taps on their phone. What seems to be the difficulty now is figuring out the fine line between what makes up an appropriate question on the portal and what really should be saved for an office visit, or at least turned into some type of encounter for which we can get reimbursed.
Varied in Complexity
During the pre-portal years, we all became accustomed to answering patient phone calls. Patients called in -- and still do -- with questions about their health: something they forgot to mention at our recent office visit or a question about a lab result, a new symptom that has developed in the interim, or another health issue they want to address.
Sometimes they even ask about entirely new issues -- things that we have often handled in a brief call, such as a simple cold, UTI, or ankle sprain. These have always run the gamut from the very simple and easy-to-answer to the incredibly complex, requiring a lot of brain power, provider time, and resource utilization.
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Jun 07 2022
Cleveland Clinic's virtual second opinion program saves $65 million annually
The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic launched in 2020 as a joint venture between the Cleveland Clinic and Amwell.
Susan Morse, Executive Editor
The Cleveland Clinic's virtual second opinions program has led to avoidable costs for misdiagnosis of about $65 million annually.
This is an estimated $65 million saved per 100,000 health plan members, said Frank McGillin, CEO of The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic. Typically, the virtual second opinion is a premium benefit health plans are offering, he said.
The digital,
virtual solution was launched in the fall of 2020 as a joint venture between
the Cleveland Clinic and Amwell, a telehealth company. But
the concept began pre-pandemic, McGillin said.
Even as telehealth flexibilities opened up during the pandemic, the service
offered by The Clinic at Cleveland Clinic is not considered a traditional
telehealth visit, McGillin said. It's not a reimbursed visit but rather it's
self-pay, or it's a premium offering by the health plan. Patients can access
the service from anywhere.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/how-telepsychiatry-optimal-hospitals-and-health-systems
How telepsychiatry is optimal for hospitals and health systems
This form of telehealth addresses the psychiatrist shortage, helps serve patients in underserved areas and boosts patient satisfaction, a telepsychiatry expert says.
By Bill Siwicki
June 07, 2022 10:21 AM
The pandemic has amplified the need for behavioral health services and also made it more difficult for people at risk to access care, as noted by the Biden administration.
At the same time, the fallout of COVID-19 has accelerated people's willingness to engage with telehealth and telemedicine. So how do hospitals and health systems deal with an influx of mental health patients seeking fast access to high-quality psychiatric care while improving patient throughput?
Between the nationwide shortage of psychiatrists, staff burnout, tight budgets and changing healthcare regulations, many hospitals and health systems don't know where to start. Fortunately, telepsychiatry can help.
Andy Flanagan is CEO of Iris Telehealth, a telepsychiatry technology and services company. We interviewed him to get the lay of the land for virtual psychiatric care today and beyond the pandemic.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ransomware-attacks-have-doubled-2-years-report-shows
Ransomware attacks have doubled in 2 years, report shows
But healthcare organizations have gotten better at responding to this new normal, the new survey indicates, with hospitals now able to restore more encrypted data after attacks.
By Mike Miliard
June 07, 2022 10:23 AM
Nearly two-thirds (66%) of healthcare organizations experienced a ransomware attack in 2021, a new survey shows – almost double the number who said the same thing (34%) in 2020.
WHY IT
MATTERS
That's a 94% increase in just a year, and the new report, sponsored by Sophos,
shows that the bad guys have become more capable and creative in their attacks,
in addition to amping up the volume.
For its survey, The State of Ransomware in Healthcare 2022, more than 5,000 IT professionals were polled earlier this year. Their answers show them grappling with a cybersecurity threat that is fast-evolving in scope and intensity – but also show a growing level of resilience in the face of what's become a ubiquitous threat.
Cyberattacks are getting more innovative in their approaches. The report points, for example, to "the growing success of the ransomware-as-a-service model, which significantly extends the reach of ransomware by reducing the skill level required to create and deploy an attack."
There are signs of hope, however, such as the fact that healthcare, "with a 61% encryption rate, performed better than the global average of 65%." Also, more healthcare organizations are buying cyber insurance policies, which require them to invest in more robust cybersecurity defenses.
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'Telemedicine Untethered' Looks to Eliminate Virtual Waiting Room
Analysis | By John Commins | June 07, 2022
UC San Diego Health borrows strategies from the restaurant and airline industries and text messages patients when their providers are available.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Nearly two dozen patients from a stroke clinic were given the option of either getting a text with a visit link when their provider was ready or logging in at a scheduled time and waiting in front of a camera in a virtual waiting room.
· After the 10-week pilot, the researchers found that no patients were seen late, while 55% were seen early, with an average 55-minute time savings in clinic operations due to patients being seen early. Study metrics also included demographics, visit rates, and satisfaction surveys.
Staring at a blank computer screen while awaiting a telehealth consultation is not the best way to endear patients to virtual care.
With that in mind, providers at UC San Diego Health borrowed strategies used by the restaurant and airline industries and launched a 10-week pilot project that text messaged patients when their provider were available. The "telemedicine untethered" program proved so successful that the health system is expanding the option into various high-volume primary and surgical care clinics this summer.
Brett C. Meyer, MD, a neurologist and clinical director of telehealth at UC San Diego Health, led the pilot and said "the goal of the feasibility study was to determine if this flexibility lead to improved perception of waiting time and an enhanced experience, while assessing for time saving for both patients and providers."
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Digital CDS Resource Gives Healthcare Providers On-Demand Support for Pediatric Care
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | June 07, 2022
PedsGuide, an mHealth app developed by Children's Mercy Kansas City, is an on-demand clinical decision support platform designed to assist rural and remote healthcare providers who are treating children.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Rural and remote hospitals, clinics, primary care physicians and EMS providers often don't have the expertise to treat children in an emergency, so they end up doing what they can and then transporting those patients to a larger, often distant, facility.
· The development of mHealth apps for clinical decision support enables providers to access diagnosis and treatment information on demand through their laptops or smartphones, giving them the tools they need for better emergency triage and care.
· Children's Mercy Kansas City has developed PedsGuide to give providers immediate access to current and often-updated information on treatment and care for pediatric cases.
One of the benefits of digital health is that it allows healthcare providers to collaborate and share their expertise with others who don't have that background. Children's Mercy Kansas City is following that path with a new mHealth app designed to give providers a clinical decision support tool for pediatric care.
"Many ERs see children because they have to," says Brandan Kennedy, MD, a pediatric hospitalist and clinical informaticist and associate director of inpatient health informatics at the Kansas City, Missouri-based hospital. "Less than 10% of their ER traffic is kids, so it's not their comfort zone … but that doesn't mean they can’t treat them."
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https://www.statnews.com/2022/06/07/apple-watch-heart-health-medication-app/
Apple unveils a medication-tracking app and new heart health features for smartwatches
By Casey Ross June 7, 2022
Apple unveils app to track medication use
Apple introduced a new app to help people to track the medications they take — a new area of focus for the company— during its pre-taped Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday. Users can scan a pill bottle to search for a medication and easily schedule reminders to take it. The software will alert users to potentially dangerous interactions between drugs in their medicine cabinet.
Building on its long-evolving features around heart health, Apple is also adding a new smartwatch feature, called AFib History, to allow people diagnosed with the condition to pinpoint episodes and track how much time they’ve spent in atrial fibrillation. The feature also allows users to see how other health and lifestyle data, like sleep, weight, and exercise might be impacting their A-fib. The product received FDA clearance on Friday.
Apple’s commitment to health remains centered around giving users more information, but questions remain on how the health care system will adapt to data collected on consumer devices. The Afib History feature, for example, is based on remarkable technology developed by one of the world’s most advanced companies. How is a doctor supposed to look at this potentially very useful data? From a PDF generated by the Health app, of course.
Playing the funeral march
The graveyard of tech pilots is filled with some of health care’s most appealing ideas: making it possible for patients to schedule their own appointments online, automating hospital hygiene monitoring, and more. Health system leaders are often loathe to call attention on big plans that never move out of pilot mode, but those failures are the key to making sure the same costly mistakes aren’t repeated.
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CDS Hooks Present Opportunity to Boost SMART on FHIR App Utilization
Researchers found that using CDS Hooks to recommend a SMART on FHIR app can increase app utilization by 130 percent.
June 06, 2022 - Clinician decision support (CDS) Hooks prompts recommending the use of a SMART on an FHIR app can lead to a significant increase in SMART on FHIR app utilization, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).
SMART on FHIR, an open-source data standard, aims to support healthcare interoperability for real-time access to health information across the care continuum.
Since its inception, the use of SMART on FHIR has become more widespread across healthcare facilities.
The rise of SMART on FHIR apps has created a need for suggesting relevant apps to end-users, the researchers stated.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/shift-to-cloud-key-strategy-in-healthcare-but-challenges-persist
Shift to Cloud Key Strategy in Healthcare, But Challenges Persist
A new report outlined various trends in healthcare’s adoption of cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, and Software as a Service, including the related challenges and best practices.
June 06, 2022 - A report published late last month by Forrester outlines some of the challenges that healthcare organizations face, including security and compliance issues, and provides best practices when implementing technologies such as cloud platforms, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), and Software-as-a-Service.
As healthcare organizations pursue data-driven patient care, adopting technologies to enable digital engagement, data management, and workflow optimization is critical. Cloud platforms, along with data analytics and AI, can help organizations achieve these goals while also focusing on patient care and security.
The COVID-19 pandemic, rising patient demand, and the unique opportunities presented by cloud technology are driving its adoption in healthcare, an industry that has traditionally been resistant to technological modernization. The pandemic required health systems and hospitals to pivot quickly to address overwhelming patient volumes, including adopting new methods of contactless communication and switching to telehealth visits. Health systems without cloud strategies had to migrate to them or risk not being able to serve their patients during the crisis.
Digital transformation in other industries is also creating expectations among patients for more technology-and data-savvy medical care. Clinical data analytics have had a major impact on faster care delivery and more accurate diagnoses, and patients are now demanding more predictive care.
Cloud technology also presents further opportunities for healthcare organizations. Virtual data centers have the potential to help health systems address various issues, such as reducing infrastructure replacement costs and integrating disparate systems between departments.
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ADA: Twin Health’s AI tech leads to Type 2 diabetes remissions, study finds
By Andrea Park
Jun 5, 2022 01:00am
Twin Health’s Whole Body Digital Twin platform uses data from wearable sensors, blood tests and self-reported questionnaires to build a model of each patient and suggest potential interventions to reverse Type 2 diabetes symptoms. (Getty Images)
It may not be able to pass the Turing test, but a “digital twin” created by Twin Health’s artificial intelligence could help its human counterpart reverse the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes and significantly cut back on medications for the condition, including insulin.
That’s according to the results of a clinical trial of the technology, which were presented Saturday at the American Diabetes Association’s annual scientific sessions in New Orleans.
Twin Health’s Whole Body Digital Twin platform collects thousands of data points each day from wearable sensors, then combines those readings with the results of blood tests and self-reported questionnaires to build a computer model of each patient. The AI continuously updates and analyzes the model to spot problem areas in a patient’s individual metabolism and suggest potential changes and improvements for their nutrition, activity, sleep and breathing, all with the ultimate goal of reversing diabetes symptoms.
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Analysis: Nine of 20 popular period tracking apps use data for third party ads
According to the review by cybersecurity and VPN company Surfshark, 10 of the apps collected coarse location data.
By Emily Olsen
May 25, 2022 12:50 pm
Nearly half of period-tracking apps studied used or shared data for third-party advertising, according to an analysis by cybersecurity and VPN company Surfshark.
The review examined 20 popular apps from the Apple App Store and ranked each app depending on the amount and sensitivity of the information they collect. For instance, an app received one point for data collected that isn't linked to a user's identity, like app crash information, and three points for data that could track users across other websites, like user ID. It also added points for collecting data for third-party advertising.
Nine shared data for advertising, while 10 collected coarse location, which can't be tracked to an exact address, but can offer more approximate location information. Eight apps collected photo and video library data.
Overall, the analysis ranked Eve, Glow and Ovia highest in how much potentially sensitive data they collect, while Apple's Cycle Tracking and the Life app ranked the lowest.
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To Realize the Promise of Connected Healthcare, Embrace Edge Computing
June 6, 2022
The following is a guest article by Bridget Meuse, Industry Strategist at Akamai.
The evolution of connected healthcare, already well underway, got a major boost during the COVID pandemic. The shift to remote healthcare service delivery, together with the expansion of the Internet of medical things (IoMT), went into overdrive with the arrival of SARS Cov-2. Almost overnight, the ability to deliver personalized care through virtual interactions, connected devices and advanced automation went from being a “nice to have” to a “need to have.”
While the speed and scope of technology modernization across the healthcare sector has been dramatic, it creates a challenge: How to effectively handle the massive surge in data and network traffic generated by these connected devices and remote care models.
Forward-looking organizations are finding the solution in edge computing – a technology architecture that places computing power close to the users and devices that need it—and where critical data is generated and used. Well established in younger, data-centric industries, edge computing is just beginning to make waves in the healthcare sector.
Medical use cases for the edge
So how will edge computing help drive digital transformation in healthcare? While data centers and the cloud will continue to play a role, there are some compelling use cases for edge computing.
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Enjoy!
David.
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