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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Imperial College scientists create AI system to help treat sepsis
Scientists at Imperial College London claim to have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that could help the treatment of sepsis.
Hanna Crouch 26 October, 2018
After analysing around 100,000 records of US patients and every single doctor’s decision affecting them over a 15-year period, the system – called AI Clinician – was able to ‘learn’ the best treatment strategy.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Medicine, claimed that 98 per cent of the time the AI system either matched, or was better than, the human doctors’ decision.
The team from Imperial hope the clinical tool could be used alongside medical professionals, to help doctors decide the best treatment strategy for patients.
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NHS Scotland to strengthen cyber resilience with new Microsoft partnership
November 01, 2018 01:00 PM
NHS Scotland signs new deal with Microsoft to deploy Office 365 and migrate all systems to Windows 10 E5.
NHS Scotland has signed a new agreement with Microsoft to deploy Office 365 and migrate all systems to Windows 10 E5 during the next three years in an effort to boost cyber resilience and mitigate any potential threats.
"We're creating the environment and the tools to allow staff and services to flourish. At the moment they are too often hampered by systems that don't join up or make collaboration easy,” said Jeane Freeman, who was appointed as Scotland’s Health Secretary in June this year.
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Proposed privacy bill mirrors GDPR, adds jail time for lying CEOs
November 02, 2018 03:27 PM
Introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, the Consumer Data Protection Act overhauls internet privacy protections and gives FTC the authority to create standards and penalize law-breakers.
A proposed Senate bill takes aim at consumer privacy rights with harsh penalties for companies that violate privacy laws. Introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, the bill would apply to companies that generate more than $50 in revenue and with personal data on more than 1 million people.
If passed, the Consumer Data Protection Act would overhaul internet privacy protections on par with EU General Data Protection Regulation and give the Federal Trade Commission the ability to enforce those consumer privacy rights.
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Cambridge University Hospitals revalidated against new EMRAM Stage 6 standards
November 01, 2018 08:10 AM
The HIMSS Analytics EMRAM standards were recently updated to reflect advancements in the healthcare information and technology space.
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) has become the first NHS trust and the first Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) to be revalidated against the new Stage 6 HIMSS Analytics international Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) standards that came into force at the beginning of the year.
The changes were designed to reflect progress in the healthcare technology and information space during the past few years, with the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) requirement, for instance, moved from higher to lower stages of the model (PACS is now part of the Stage 1 criteria, as opposed to Stage 5).
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FDA isn't doing enough to prevent medical device hacking, HHS report says
Updated 2250 GMT (0650 HKT) November 1, 2018
"FDA had plans and processes for addressing certain medical device problems in the postmarket phase, but its plans and processes were deficient for addressing medical device cybersecurity compromises," the report says.
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With machine learning, researchers get new clues in the hunt for the source of mysterious viruses
November 1, 2018
When a new virus crops up in people, health authorities face an urgent question: Where did it come from?
Thousands of viruses are out there in the wild, circulating in animal hosts and only gaining attention when they infect people. Viruses can make that jump in various ways — sometimes through direct contact, sometimes via an intermediary like a mosquito or tick. But researchers don’t have great tools to quickly determine the reservoirs that house the viruses or the “vectors” by which they were transmitted.
On Thursday, researchers unveiled a new system, based on machine learning models, that identifies patterns in the genomes of viruses to offer a hypothesis about their hosts and vectors.
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Apple heart study enrolls 400,000 participants to use smartwatch app
Published November 02 2018, 7:27am EDT
A study has enrolled more than 400,000 participants to determine if a smartwatch app can accurately identify atrial fibrillation.
Launched last year, the clinical trial—funded by Apple and conducted in collaboration with Stanford Medicine—is being touted as the largest atrial fibrillation screening study ever undertaken.
“We hope this study will help us better understand how wearable technologies can inform precision health,” says Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine. “These new tools, which have the potential to predict, prevent and manage disease, are finally within our reach.”
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HIT Think 9 criteria for selecting a disaster recovery system
By Gary Watson
Published November 02 2018, 5:10pm EDT
These days, every organization is attuned to the threat of data breaches, with most if not all investing in proactive protection and reactive recovery measures to mitigate risks against data loss. But what about natural disasters?
Hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, fires, landslides—according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2017 was the most expensive year on record for natural disasters in the U.S. The total cost in damages from 16 events was more than $300 billion, crushing the previous high of $214 billion in 2005.
Scientists are predicting that we will experience more extreme weather in the future as the climate changes and the planet heats up. And while the key focus in the aftermath of natural disasters is their impact on health, economy and the environment—which it should be—it should also prompt a refocused attention on disaster recovery.
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NHS’s GP at Hand app ‘no match for trip to doctors’
Kat Lay, Health Correspondent
A controversial app championed by the health secretary might offer a significantly worse service to patients than they would get in person at a doctor’s surgery, it will be claimed in The Lancet next week.
GP at Hand uses artificial intelligence to assess symptoms via a chatbot. It also offers video and telephone consultations with doctors. The service is available on the NHS to patients in London, although a nationwide version has been delayed pending more evidence. Patients can also pay for access.
Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary, uses the app as his own GP and has endorsed it, despite criticism from doctors.
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NHS Digital to cut 500 jobs in major restructure
November 01, 2018 10:55 AM
NHS Digital will cut around 500 jobs in a major restructure expected to "change the skills and capability of its workforce", Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock has said.
Hancock confirmed earlier reports that the reconfiguration of NHS Digital would be delivered in a “series of waves”, set to be completed by 2020/21.
“At this stage, NHS Digital estimates that a net overall reduction in headcount of circa 500 full time equivalents is expected. A programme of staff engagement and discussions with staff representatives is in place. All staff will be affected by the restructuring and will be required to apply for posts in the new organisation structure,” the secretary told Parliament this week.
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CMS will pay for remote patient monitoring by home health agencies
By Maria Castellucci | October 31, 2018
The CMS issued a final rule Wednesday that allows home health agencies to bill Medicare for remote patient monitoring.
Home health is expected to boom in the coming years as the baby boomers continue to retire. Remote patient monitoring allows providers to collect health information about patients digitally and studies show the service results in more live-time data-sharing, which can lead to more tailored care and better health outcomes.
"This home health final rule focuses on patient needs and not on the volume of care," said CMS Administrator Seema Verma, in a statement.
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AAFP Nudges ONC Toward EHR Interoperability
Developer Transparency and Increased Competition Are Key Factors, Letter Advises
October 30, 2018 04:00 pm News Staff – Someday you might see it: a 13-letter crossword fill, clued as "What health IT systems should be but still are not."
Nonphysician players will be stumped, but you'll know the answer: interoperable.
The real-life puzzle of interoperability remains unsolved, but the Academy has once again filled in some blanks for a questioning federal agency. In a blunt assessment, the AAFP this month told the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC): "Some interoperability tasks are beyond the capability of certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT) products."
The Academy was responding to an ONC request for information (RFI)(www.govinfo.gov) published in the Federal Register on Aug. 24 that sought comments about electronic health records (EHR), especially regarding interoperability, usability and certification testing. (Calls for EHR feedback are mandated by the 21st Century Cures Act.)(www.fda.gov)
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HITRUST threat catalogue helps organizations identify salient risks
Published November 01 2018, 3:43pm EDT
Providers and payers now have access to a “threat catalogue” to help them identify adverse events that they’ll likely need to control.
The project was developed by HITRUST, a coalition of industry stakeholders collaborating to better secure protected health information. The initiative aims to help organizations identify the adverse events that are most relevant to them particularly and how they can be controlled.
The catalogue gives stakeholders greater visibility into the threats and risks targeting information, assets and operations, and identifies specific technical, physical and administrative controls to address the risks.
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HIT Think IT provides only a few answers to reversing the opioid crisis
Published November 01 2018, 3:18pm EDT
Of course, the goal promoted before, during and since President Trump’s legislation-signing ceremony in the White House last week is to reduce opioid addiction and related deaths.
“Together, we are going to end the scourge of drug addiction in America,” said the president, before hedging his bet by adding, "We are going to end it, or we are going to at least make an extremely big dent in this terrible, terrible problem."
One can hope he’s right about the impact of the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, regardless of expectation. Drug overdoses overall took more than 70,000 American lives in 2017, with opioids responsible for almost 50,000 of those. By any measure, opioids have ravaged American society in recent years and serve as a placeholder for the desperation that seems, for many, to define American life.
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Special Report: Mental Health
Physical and mental healthcare interact in complex and significant ways, and yet traditionally the NHS has treated the two as separate issues. Can digital shared records help address this unhelpful separation and improve patient care? Jennifer Trueland investigates.
As a psychiatrist, Ayesha Rahim has trained for years to develop an expertise in mental illness – and one of the key lessons is that it doesn’t exist in isolation.
A person’s physical and mental health are inextricably linked but this is not always reflected in how services are designed or, crucially, in the way that information flows between different parts of the health and care economy.
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What it will take for big data to achieve its potential in healthcare
By Mike Miliard
October 31, 2018 04:21 PM
From basic information governance to advanced precision medicine, health systems large and small describe their strategies for putting data to work.
"We cannot underestimate how connected we will be" as data and technology become even more ubiquitous, said futurist Michael Rogers at the HIMSS Big Data and Healthcare Analytics Forum.
Over two days in Boston last week, leaders and decision-makers at healthcare organizations of all shapes and sizes convened to compare notes about the ways they're leveraging ever-growing troves of clinical, financial and operational data.
At the HIMSS Big Data and Healthcare Analytics Forum, industry experts shared strategies and best practices for managing initiatives of increasing complexity – from data governance to population health management, artificial intelligence to precision medicine.
Here are a few things we learned at the event.
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DoD Leveraging MHS GENESIS EHR System to Reduce Duplicate Testing
Providers at four DoD care sites have cut duplicate lab test orders and X-rays since going live with the MHS GENESIS EHR system.
By Kate Monica
October 30, 2018 - Four Department of Defense (DoD) care sites are achieving some improvements in clinical efficiency since going live with the MHS GENESIS EHR system, according to Cerner Government Services President Travis Dalton.
Patients visiting the emergency department at DoD treatment facilities part of the MSH GENESIS initial operating capability (IOC) sites have so far seen a nine-minute reduction in wait times in the 60 days after go-live, said Dalton in a recent blog post.
“We’re in the early phases of this transformation,” wrote Dalton. “It’s a complex endeavor that will take time and involve asking passionate health care providers to change some of the processes they’ve been using for decades.”
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Severe weather, cyberattacks top list of hospital safety concerns
Severe weather and cyberattacks are the two most pressing safety concerns among hospital leaders, according to a survey from communications software provider Rave Mobile Safety.
Rave Mobile Safety surveyed more than 300 respondents leading compliance, emergency management, facilities and security, among other divisions, at hospitals across the U.S. for its poll on safety concerns and emergency preparedness.
Here are the top two safety concerns most commonly ranked by seven hospital divisions:
Compliance:
- Cyberattack, weather event (tie)
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WannaCry: what happened to the UK National Health Service?
It was one of the largest ransomware attempts in history - although it barely made $200k
Antony Scholefield
1st November 2018
It was the real-world cyber-attack seemingly ripped from the pages of a James Patterson thriller novel — the WannaCry attack of May 2017.
If you missed the last instalment, WannaCry was one of the largest “ransomware” attempts in history.
The virus forcibly encrypted files in hundreds of organisations worldwide, demanding a ransom of about $400 in Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, to unlock each of the files. By chance, it happened to hit the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK.
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With CMS' new physician fee schedule on the way, 2018 could be a 'turning point' for telemedicine
by Eli Richman
Oct 31, 2018 4:00pm
WASHINGTON, D.C.—New telehealth gadgets and applications are popping up every day, but physicians are usually still left with the same old questions about them: Do they work? Will I get sued? And can I get paid?
The answers to those questions may be coming as soon as Thursday in the form of a new physician payment schedule, according to a panel by the Internet Innovation Alliance. And if it answers the outlying questions satisfactorily, panelists said 2018 could become the year when telemedicine moves into the mainstream.
"This has been an incredible year for digital medicine," said Sylvia Trujillo, senior Washington counsel at the American Medical Association, during the panel. "It will likely go down in the books as the turning point for digital transformations, in my opinion."
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AMIA asks feds to work with private sector to promote AI
Published October 31 2018, 7:26am EDT
The American Medical Informatics Association is urging the Trump administration to leverage an existing industry strategy on artificial intelligence research and development, rather than beginning from scratch.
“We commend the administration for designating artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences and strategic computing as administration (research and development) priorities in its Fiscal Year 2020 budget, and for chartering a select committee on artificial intelligence under the National Science and Technology Council,” Doug Fridsma, AMIA president and CEO told the administration in a comment letter.
“We see these as necessary and important steps toward ensuring that the federal government takes a coordinated approach to AI R&D,” the letter continues.
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Paying for data could help incentivize interoperability, athenahealth says
Published October 31 2018, 4:03pm EDT
Jump-starting interoperability among healthcare providers could get a boost from creating an economic value for data.
That concept is the suggestion of electronic health record vendor athenahealth. In a comment letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the company offers the idea that interoperability could be facilitated if providers saw direct economic value from exchanging it.
“To promote interoperability between disparate healthcare organizations, CMS should create a new carve out to Stark and Anti-Kickback laws to allow physicians to make and receive fair market value payments, which would be nominal, for the exchange of important and usable information for patient care,” contends Greg Carey, director of government and regulatory affairs at athenahealth, in a letter to HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson.
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Most Wired shows hospitals have mixed success integrating data
By Fred Bazzoli
Published October 31 2018, 3:30pm EDT
A snapshot of trends from the industry’s annual Most Wired survey shows wide adoption of technology, but a mixed bag in efforts to use it to improve care.
A preview of results of the 2018 survey were presented at the CHIME18 Fall CIO Forum in San Diego on Wednesday, indicating that providers would face challenges in integrating disparate technologies to facilitate care delivery.
Survey results indicate a wealth of electronic data now being collected in electronic health records systems and through digital technologies, but organizations now face the complex task of bringing the data together efficiently to assist clinicians in making care decisions.
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HIT Think How to make sense of the effects of policy on HIT
By Mark Segal
Published October 31 2018, 4:43pm EDT
I’ve spent my career tackling complex health policy initiatives to change provider or industry behavior. Reflecting on this experience, on what works and doesn’t, I’ve developed a checklist of points for policymakers to consider as they develop or revise policies.
Such questions are especially timely as the federal government is considering policies for its health IT incentive programs; health information exchange and interoperability, “information blocking,” and health IT certification; digital health product safety; and evaluation and management codes.
These are key points to track:
- Policy views are theories subject to verification
- Evidence of a problem does not equal evidence that a policy intervention is warranted, will work, or is worth the cost
- Unintended consequences are inevitable
- “Market failure” is in eye of the beholder
- Logrolling leads to policy bloat
- Compliance eats policy intentions for lunch (apologies to Peter Drucker)
- We are not all alike: segmentation works in marketing and public policy
- Policy deadlines are made to be broken, and we all know it
- Policy innovations run their course, as do the organizations charged with their execution
- Emphasize “diffusion of innovations” in lieu of or along with detailed regulation
Policy views are theories subject to verification
Too often, by the time policies are proposed, assertions that began in the literature as theories tested against data no longer reflect underlying uncertainties. By their nature, laws and regulations assume unwarranted confidence about cause and effect and what people and organizations want and will do. In developing interoperability policies, for example, it is important to know: do doctors want all the information in the Consolidated CDA document; are providers more focused on cross-organization rather than internal interoperability as suggested by health IT incentive programs, and do patients really want electronic access to all of their electronic health data? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe sometimes.
Too often, by the time policies are proposed, assertions that began in the literature as theories tested against data no longer reflect underlying uncertainties. By their nature, laws and regulations assume unwarranted confidence about cause and effect and what people and organizations want and will do. In developing interoperability policies, for example, it is important to know: do doctors want all the information in the Consolidated CDA document; are providers more focused on cross-organization rather than internal interoperability as suggested by health IT incentive programs, and do patients really want electronic access to all of their electronic health data? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe sometimes.
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Does your doctor need to know what you buy on Amazon?
Brokers are selling your data to your doctor, and no one’s regulating it.
10/30/2018 01:15 PM EDT
Google, Amazon, insurers and credit card companies have long been able to tell whether you vote, own a dog, spent time in prison or drive a rusty 1997 Chevrolet. Now, that type of information is starting to pop up in front of doctors when you walk into their examination rooms.
A small but fast-growing number of technology companies, including data brokers LexisNexis and Acxiom, sell health care providers detailed analyses of their patients, incorporating criminal records, online purchasing histories, retail loyalty programs and voter registration data.
Some health systems think the data may drive better medical decision-making — helping them identify patients at risk of expensive care or rehospitalization, for instance, and enabling them to connect hurting patients with follow-up care or social work programs. The fact that a hypertension patient lives in a food desert, or lacks carfare to get to appointments, may be more important to her health than any prescription written by a doctor, former AMA President David Barbe noted in an interview.
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Epic introduces App Orchard low-cost option
By Tom Sullivan
October 29, 2018 02:22 PM
The new tier, known as Nursery, comes as the EHR vendor has also reduced pricing for its more expensive tiers by 33-80 percent.
Epic has reduced the price for startups to participate in its App Orchard developer program and revealed a new entry-level tier.
The new option, dubbed Nursery, costs $100 a year. Epic also said it has cut the pricing on its three existing tier by 33-80 percent.
WHY IT MATTERS
When electronic health record vendors first started launching developer programs, the going rate was usually to charge 30 percent of top line revenue. In the time since, however, companies have realized that is too steep for startups trying to decide whether they should write new apps for, say, Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, eClinicalWorks or Epic. Other EHR vendors have also restructured their pricing, accordingly.
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Focus on cybersecurity: 5 things we learned this month
By Tom Sullivan
October 30, 2018 10:15 AM
Synthetic ID theft, infosec dashboards, the real weakest link and more factored into the security conversation during October.
October being the 15th National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we at HIMSS Media marked the occasion by focusing on infosec every day.
Along the way, we encountered some new ideas, contrarian perspectives and not-widely discussed tactics for improving your security posture.
Here are five of those.
1. Identity theft can be "synthetic" – and that includes the medical variety. When breaches happen like the ones at Facebook and Uber, among others, cybercriminals can take that data or keep it then piece together forged identities to commit all manner of fraud, medical identity theft among those. There are steps health organization can take to fight back, beginning with inventorying data to find protected health information and understand where it lives, then prioritize different data, apply safeguard and keep reviewing it. Read the full article here.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ama-updates-population-health-tool-to-improve-patient-care-access
AMA Updates Population Health Tool to Improve Patient Care Access
The Health Workforce Mapper includes updated population health data to help providers increase patient care access.
By Jessica Kent
October 29, 2018 - The American Medical Association (AMA) has enhanced its Health Workforce Mapper tool with updated population health data to further improve patient access to care.
The tool, which allows users to see the distribution of providers in each state, will now include population health data by geographic location. The “Population Health Explorer” feature will show data on several community and socioeconomic factors, including healthcare access and quality, demographics, and social environment.
This new feature will help users understand where physicians practice, where patients are located, and which factors significantly impact patients’ access to healthcare.
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FHIR Testing Tools Can Foster Interoperability, Health Data Exchange
FHIR validation and testing tools can reduce variations in implementation, thus supporting interoperability and health data exchange.
October 29, 2018 - Widely adopting validation and testing tools for the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) can help to reduce variation in implementation and ensure the deployment of more standardized methods of health data exchange, says the ONC and several other industry stakeholders in a new journal article.
The paper, published in JMIR Medical Informatics, asserts that validation tools are key for preventing developers from deviating too far from HL7 FHIR standards, a common byproduct of implementation decisions when navigating healthcare’s fragmented health IT environment.
Creating FHIR-based solutions that are similar enough to work together seamlessly will be essential for creating a truly interoperable healthcare industry that enables appropriate data access for authorized stakeholders.
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Cerner offers new opioid toolkit integrated with its EHR
Published October 30 2018, 7:46am EDT
Health IT vendor Cerner is offering clients a new toolkit integrated into clinical workflows to ensure safe prescribing of opioids by providers.
Cerner’s Opioid Toolkit includes analytics to assess prescribing patterns, clinical decision support for management of opioids and an algorithm to identify the potential for substance use disorder.
Eva Karp, Cerner senior vice president and chief clinical and patient safety officer, says the toolkit includes a new suite of advancements to help clients win the battle against the opioid epidemic.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/labcorp-mobile-app-lets-patients-put-health-data-on-iphone
LabCorp mobile app lets patients put health data on iPhone
Published October 30 2018, 5:22pm EDT
LabCorp has introduced a mobile app that aids patients in moving their health records to their iPhones, making it easy to access test results.
That’s just the start, as the app—currently in beta stage testing—also will give access to information from healthcare organizations that get services from LabCorp, covering patients’ allergies, medical conditions, immunizations, medications, procedures and vital signs, turning the iPhone into a patient’s own electronic medical record, company executives say.
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Military Health System can access patient info through 7 state HIEs
Published October 30 2018, 5:06pm EDT
The Military Health System is adding medical information from seven health information exchanges to enhance its ability to share medical records.
The system, which serves the Department of Defense and provides healthcare to active duty and retired military personnel and their dependents, is working with the Kansas Health Information Network, the eHealth Exchange of the Sequoia Project and KAMMCO, which provides a suite of products and services to physicians.
“This represents the growing capabilities of HIEs to share records in all locations from which a patient has received care,” says Laura McCrary, executive director at the Kansas Health Information network.
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HIT Think Careful planning is key to mitigate risks of moving to the cloud
By Ryan Gratias
Published October 30 2018, 5:17pm EDT
As more organizations migrate to the cloud, many assume the risks are similar to their internal data centers—nothing new to worry about. Others assume their cloud service providers will take on whatever risks are uniquely associated with the cloud.
So it can come as a costly and time-consuming surprise when organizations not only discover new risks in the cloud, but also find they're responsible for managing and mitigating them.
To complicate matters, the cloudscape is in continuous flux as risks and compliance demands evolve. Regulations are increasing, including SOX (U.S. Congress’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act), PII (Personally Identifiable Information), PCI (Payment Card Industry) and the European Union's recent GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Threat actors expose organizations to ever-evolving dangers, including data breaches (such as Equifax) and cryptojacking (such as Tesla).
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GP patient data now being automatically collected to boost screening
Jack Serle29 October 2018
- New mandate for data collection should increase coverage of eye screening programme
- Obligation removes the opportunity for GPs to opt out of national data collection process
- Eye screening programme ‘entirely reliant’ on accurate patient data from GPs
NHS Digital will now routinely collect diabetic patient level data from GPs under a new legal direction designed to ensure consistent monthly reporting and improve screening for diabetic retinopathy.
Previously GPs were relied on to self-report data on patients which was then used to identify those eligible for screening.
Under a direction from Public Health England, NHS Digital is now required to automatically pull the patient data from 5,000 participating GPs to feed into a national database that identifies patients for screening.
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Why NPfIT failed
Below is my list of reasons why I think NPfIT failed. NPfIT was the NHS National Programme for IT in health, starting in 2002, with Richard Grainger appointed as NHS IT director. A timeline is published here. NPfIT is generally conceded to have spent £10.7bn by the government in 2013, when it was definitively shutdown. Claims have been made that slightly more than this was delivered in value. Realistic analyses such as the one linked to from the image at the top of this post show that the realised benefits are miniscule. Right now, the benefits for ‘Choose and Book’ can probably also be written off, as it is no longer generally used. I would guess the only benefits that those in the industry would agree were actually realised are N3, the secure NHS network and possibly NHS mail. The Spine supplies some benefits, but is so badly designed and over-complicated that it will undoubtedly be completely replaced in the next 5 years. My view, pretty uncontroversially, is that the programme was mis-conceived from the start. Here are my reasons, which are by no means complete.
- The basic requirements were not understood by those running the programme, even though many are actually fairly obvious. The NHS’s favourite published scenario to solve was a Scottish person on holiday in Cornwall getting sick. However the vast majority of all health system interactions are local. A locally devolved but standardised and federated system architecture was required. Instead a nonsensical centralised system (the ‘Spine’) was devised.
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Oct 29, 2018
Telehealth from home to be added to Medicare Advantage plan's benefits under new rule
Enrollment in MA is projected to increase by 11.5 percent, and the number of plans to increase by 600 next year.
Proposed changes issued today by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would allow Medicare Advantage insurers to be reimbursed for additional telehealth services, a benefit not available through traditional fee-for-service Medicare.
Under the proposed rule, Medicare Advantage enrollees can receive telehealth services from their homes, rather than from a healthcare facility.
MA plans have always been able to offer more telehealth services than are currently payable under original Medicare through supplemental benefits. The Medicare fee-for-service program telehealth benefit is narrowly defined and includes restrictions on where beneficiaries receiving care via telehealth can be located.
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ONC: Hospitals making strides on EHRs, interoperability, but work remains
By Mike Miliard
October 29, 2018 03:40 PM
"Hospitals engaged in all four interoperability domains – electronically sending, receiving, finding, and integrating – increased 41 percent since 2016," said National Coordinator for Health IT Donald Rucker, MD, seen speaking here at HIMSS18.
In 2014, just 78 percent of hospitals were able to send electronic patient information to other providers, and only 56 percent were able to receive it, according to American Hospital Association data. In 2017, those number had increased substantially to 88 percent and 74 percent, respectively.
WHY IT MATTERS
Those numbers were cited by National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Donald Rucker, MD, in a blog post, co-authored with ONC Director of Research and Evaluation Talisha Searcy, spotlighting the progress U.S. hospitals have made with regard to their IT and interoperability maturity levels.
Those numbers were cited by National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Donald Rucker, MD, in a blog post, co-authored with ONC Director of Research and Evaluation Talisha Searcy, spotlighting the progress U.S. hospitals have made with regard to their IT and interoperability maturity levels.
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Healthcare Takes Around 350 Days to Identify, Contain Data Breach
The healthcare industry had the second highest number of days to identify and contain a data breach, around 350 days, according to a recent study by The Ponemon Institute and IBM.
By Fred Donovan
October 25, 2018 - The healthcare industry had the second highest number of days to identify and contain a data breach, around 350 days, according to a recent study by The Ponemon Institute and IBM.
The healthcare industry was second only to the entertainment industry, which took 367 days. Financial services had the fewest number of days to identify and contain a data breach, 217 days.
Financial services had the highest frequency of data breaches, followed by services, and industrial and manufacturing. Healthcare was well down the list of industries in terms of frequency of data breaches.
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Health IT Roundup—IBM buys Red Hat for $34B; More acute care hospitals engaged in interoperability
by Evan Sweeney
Oct 29, 2018 3:09pm
…..
Health IT experts hope API rule meets expectations
Leaders of SMART on FHIR are hopeful that ONC’s pending rule on interoperability and APIs will including provisions that allow patients to obtain a complete copy of their EHR and allow widespread use of apps in healthcare.
SMART standards have already been used in Apple’s health app and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Blue Button 2.0 initiative. By using existing standards, providing flexibility to fill the gap between core data and other data elements, and standardizing APIs for apps, the three Boston Children’s Hospital experts said the rule could have huge implications for the industry.
“We are on the precipice of creating a national-scale apps model for health, based on an API that promotes interoperability and data exchange via substitutable apps,” they wrote. (Post)
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Athenahealth floats kickback carve-out that would allow physicians to pay for clinical data
by Evan Sweeney
Oct 29, 2018 2:05pm
Athenahealth is asking federal regulators to create a fraud exemption that would allow doctors to pay “fair market value” for patient data, creating a business case for interoperability.
Such an approach would establish “a true functioning market for the exchange of health information,” Greg Carey, director of government and regulatory affairs at Athenahealth, wrote in a letter (PDF) to Inspector General Daniel Levinson. Carey said the payments would be "nominal."
Responding to a request for information issued by the HHS Office of Inspector General in August seeking suggestions on how to reform the Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law, Carey argued that outdated fraud laws didn’t account for the value of data exchange. While other industries like finance pay for data, healthcare companies like Athenahealth are forced to shoulder the costs of secure, efficient data transfer that supports value-based care.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/nyu-langone-ramps-up-virtual-urgent-care-services-for-kids
NYU Langone ramps up virtual urgent care services for kids
Published October 29 2018, 7:28am EDT
New York City’s NYU Langone Health is increasing the availability of virtual urgent care services for children.
The expanded use of technology is aimed at children age 12 and older, enabling them and their parents to video chat with a physician without leaving home.
“We’ve been seeing adult patients for a little over a year now, and we’ve just started seeing pediatric patients,” says Paul Testa, MD, NYU Langone’s chief medical information officer. “There’s no vendor. We use our own doctors, our own health record and our own equipment.”
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IBM to buy Red Hat for $33B to catapult cloud efforts
Published October 29 2018, 4:46pm EDT
IBM’s $33 billion purchase of Red Hat—the world’s second-largest technology deal ever—is aimed at vaulting the company into the ranks of the top cloud software competitors.
The cash deal, IBM’s largest, boosts the company’s credentials overnight in the fast-growing and lucrative cloud market, and it gives it much-needed potential for real revenue growth. The 107-year-old computer-services giant, once synonymous with mainframe computing, has been slow to adopt cloud-related technologies and has had to play catch-up to market leaders Amazon.com and Microsoft in offering computing and other software and services over the internet.
“We’ve been reshaping IBM for this moment,” Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty says. “This is all about resetting the cloud landscape, and this is the inflection point to do it.”
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PNG minister touts 'e-health' as answer to medical shortfalls
8:36 pm on 29 October 2018
Papua New Guinea's embattled Health Minister says mobile technology is the answer to the country's health system woes.
Dr Puka Temu told PNG's EM TV that the opening up of telecommunications across PNG offers a new way of delivering health services.
He said a new 'e-health system' will help to address ongoing issues like shortage of health specialists at the district level.
"So gynaecologist here can communicate with Goilala (a rural district in Central Province) when the mother is having a difficult delivery," he explained.
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Enjoy!
David.
