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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Boots launches free online NHS repeat prescription service
Boots has developed a free online NHS repeat prescription service, in partnership with NHS Digital and NHS England.
Hanna Crouch – 12 June 2019
Launched in May, the service is available through the Boots app and the company’s website.
It uses technology from Wiggly-Amps Limited, a company which was acquired by Boots in January, and allows customers to directly order their repeat prescription from their GP record and have it sent to Boots for dispensing.
It gives patients the convenience of ordering repeat prescriptions from their mobiles, arranging collection from a store or having it delivered to their home for free.
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Special Report: Electronic Document Management
Electronic document management has been seen by many as providing a temporary stepping stone to full digitisation via an electronic patient record. But, as Maja Dragovic reports, some are finding that it can play a much more active long term role.
Johan Waktare is a consultant cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist, and he says his work hasn’t involved a piece of paper since 2013. In large part, that’s because Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has a full electronic patient record (EPR) in place. But it’s also because they use an electronic document management solution to manage pre-EPR documents and enable them to be easily called up.
“We took the view that we’re not going to have clinical staff accessing clinical notes after the 26 June 2013 and that was delivered. The EDM is fully integrated with EPR – you can call up historical records of a patient in the EPR and it all comes up.”
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June 13, 2019 / 10:29 PM
IBM, Walmart, Merck in blockchain collaboration with FDA
(Reuters) - IBM, Merck and Walmart have been chosen for a U.S. Food and Drug Administration pilot program that will explore using blockchain technology to improve the security of prescription drug supply and distribution.
The companies said they would work with consultancy KPMG to create a shared blockchain network that will allow real-time monitoring of products in the pharmaceutical supply chain.
The project has been authorized under the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) that was set up to increase regulatory oversight of counterfeit, stolen, contaminated or otherwise harmful drugs.
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Mary Meeker's 2019 Internet Trends report spotlights healthcare digitization
The digitization of the entire healthcare ecosystem is underway, the annual report shows, with consumer demand driving the trend.
Driven by consumer demand, the health care sector in the US is steadily digitizing, according to Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends report. While this trend may be most evident in the use of consumer tools, such as health wearables, digitization is underway across the entire healthcare ecosystem -- hospital administrators are updating their record-keeping systems, researchers have access to troves of new digital data and doctors are offering more data-driven, personalized forms of care.
Meeker, the Bond Capital founder and former Kleiner Perkins general partner, has tracked internet statistics and technology trends since 1995. The digitization of the healthcare industry, she notes, correlates with the rising cost of healthcare in the US -- a looming issue for consumers and the government. In the US, consumers not only have to contend with relatively high costs, compared to the rest of the world, but also relatively poor outcomes, according to some metrics.
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In metabolic syndrome, telemonitored exercise may improve health
Burdorf A, et al. Lancet Public Health. 2019;doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(19)30101-X.
Haufe S, et al. Lancet Public Health. 2019;doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(19)30075-1.
Haufe S, et al. Lancet Public Health. 2019;doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(19)30075-1.
June 13, 2019
The use of telemonitoring in exercise-based intervention initiatives for adults with metabolic syndrome may lead to reduced severity of the condition, according to findings published in The Lancet Public Health.
The telemonitoring intervention could be beneficial in improving mental health and work-related productivity and ability in employees with elevated risk for CVD and metabolic disease, researchers wrote.
Providing guidance and support
Sven Haufe, MSc, and colleagues investigated the effect of regular telemonitoring-supported physical activity on metabolic syndrome severity and work ability in participants from a Volkswagen factory in Germany.
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Variations in physician EHR documentation risk patient safety, cause inefficiencies
– 13 June, 2019
Differences between when and how physicians document information in the EHR may lead to inefficiencies such as documenting too much or too little of the patient's information, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
For the study, Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan researchers analyzed EHR data from 170,332 encounters led by 809 physicians from more than 200 healthcare practices. Additionally, researchers conducted interviews with a select group of 40 physicians to determine what EHR factors impact variation in documentation.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/digital-innovation-moving-slowly-in-healthcare-study-shows
Digital innovation moving slowly in healthcare, study shows
By Diana Manos
Published June 14 2019, 4:17pm EDT
A new study of healthcare innovation shows progress toward new approaches to care delivery could use a nudge.
The report, entitled, “Trends for Scaling Innovation in Health Care,” was based on a survey of 29 health system executives from 28 unique health systems, and found that while many health systems and their affiliated health plans name healthcare innovation as a top priority, two-thirds of the executives say innovation is coming along “very slowly.”
Additionally, fewer than half of responding systems have formal innovation departments, says the research, conducted by the Center for Connected Medicine—which is jointly operated by GE Healthcare, Nokia and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—and the Health Management Academy.
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House amendment strikes down unique patient identifier funding ban
Published June 14 2019, 12:04am EDT
The House of Representatives this week adopted an amendment to overturn a 20-year prohibition on using federal funding for a unique patient identifier.
The intent of the amendment is to address the widespread problem of misidentification. Correctly identifying patients and accurately matching their electronic health records as they are shared across healthcare organizations continues to be a major challenge for the industry—misidentification has resulted in medical errors and deaths, industry experts contend.
Current law inserted into every budget passed by Congress since 1999 has prevented the Department of Health and Human Services from spending funds on a unique patient identifier to help solve the problem.
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How to make the most of health data?
By Artur Olesch
June 13, 2019 01:34 AM
We still fail in medical data management and are not ready yet to convert data into knowledge, claimed the experts of the session “Health Anywhere, Anytime” organised this week at the HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Conference.
With the rise of sensors and trackers embedded in citizens’ lives, care providers and health systems can get a complete view of their patients. Voice-operated and user-friendly technologies also enable doctors to access new data sources. Nonetheless, we still fail in medical data management and are not ready yet to convert data into knowledge, claimed the experts of the session “Health Anywhere, Anytime” organised this week at the HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Conference.
“Patients are ready to take more responsibility and access their own data. But we have to guarantee transparency first. As a result, patients will trust technologies, and from this point, we will be able to improve patient outcomes,” pointed out Anne Werner Løhndorf, management consultant at NNIT.
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AI-powered clinical documentation boosts patient satisfaction and physician well-being
By Bill Siwicki
June 14, 2019 05:30 AM
With the new tech, Indiana group practice Community Health Network is aiming for more ambient physician experiences that leverage smarter, artificial intelligence-driven workflows.
M*Modal, a vendor of clinical documentation and speech understanding technologies, is collaborating with Indiana physician group practice Community Health Network with the aim of transforming the patient-physician experience while improving provider and clinician satisfaction and care quality.
WHAT HAPPENED
Community Physician Network, which employs more than 1,100 physicians and advanced practice providers, is working with M*Modal to make Epic EHR documentation faster and easier for physicians and providers, and to maximize face time with patients.
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AI in healthcare: separating myth from reality
By Mike Miliard
June 14, 2019 01:07 PM
At the HIMSS Machine Learning & AI event, Dr. Anthony Chang, chief intelligence and innovation officer at CHOC Children's, cleared up some common misconceptions.
BOSTON – The excitement around artificial intelligence is genuine. The promise and potential of what it can do for healthcare is very real. But there's still a lot of unrealistic expectation of what AI and machine learning will mean for care delivery, said Dr. Anthony Chang.
Chang, chief intelligence and innovation officer at Children's Hospital and Orange County, delivered the Day 2 keynote address at the HIMSS Machine Learning & AI for Healthcare event here in Boston.
There's already a lot going on with the technology in hospitals, as evidenced by the numerous case studies presented here these past two days. But Chang said the best is yet to come for AI in healthcare.
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FBI Warns Hackers Launching Phishing Attacks on ‘Secure’ Websites
Given the prevalence of hackers targeting healthcare with phishing attacks, the FBI alert around the use of ‘secure’ HTTPS in these cyberattacks should be added to employee security training.
June 12, 2019 - Hackers are launching phishing attacks using ‘secure’ https websites: a protocol designation that typically alerts users that a site is secure and web traffic is encrypted, according to a recent FBI public service announcement.
Web addresses beginning with HTTPS are meant to give users peace of mind that a website is private and secure. Traditionally, during cybersecurity training, users are taught to look for the https designation to ensure users can safely share data.
“Unfortunately, cyber criminals are banking on the public’s trust of ‘https’ and the lock icon,” according to the alert. “They are more frequently incorporating website certificates – third-party verification that a site is secure – when they send potential victims emails that imitate trustworthy companies or email contacts.”
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Why are physicians not sharing patient info? Lack of data sharing, privacy concerns and more
– 12 June, 2019
The most common reason physicians don't share patient data within their hospital or health system is because there is a lack of access to data sharing systems, according to a Philips survey.
In its fourth annual Future Health Index, Philips surveyed 15,000 individuals and more than 3,100 healthcare professionals in 15 countries to evaluate digital health technology's affect on patients' and providers' experience.
Around one-third of respondents said they share patient information electronically with other healthcare providers outside of their facilities. Eighty percent of healthcare professionals responded that they share patient data to others within their facilities.
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OIG: Medicare data could be used to ID abuse, neglect
Published June 13 2019, 12:05am EDT
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has a valuable information resource for identifying and addressing the potential abuse and neglect of Medicare beneficiaries.
That’s the contention of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General.
An OIG audit discovered 34,664 Medicare claims that contained diagnosis codes indicating the treatment of injuries potentially caused by abuse or neglect of Medicare beneficiaries.
“We estimated 30,754 of these Medicare claims were supported by medical records that contained evidence of potential abuse or neglect,” states OIG’s report. “We further estimated that, of the claims in our population associated with incidents of potential abuse or neglect, 2,574 were allegedly perpetrated by a healthcare worker, 3,330 were related to incidents that occurred in a medical facility, and 9,294 were related to incidents that were not reported to law enforcement.”
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HIT Think Why EHRs are flawed, and how they can be fixed
By David Lareau
Published June 13 2019, 5:53pm EDT
Electronic health records continue to get a bad rap—at times, justifiably so. The recent article Death by 1,000 clicks: Where electronic health systems went wrong has spurred new conversations about what can be done to fix EHRs, including making them more physician-friendly and efficient at driving safe, effective patient care.
One school of thought is to replace existing health IT systems with newer technology. For example, a recent Reaction Data report revealed that almost 40 percent of surveyed outpatient providers are looking to replace their EHR and other IT tools with solutions that offer better ease of use, more functionality and increased interoperability with other IT systems. An additional one-third of the surveyed providers indicated dissatisfaction with their current solution, but didn’t have plans to switch systems because of the expense and disruption to their practice.
Regardless of whether organizations choose to keep or replace their current IT solutions, it’s clear that physician dissatisfaction is high—and that, as an industry, it’s time to advance the dialogue and take action to fix our flawed EHRs where they hurt most.
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4 ways to protect your data from the dark web
By Drew Adamek
June 12, 2019
It’s much easier to remember your password if you use the same one across multiple platforms. And that’s probably why so many people keep using the same password despite being warned for years not to do so.
Password reuse remains one of the biggest cybersecurity risks on the radar of Chip Witt, head of product strategy for SpyCloud, an Austin, Texas-based company that alerts customers when employee or company assets have been compromised.
Witt gave a presentation on cybersecurity Tuesday at the AICPA ENGAGE 2019 conference in Las Vegas. He discussed the growing risks of password reuse and account takeover as well as how to keep credentials and data from being monetized on the “dark web” by cybercriminals.
“Password reuse is a really big problem,” he said in an interview before ENGAGE. “Once people find a good password, they’ll continue to reuse that password exactly, or variations of it. This is dangerous because the cybercriminal, once he has your password, can very easily access your accounts and the loyalty points, cash, and/or personally identifiable information within.”
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Patients who share their medical records with clinicians report higher quality care experiences
– 11 June, 2019
Eighty-two percent of patients who have access to their EHRs said they have greater personal experiences with healthcare they have received, according to a Philips report.
For its 2019 Future Health Index report, Philips surveyed 15,000 individuals and more than 3,100 healthcare providers across 15 countries about their opinions on EHRs and how technology impacts healthcare.
Four survey insights:
1. While 82 percent of respondents who have access to their digital medical records rate their care experiences as good, very good or excellent, only 66 percent of participants who do not have access to their EHRs rate their experiences the same.
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Healthcare organizations lack money, tools, talent to address biggest cybersecurity threats: survey
Jun 12, 2019 9:12am
Third-party vendor risk and medical devices are the biggest cybersecurity threats that keep healthcare IT security executives awake at night, according to a new survey.
However, the action needed to actually address these threats is lagging, the survey found.
Forty percent of healthcare security leaders said third-party risk is the threat that concerns them the most, according to a survey from Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity firm CynergisTek. The survey aimed to identify the greatest perceived threats and current challenges healthcare organizations face in cybersecurity and privacy.
Among emerging threat areas—5G, artificial intelligence, internet of things (IoT) and supply chain—more than 50% of healthcare executives said they were the most concerned about IoT.
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How necessity helped this St. Louis company merge telemedicine with the ICU
Jun 12, 2019 3:51pm
St. Louis-based telehealth company Advanced ICU Care was born of simple necessity: Two intensivists were asked to care for patients in two different intensive care units (ICUs) simultaneously—but those ICUs were on opposite sides of the city.
Thirteen years later, those two St. Louis hospitals remain clients of that company, which has been working spread the concept of the tele-ICU. And even just five years ago, CEO Lou Silverman said he was still starting prospective client meetings with, “What (the heck) is tele-ICU?”
In 2019, telehealth is playing an increasingly vital role in healthcare, and Silverman said the delineation between in-person and virtual healthcare—even in the most critical of care settings—is disappearing.
In 2019, telehealth is playing an increasingly vital role in healthcare, and Silverman said the delineation between in-person and virtual healthcare—even in the most critical of care settings—is disappearing.
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Healthcare network rolls out voice-enabled digital assistant across 1,500 practices
Jun 12, 2019 12:27pm
The use of voice-enabled digital assistants in healthcare continues to grow as hospitals and medical practices look to combat physician burnout as a result of increasing administrative workloads.
Add Unified Physician Management to the list of healthcare organizations giving voice technology to their physicians. Unified is rolling out a voice-enabled digital assistant, Suki, that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help doctors with medical charting during patient visits.
The tool is being rolled out across Unified's national network of more than 1,500 women’s health care providers in nine states and the District of Columbia. The goal, Unified executives said, is to use the AI-powered voice tool to enable clinicians to have more time with patients.
“Women’s health care is incredibly personal, and Suki helps providers to concentrate on providing exceptional care by lowering the barrier created by electronic health records (EHRs),” Matt Eakins, M.D., chief operating officer at Unified, said. “Suki not only helps our providers more accurately document the care they deliver but enhances clinician experience and helps us address provider burnout.”
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EHR optimization can stop common diseases in their tracks
June 12, 2019 12:20 PM
Many illnesses are easy to treat if caught in time. New EHR studies show how optimizing data can spot problems clinicians might overlook.
Early detection is a mantra in hospitals: Find a nascent condition before it can morph into something serious and you can alleviate suffering, improve care and save lives.
Symptoms can be hidden in plain sight or can be masked by other known illnesses. In these manners, thousands of patients a year fall through the cracks and become seriously ill.
WHAT HAPPENED
Two new early detection algorithms that integrate with electronic health record data are looking to make the odds more favorable.
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AMA develops new policies around physician use of AI
By Mike Miliard
June 12, 2019 02:50 PM
The group wants to advance the ability of augmented intelligence to enhance care, boost population health, drive value and improve physician satisfaction.
Delegates to the American Medical Association have endorsed a list of policy recommendations to ensure oversight and accountability for augmented intelligence and help guide its potential to enable efficiencies and improve patient and physician experiences.
WHY IT MATTERS
The AMA will advocate for "oversight and regulation of healthcare AI systems based on risk of harm and benefit," according to the newly approved policies.
The AMA will advocate for "oversight and regulation of healthcare AI systems based on risk of harm and benefit," according to the newly approved policies.
In addition, the AMA supports payment and coverage for AI systems, conditional with their compliance with "all appropriate federal and state laws and regulations" related to patient safety, privacy and security, practice and licensure laws, and more.
Effective AI systems should be informed by "real world workflow and human-centered design principles," said AMA officials. They should also:
- Enable physicians to prepare for and transition to new care delivery models;
- Support effective communication among patients, physicians and care teams;
- Integrate "clinical, administrative and population health management functions into workflow"; and
- Use feedback from end-users for iterative product improvement.
Additionally, the AMA specifically wants to advance "affordability and access to AI systems designed for small physician practices and patients and not limited to large practices and institutions."
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Accenture has a DARQ vision of healthcare's 'post-digital' era
By Mike Miliard
June 12, 2019 12:37 PM
The firm says hospitals and health systems should be preparing themselves to take advantage of distributed ledger technology, AI, augmented reality and quantum computing.
Distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain will soon be an "important part of healthcare payments and identity management" across healthcare, say Accenture researchers.
Leading-edge health systems are already making strides with innovative use cases involving artificial intelligence and blockchain, but a new report from Accenture spotlights a couple other innovations for which hospitals should be preparing.
WHY IT MATTERS
Accenture's report, Digital Health Tech Vision, highlights five trends set to shape health and care delivery in the years ahead, from consumerism to workforce development to cybersecurity. But perhaps most interesting is a new acronym that health IT professionals should be thinking about: DARQ.
Accenture's report, Digital Health Tech Vision, highlights five trends set to shape health and care delivery in the years ahead, from consumerism to workforce development to cybersecurity. But perhaps most interesting is a new acronym that health IT professionals should be thinking about: DARQ.
It stands for Distributed ledger technology, Artificial intelligence, extended Reality and Quantum computing. Each of those innovations is still in the early stages, but as they gain maturity and make inroads across the healthcare industry, they're set to transform the future, according to Accenture.
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Having Access To Medical Records Is Useless For Most Patients
June 7, 2019
I knew up front that it would be ugly. After two years of treatment, a chronically-ill patient like me generates a lot of records, and I had every reason to expect that they would be disorganized and dense.
Still, when I sat down to tackle the 600-odd PDF that Kaiser Permanente made available, I was pretty intimidated. Yeah, when I say this I can almost hear you thinking “well, duh!” but your warnings couldn’t prepare me emotionally for the document that I got.
In any event, this encounter with my personal data has convinced me that if CMS doesn’t change its strategy, pushing consumer engagement with their online medical record will prove to be a complete waste of time.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/atas-johnson-looks-to-dispel-the-7-myths-of-telehealth-adoption
ATA’s Johnson Looks to Dispel The 7 Myths of Telehealth Adoption
At Xtelligent Healthcare Media's Value-Based Summit on Telehealth last week in Atlanta, ATA CEO Ann Mond Johnson challenged providers to look beyond 7 inaccurate descriptions of telehealth and embrace connected care.
June 10, 2019 - Telehealth is slowly gaining a foothold in the US healthcare ecosystem, but it hasn’t taken that giant step forward that its supporters would like to see. And in Ann Mond Johnson’s opinion, it’s because connected care is getting a bad rap.
“It’s a very different world now,” the CEO of the American Telemedicine Association offered during last week’s Value-Based Care Summit on Telehealth in Atlanta. “And with all the technology available, I don’t think we’re executing it quite as well as we want.”
Johnson, who took the helm of the ATA last year and has been working to bring what had been a meandering organization back on track, delivered the Day 2 keynote at Xtelligent Healthcare Media’s second annual telehealth event with an eye to the future. That future, she said, will focus on “changing the story” from potential and promise to explaining why telehealth and mHealth should already be available to consumers and in every provider’s repertoire.
And that begins with dispelling a few myths.
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EHRs can help clinicians identify patients at-risk of diabetes
– 10 June, 2019
Health systems can improve their screening processes for patients at risk for type 2 diabetes by optimizing population health, clinical decision support and patient portal tools in the EHR, according to the American Medical Association.
To optimize the EHR to better identify individuals at risk for type 2 diabetes, the AMA recommends the following tips:
1. Use evidence-based screening protocol or guidelines to create reports for clinicians to track patients who are due for an abnormal glucose screening.
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AMIA calls on FDA to refine its AI regulatory framework
Published June 11 2019, 12:18am EDT
The American Medical Informatics Association wants the Food and Drug Administration to improve its conceptual approach to regulating medical devices that leverage self-updating artificial intelligence algorithms.
The FDA sees tremendous potential in healthcare for AI algorithms that continually evolve—called “adaptive” or “continuously learning” algorithms—that don’t need manual modification to incorporate learning or updates.
While AMIA supports an FDA discussion paper on the topic released in early April, the group is calling on the agency to make further refinements to the Proposed Regulatory Framework for Modifications to Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)-Based Software as a Medical Device (SaMD).
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HIT Think Why patient communications has become a privacy conundrum
Published June 11 2019, 5:15pm EDT
A scenario growing in frequency for physician practices and other healthcare organizations is the desire for patients to communicate with clinicians using the same tools as in everyday life. That translates to a preference for text messaging, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage or any other number of third-party applications that enable quick and efficient communication.
However, the convenience and ease of communication are also factors that give rise to a number of privacy and security concerns.
A first question can be whether such tools are permissible in healthcare. If they’re permissible, how can they be controlled? Where should agreements be created? Who is responsible for managing accounts? A multitude of other questions will cascade from there.
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Using artificial intelligence, speech recognition to optimize note taking
June 11, 2019 11:57 AM
A new AI service promises to improve physician performance by doing the typing for them.
With the combined technologies of two companies, note taking for obstetrics is about to become a lot more automated, streamlined and personal.
What happened?
Unified, a large technology and services provider for OB/GYN practices, and Suki, an artificial intelligence-powered medical assistant for clinicians, are pairing up to roll out a note taking platform that uses voice commands and speech recognition.
As a doctor uses the service more, the AI will understand a clinician’s vocabulary, style and habits and will be able to document care more precisely while taking up less human time, the companies explained. The goal of the service is to generate higher quality clinical data resulting in a medical action plan all through voice recognition and AI-interpreted commands.
Unified notes that for every hour spent with a patient, a clinician spends two hours documenting the interaction and developing a care plan.
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AI can’t replace doctors. But it can make them better.
A machine can collate environmental data, genetic data, and patient history way better than I can.
by Rahul Parikh
Oct 23, 2018
Several years ago Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley investor, wrote a provocative article titled “Do We Need Doctors or Algorithms?” Khosla argued that doctors were no match for artificial intelligence. Doctors banter with patients, gather a few symptoms, hunt around the body for clues, and send the patient off with a prescription. This sometimes (accidentally, maybe) leads to the correct treatment, but doctors are acting on only a fraction of the available information. An algorithm, he wrote, could do better.
I’m a pediatric and adolescent physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, where entrepreneurs like Khosla have been knocking on the doors of doctors for years with their pilot technologies and software and hardware. I can say with some authority that Khosla’s is the voice of a savvy outsider who knows what he knows—which isn’t health care.
Yes, AI could help us diagnose and treat disease. It can collate and serve up broad swaths of data in a clear and concise way, cutting down on the imprecise judgments that doctors make because of the pressures and complexity of our practices. There’s no doubt that for certain doctors, whose work is highly focused on diagnosis (radiologists or pathologists, for example), that breakthrough may prove an existential threat. A decade ago, for example, researchers showed that AI was as good as radiologists at detecting breast cancer.
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Tech Tuesday: Phishing Emails By Hackers Cost Americans Over $675 Million Dollars & It’s Only Getting Worse
Tech Tuesday: Phishing Emails By Hackers Cost Americans Over $675 Million Dollars & It’s Only Getting Worse
By: Kip Kirchberg, Cyber Security Specialist
In 2018 over a billion dollars were lost to email phishing campaigns worldwide.The FBI estimates that criminals made off with over $675 million from phishing campaigns that targeted US based businesses. As you can imagine, with this type of payday, Hackers are working very hard everyday to find new ways to trick employees into giving Hackers their credentials or other sensitive information.
Email Phishing is a type of cyber-attack that utilizes email as a weapon to infiltrate a company’s network or computer system. The primary goal of the attacker is to get the recipient to believe that the message is something they want or need.
For instance, a Hacker could be disguising an email so that it appears to be coming from an internal employee or resource. The Hacker would then use the email account to pose as an internal employee and communicate in a way that is convincing to the receiving party.
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Consumers favor mobile health when complemented by office visits
Author Tony Abraham @TonyAbraham
Published June 6, 2019
Dive Brief:
- A new survey of more than 550 healthcare consumers illustrates a varied digital health market where adoption rates are just as wide-ranging as the services and products. Conducted in April by IoT firm SOTI, the survey found most patients (75%) feel care is made more convenient by mobile technologies, which include everything from scheduling apps to telehealth services.
- Consumers use mobile apps for scheduling appointments (70%), viewing lab results (52%) and requesting prescriptions (40%). Of those surveyed, 57% favored app-based communication over a phone call.
- Still, most patients (67%) prefer physician face-time inside an office over videoconferencing options. Telehealth's slow-moving adoption rate has been a frustration for payers, many of which are enthusiastic about the technology's cost-savings potential.
Dive Insight:
According to SOTI, more than half of U.S. physicians (57%) report offering patients the ability to use mobile apps to schedule appointments, access medical records and view lab results, among other services. Payers are increasingly offering telehealth benefits, which is rapidly driving up physician telehealth offerings but not quite catching on with patients.
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VA awards $140M to Cerner for EHR support: 3 notes
The Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of EHR Modernization expanded its contract with Cerner with a $139.9 million task order aimed at increasing EHR interface support, GovConWire reports.
Three notes:
1. The task order falls under the VA and Cerner's $16 billion, 10-year contract formed in 2018 to develop and deploy a new EHR system across its care network.
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NSA Joins Call to Patch RDP Flaw, Researcher Demos Windows Exploit
A recently released proof-of-concept demonstrates how a hacker can infect a vulnerable system in less than a minute through the BlueKeep RDP flaw, while NSA joins calls to patch or disable RDP.
June 07, 2019 - The National Security Agency has joined Microsoft and security researchers in calling on organizations to patch the BlueKeep flaw impacting legacy Windows devices that, if exploited, could potentially lead to another cyberattack similar to WannaCry.
Microsoft discovered a critical flaw in the remote desktop protocol on its Windows 2007, Server 2008, XP, and 2003 versions that could allow a hacker to remotely execute the RDP without authorization. The fear is that if the vulnerability is exploited, a hacker could send tailored requests and infect systems with malware able to spread to all vulnerable devices across the network.
In response, the tech giant issued a rare legacy patch for those platforms. However, after reports determined that 1 million devices were still unpatched against the vulnerability, Microsoft issued another warning: the current landscape is following the timeline that led to WannaCry.
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Report sets priorities for bringing AI to radiology, clinical practice
By Fred Bazzoli
Published June 10 2019, 12:06am EDT
A new report identifies research priorities to leverage advanced computing technologies to bring artificial intelligence to clinical practice.
The report, recently published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, seeks to provide a roadmap for translational research on AI in medical imaging.
The new report includes contributions from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering—part of the National Institutes of Health—as well as key radiological professional organizations, including the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research, the American College of Radiology and the Radiological Society of North America.
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HIT Think How to weather the storm when disaster hits home
Published June 10 2019, 4:59pm EDT
With hurricane season approaching and myriad other potential threats looming, health systems and hospitals need to be prepared for the worst.
George Carion, chief technology officer at Cedars-Sinai Health System, shares strategies in this Q&A. Cedars-Sinai was named a top 10 CHIME HealthCare’s Most Wired recipient in 2018 and received a special shout-out for their disaster recovery program.
What makes a strong disaster recovery program?
It is not just one thing; there are lots of things. The foundational piece is ensuring your technology infrastructure is resilient. A hospital can spend a lot of time and effort creating an application disaster recovery (DR) plan when nine times out of 10, its infrastructure technology that gets you. You’ll find yourself falling back to a disaster plan because of a hardware problem, but if you don’t have solid infrastructure, your disaster plan will probably fail. Bad infrastructure architecture can defeat the best DR plans.
It is not just one thing; there are lots of things. The foundational piece is ensuring your technology infrastructure is resilient. A hospital can spend a lot of time and effort creating an application disaster recovery (DR) plan when nine times out of 10, its infrastructure technology that gets you. You’ll find yourself falling back to a disaster plan because of a hardware problem, but if you don’t have solid infrastructure, your disaster plan will probably fail. Bad infrastructure architecture can defeat the best DR plans.
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As cybersecurity threats change, so must hospitals
June 07, 2019 11:28 AM
A new assessment of cybersecurity threats highlights consumers’ growing role and predicts things will get worse before they get better.
Never before has the healthcare industry been so vulnerable on so many fronts. As consumers interact with online health data and even create their own, hospitals both need to cater to a larger connected presence as well as provide a larger attack surface on the internet.
What happened?
Many machines run legacy software, including operating systems that are at or near the end of their lives. And even as consumers directly acknowledge these fears and claim some responsibility in protecting their data, they admit to knowing little about the state of their health data or their rights to it.
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45% Health CISOs Faced Cyberattacks Focused on Destroying Data
Carbon Black’s health cybersecurity report finds leading health CISOs are mostly concerned with compliance, while experiencing an increase in destructive, sophisticated cyberattacks.
June 10, 2019 - The healthcare sector’s leading chief information security officers have seen an increase in the sophistication of cyberattacks, with 45 percent of surveyed leaders experiencing an attack with a primary focus of data destruction in the past year, according to a recent Carbon Black report on the state of healthcare cybersecurity.
The security firm surveyed 20 CISOs from leading healthcare organizations to gain insights into the sector’s threat landscape and how hackers have evolved their attack methods.
Eighty-three percent of the surveyed CISOs saw an increase in the number of cyberattacks in the past year, with 66 percent finding those attacks have increased in sophistication. Along with the attempts to destroy data, two-thirds were targeted by ransomware.
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CISOs report cyberattacks on the rise in healthcare
By Nathan Eddy
June 10, 2019 12:08 PM
According to a new study by Carbon Black, two thirds of surveyed healthcare organizations said cyberattacks have become more sophisticated over the past year.
The vast majority of healthcare organizations said they have seen an increase in cyberattacks over the past year, according to a new survey of 20 chief information security officers.
What happened?
The study, conducted by cybersecurity technology vendor Carbon Black, found two thirds of surveyed healthcare organizations said cyberattacks have become more sophisticated over the past year – the same percentage said they were targeted by a ransomware attack during the past year.
Nearly half (45 percent) of surveyed healthcare organizations said they have encountered attacks over the past year where the primary motivation was destruction of data.
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We're launching Digital Health Pro — here's how to access insights from healthcare's biggest decision-makers
Jun. 4, 2019, 9:33 AM
Business Insider Intelligence
Digital disruption is shaking healthcare as consumers gain greater control over how they access care, personnel shortages stress health systems, and fast-developing technologies open up new care opportunities. As just one example of the coming challenges, US providers are forecasted to face a collective shortage of about 500,000 home health aides, 100,000 nursing assistants, and 29,000 nurse practitioners by 2025.
To help payers, providers, and technologies companies navigate this complex and massive shift before it's too late, Business Insider is launching Digital Health Pro. Digital Health Pro gives industry leaders an edge with access to news, expert analysis, and a community of the most important decision-makers shaping the future healthcare. Here's a look at the value you'll get as a Digital Health Pro member:
Note: It costs heaps so you want an expense account.
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Nearly 4 in 5 CFOs Plan to Invest More in Digital Transformation
Almost 70% of CFOs expect to increase investments in digital transformation by more than 20% at the end of Q1 2020, according to a recent Black Book survey.
Seventy-nine percent of health system CFOs and 89% of senior finance officers will increase investments in digital transformation by the end of next year, according to a Black Book survey released Friday.
Of health systems with over 150 beds, 28% report that they are behind other provider organizations in their market regarding digital transformation offerings, with 19% indicating that they are equal to the competition.
The primary drivers for financial digital transformation in health systems are reducing the cost of care, improving care coordination, and preparing value-based care payments, according to Black Book.
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The Business of Health Care Depends on Exploiting Doctors and Nurses
One resource seems infinite and free: the professionalism of caregivers.
By Danielle Ofri
Dr. Ofri practices at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
- June 8, 2019
You are at your daughter’s recital and you get a call that your elderly patient’s son needs to talk to you urgently. A colleague has a family emergency and the hospital needs you to work a double shift. Your patient’s M.R.I. isn’t covered and the only option is for you to call the insurance company and argue it out. You’re only allotted 15 minutes for a visit, but your patient’s medical needs require 45.
These quandaries are standard issue for doctors and nurses. Luckily, the response is usually standard issue as well: An overwhelming majority do the right thing for their patients, even at a high personal cost.
It is true that health care has become corporatized to an almost unrecognizable degree. But it is also true that most clinicians remain committed to the ethics that brought them into the field in the first place. This makes the hospital an inspiring place to work.
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Weekly News Recap
- A breach of American Medical Collection Agency exposes the information of 19 million of patients of national lab companies LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics
- The six former National Coordinators express their support for the proposed interoperability rules of ONC/CMS
- CVS announces plans to reconfigure 20% of each drugstore’s space into HealthHubs that will offer health and wellness services as well as kiosks and digital health tools
- A KLAS report on newly developed small-hospital inpatient EHRS from Athenahealth, EClinicalWorks, Epic, and Meditech finds that only Meditech has brought sites live
- Vendor members of the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association raise “significant concerns” about proposed federal rules covering interoperability
- Politico details problems with the implementation of Epic in Denmark’s Copenhagen region
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Robots/ageing Japan: I, carebot
Robots will not rule the world, but they will care for rulers and the ruled after they retire. A cyborg revolution in the field of elderly care has already started. In Disney’s film Big Hero 6, an inflatable robot named Baymax provides medical care. This personal companion based in San Fransokyo, a San Francisco-Tokyo hybrid, is edging closer to becoming a reality.
Japan has the most rapidly ageing population in the world. Low birth rates have continued for three decades. Almost a third of the population is over 65. To help look after them, Japan needs to increase the number of care workers almost sevenfold over the next decade from the current 1.5m. Paid carers would then constitute over than a 10th of the workforce
Problems have been made worse by employee shortages. Unemployment, at 2.3 per cent, is the lowest in decades. Government moves to fill vacancies with foreign workers have not always succeeded. Cultural and language barriers are high. Immigration is controversial politically.
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Enjoy!
David.
