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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Machine-Learning Tools Predict Post-Op Complications, Surgery Duration
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have developed machine-learning tools that can predict post-operative complications and surgery duration using perioperative data.
August 26, 2022 - New research shows that machine-learning (ML) tools can use perioperative data to accurately predict post-operative complications and surgery duration.
Surgery and its potential complications create significant burdens on patients, providers, and health systems in terms of health outcomes and associated costs. Research suggests that approximately 7 to 15 percent of major surgery patients are expected to experience a major complication. The press release announcing the research indicates that one-third of hospitals’ expenses are spent on care to prevent these complications, which can be life-threatening.
Accurate risk stratification for patients undergoing surgery is key to preventing them. However, the risk assessment tools that many clinicians rely on can often be limited, either in the scope of what complications they are capable of forecasting or, as the research team notes, how they manage the complexity of perioperative data.
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Study Finds Medical Apps Are Sharing Health Data With Third Party Trackers, Funneling Info To Targeted FaceBook Ads
August 25, 2022
A new study published in data science journal Patterns examined a number of apps that handle sensitive health data, including some that interface with labs and other entities covered by HIPAA privacy regulations, and found that they are sharing health data with third party trackers that provide cues for targeted Facebook ads.
The issue of health data being exposed to data brokers and advertisers via basic fitness and health apps, such as exercise and pregnancy trackers, has long been known to the public. These entities do not qualify as patient care organizations, and are thus not bound to HIPAA requirements (which forbid sharing health data with advertisers) when app users freely give such information to them. However, this study focused on five apps that are intended for cancer patients and that handle their sensitive medical records.
The incident continues a string of recent health data issues related to the Facebook ads system, as the company has been tied to both an accidental disclosure involving one of the country’s largest health systems and a website scraping incident that impacted 33 patient care sites.
Apps funnel cancer patient health data, sometimes drawn from protected records, to targeted advertising programs
The study found that the five apps it examined were passing health data to a collective 32 “middleware” outfits that track end users across different sites and apps via cookies. These apps were selected for their frequent use by patients that engage on Facebook and other social media platforms for information and community support related to their condition. In particular, these apps focus on genetic testing that can provide risk projections for different types of cancer and health services for those already diagnosed.
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https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/979771
Under a Fifth of PCPs Exchange Data Online With Public Health
Ken Terry
August 25, 2022
Only 18% of primary care physicians (PCPs) and 12% of all doctors exchanged data electronically with public health agencies in 2019, according to a new report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
However, the percentage of PCPs who exchanged data electronically with public health agencies was five percentage points higher in 2019 than in 2018, the report noted. Moreover, it is likely that the frequency of electronic reporting to these agencies has increased since 2019 because of COVID-19.
"The [electronic reporting] has absolutely improved," Keith Kelley, chief operating officer of the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), told Medscape Medical News. He attributed this change to the pandemic.
The survey data in the report doesn't show how many practices exchanged data with state and local public health agencies (PHAs) through manual processes such as paper-based data sharing, phone calls, emails, and faxes, an ONC blog post noted. Recent studies show that these are the primary conduits for sending and receiving data between healthcare providers and PHAs, the post said.
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How Health Systems are Using Video Games for Continuing Medical Education
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | August 25, 2022
Eric Gantwerker, MD, MMSc (MedEd), FACS, a practicing pediatric otolaryngologist and medical director for Level Ex, explains how healthcare organizations can use video games and gamification as an educational tool for clinicians.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· There are 2.6 billion video game players in the world, and while many are playing games for entertainment, an increasing number are using this platform for healthcare.
· Video games and gamification in healthcare are used to help patients understand care management or medicaation adherence. They're also used by healthcare organizations for continuing medical education.
· These tools "are built on deep knowledge and understanding of how to activate and stimulate the brain to induce learning." And they can help clinicians better understand new ideas and concepts.
Video games aren't just for fun any more.
Healthcare organizations are finding uses for video games that go far beyond entertainment. They're being used to help patients – particularly younger ones – understand healthcare concepts, from chronic disease management to medication adherence, while care providers are using games to track patient outcomes in cases ranging from autism to concussion treatment.
More recently, health systems are using them as educational resources, with the idea that a game can work better than a book or classroom event.
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The Sequoia Project Selects HITRUST as TEFCA Security Certifying Body
QHINs must obtain the HITRUST Risk-based, 2-year (r2) Certification to comply with TEFCA security requirements.
August 25, 2022 - The Sequoia Project has selected HITRUST as the first certifying body for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) security requirements.
Organizations must obtain the HITRUST Risk-based, 2-year (r2) Certification to prove they meet the security requirements for their Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) designation.
The HITRUST r2 is the only certification recognized by The Sequoia Project, TEFCA's recognized coordinating entity (RCE), for meeting the Common Agreement cybersecurity criteria.
HITRUST is currently certifying potential QHINs.
HITRUST is also available to assist TEFCA participants and subparticipants in ensuring the security of TEFCA information under the framework agreements.
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KLAS Evaluates Healthcare Cybersecurity, Data Privacy Consulting Vendors
Organizations reported being most satisfied with Impact Advisors and First Health Advisory among a variety of healthcare cybersecurity and data privacy consulting vendors, KLAS reported.
By Jill McKeon
August 25, 2022 - More healthcare organizations are engaging with healthcare cybersecurity and data privacy consulting vendors to help mitigate risk and avoid the numerous repercussions of healthcare cyberattacks, data breaches, and HIPAA violations, a new KLAS report noted.
Researchers asked healthcare professionals about the security and privacy consulting vendors that their organizations worked with and how satisfied they were with vendor relationships, services, operations, and value.
Respondents reported being highly satisfied with First Health Advisory and Impact Advisors in particular. Healthcare professionals also reported improved executive involvement within Clearwater and CynergisTek, the latter of which recently entered into an agreement to be acquired by the former.
Other assessed vendors included tw-Security, Intraprise Health, Guidehouse, Fortified Health Security, and Meditology Services.
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Using Health IT Integration to Address the Drug Overdose Crisis
Lolita Kachay; Jawanna Henry and Wes Sargent | August 23, 2022
The drug overdose crisis in the United States continues to expand – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, an increase of nearly 15% from 93,655 deaths estimated in 2020.
From 2018 to 2022, as part of efforts to support health IT use in response to the continued increase in drug overdose deaths, ONC and CDC collaborated to develop an interactive tool and resource called the Integration Framework. This tool provides guidance to states to improve integration of state Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) with clinicians’ health IT systems.
The Integration Framework includes how best to implement advanced technologies such as electronic clinical decision support (CDS) systems that clinicians are increasingly using to combat the crisis. It can help advance and scale PDMP integration with health IT systems (e.g., electronic health record (EHR) systems, health information exchanges, and pharmacy systems) in a variety of hospital, primary care, and outpatient settings.
Today, clinician use of PDMPs is a promising state-level intervention to improve opioid prescribing, inform clinical practice, and support safer and more effective patient care. Integrating PDMP data into EHR systems addresses barriers to accessing and using PDMP data to help inform clinical practice to improve opioid prescribing.
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https://www.statnews.com/2022/08/25/pregnancy-data-maternal-health-research/
A pandemic push for data sharing could pay off for pregnancy research
By Katie Palmer Aug. 25, 2022
Despite stubbornly high maternal mortality in the United States, pregnancy is still woefully under-researched. But thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, technology that makes it easier to study pregnancy is starting to catch up.
During the public health emergency, federal agencies, health systems, and medical data companies were motivated to open up their records and create privacy-preserving methods to help hospitals share sensitive patient records for research. Those steps have given researchers a near real-time window into Covid-19 outcomes and the efficacy of therapeutics and vaccines — including in pregnant people, who they’ve learned are at greater risk of severe illness.
Those new networks could pay dividends for the understanding of pregnancy beyond the pandemic. Right now, clinicians don’t fully understand why dangerous complications like preeclampsia occur, or whether many drugs and procedures are safe during pregnancy. The clinical trials that could help answer those questions have long been considered unethical — and despite recent regulatory changes to encourage enrollment, prospective research in pregnancy is still rare.
“The tolerance for risk is so low, and for that reason you do see very few studies — and when you do, it’s voluntary and at your own risk,” said Jose Figueroa, a physician and hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who researches health policy and management. “So real-world data is super important.”
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5 top ailments affecting the healthcare data security infrastructure
August 24, 2022 3:21 PM
While hospitals and healthcare systems have been one of the most popular targets of hackers and cybercriminals in recent years, that picture is starting to improve at many organizations.
Hospitals are generally getting better at protecting data. Many are updating their health information technology infrastructure and implementing stronger data security measures. These include encryption of all healthcare data stored, two-factor login authentication, and workforce security training programs.
But that road to recovery still eludes some healthcare systems.
To get a better idea of how data is being protected in the healthcare system, VentureBeat spoke to Victor Low, senior director of IT at Q-Centrix, a company specializing in healthcare data management.
Common challenges impacting healthcare data infrastructure
Unfortunately, many hospitals and healthcare centers suffer from symtoms of inadequate data infrastructure, staffing or strategy, Low said.
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Epic’s Judy Faulkner dresses as Amelia Earhart for global conference
· Aug 24, 2022
Health information technology is more complicated than rocket science.
Or, at least that’s what Epic Systems leaders told employees and customers at the health care records company’s annual Users Group Meeting on Tuesday.
Each year, Epic’s partner hospitals and health insurance companies from around the globe gather at its “intergalactic headquarters” in Verona to discuss the company’s past and preview its future. The highlight is always Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner’s keynote address, where she dresses as whimsical characters like Lucille Ball’s titular character from “I Love Lucy.”
To match this year’s theme, “Midnight at the Museum,” Faulkner donned pilot’s gear in a homage to another female pioneer, Amelia Earhart, as she delivered her hour-long address to a crowd of thousands from 15 countries in Epic’s 11,500-seat Deep Space auditorium. Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, but disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
Faulkner outlined her vision for a seamlessly connected health care ecosystem using a mix of lighthearted anecdotes and information about new technologies.
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How patient safety incident reporting improves care
A holistic, data-driven approach to safety improvements – focused on incident reporting, automated event detection and care audits – is imperative.
Aug 25 2022
The erosion of patient safety gains during the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sound healthcare alarms.
Leaders from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently noted: “We have observed substantial deterioration on multiple patient safety metrics since the beginning of the pandemic, despite decades of attention to complications of care.”
Safety audits and error reporting have also fallen by the wayside due, in large part, to the exhaustion of frontline staff and personnel shortages.
To improve safety, healthcare leaders must find new and simpler ways to support safety practices. They must renew their focus on creating a safety culture in which staff continually scan and monitor their environment to identify and correct even minor deviations that could lead to unsafe conditions.
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https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/amazon-care-shut-down-end-2022
Amazon Care to shut down at the end of 2022
Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said the telehealth service was "not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term."
By Emily Olsen
August 24, 2022 06:11 pm
Amazon plans to sunset its Amazon Care employer offering at the end of the year, according to an internal memo first reported by GeekWire and Fierce Healthcare.
The email from Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said the service will officially shut down on December 31. The decision only affects Amazon Care and its Care Medical group of providers, not the company's other healthcare projects.
"This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration," Lindsay wrote to Amazon Health Services employees. "Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term."
THE LARGER TREND
Amazon Care launched in 2019 as a virtual clinic for its own employees, but the service later expanded to outside employers. Earlier this year, the company announced it was adding in–person care options in more than 20 new cities in 2022, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/optimizerx-ai-pilot-identifies-non-adherence-risks
OptimizeRx AI pilot identifies non-adherence risks
After identifying risks that patients may not take medications, providers received information on financial resources information to share with them.
By Andrea Fox
August 25, 2022 02:46 PM
Patients can experience unexpected access and affordability barriers that physicians lack visibility into, but by searching for the early indicators of non-adherence, physicians could act to help patients stay on their treatment plans.
Rochester, Michigan-based OptimizeRx Corp., which provides care-focused engagement throughout patient journeys and connects more than 60% of U.S. healthcare providers to their patients, launched a pharmaceutical pilot to identify doctors whose patient treatment plans are at risk of lapsing due to costs.
The company found that machine learning was able to accurately predict healthcare providers with at-risk patients due to loss of insurance coverage, including Medicare coverage gaps.
The evidence-based physician engagement program used deidentified third-party data sets to learn what is happening in real time at the point of care. Based on the predictive algorithm, the program sends the healthcare providers targeted financial resources information to share with the at-risk patients.
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‘Point-of-Care’ Clinical Research Scalability Requires Interoperability
Using interoperability standards could help mitigate barriers to the ‘point-of-care’ clinical research approach, including clinician burden.
August 24, 2022 - Leveraging interoperability standards may provide a more flexible framework for the scalability of “point-of-care” clinical research, according to a Health Affairs article.
A point-of-care trial is an operational approach to conducting clinical research that aims to make clinical trials accessible to more diverse populations by incorporating clinical trial processes into routine care delivery.
A common feature of successful point-of-care trials is integration with EHRs for multiple aspects of trial conduct, such as enrollment, randomization, and data collection. This integration may require modification of existing EHR systems that are typically not optimized for use in clinical trials.
Successful point-of-care trials also integrate research and clinical care delivery workflows.
“Generally, this means that patients receive their care without additional follow-up visits other than routine appointments,” the Health Affairs authors wrote. “In addition, research and care workflows are integrated to reduce burden on busy providers.”
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/deep-learning-model-predicts-physician-burnout-using-ehr-logs
Deep-Learning Model Predicts Physician Burnout Using EHR Logs
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have developed a deep-learning model that can predict physician burnout using clinical actions and timestamps from EHR logs.
August 24, 2022 - Researchers have created a deep-learning prediction model that can identify physician burnout by pulling automatically generated EHR activity logs, which may be more convenient than standard approaches for measuring burnout.
Physician burnout is a huge challenge for many health systems, with one 2018 report indicating that 83 percent of clinicians and healthcare leadership see it as a problem in their organizations. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, burnout has grown, and its related costs have increased.
Addressing this issue is a top priority for healthcare organizations, many of whom rely on surveys given to clinicians to evaluate and tackle burnout. However, the researchers point out that many clinicians do not complete these surveys because they are either too busy or are not comfortable revealing that information.
The researchers set out to develop a burnout evaluation method that was as effective as a survey without creating additional burdens for physicians. Previous research has shown that workload was significantly correlated with burnout — the heavier a clinician’s workload, the more likely they were to be experiencing burnout.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/us-orgs-have-suffered-5000-healthcare-data-breaches-since-2009
US Orgs Have Suffered 5,000 Healthcare Data Breaches Since 2009
More than 342 million medical records were impacted by the thousands of healthcare data breaches that occurred from 2009 to June 2022.
By Jill McKeon
August 24, 2022 - From 2009 to June 2022, organizations reported nearly 5,000 healthcare data breaches to the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) data breach portal, researchers at Comparitech found. The breaches impacted more than 342 million records in total.
“All 50 states are required to report medical breaches to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with individual breaches filed if they affected over 500 records (those with fewer may be filed under a yearly report),” the report noted.
“Due to the tool only listing breaches that affect 500 or more patients, it is likely our figures underestimate the true scale of the problem.”
Even so, the data once again confirms that healthcare data breaches are a longstanding, nationwide problem.
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Hackers shifting focus to small hospitals, clinics and tech companies to siphon off patient data, report finds
Aug 24, 2022 12:45pm
Healthcare continues to be a top target for cyberattacks but hackers have pivoted their focus from large healthcare systems to smaller hospitals and specialty clinics and third-party vendors.
Among cyberattacks against providers in the first half of 2022, breaches associated with specialty clinics rose from 23% in 2021 to 31% this year, according to a report from cybersecurity firm Critical Insight.
Attacks against specialty clinics made up 20% of breaches in the first half of 2019.
For the report, the firm analyzed breach data reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by healthcare organizations.
Hospital systems accounted for 29.6% of reported breaches so far in 2022.
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Amazon to Shutter Telehealth Business Amid Plans to Buy One Medical
Amazon will shut down its telehealth business by Dec. 31 after leaders determined it wasn't a "complete enough" solution for the enterprise customers it was targeting, an internal memo states.
By Anuja Vaidya
August 24, 2022 - Just one month after sharing plans to buy One Medical, Amazon announced it will close its Amazon Care telehealth business by the end of 2022, according to an internal company memo shared with mHealthIntelligence.
The memo, shared internally by Amazon Health Services Senior Vice President Neil Lindsay Wednesday, states that company leaders determined Amazon Care was not "the right long-term solution for our enterprise customers," leading to the decision to shutter the service by Dec. 31.
"This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration," Lindsay said in the memo. "Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term."
It is unclear how many employees will be impacted by the closing of the service, but some will have the opportunity to join other roles within Amazon Health Services or the larger company, the memo states.
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Amazon Care is shutting down at the end of 2022. Here's why
Aug 24, 2022 04:30pm
Three years after it began piloting a primary care service for its employees that blended telehealth and in-person medical services, Amazon plans to cease operations of its Amazon Care service.
Amazon announced Wednesday afternoon that it would end Amazon Care operations after December 31. In an email to Amazon Health Services employees, Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said Amazon Care wasn't a sustainable, long-term solution for its enterprise customers.
Amazon provided a copy of the email to Fierce Healthcare.
The decision only impacts Amazon Care and Care Medical teams and not Amazon's other healthcare services.
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August 23, 2022
AMA develops toolkit to help providers increase infectious disease screening
Key takeaways
- The AMA has developed a toolkit to increase routine screenings for various infectious diseases.
- The toolkit is being tested by community health centers across the country.
The AMA has developed a toolkit to help health care professionals increase routine screenings for infectious diseases like STIs, HIV, latent TB and viral hepatitis, according to a press release.
The organization noted a decline in preventive health services caused by disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Getting diagnosed before an infection causes serious illness should be the norm — not the exception,” Jonathan H. Mermin, MD, MPH, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said in the release. “Routine screening saves lives, increases health equity and reduces health care costs. This AMA-CDC collaboration supports evidence-based strategies to effectively and efficiently scale up routine screening.”
With support from the CDC, the AMA “worked to understand key barriers and drivers for implementing routine screening,” according to the release. The toolkit, which provides strategies and best practices to help improve screening programs, is being tested by multiple community health center sites across the United States. They will provide general feedback and assess the improvement strategies in the toolkit to determine any impact they may have on routine screening.
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https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/ai-parkinsons-disease-sleep-breathing-patterns-mit/
AI detects Parkinson’s disease by tracking your breathing patterns
August 22, 2022
A compelling new study indicates Parkinson’s disease (PD) could be diagnosed by remotely tracking a person’s breathing patterns. Led by researchers from MIT, the study presents an AI system that uses radio waves to monitor breathing while a person sleeps.
Dina Katabi, principal investigator on the new research, said the study was inspired by 200-year-old observations from James Parkinson, the first doctor to clinically catalog signs of the degenerative neurological disease.
“A relationship between Parkinson’s and breathing was noted as early as 1817, in the work of Dr. James Parkinson,” explained Katabi. “This motivated us to consider the potential of detecting the disease from one’s breathing without looking at movements. Some medical studies have shown that respiratory symptoms manifest years before motor symptoms, meaning that breathing attributes could be promising for risk assessment prior to Parkinson’s diagnosis.”
The first step was to train a neural network on a massive nocturnal breathing dataset. Nearly 12,000 nights of breathing patterns were analyzed, from 757 Parkinson’s disease patients and around 7,000 healthy control subjects.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/where-invest-increasing-digital-health-dollars
Where to invest increasing digital health dollars
Reliable data common across all systems is one of a variety of places healthcare CIOs can push funds, one expert says.
By Bill Siwicki
August 24, 2022 10:06 AM
According to the HIMSS22 State of Healthcare Report, 80% of health system leaders plan to increase their investment levels in digital health over the next five years.
The report also found 60% describe themselves as "stuck in the planning and pre-implementation phases" of digital transformation, either because they don't have the necessary infrastructure or they lack the high-quality patient and other data required to achieve their goals.
As more organizations are opening the digital front door, patient data and patient identification will become increasingly important, said Clay Ritchey, CEO of Verato, a healthcare digital transformation vendor.
We interviewed Ritchey to discuss the kinds of digital health investments that need to be made, getting health system leaders out of the planning and pre-implementation phase, the roles of CIOs and other C-suite executives in getting "unstuck," and the relationship between the digital front door and patient data.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/onc-cdc-say-integration-framework-can-combat-opioid-crisis
ONC, CDC say Integration Framework can combat opioid crisis
The guide helps inpatient and outpatient providers implement more advanced clinical decision support and integrate data from state prescription drug monitoring programs.
By Mike Miliard
August 24, 2022 09:32 AM
For the past five years, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been working together on an interactive resource for states and health systems called the Integration Framework.
WHY IT MATTERS
The tool is meant to give guidance to help improve integration of state prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) within clinicians' workflows. It includes best practices for implementing advanced clinical decision support systems to help flag potential opioid abuse, and it outlines steps to help advance and scale PDMP integration with IT systems, such as electronic health records, health information exchanges and pharmacy systems.
The Integration Framework's practical tips are aimed at hospital, primary care and outpatient settings, according to the ONC and the CDC, and are meant to help with project execution, management and communications.
To help inform the development of the Integration Framework, the agencies worked with eight health systems across five states.
Six health systems in three states served as PDMP-EHR integration technical demonstration sites, enabling the project team to observe the successes, challenges, and impacts of PDMP-EHR integration.
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ONC Outlines Upcoming Cures Act Deadlines for Certified Health IT Vendors
The ONC Cures Act Final Rule requires certified health IT developers to update and provide their customers with FHIR-based certified API technology by December 31, 2022.
August 23, 2022 - The 21st Century Cures Act infrastructure will come to fruition in 2022, with upcoming deadlines for the availability of standards-based FHIR application programming interfaces (APIs), according to a HealthITBuzz blog post.
The ONC Cures Act Final Rule requires certified health IT developers to update and provide their customers with FHIR-based certified API technology by December 31, 2022.
“We’ve been closely monitoring certified health IT developers’ progress in updating their technology to be certified to the Cures Update criteria, specifically, Standardized API for patient and population services,” ONC officials Avinash Shanbhag and Rob Anthony wrote in the blog post.
As of August 1, about five percent of certified health IT developers had updated their technology to certified API technology. However, that five percent support 66 and 77 percent of the in-patient and ambulatory users with their health IT modules nationwide, respectively.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/wearable-skin-sensor-can-collect-various-health-indicators
Wearable Skin Sensor Can Collect Various Health Indicators
MIT researchers have developed a wireless, chip-free wearable skin sensor that can assess and provide various health metrics, including blood pressure and heart rate.
August 23, 2022 - Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a wireless wearable skin sensor that can detect glucose concentrations, blood pressure, heart rate, and activity and is also free of onboarding chips and batteries.
The use of wearable devices is continuing to grow in healthcare. Various conditions are being treated with this technology, including heart problems. Although they are often effective, researchers from MIT noted that the Bluetooth chips used in devices are sizeable and can lead to inconveniences.
Thus, MIT engineers created a wireless wearable skin sensor that collects various pieces of health information, which are then tracked on a smartphone, without needing large chip attachments.
“Chips require a lot of power, but our device could make a system very light without having any chips that are power-hungry,” said the corresponding author of the study Jeehwan Kim, PhD, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, and a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, in a press release. “You could put it on your body like a bandage, and paired with a wireless reader on your cellphone, you could wirelessly monitor your pulse, sweat, and other biological signals.”
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Amazon keeps growing, and so does its cache of data on you
By HALELUYA HADERO 22 August 2022
From what you buy online, to how you remember tasks, to when you monitor your doorstep, Amazon is seemingly everywhere.
And it appears the company doesn’t want to halt its reach anytime soon. In recent weeks, Amazon has said it will spend billions of dollars in two gigantic acquisitions that, if approved, will broaden its ever growing presence in the lives of consumers.
This time, the company is targeting two areas: health care, through its $3.9 billion buyout of the primary care company One Medical, and the “smart home,” where it plans to expand its already mighty presence through a $1.7 billion merger with iRobot, the maker of the popular robotic Roomba vacuum.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a company known for its vast collection of consumer information, both mergers have heightened enduring privacy concerns about how Amazon gathers data and what it does with it. The latest line of Roombas, for example, employ sensors that map and remember a home’s floor plan.
“It’s acquiring this vast set of data that Roomba collects about people’s homes,” said Ron Knox, an Amazon critic who works for the anti-monopoly group Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “Its obvious intent, through all the other products that it sells to consumers, is to be in your home. (And) along with the privacy issues come the antitrust issues, because it’s buying market share.”
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/healthcare-it-leaders-cloud-adoption-challenges
Healthcare IT leaders on cloud adoption challenges
A new survey found healthcare is still struggling with cloud transformation, with security cited as the top barrier and compliance as a leading driver.
By Nathan Eddy
August 23, 2022 01:49 PM
Despite the much-needed push toward technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), a Presido survey found healthcare IT leaders are still struggling with cloud adoption issues.
Path to cloud slowed by turnover
The push for digital transformation was accelerated by the pandemic, thrusting healthcare IT leaders into the spotlight and forcing them to fast-track their plans over the past few years.
The leading factor for cloud adoption among healthcare IT leaders, however, was help achieving compliance, cited by 52% of healthcare respondents. The desire to become "more agile and support innovation" followed, cited by 46% of the respondents.
Sam Fatigato, vice president of Presidio's Cloud Solutions Group, said the most surprising stats revealed are that just 21% of healthcare IT leaders say they are proficient in AI/ML and less than a quarter (23%) say their team is currently proficient with DevOps and automation.
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Disabilities and Accessibility in Health IT: The Need Is Constant – Part 1
August 23, 2022
Of all industries, health care above all should provide accessible web sites to support people with disabilities or special needs. Our field deals disproportionately with the elderly and with people who suffer a range of disabilities, physical and mental. Furthermore, the field is getting more and more digital with wellness sites, telehealth, and fitness devices—so making them accessible is crucial to making health care accessible.
Caroline Jerome, a designer who is a partner and chief creative officer at TBGA, pointed out to me that digital technologies have expanded the options available to disabled people. Accommodations, televisits, haptic feedback, etc., are great advances. But services designed without disabled people in mind can be discriminatory.
Many countries require web sites to meet accessibility guidelines; in the United States, both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and HIPAA include such requirements. Lawsuits to enforce these regulations have hit many companies. As Dylan Barrell, CTO of Deque Systems, writes in his Agile Accessibility Handbook (available for free by filling out a form): “The number of disability-related lawsuits increased by 181% in 2019 alone, and the cost of responding to a lawsuit (independent of the settlement costs) is $350,000.” (page 32 of the PDF)
But conforming to the innumerable recommendations is exhausting, and few site designers even know them all. I heard a story from Rafael Glantz, Partnership Success Manager at accessiBe, which offers tools for making web sites more accessible. When he spoke at an optometrists’ conference, he couldn’t interest the doctors in making their web sites more accessible to vision-impaired visitors. I guess it was an achievement at least to be invited to their conference.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2022/08/24/automating-accessibility-in-health-it-part-2/
Automating Accessibility in Health IT – Part 2
August 24, 2022
The first article in this series, Disabilities and Accessibility in Health IT: The Need Is Constant, introduced the importance of designing web sites and other health care tools for many different types of people. In this article, we’ll look at how far you can go with the automation of web site accessibility.
Automation and the human factor
In most endeavors, computers can provide help while leaving tasks that require human intervention, a role for the computer that user interaction pioneer Doug Engelbart called “augmentation.” In making web sites accessible, we can ask which jobs are for a computer and which are for humans.
Human intervention, in this case, calls for involving people from different disabled communities directly. They might join a focus group to engage in participatory design, or enter a lab to test interfaces.
Caroline Jerome, the designer quoted in the previous article, believes that good design skills are more important than testing. Designing a good interface is not intuitive, but she has found that people who study design can anticipate visitors’ needs. She endorses the WCAG rules, which form the basis of many automated tools we’ll look at.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/understanding-value-hub-and-spoke-telemedicine-program
Understanding the Value of a Hub-and-Spoke Telemedicine Program
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | August 23, 2022
Hub-and-spoke telemedicine networks can extend specialty services and education into rural areas and improve clinical outcomes and provider efficiencies. But providers have to do their homework before jumping online.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Hub-and-spoke telemedicine platforms typically revolve around a large academic health system at the center (hub), whose specialists use the technology to help treat patients in rural locations (spokes) and assist providers in care delivery.
· The platform can also be used in what is called the Project ECHO model to educate rural providers on topics ranging from care management to new types of treatments, allowing them to care for more of their patients and reduce referrals and transfers.
· This model can help rural hospitals and clinics improve clinical outcomes and their bottom line, while enabling teaching hospitals and specialists to extend their reach and help more patients and providers.
Telemedicine is designed not only to improve patients' access to care, but to extend the reach of healthcare providers beyond the hospital, clinic, or doctor's office. That's especially true for specialty care providers, who are fewer in number but in high demand throughout the country.
The Cardiovascular Institute of the South (CIS), based in Houma, Louisiana, specializes in cardiovascular care in a part of the country where those resources are limited and a higher percentage of people are living with at least one chronic condition. With that in mind, the institute has leveraged a hub-and-spoke telemedicine platform, with CIS at the center, to help rural patients in Louisiana and surrounding states access care.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/va-data-shows-498-major-incidents-since-oracle-cerner-ehr-go-live
VA Data Shows 498 ‘Major Incidents’ Since Oracle Cerner EHR Go-Live
A VA dataset showed that the Oracle Cerner EHR experienced 930 hours of “incomplete functionality” and almost 40 hours of “outage” since its fall 2020 go-live.
August 22, 2022 - The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has recorded 498 major incidents with its new Oracle Cerner EHR system since the system go-live in 2020, according to reporting from FedScoop.
A dataset obtained by the news outlet through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals that the EHR system had 930 hours of “incomplete functionality” between Sept. 8, 2020, and June 10, 2022.
Additionally, the dataset showed 103 hours of degraded performance and almost 40 hours of “outage,” which means that the system was entirely offline.
However, separate internal agency communications obtained by FedScoop point to a lack of consistency over how the agency discloses multi-day outages.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-precision-medicine-approaches-disorganized-slowed-by-gaps
AI Precision Medicine Approaches Disorganized, Slowed by Gaps
A Rutgers analysis shows that artificial intelligence approaches to precision medicine are advancing rapidly, but many suffer from disorganization and gaps.
August 22, 2022 - Researchers at Rutgers have concluded that artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches to precision medicine are limited or slowed by various structural issues, such as disorganization, data standardization, and gaps in approaches used.
The analysis evaluated and compared 32 of the most prevalent AI approaches to study preventive treatments for multiple diseases, including obesity, Alzheimer’s, inflammatory bowel disease, breast cancer and major depressive disorder. The researchers found that out of all the approaches evaluated, none could be used for all treatments, and programs that could evaluate multiple treatments were limited.
These findings, the authors note, indicate that the field of AI-based precision medicine is advancing rapidly, but suffers from significant disorganization, which has the potential to hamper future progress. Because AI and precision medicine both incorporate a wealth of different data and approaches, many different computing approaches have cropped up.
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Chartis: Number of systems exploring hospital-at-home to double over next 5 years
By Robert King
Aug 18, 2022 03:05pm
The number of health systems looking to install a hospital-at-home program is expected to double in the next five years, even as the fate of the program remains in limbo, a new survey found.
The survey, released earlier this month by the Chartis Group, showed more systems are leaning into hospital-at-home, which enables patients to get hospital-level care in their homes. The survey also found that more health systems are looking into digital-first primary care and remote patient monitoring to offer more personalized care.
“Digital transformation represents the most promising opportunity to make healthcare delivery more satisfying for patients, more streamlined for provider staff, and more sustainable for hospitals and health systems,” Chartis’ report said. “Provider organizations should act now to capitalize on this critical and timely juncture of industry evolution.”
Chartis spoke with 143 health system executives on their five-year plans for digital transformation.
It found that 39% of respondents plan to implement a hospital-at-home system within the next five years, up by nearly double compared to the 18% listed in the 2021 Chartis survey.
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Medical devices are a weak link in hospital cyber defenses, putting patients in the crossfire: study
By Annie Burky
Aug 18, 2022 03:05pm
Patients are feeling the effects of cyber attacks entering through the internet of medical things as hospitals continue to pass the buck.
Half of hospitals have been attacked with ransomware with 45% of organizations stating they believed the attacks were affecting patient care, according to a study released by Cynerio and Ponemon. Out of the group attacked, over half believed cyber attacks were indirectly responsible for increased mortality rates. The report cited integral medical devices being a weak link in hospital armor and a lack of foresight sending hospitals spiraling into attack cycles.
“What we find is that the healthcare industry is by far the highest risk industry with respect to emerging threats and vulnerabilities and real attacks, not just the possibility of an attack, but real legitimate attacks,” said Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the Ponemon Institute. “These organizations have been inept in implementing security processes, especially if we include issues around IoT, internet of things and internet of medical things.”
Ponemon pointed to these devices that are ubiquitous in hospitals, everything from MRI machines to heart rate monitors, which were involved in 88% of data breaches. Furthermore, 79% of organizations do not consider the cybersecurity of these devices to be deemed “mature,” and only 33% of survey respondents reported keeping an inventory of the attacked devices. Without the proper defense, these devices can become revolving doors for hackers, experts say.
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OpenNotes Initiative Targets Caregiver Engagement Through Health IT
The initiative aims to develop and spread health IT tools that support caregiver engagement, as they are important figures to improve patient outcomes and care quality.
August 19, 2022 - OpenNotes and the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care (Lipitz Center) have launched the Coalition for Care Partners, an initiative that focuses on building health IT tools directed at supporting caregiver engagement.
Millions of Americans involve family, friends, and other informal care partners, known as caregivers, to assist with care management. Caregivers often provide a wide range of services, like emotional support and medication management. They also involve themselves in their loved ones’ care decisions.
Despite being vital figures, caregivers are often left out of the “formal” healthcare delivery system. Caregiver involvement and engagement can greatly impact the quality of patient care and healthcare utilization but are not adequately supported by the healthcare system.
Research shows that only a small number of partners report being asked by clinicians and other healthcare workers about their need for help managing care for their loved ones.
“Very few care partners report being asked by clinicians and other healthcare workers about their need for help in managing the care,” Cait DesRoches, DrPH, executive director of OpenNotes, and an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a press release.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2022/08/22/integrating-digital-fax-into-your-health-it-solution/
Integrating Digital Fax Into Your Health IT Solution
August 22, 2022
While many would like to eschew fax in healthcare, the reality is that faxes are still an extremely important part of data sharing that happens in healthcare. At least in the current environment, if you want to solve the healthcare interoperability problem, you’re going to have to include some faxing.
This was the reality that Therasa Bell, Cofounder, President & CTO at Kno2, found as her team and her worked to make communication of health data seamless for their end users. Rather than building out the fax infrastructure themselves, Kno2 decided to integrate eFax Corporate by Consensus Cloud Solutions directly into the Kno2 product.
I was able to sit down with Bell from Kno2 and John Mannion, VP of Partnerships and Alliances at Consensus Cloud Solutions, to learn more about this decision and about the fax integration. Along with diving into the partnership, Mannion shared more about why health IT companies are choosing to integrate faxing into their products and what it really takes to build a robust digital fax infrastructure (Spoiler Alert: It’s much harder than you’d think).
Bell and Mannion also shared the benefits to end users and patients of having this integration seamlessly available to them and the impact on patients when that data isn’t being shared properly. Needless to say, it creates a bad experience for patients and doctors. Finally, Mannion shared a few more details on how Consensus can help partners beyond fax including their jSign eSignature product and some of the exciting new efforts their working on.
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Healthcare is littered with failed attempts by big tech to break in. Here’s why.
First, credit where credit is due: Healthcare and technology have made incredible strides in patient care over the last two decades, shifting care from within the four walls of a hospital to remote-care settings. Medical records can even be accessed from a smartphone.
But not all tech vendors that enter the healthcare environment do so successfully. Many vendors, including some of the the most dominant players in the tech space, have a revolving door of healthcare leaders. Others hop in, then hop out again when the juice doesn't quite prove worth the squeeze.
There are exceptions: Those that forge ahead, establishing stronger partnerships with health systems to bring innovative solutions to longstanding medical challenges. And it's those fringe cases that prove the great opportunity for innovation within healthcare for vendors willing to commit, said Dan Dodson, CEO of Fortified Health Security, to truly ascertain the challenges and engineer solutions that above all else realize the "uniquenesses of healthcare.”
Vendors able to do that can “solve real problems in healthcare, can be very successful, and help move the market forward,” said Dodson.
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https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/08/nhs-trials-smart-goggles-to-give-nurses-more-time-with-patients/
NHS trials smart goggles to give nurses more time with patients
20 August 2022
High tech goggles will be worn by community nurses on home visits to free up time with patients, as part of a cutting-edge NHS pilot.
As long as a patient consents, the virtual reality style headset can transcribe the appointment directly to electronic records, reducing time-consuming admin for nurses.
Staff will be able to share live footage directly with hospital colleagues to get a second opinion, avoiding the need for further appointments or hospital admission, and includes thermal imaging to help assess how wounds and injuries have healed.
The glasses, which also help nurses look up their next appointment that day and check how long it will take to get there based on live travel updates, will be trialled in Northern Lincolnshire and Goole from next week.
Community nurses are estimated to spend more than half of their day filling out forms and manually inputting patient data.
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https://histalk2.com/2022/08/21/monday-morning-update-8-22-22/
Monday Morning Update 8/22/22
August 21, 2022 News
Top News VA – Oracle - Cerner
VA data obtained by FedScoop under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the VA has had a least 45 days of Oracle Cerner downtime and 498 major incidents since its first rollout in September 2020.
The VA itself was responsible for one-third of the incidents.
The system issues caused 930 hours of incomplete functionality, 103 hours of degraded performance, and 40 hours of compete downtime.
The VA lists five medical centers as being live on the Oracle Cerner system — Spokane, WA; Walla Walla, WA; Columbus, OH; Roseburg, OR; and White City, OR. It has paused deployments that were scheduled for 2022 until next year.
VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in response to the FedScoop report, “The bottom line is that my confidence in the EHR is badly shaken … the system is not meeting those goals and needs major improvement. We at VA could not be more frustrated on behalf of Veterans and providers, and we’re holding Cerner, Oracle, and ourselves accountable to get this right.”
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Enjoy!
David.
If the government is looking to how I might mothball the tax funding little used federal EHR then Amazon is a good place to start - Amazon Care to shut down at the end of 2022
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