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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VA Launches Telehealth Program to Treat Rural Veterans With PTSD
The Department of Veterans Affairs says the Telemedicine Outreach for PTSD (TOP) pilot program will connect veterans in rural areas with psychologists and psychiatrists for online treatment.
March 07, 2018 - The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is launching a nationwide telehealth program to help rural veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The pilot program, coordinated by the VA’s Office of Rural Health and its Quality Enhancement Research Initiative, will connect 12 community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs) across the nation with veterans in need of treatment for PTSD. Care managers will first contact veterans by phone, then set up therapy sessions with available psychologists and psychiatrists through an interactive video platform.
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Partnership aims to get genomic info to docs for prescribing
By Fred Bazzoli
Published March 09 2018, 4:42pm EST
A new initiative seeks to give clinicians access to a database that can inform them on which drugs might be the most effective in treating patient conditions, based on their genetic composition.
The Innovation Institute and 2bPrecise, a wholly owned subsidiary of Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, have announced an agreement that will enable 2bPrecise to deliver a pharmacogenomics knowledge base to the point of care for providers that are members of The Innovation Institute, as well as other providers that aren’t in the networks of those members.
One of the six member owners of the Innovation Institute is Avera Health, which has developed GeneFolio, which describes how drugs and gene tests are related. Insights from the database are intended to be delivered within providers’ workflows, when they are making treatment decisions.
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Blockchain is proving itself for real-world healthcare applications
But experts from IEEE, UC San Diego and Health Linkages say the key is to make sure it's the "right solution for the right problem."
By Mike Miliard
March 08, 2018 02:08 PM
LAS VEGAS – Even if you don't think blockchain is overhyped (and many people do), you may still be convinced that whatever real-world promise it holds for healthcare is either too far in the theoretical future to think much about, or it's not yet worth the effort to implement.
"It sometimes seems like challenges of implementing blockchain outweigh the benefits and ROI," said Maria Palombini, director of communities and initiatives development for emerging technology at the IEEE Standards Association, Wednesday at HIMSS18.
But in the session, "Blockchain 4 Healthcare: Fit for Purpose?" experts showcased an array of use cases that suggest the promise of distributed ledger technology is closer, more achievable and potentially transformative that you might think.
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What Retail Can Teach Health Care About Digital Strategy
March 08, 2018
Retailers know they have to find the right blend of digital convenience and in-person service. Consider Walmart’s latest advertising campaign in which customers gleefully place orders online and through its app, selecting to receive smart-looking blue boxes on their doorsteps or seamlessly pick up their orders at the closest store.
Imagining the same ad for a healthcare provider in 2018, even an innovative provider, is a stretch.
Like banks, airlines, and retailers, health care providers will need to offer an easy, digital front-end experience to their customers. This isn’t just about building fancy new websites, but undertaking true care redesign: becoming adept at delivering high-quality, cost-effective virtual care through telehealth and digital tools. To this end, they will need to move from pilot programs to large-scale efforts routinely offered across the care spectrum.
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ONC, CMS set their sights on reducing EHR clinical burden
Published March 08 2018, 6:11am EST
With physicians spending more time entering data into electronic health records and less time engaged in direct patient care, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is making the streamlining of the EHR documentation process and reduction of clinical burden one of the agency’s top priorities.
John Fleming, MD, deputy assistant secretary for health technology reform, is ONC’s point man for working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reduce the documentation burden on providers.
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Look how far we've come: 93% of hospitals enable online access to health data in 2017, up from 27% in 2012
More and more patients are going online to access their health data, according to a Trend Watch report by the American Hospital Association.
The health IT issue brief highlights data from a 2016 AHA Annual Survey Information Technology Supplement it administered to community hospitals between November 2016 to April 2017.
Here are five things to know.
1. Almost every hospital and health system (93 percent) enable patients to view their health record online, up from 27 percent in 2012.
2. More organizations are allowing patients to pay their bills online, with 78 percent of hospitals and health systems featuring the service in 2017, compared to 51 percent in 2012. Features like requesting prescription refills online, scheduling appointments online and securely messaging providers have also expanded over the last five years.
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Consumers hungry for more digital healthcare interaction
By Alex Kacik | March 6, 2018
Rising demand for digital interaction between consumers and doctors is paving the way for nontraditional players to upend the healthcare industry, according to a new survey.
More than half of the nearly 2,500 consumers surveyed are comfortable contacting their physician digitally and already use available technology, according to a new survey from the consultancy Ernst & Young. The main motivators are that virtual data-sharing will reduce wait times and lower costs.
Both consumers and physicians are hungry for more connected experiences that reframe how and where care is delivered, Jacques Mulder, U.S. health leader for Ernst & Young, said in a statement.
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Results of the 2018 HIMSS Leadership Survey Confirm CIOs’ Focus on Clinical Outcomes Improvement—and Cybersecurity
March 8, 2018
by Mark Hagland
The HIMSS Leadership Survey finds consistency of concerns in 2018, compared to in 2017
While patient safety, clinical informatics, data analytics, and improving quality outcomes remain top of mind among hospital-based healthcare IT leaders, cybersecurity and data privacy and security issues have risen nearly to the top of the list of concerns of those leaders. That’s what the results of the 2018 HIMSS U.S. Leadership and Workforce Survey, released Tuesday, during HIMSS18, indicate.
The leaders of the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society released those results during the annual HIMSS Conference, being held at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas this week. That survey polled 224 healthcare providers (81 percent of whom work in hospitals, 6 percent of whom work in ambulatory care settings, and 13 percent of whom work in nursing homes), and also 145 vendor executives and consultants.
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HIT Think Why healthcare IT needs to aim at simplicity
By Fred Bazzoli
Published March 08 2018, 5:24pm EST
Perhaps it’s the glitz and glam of Las Vegas that’s inspiring this, but I wanted to take an opportunity to espouse the notion of reinforcing an emerging direction for healthcare IT—keeping that tech simple and focused.
Perhaps it’s HIMSS overload, but the stories of technology that have most impacted me over the last couple days are the ones that put the human factor at the very center of design and purpose.
There are hundreds of booths at the show, many demonstrating technology that I’d need more than a day to understand, or begin to understand. But if it’s just fancy bells and whistles that fail the test of the human interface, it risks being wasted effort. I’ve covered HIMSS conferences for a couple decades, and over that time, I’ve seen the industry make great progress in aiming to use information technology to meet the most basic of needs.
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Friday 9 March 2018
Four health boards to build shared care record
NHS bodies in north of Scotland to use portal for information on health and social care
Mark Say
Four health boards in the north of Scotland have commissioned a portal for sharing information on health and social care as part of the effort to fulfil the Scottish Government’s eHealth Strategy.
NHS Grampian, which will host the portal, has joined NHS Highland, NHS Orkney and NHS Shetland in a deal with Orion Health to provide the portal.
The first phase of the project will involve the development of a shared care record using the company’s Population Health platform to present a clinically relevant view of the patient’s record. It will present clinical data from the two patient management systems (PMS) currently used by the four boards, the region’s two Scottish Care Information stores, the picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) and the Emergency Care Summary data.
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ONC chief Donald Rucker lays out his agency's very full plate
The National Coordinator explains how ONC is approaching 21st Century Cures, TEFCA, info blocking, EHR usability, the power of smartphones to drive interoperability and more.
By Mike Miliard
March 07, 2018 11:28 AM
LAS VEGAS – In an evening session at HIMSS18 on Tuesday, National Coordinator for Health IT Donald Rucker, MD, sat down for a candid talk about an array of issues related to federal healthcare policy, interoperability, user experience, patient engagement and much more. Here's a sampling of what he had to say.
On bipartisan agreement about the value of health IT:
There are two areas of focus we at ONC have these days, as we look at the status of electronic health records in the United States: One is usability and provider burden, and the other is interoperability. There's a great luxury, which I think is a rarity in Washington, that both houses of Congress, both parties, the prior president, the current president, are all united on these goals.
There are two areas of focus we at ONC have these days, as we look at the status of electronic health records in the United States: One is usability and provider burden, and the other is interoperability. There's a great luxury, which I think is a rarity in Washington, that both houses of Congress, both parties, the prior president, the current president, are all united on these goals.
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Clinical and Financial Analytics Lead Healthcare IT Investment and ROI
Jonathan Bees, March 8, 2018
Investment areas can be viewed as value-based, but they also benefit fee-for-service models.
The leading area of healthcare IT investment over the next three years is clinical analytics (65%), according to respondents in the 2018 HealthLeaders Media Annual Industry Outlook Survey. Clinical analytics is followed by a cluster of responses that includes EHR interoperability (49%); mobile health, mobile technology (44%); financial analytics (42%); and data-driven knowledge of patient health factors (40%).
In many ways, these investment areas can all be viewed through a value-based care lens, but they also benefit a fee-for-service model.
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Special Report: Cybersecurity
The recent review of WannaCry attack by NHS England CIO has shone a bright light into NHS cyber defence deficiencies. With the General Data Protection Regulation coming into force this Spring, and an array of legacy Microsoft systems hitting their end of support status, just where do things stand now regarding cybersecurity strategy within the NHS? Davey Winder investigates.
According to the newly published review authored by Will Smart, chief information officer of NHS England, only 1 percent of NHS activity was directly impacted by WannaCry with 80 of the 236 hospital trusts affected, plus 595 of the 7,545 GP practices. However, the vulnerability of NHS infrastructure was laid bare for all to see.
An historic underinvestment in network security, unpatched legacy software and unpatchable hardware devices, were exposed; along with poor discipline and accountability at the highest levels within individual trusts.
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CMS planning to overhaul EHR incentive programs, rolls out MyHealthEData to put patients in control of their health information
CMS is launching a new initiative called MyHealthEData aimed at increasing patient access to their own health records and is planning to revamp its EHR incentive programs, the agency announced at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference March 6.
The agency is planning to overhaul its EHR incentive programs and instead, focus the programs on interoperability. CMS wants to revise the programs so they reduce the time and compliance costs associated with meeting the program's requirements. CMS will continue to work with ONC to improve clinician EHR use.
It's not clear which specific EHR incentive programs will be redesigned, but one bill, signed into law as part of the February funding package, signals meaningful use is due for review. The bill would make the meaningful use program easier for participating physicians by not mandating the HHS secretary create more stringent reporting requirements over time.
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Google takes health care to the cloud with new API, partnerships
Google Cloud is expanding its role in the health care sector, which accounts for more than one-sixth of the US economy.
Google on Monday outlined steps it's taking to usher the health care industry to the cloud, including a new Cloud Healthcare API, more HIPAA-compliant products and new partnerships.
Technologies like cloud computing, AI and IoT are expected to have a major impact in the coming years on the health care sector -- a sector that already accounts for more than one-sixth of the US economy. Google's goal for the sector is "very much a reflection of Google's overall mission," according to Greg Moore, VP of healthcare for Google Cloud, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
With that in mind, Google recently launched the Cloud Healthcare API to help health care organizations manage a variety of data types and use it all for analytics and machine learning. It's currently available in an early access release, and Google will roll it out to more customers and partners over the next year.
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Hacking responsible for 83% of breached records in January, insiders 1%: 6 things to know
One hacking incident reported in January accounted for 59 percent of the total number of breached patient records that month, according to a Protenus report.
The report, part of the "Protenus Breach Barometer" monthly series, analyzed healthcare breaches reported to HHS or disclosed to the media throughout January 2018.
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Belgium to strengthen role of e-health apps in patient healthcare
Belgium March 6 2018
The Belgian Minister of Health has announced in a press release that she is seeking to integrate mobile medical applications (e-health apps) into the Belgian healthcare system. In order to ensure the quality of such e-health apps and the safety of patients, these apps will be evaluated under a specific scheme (Evaluation Scheme) and some will be eligible for government financing.
The Evaluation Scheme is a first step to providing a legal framework on the use of e-health apps and aims to review whether a medical app should be integrated into the “mainstream” Belgian healthcare system and if so, how it should be integrated. The Evaluation Scheme consists of three levels:
- Level 1: minimum requirements. Any application that wishes to be integrated into the Belgian healthcare system must meet certain standards, function correctly (for example, precisely and correctly monitor a patient’s heartbeat), bear a CE mark, and comply with the applicable regulations on privacy and the protection of data.
- Level 2: communication with official e-health apps. The app must be able to communicate with other official Belgian e-health apps.
- Level 3: added value. If demonstrated that an app provides added value to healthcare and meets the requirements of the first two levels, a tailored investment scheme will be made available for its implementation.
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Industry moves forward a few steps on road to interoperability
Published March 07 2018, 6:52am EST
As the healthcare industry attempts to solve the challenges standing in the way of interoperable health IT systems, stakeholders must recognize that there is no ultimate endpoint or goal for interoperability—it will always be a work in progress.
That’s the message Micky Tripathi, president and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, delivered on Monday during the opening keynote at a HIMSS18 pre-conference symposium in Las Vegas.
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EHRs get most blame for epidemic of physician burnout
Published March 07 2018, 6:40am EST
The problem of physician burnout is affecting about 50 percent of practicing doctors, and electronic health records are squarely to blame, according to Michael Hodgkins, MD, CMIO at the American Medical Association.
A major contributing factor to this professional dissatisfaction is the fact that for every hour physicians spend on direct patient care, they spend two hours on EHR data entry and other administrative tasks.
“Think about that—twice as much time tending to things that really have very little or nothing to do with direct patient care,” Hodgkins told a CMIO roundtable on Tuesday at the HIMSS18 conference in Las Vegas. “When physicians are not involved in how these tools are created, designed and implemented, there are problems.”
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HIT Think How new market forces are aligning to change healthcare IT
By Fred Bazzoli
Published March 07 2018, 11:55am EST
HIMSS can be—and perhaps should be—an overwhelming experience. But in engaging in a couple dozen conversations with folks yesterday, I began to get a sense that we’re looking at a new, somewhat scary, age of healthcare, and thus the use of healthcare IT.
Entering new phases is typically a bit frightening. Many of us are never completely ready, yet they come at us with a sense of inevitability, excitement and dread. Sometimes, it hits us when we are unaware. I think the light is coming upon the healthcare industry, with the brute force of a blazing Las Vegas sunrise.
Yesterday, I could hear new words and new competitors being discussed. I heard the term “micro-hospitals” in three successive conversations. When folks were talking about competitors, they weren’t talking about the crosstown hospital system or feisty payers. They were mentioning CVS, Walgreens, urgent care centers and Amazon.
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New prescribing software helps monitor use of opioids
Published March 07 2018, 4:50pm EST
The five orthopedic surgeons at the Schwartz, Funari & Poshni practice in Montgomery County, Maryland, have long used secure texting software from Dr. Frist to communicate among the three offices because it’s much quicker and easier than making phone calls or sending emails.
In February, however, the practice adopted the vendor’s iPrescribe software to better handle the prescribing and workflow processes of a practice writing 90 controlled substance medications a day, including opioids for pain management, while making it easier for patients who just had surgery to get their prescriptions electronically sent to the pharmacy, rather than having to physically drop off the prescription.
Not only is e-prescribing a convenience to patients, but it also may compel patients to stay with the practice, says Kevin Schwartz, MD.
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eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani: Our next EHR will be like a Bloomberg Terminal
The electronic health record vendor is working on a version that would run on monitors such as Microsoft Surface and feature four distinct panels to help doctors make decisions.
By Tom Sullivan
March 07, 2018 11:17 AM
LAS VEGAS – While eClinicalWorks is demonstrating its latest cloud-based EHR and new offerings for inpatient settings at HIMSS18, CEO Girish Navani gave a glimpse of the forthcoming iteration — and the goal is to resemble a Bloomberg Terminal.
The hosted service would make a bold step forward for the EHR vendor that last year settled a $155 million case with the U.S. Department of Justice in a False Claims Act suit.
Much in the way the Bloomberg device delivers information to help bond traders make decisions in near real-time, the next version of eClinicalWorks will provide doctors with four key technologies each on its own screen.
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Jared Kushner says 'Trump administration has a new plan for interoperability'
The President’s senior advisor said the government’s strategy will involve unleashing data to spark innovations such as AI and machine learning with the ultimate goal of interoperability for all Americans.
By Tom Sullivan
March 06, 2018 12:50 PM
LAS VEGAS – White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner on Tuesday announced that the Trump Administration has a plan for making access to health records and interoperability a priority.
“The president is determined to make interoperability a reality for all Americans,” Kushner said during a speech at the HIMSS18 conference.
Key pieces of the overarching work to improve interoperability include overhauling the meaningful use program, expanding Blue Button and the MyHealthEData initiative to enable patients to access their medical data, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said here.
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Ministry draws up JD602m healthcare plan for 2018-2022
Doctors, nurses to serve at public, private schools
By JT - Mar 08,2018 - Last updated at Mar 08,2018
AMMAN — Health Minister Mahmoud Sheyyab on Wednesday said that the cost of the government’s executive plan to reform the health sector in 2018-2022 amounted to JD602 million, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.
Sheyyab said in a press statement that the plan has seven major aspects, including primary healthcare, secondary healthcare, health insurance, pharmaceuticals, medical tourism, reliability, quality control and e-health.
The plan entails 131 projects and initiatives worth JD602.1 million, which will be covered by the funds allocated for the sector in the budget, grants and loans.
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IT leaders highlight big success with machine learning models
Predict readmissions, detecting early cancer among the results of several case studies detailed at the Machine Learning & AI event.
By Dave Muoio
March 05, 2018 08:02 PM
LAS VEGAS – A trio of presenters at HIMSS 2018 shared data from practical machine learning and AI-focused studies that demonstrate how the technologies could reduce costs and improve patients’ outcomes.
These studies, conducted by teams at the Grady Health System, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, primarily focused on flagging adult and pediatric patients whose EHRs indicated specific risks, including readmission to care or unscreened colorectal cancer.
“These [AI-related] technologies are here to stay,” Srinivasan Suresh, MD, chief medical information officer at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, said during the conference’s Machine Learning & AI event. “They are very transformative. They’re also very disruptive, so you should be extremely cautious integrating these into a clinical workplace. A key point is the collaboration just between clinicians first, and then between care providers and data scientists and software engineers.”
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Google signed a key deal with a $9.5 billion device maker to save healthcare from a 'world of ignorance'
Mar 2, 2018, 2:00 AM
- Google has teamed up with Flex, a $US9.5 billion gadget manufacturer, in a cloud computing deal.
- Flex is using Google Cloud technology to build BrightInsight, a platform for connecting medical devices together.
- Flex lauds Google for its security, privacy, and futuristic technology.
- Amazon and Microsoft are also going after the healthcare market.
Google has signed a key cloud computing deal with Flex – a $US9.5 billion publicly-traded electronics manufacturer that provides components for Sonos speakers, Nespresso coffee machines, and, importantly, a huge number of medical devices around the world.
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OCR Highlights 8 Tips for Avoiding Healthcare Phishing Attacks
The February 2018 Cybersecurity Newsletter urges covered entities to back up data and use multi-factor authentication to avoid healthcare phishing attacks.
March 01, 2018 - Healthcare phishing attacks are becoming more sophisticated, which is why organizations must remain vigilant in their detection measures, OCR explained in its recent cybersecurity newsletter.
Hackers can take advantage of popular holidays to try and take advantage of individuals, and phishing attacks are also common during tax season, the agency stated. Spear phishing can also be especially damaging to healthcare.
“A spear phishing attack could target an individual in the IT, accounting or finance department of an organization by impersonating the individual’s supervisor and directing the individual to a malicious website or to download a file containing a malicious program,” OCR cautioned. “One of the primary methods of combating phishing attacks of all kinds is through user awareness.”
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Verizon cybersecurity report on PHI breaches finds insiders pose greatest threat
Mar 2, 2018 at 3:19 PM
The healthcare industry is the only sector in which people inside an organization represent the biggest threat to the security of protected health information. That’s a pretty startling finding from Verizon’s latest Protected Health Information Data Breach Report.
Verizon’s dataset included incidents from its 2016 and 2017 Data Breach Investigations Reports.
Now in its third year, the study examined more than 1,360 security incidents. It found that more 57 percent of breaches were caused by people inside the healthcare organization compared with 42 percent caused by external actors.
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1 in 5 health employees willing to sell confidential data: 7 survey insights
Nearly one in five healthcare employees would be willing to sell confidential data to unauthorized parties for as little as $500, according to a survey from Accenture.
For the report title "Losing the Cyber Culture War in Healthcare," Accenture surveyed 912 provider and payer organizations across the U.S. and Canada.
Here are seven survey insights.
1. About 18 percent of respondents said they would be willing to sell confidential data — such as login credentials, installing tracking software and downloading data to a portable drive — to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000.
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Wachter does an about face on the evils of health IT
Published March 06 2018, 5:26am EST
No one has ever accused Robert Wachter, MD, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, of seeing health IT through rose-colored lenses. However, the outspoken critic of HIT seems to be changing his view on the inherent evils of the technology.
Wachter is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age, which describes the unanticipated consequences of the widespread adoption of electronic health records—including medical errors.
However, speaking in a keynote address on Monday at the CHIME CIO Forum at HIMSS18 in Las Vegas, Wachter declared that he is in a “much more optimistic place” than when he wrote his 2015 book.
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'Digital Doctor' Robert Wachter changes his tune, sees real progress in digital health
Ten years and $30 billion later, the industry has at last established its digital backbone, Robert Wachter says.
March 05, 2018 06:31 PM
LAS VEGAS – Robert Wachter, MD, is not nearly as grumpy as he used to be about EHRs. At least that's what he told the standing-room-only crowd at the CHIME CIO Forum at HIMSS18 on Monday.
Wachter is chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also the author of "The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age.”
"If you had heard this talk two or three years ago, he told his audience, it would have been pretty grumpy,” he said. “I find today things are getting a lot better.”
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UCSF’s Robert Wachter says health IT still hasn’t realized its full potential, but promise is there
by Evan Sweeney
Mar 7, 2018 10:23am
LAS VEGAS—Robert Wachter, M.D., a healthcare leader who has been critical of health IT's shortcomings, believes the industry is still behind when it comes to effectively implementing new tools. But he’s also seeing some bright spots that leave him optimistic about the future.
During a keynote speech at the College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME) CIO Forum at HIMSS18 in Las Vegas, the chair of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Medicine struck a sometimes optimistic tone, highlighting instances at UCSF where data analytics has helped clinicians identify the origins of a deadly infection and allowed a specialist to review glucose data for every patient at the hospital in the time it typically took to do a single consult.
In most industries, widespread digitization takes 10 to 15 years, Wachter said. The complexity of healthcare will lengthen that time frame, but he appeared hopeful that the process is underway.
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Dr Robert Wachter says productivity benefits of health IT are still to come
Jon Hoeksma
7 March 2018
The vast US healthcare industry is slowly seeing the benefits of a decade of investment in IT systems, but much remains to be done before it achieves the full productivity benefits of digitisation.
This was the key message from Dr Robert Wachter, author of ‘The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age’, in his keynote address at the CHIME CIO Summit in Las Vegas on Monday.
After $30 billion of investment, through the HITECH Act, the $3.5 trillion US healthcare industry has reached encouraging levels of digitisation, but remains on a 10-15 year journey to realise the productivity benefits other industries have seen through computerisation.
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High expectations for AI in imaging lag behind reality
By Fred Bazzoli
Published March 06 2018, 12:00pm EST
Despite high expectations for the use of artificial intelligence in imaging, use of advanced computing technologies to assist radiologists is still in the early stages.
A recent report from KLAS Research finds that “talk about AI in imaging has been more common than actual adoption.” Despite that sobering assessment, some leading provider organizations and their vendor partners “have begun to roll out the technology or are making plans to do so.”
The KLAS report, researched through interviews with 81 healthcare organizations—primarily large integrated delivery networks—are an effort by the researchers to detail early imaging AI deployments and plans. The report also seeks to identify which vendors the health organizations see as leaders in providing AI capabilities.
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Fed initiative to put patients in control of their health data
Published March 06 2018, 1:34pm EST
The Trump administration is attempting to put patients in control of their own health data and to spur healthcare innovation as part of its broader efforts to cut red tape in the federal government.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on Tuesday at the HIMSS18 conference in Las Vegas the launch of the MyHealthEData initiative, which CMS Administrator Seema Verma claimed is the first time any administration has set in motion a coordinated initiative to truly make patients the focus of the healthcare system by using the federal government's full authority to ensure providers and insurers give patients control of their medical records.
The goal of the government-wide MyHealthEData initiative is to make the patient “the center of our healthcare system,” Verma said. The effort will be led by the White House Office of American Innovation with participation from CMS, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, the National Institutes of Health, as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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Google announces Cloud Healthcare API to unlock health data
Published March 06 2018, 5:32am EST
Search engine giant Google on Monday announced a new cloud-based application programming interface aimed at addressing the interoperability challenges that continue to dog the healthcare industry.
Google’s Cloud Healthcare API is meant to extract data from electronic health records and “other proprietary data” by using DICOM, FHIR, and HL7 protocols, according to Eric Schmidt, technical advisor and former executive chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
The goal is to free up the flow of information leading to actionable insights from artificial intelligence and machine learning that can improve health outcomes.
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Two Healthcare Systems Use Telehealth Kiosks to Expand Reach
Alexandra Wilson Pecci, March 6, 2018
Within just a few weeks of each other, NewYork-Presbyterian and BayCare Health System each announced new telehealth kiosk programs with Walgreens and Publix, respectively.
Two health systems are expanding their digital health delivery programs by hosting telehealth kiosks at retail pharmacy locations.
Within just a few weeks of each other, NewYork-Presbyterian and Florida-based BayCare Health System each announced new programs with Walgreens and Publix, respectively, to allow patients to access doctors from those institutions via medical-device equipped, self-service, telehealth kiosks.
Patients can sit down at telehealth kiosks inside the stores and be connected within minutes to board-certified physicians. If a prescription is needed, one can be sent immediately to whatever pharmacy the patient wants.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/survey-93-percent-of-hospital-patients-can-view-ehr-online
Survey: 93 percent of hospital patients can view EHR online
Published March 05 2018, 7:07am EST
Nearly all hospital patients can view information from their electronic health record online, according to new data released by the American Hospital Association.
The AHA Annual Survey Information Technology Supplement for community hospitals collected between November 2016 and April 2017 finds that 93 percent of hospitals and health systems enable patients to view information from their EHR online, up from only 27 percent in 2012.
In addition, 84 percent of hospitals and health systems enable patients to download information from their health record, compared with only 16 percent in 2012. And, 83 percent of these medical facilities enable patients to designate a caregiver to access health information on the patient’s behalf, a slight increase from 2015, the first year the question was included in the AHA survey.
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Lyft announces integration with Allscripts EHR system, allowing 180,000 doctors to hail rides for patients
by Matt Kuhrt
Mar 5, 2018 12:00pm
On the heels of Uber’s recent foray into provider-requested ride hailing, Lyft has announced a deal with Allscripts for a similar service. The company expects the deal to allow 180,000 physicians to request nonemergency transportation for patients.
Ride-hailing companies that want to capture a share of the estimated 3.6 million Americans who lack transportation to doctor’s appointments have recently shifted tactics. In recent days, Uber Health rolled out a HIPAA-compliant dashboard that providers can use to set up rides for patients, caregivers and staff.
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DoD-Cerner EHR project finding improvements, despite some challenges
The work is currently in a planned eight-week assessment period, but some sites have already made progress: Fairchild Air Force Base achieved HIMSS Analytics EMRAM Stage 6.
March 02, 2018 11:15 AM
Cerner’s EHR project for the U.S. Department of Defense has already led to increased clinical efficiencies and reductions in duplicative testing for some sites part of the initial pilot, according to a new blog post from Travis Dalton, general manager of Cerner’s federal division.
In February 2017, DoD rolled out the first MHS Genesis EHR at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington, followed closely by implementations at Naval Hospital Oak Harbor and Naval Hospital Bremerton. The last pilot site went live at Madigan Army Medical Center in October.
Currently, the project is in a planned eight-week assessment period to work through all of the kinks that happen with most EHR projects. To mitigate some of these issues, Dalton said DoD has leaned on commercial practices of deployment.
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HIT Think How other countries’ struggles with patient identifiers can help the U.S.
By Dan Cidon
Published March 05 2018, 4:05pm EST
Discussion of a national patient identifier (or lack thereof) has run rampant in healthcare over the last two decades. The conversation continued recently with an op-ed article that appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine calling on Congress to lift its ban on using federal funds to establish a patient identifier in the U.S.
Encouraging greater efforts at the federal level, the authors, who include John Halamka from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, point to the successful implementation of unique patient identifiers in other countries that have benefited from this core piece of infrastructure. Although both England and Scotland have a mandated number, which allows data sources to be connected, it alone is not enough to achieve total integration across health and social care services.
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HP launches new laptops designed specifically for healthcare
The HP Healthcare Edition portfolio includes two Elite Books and an All-in-One with features for security, safety, telemedicine, and workflows, the company said.
By Jeff Lagasse
March 05, 2018 10:28 AM
Hewlett Packard has lifted the curtain on a spate of new healthcare devices, each specifically designed to address the next generation of patient care, The new portfolio was revealed at the HIMSS18 conference in Las Vegas on Monday.
The new slate of products is designed to address healthcare provider needs such as enhanced patient safety, smarter workflows, temedicine and data security. The new devices include the HP EliteBook 840 G5 Healthcare Edition notebook, the HP EliteOne 800 G4 23.8 Healthcare Edition All-in-One (AiO), and the HP Healthcare Edition HC270cr Clinical Review Display.
Dubbed the HP Healthcare Edition, the portfolio offers solutions “that are safer, smarter and more secure for healthcare,” HP’s Senior Director of Worldwide Healthcare Reid Oakes said in a statement. He said the offerings “help providers protect patients and their data, streamline workflows, and facilitate collaboration across the care continuum to deliver effective patient-centered care.”
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Implementing eHealth innovation
How Merck’s PMEA-winning progress in new technology is improving outcomes for young patients
Innovation has driven Merck’s growth and performance to its 350-year celebration in 2018.
We recognise that while product advances lie at the core of innovation in healthcare, it is the development and implementation of new technologies to address patients’ needs that is critical moving forward.
This is true for many of the therapeutic areas that Merck is involved in, and nowhere is the evolution of new technologies more evident than in our approach to the management of growth hormone diseases (GHD). In this area, I have seen the adoption of eHealth initiatives bring significant benefits in medicine adherence, while the progress in chronic disease management has recently led to industry recognition with PMEA’s Excellence in Innovation award for the company’s growth hormone eHealth initiatives.
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Enjoy!
David.
