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.
Toby Cosgrove, former president and CEO of the US’s Cleveland Clinic turned Google health and care advisor, said that heavy investment in clinical IT systems safeguarded EPR suppliers against any hypothetical offering put forward by Google, IBM and other major software firms.
Instead, Cosgrove said Google was focusing its attention on where it could apply its current strengths within the healthcare system, particularly its search engine.
Speaking at the Intelligent Health conference in Basel in 12 September, Cosgrove said: “There’s not been discussions going on, with IBM and Google, around whether or not they should do a new electronic medical record.
“Quite frankly I think it’s too late because across world, everyone is invested heavily in their EMR systems – both in the cost of equipment and training of people who use them.
The human genome is an extraordinary thing. It is the blueprint for how we come into existence, live and experience the world, and ultimately die. And each genome is unique – your personal manual for your life on earth. It contains vast quantities of information, each one with enough data to fill a computer, containing information about us that we could not have dreamed of deciphering even thirty years ago.
It is this combination of individuality and richness of data that makes genomics so powerful. By understanding the genome, on both an individual and population level, we can begin to unlock some of the fundamental questions about our health. From predicting risk of disease, to diagnosing illness before symptoms occur, to tailoring treatments to individual patients, genomics opens up huge opportunities to change the way we think about illness and treatment. Put simply, the future of personalised healthcare lies in the genome.
Speaking at the Intelligent Health conference in Basel, Switzerland, Dr Peter Lee discussed how machine learning models for consumer-facing translation products were being reconfigured into ‘intelligent scribes’ for healthcare professionals.
He labelled this a “beautiful concept” that had been enabled by the “very rapidly improving fidelity” of machine learning models.
Speaking on 11 September, Dr Lee said: “There have been startling advances in natural language processing…We have been tuning these models that are commercial natural language processing and machine learning translation products for biomedical and healthcare applications.
As these boomers age, they want to do so actively, gracefully and independently. Technology is being viewed as the big disruptor that will allow them to achieve those goals. And that’s presenting a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs developing these types of products.
by Ryan Smith 11 Sep 2019
Annual global cyber losses are expected to hit US$6 trillion by 2021, with cybersecurity spending projected to exceed a total of US$1 trillion for the five years leading up to 2021, according to a new report from Aon quoting statistics from Cybersecurity Ventures.
While the immediate costs of a cyberattack can be significant, Aon’s report suggested that damage to a business’s reputation could cost just as much or even more in the long term.
“The reputational crisis resulting from an attack can erode a company’s market value, destroy brand loyalty, limit companies’ digital transformation efforts and even lead to a credit-rating downgrade,” Aon said. “An effective cyber resilience strategy can help mitigate both immediate and long-term financial losses.”
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HIT Think
How organizations need to respond to the phishing epidemic
September 13, 2019, 3:45 p.m. EDT
Since at least the beginning of the summer, it seems as though no day can go by without another phishing incident being reported by a healthcare entity. The reports are almost always the same, too.
After some period of time (usually not the same day), unauthorized activity will be found in the email account of one or more employee. A forensic analysis will be conducted that cannot conclusively determine what, if any, patient information or other data were accessed.
Out of an abundance of caution though, a breach notification is provided to enable potentially impacted individuals to monitor accounts in the event of suspicious activity, with the entity sometimes covering the cost of such monitoring.
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Report: Providers need strategy for disruptive digital health tech
September 13, 2019, 5:34 a.m. EDT
If healthcare organizations want to succeed in an environment of digital transformation, they must bring about participatory health.
That shift will require providers to be grounded in patient engagement and patient-centered care—by being “on-demand, connected and data-driven.”
That’s the contention of a
new report from the American Hospital Association’s Center for Health Innovation, and EY, which examines how digital health technologies are shifting the care location to anywhere, anytime and the care model to preventive, personalized and participatory.
“To avoid being on the wrong side of this emerging and disruptive trend, providers will need an appetite for ambitious transformation and the will to tackle hard choices around the legacy organization—where to divest, revitalize or pursue innovation,” according to the report.
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The benefit of the shared care plan is that a patient’s care plans will be consistent if they move within the region, and new clinicians involved in that patient’s care can view and edit the plans.
Electronic shared care plans live across NZ’s South Island
September 13, 2019 03:52 AM
A suite of electronic shared care plans is being rolled out across New Zealand’s South Island, with more than 10,000 active plans now available via the HealthOne and Health Connect South portals.
Personalised care plans, acute plans and advance care plans make up the suite. They are the first documents that both HealthOne and Health Connect South users have the ability to create, edit and read.
The electronic plans were first introduced in Canterbury in 2014 and have been going live across the South Island.
“As DHBs moved to Health Connect South, that gave them access to the plans and they started picking them up and using them themselves,” said Sonya Morice, regional IS portfolio manager, South Island information services SLA.
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The platform, Critical Care Suite, developed in partnership with UC San Francisco and powered by GE's Edison AI technology, can help radiologists prioritize cases involving collapsed lungs.
FDA clears GE Healthcare's AI platform for X-ray scans
September 13, 2019 12:09 PM
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given clearance to suite of of artificial intelligence algorithms embedded on a mobile X-ray device from GE Healthcare.
WHY IT MATTERS
When a patient is scanned on a device with Critical Care Suite, the platform provides triage notifications that are then sent to PACS systems upon transfer of the original diagnostic image.
The suite also enables PACS worklist prioritization, and offers an on-device notification to the technologist – the aim is to drastically cut the average review time, which currently takes up to eight hours.
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Health Plan Use Of Wearables Data Will Come With New Challenges
September 13, 2019
In recent times, health plans have taken an interest in integrating wearables into their wellness efforts. For now, most are sticking to programs which encourage consumers to use them independently, but that could change as insurers find ways to take direct advantage of the monitoring data themselves.
Depending on how health insurers handle wearables data, however, these efforts come with challenges of their own, according to a
letter appearing in the
Journal of the American Medical Association .
As things stand, health plans are mostly working to make wearables devices more accessible to their beneficiaries. One typical example of current wearables programs comes from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which announced in August that it had
partnered with wearables giant Fitbit to offer discounts on its wearables. This offer comes as part of a larger wellness initiative known as Blue365.
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De-identified patient data: Treasure trove for research or privacy nightmare?
Jackie Drees – 12 September, 2019
EHR vendors Epic and Cerner have each recently unveiled initiatives that aim to propel the use of de-identified patient data for medical research.
Last month, Epic CEO Judy Faulkner
announced the EHR giant's new program called Cosmos, which is designed to mine data from millions of patient medical records at various health systems across the country in support of treatment research.
Currently, Cosmos collects de-identified patient data from 8 million individuals at nine health systems. An additional 31 healthcare organizations have pledged to participate in the program, which will bring the total anticipated number of included records to 25 million in the next few months.
Cerner
partnered with the Duke Clinical Research Institute in August to pilot the Cerner Learning Health Network, which aims to automate data collection and expand researchers' access to patient health data. At the Durham, N.C.-based research institute, Duke researchers will use Cerner's network to analyze the use and impact of proven therapies for cardiovascular disease.
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ONC Ponies Up Close to $2M for Healthcare Interoperability Work
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has awarded close to $2 million to two organizations in order to fund their work in improving healthcare interoperability.
September 11, 2019 - The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
has awarded close to $2 million to two organizations in order to fund their work in improving healthcare interoperability.
The grants are being made under the Leading Edge Acceleration Projects in Health Information Technology (LEAP in Health IT) program, which is designed to advanced the development and use of interoperable health IT.
The two organizations receiving funding this year are the San Diego Regional Health Information Exchange (HIE) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin).
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HIT Think
How responsible are cloud platforms for data security?
September 12, 2019, 3:46 p.m. EDT
These days, just about every software platform or app available has some kind of cloud functionality. They might host your data in the cloud, give you cross-platform access to your account, or enable you to upload and download files anywhere.
This is remarkably convenient, and a major breakthrough for productivity and communication in the workplace, but it also comes with its share of vulnerabilities. A security flaw could make your data available to someone with malicious intentions.
Cloud security is a complex topic that comprises many different considerations, including the physical integrity of the data center where your data is held and the coding of the software that allows you to access it. A trustworthy cloud developer should take precautions and improve cloud security the best it can—but how responsible should the developer be for ensuring the integrity of their system?
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Healthcare providers need hackers’ perspective on vulnerabilities
September 12, 2019, 3:26 p.m. EDT
Many healthcare organizations have an employee fully or partially responsible for overseeing data security protection.
Small organizations may have a person with some level of cyber experience who gets the job, but it rarely is on a full-time basis. Larger providers may have several persons protecting the enterprise with tasks such as doing penetration tests and automated scans, educating employees about cyber security. They’re likely working under the supervision of a chief information security officer and that’s a pretty good situation, says Wesley McGrew, a computer scientist and ethical hacker at HORNE Cyber, a cybersecurity service.
But it won’t be good enough because the hackers are better.
The goal for providers should be to identify vulnerabilities that would be an entry for an attack and fix what can be fixed—but even that still won’t be enough, McGrew contends.
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Four precision medicine experts – a groundbreaking provider organization and three precision medicine technology vendors – offer healthcare CIOs and other leaders their expertise for getting started with the nascent area of medicine.
Implementation best practices: The best approaches to precision medicine
September 11, 2019 12:38 PM
Precision medicine is just starting to gain ground in the healthcare industry. Most patients have yet to have medical care designed to enhance effectiveness or therapeutic value for select groups of patients, especially by utilizing genetic or molecular profiling.
But some forward-looking healthcare provider organizations have started using precision medicine in their day-to-day operations. And the number of technology vendors with precision medicine offerings is growing.
Precision medicine is indeed the future of medicine overall. And as a result, it is time for all healthcare provider organizations to start thinking about how they can incorporate the high-tech offering.
Here, executives from precision medicine groundbreaking provider organization NorthShore University HealthSystem and precision medicine technology vendors 2bPrecise, Orion Health and Translational Software offer healthcare CIOs and other leaders and IT workers key best practices and tips for implementing precision medicine technologies.
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But French website Doctissimo denies sharing sensitive data with third parties.
Privacy International report claims European websites sell mental health information to advertisers and fail to meet GDPR
September 11, 2019 05:55 AM
A new study by the charity Privacy International (PI) claims that popular health websites in Europe routinely share users’ mental health information with advertisers, data brokers and large tech companies.
The charity analysed more than 136 popular web pages related to depression in Germany, France and the UK, using the open-source tool webxray to identify companies that collect user data.
According to the report,
"Your Mental Health for Sale," 97.78% of the web pages analysed contained a third-party element such as third-party cookies, JavaScript or an image hosted by a third-party server.
The investigation found many of the web pages enabled cookies that enabled targeting advertising from large companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.
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The voluntary recommendations from the industry group, which aim to build consumer trust in companies that handle health and wellness data, are meant to supplement, not supplant, existing legal requirements, says CTA.
Consumer Technology Association publishes new health data privacy guidelines
September 12, 2019 03:39 PM
Companies that handle consumer health and wellness data have a new set of industry-developed privacy guidelines with which to consult.
WHY IT MATTERS
The
voluntary guidelines , drafted by members of the Consumer Technology Association, are meant as a baseline framework to help promote consumer trust in tech companies that handle personal health and wellness data.
The recommendations, which allow for flexibility on how companies can implement them, suggest that vendors be as open and transparent as possible about the personal health information they collect and why, and think carefully about how they put that data to use.
The guidelines also suggest that companies make it easier for consumers to access and control the sharing of their health information, and give them convenient means to do so. They should also build robust security protections into their technology, says CTA, and be accountable for their promises and practices.
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More than 100 organisations from the NHS, academia, charities, and tech and pharma companies are involved in the initiative.
UK to explore use of health data for research and innovation at scale with launch of seven hubs
September 12, 2019 07:34 AM
The UK is moving one step closer to creating an infrastructure for the use of health-related data at scale with the launch of seven centres announced this week.
Led by Health Data Research UK and part of a four-year, £37.5m investment from the government through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, these hubs will, among others, seek to transform the way cancer data is used and expand opportunities for patients to participate in clinical trials.
They were selected in an open competition by an independent panel, after being examined against criteria including their potential for impact, and over 100 organisations from the NHS, academia, charities, tech and pharma companies are involved.
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Researchers used open source tech from IBM Watson to build an AI model that would ingest clinical data from de-identified sepsis patient EHR data, then used it to predict patient mortality during hospitalization and during the 90 days following discharge.
Geisinger, IBM develop new predictive algorithm to detect sepsis risk
September 12, 2019 10:56 AM
Geisinger and IBM this week announced this week that they've co-created a new predictive model to help clinicians flag sepsis risk using data from the integrated health system's electronic health record.
WHY IT MATTERS
Dr. Shravan Kethireddy led a team of scientists to create a new model based on EHR data. Partnering with the IBM Data Science and AI Elite teams, researchers assembled a six-person team to develop a model to predict sepsis mortality as well as a tool to keep the team on top of the latest sepsis research.
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Florida Hospital Settles With HHS Over Patient Medical Record Access Problems
September 12, 2019
As I’ve noted before, it’s harder for patients to access their medical records then you might think. While providers are bound by both HIPAA and state laws on how to handle medical record requests, as a patient I can tell you that many providers do at most the bare minimum to comply.
In fact, as I
shared previously, some organizations don’t even pretend that they take such requests seriously. I often cite the time when I asked a DC-area hospital for my records and was told that I would have to wait three months, even though all they had to do was print it off from their EMR. Because I knew who to call, I was able to get things turned around far more quickly, but for many patients, it never gets easier.
Given my experiences, I was very happy to read that the HHS Office for Civil Rights had recently
settled the first case under its Right of Access initiative, an effort focused on “vigorously” enforcing the rights of patients to get copies of their medical records promptly and without facing excessive charges.
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Separating hype from reality in health tech
Tech companies trying to disrupt the health care system still have a long way to go.
Why it matters: Splashy health tech announcements are everywhere, but many are more hype than reality, according to a poll conducted for this column.
By the numbers: 70% of the people we surveyed say they’ve used the internet to research symptoms or learn more about health conditions. And 51% use apps or other tech tools to track their sleep, fitness or diet.
· But as people’s needs shift from personal information-gathering into the formal health care system, their tech usage begins to fall.
· Only 44% have accessed their medical records online, and fewer than 25% have used the internet to manage chronic conditions, mental health, or their health care spending.
Yes, but: Across the board, young people are more likely to go online for some part of their health care needs.
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Mayo Clinic, Google partner to use AI, patient data to catapult research
September 11, 2019, 1:52 a.m. EDT
Google Cloud and Mayo Clinic are working together to improve patient outcomes, transform clinician experiences, support clinical research and revolutionize healthcare delivery.
Google brings its cloud platform and artificial intelligence capabilities, while Mayo brings its clinical expertise and a strategy to advance the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
“When selecting a technology partner, Mayo was looking for an organization with the engineering talent, focus and cloud technology to collaborate with us on a shared vision to deliver digital healthcare innovation at a global scale,” says Christopher Ross, Mayo’s CIO.
In addition to building its data platform on Google Cloud, Mayo’s physician leaders are partnering with Google to create machine-learning models for serious and complex diseases.
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6 biggest healthcare security threats for 2020
Healthcare continues to be a popular target for ransomware, cryptomining, data theft, phishing, and insider threats.
Senior Editor, CSO | Sep 11, 2019 3:00 am PDT
Consumers are more worried now about their protected health information (PHI) being compromised, thanks to high-profile breaches like Anthem and Allscripts . The recent RSA Data Privacy & Security Survey 2019 asked nearly 6,400 consumers in Europe and the US how they felt about the security of their data. It showed that 61% of the respondents were concerned about their medical data being compromised.
They have good reason to be concerned. Healthcare as an industry continues to be a prime target for hackers, and there is a significant risk from internal threats, too.
Why healthcare is a target for hackers
Healthcare organizations tend to have a few attributes that make them attractive targets for attackers. A key reason is the number of different systems that are not patched regularly. “Some of them are embedded systems that, due to the way the manufacturer has created them, can’t be easily patched. If the healthcare IT department were to do so, it would cause significant problems with the way the vendor can support them,” says Perry Carpenter, chief evangelist and strategy officer at KnowBe4.
The critical nature of what healthcare organizations do puts them on the radar of attackers. Health data is a valuable commodity in the cybercriminal world, and that makes it a target for theft. Because of what’s at stake—the well-being of patients—healthcare organizations are more likely to pay ransomware demands.
What follows are the five biggest healthcare security threats for the year ahead.
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'Siri, how's the research going?' Apple launches new app to study health
Sep 11, 2019 11:18am
The Apple Watch received
FDA clearance last year for its electrocardiogram feature, officially classifying it as a medical device capable of alerting its user to abnormal heart rhythms.
“With the Apple Heart Study, we found that we could positively impact medical research in ways that help patients today and that make contributions that will benefit future generations,” Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “Today’s announcement carries our commitment to health even further by engaging with participants on a larger scale than ever before.”
A University of California San Francisco
study assessing the Apple Watch’s ability to predict irregular heartbeats poured some cold water on the capabilities of the technology. The study found that the Apple Watch paired with an algorithm designed to detect atrial fibrillation performed well among sedentary patients undergoing a medical procedure. But among an ambulatory group of more than 1,600 participants, the watch and algorithm were just 68% accurate.
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Apple’s new Research app to serve as platform for three medical studies
September 11, 2019, 1:43 a.m. EDT
Several major academic and healthcare institutions are partnering with Apple to leverage a new app for medical research intended to reach more participants than has previously been possible.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant announced on Tuesday that three medical studies will be available on Apple’s Research app later this year as a free download in the App Store.
“The studies will be available on the new Research app, which democratizes how medical research is conducted by bringing together academic medical institutions, healthcare organizations and the Apple products customers already make a part of their everyday life,” states the announcement. “Participants will contribute to potential medical discoveries and help create the next generation of innovative health products.”
The company calls these three separate studies “unprecedented” and says they will examine factors that impact hearing, heart health and mobility, as well as women’s health.
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Apple launching studies testing whether Apple Watch can monitor hearing, mobility, and women’s health
September 10, 2019
S AN FRANCISCO — Apple (
AAPL ) on Tuesday announced that it’s
launching three research studies that will assess the Apple Watch’s capabilities in monitoring women’s medical conditions, hearing health, and mobility signals like heart rate and walking pace.
It’s the latest sign of Apple’s rising profile and ambition as a player in medical research — centered around a consumer gadget that has yet to demonstrate that it offers widespread health benefits for individuals or the population at large.
Apple will partner on the studies with the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, as well as leading academic medical institutions including the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and the University of Michigan.
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The Senate can save lives by removing ban on unique patient identifier
By Wylecia Wiggs Harris and Marc Probst, Opinion Contributors — 09/11/19 08:45 AM EDT
These situations may have been avoided had patients been accurately identified and matched with their records. The U.S. Senate has an unprecedented opportunity to make that happen when members vote on Senate Fiscal Year 2020 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Appropriations bill. In June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment that would remove a ban that has stifled efforts to establish a nationwide unique patient identifier. Now, it is up to the U.S. Senate to move this issue forward by rejecting inclusion of outdated rider language in their appropriations bill that prohibits the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from spending any federal dollars to promulgate or adopt a national patient identifier.
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Providers Use Automated Deep Learning to Develop Diagnostic Models
Providers with no coding expertise used automated deep learning models to develop algorithms that successfully performed clinical classification tasks.
September 09, 2019 - Using automated deep learning tools, physicians with no coding experience were able to develop medical image diagnostic classifiers, showing that automated deep learning is a viable way to increase the accessibility of advanced analytics in healthcare, according to a
study published in the
Lancet Digital Health .
Deep learning models have the potential to transform healthcare by increasing diagnostic accuracy and streamlining processes. However, in order to train these models, providers need to have specific technical expertise and mathematical knowledge, proficiencies that are still rare in the medical field.
“Because programming is not a common skill among healthcare professionals, automated deep learning is a potentially promising platform to support the dissemination of deep learning application development in healthcare and medical sciences,” researchers said. “Yet, the extent to which people without coding experience can replicate trained deep learning engineers’ performance with the help of automated deep learning remains unclear.”
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AMA Supports Remote Patient Monitoring, Telehealth in 2020 CPT Codes
The American Medical Association is adding several new codes to its 2020 CPT code set to support remote patient monitoring and telehealth services.
September 09, 2019 - Remote patient monitoring and telehealth play prominently in the
2020 CPT codes unveiled this month by the American Medical Association.
Among the 248 new codes added to the list for the coming year, the AMA has created six for online digital evaluation services, or e-visits, in which care providers can connect with patients at home to exchange information. Three codes – 99421, 99422 and 99423 – relate to patient-initiated digital communication provided by a physician or other qualified healthcare professional, while three others – 98970, 98971 and 98972 – focus on communications with a “non-physician healthcare professional.”
The new codes represent a continuing trend toward RPM services, as hospitals and health systems look to extend care to the home or other non-traditional settings and collaborate with patients and other care providers on care management.
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Facebook to share data about users’ mentions of self-harm
September 10, 2019, 3:27 p.m. EDT
Facebook executives say the company will begin sharing data about how users talk about suicide as part of efforts to address concerns about suicide and self-harm on its site.
In a blog post on World Suicide Day, Facebook said it will give academic researchers access to CrowdTangle, a tool often used by news and media organizations to monitor social media, to explore how information shared on Facebook and Instagram can be used to help prevent suicide.
The company will also include guidelines for talking about mental health by Orygen, an organization that studies youth mental health, on the platform’s Safety Center and hire a health expert to join its safety team.
The moves grew out of consultations Facebook has been having since earlier this year with experts to discuss some of the more difficult topics related to suicide and self-harm. Facebook has also tightened its policies to no longer allow images of graphic cutting and making it harder to search for this type of content on its apps.
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Singapore’s NCID trials use of a real-time location system
The RTLS will enable the tracking of patients, visitors and staff in an outbreak, for rapid and reliable contact tracing so that necessary actions can be taken quickly to curb onward transmission.
September 10, 2019 01:50 AM
The National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) in Singapore was officially opened last week on September 7 by Minister for Health Mr Gan Kim Yong. NCID houses clinical services, public health functions, outbreak training, public education and community engagement in outbreak readiness under one roof to enable a comprehensive and integrated approach to handling infectious disease threats.
Located at HealthCity Novena, NCID is a 14-storey, 330-bed purpose-built facility set up by the Ministry of Health to enhance infectious disease outbreak management and public health preparedness for the nation.
One of the ways NCID is tapping on healthcare technology to boost its capabilities is a pilot of a Real-Time Location System (RTLS), which is expected to roll out at the end of 2019. The RTLS will enable the tracking of patients, visitors and staff in an outbreak, for rapid and reliable contact tracing so that necessary actions can be taken quickly to curb onward transmission.
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Health Plans, Providers Primed To Invest More In Predictive Analytics Tools
September 10, 2019
If health plans and providers had any doubts that they live and die on the strength of their data management tools, they’re fading fast. A new
survey has found that payers and providers are fully on board with investing in predictive analytics tools, and what’s more, expect them to yield great results.
The survey, which was conducted by the Society of Actuaries, found that 92% of payers and 93% of providers agreed that predictive analytics would be important to the future of their business.
Sixty percent of executives polled were using predictive analytics in their organizations, a 13% jump from last year’s results. Meanwhile, 89% of healthcare execs reported that they either used or planned to use predictive analytics within the next five years, which represents a 4% year-over-year increase from 2018.
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Declining Patients Get Attention Faster; Nurses Work Smarter: How Froedtert Did It
A predictive analytics tool based on nursing assessments, combined with remote monitoring, leads to earlier intervention of patients in clinical decline, while alleviating nursing burden.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
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How does
Froedtert Health accelerate intervention of patients in the early stages of clinical decline? By remotely monitoring every individual occupying a bed with a predictive analytics tool that pinpoints a patient's condition. The formula incorporates nursing assessments into its algorithm—something similar predictive tools neglect—and, rather than burden overworked nurses with yet another task, the offsite center notifies them when action may be warranted.
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A cyborg magician explains why she implanted 26 microchips and magnets in her body
September 6, 2019
L AS VEGAS — At a biohacker conference convened here the other day, panelists took to the stage, settled into their chairs, and launched into their slide decks. Not Anastasia Synn.
With Frank Sinatra crooning “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” over the loudspeakers, Synn pulled out a giant needle and
twisted it deeper and deeper into her left forearm as the music played on. It was only after finishing her routine, capped off by loud applause from the crowd of biohackers, that Synn sat down for a fireside chat about her work as a “cyborg magician.”
Synn has 26 microchips and magnets implanted throughout her body. Unlike many biohackers who experiment purely out of personal interest, Synn does it for her magic career. These days, she’s doing less performing on stage and spending more time designing bodily implants for other magicians.
STAT sat down with Synn after her performance last weekend at “
Biohack the Planet ” to learn more about her bodily implants, her medical precautions, and what it’s like to go through airport security.
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UCSF, Cornell working on Android health record app to rival Apple
Sep 9, 2019 12:34pm
UC San Francisco and Cornell Tech are leading a project to create an open-source platform to enable Android phone users to access and share their health records on par with Apple's mobile health records feature.
The project, called
CommonHealth , will use data interoperability standards, including HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to make it easy and secure for people to collect their electronic health record data and share it with health apps, according to a press release.
Other organizations involved in the project include biomedical research and technology development organization Sage Bionetworks, Open mHealth, an organization focused on making patient-generated health data more accessible with an open data format, and The Commons Project, a non-profit developed to build and operate digital services for public good.
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INSIGHT: Does My Company Need a Data Privacy Officer?
Michael Keough - Steptoe & Johnson, Jennifer Nelson - Prestige Consumer Healthcare
Sept. 4, 2019
Data privacy laws are front and center with the GDPR’s one-year anniversary and the California Consumer Privacy Act taking effect in months. Steptoe’s Michael Keough and Prestige Consumer Healthcare’s Jennifer Nelson say having a data privacy officer can help companies navigate this fast-changing field.
As the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation celebrates its first birthday and the California Consumer Privacy Act gets ready for enforcement in 2020, everyone, it seems, has data on their mind.
If your company does business in the European Union (and even if they don’t), the GDPR requires at least one person to have data on their mind: the data privacy officer, or DPO.
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Can't We Do Better Than a DNR Tattoo?
Patients' medical information -- and DNR wishes -- should be easily obtainable in an emergency
· by Fred N. Pelzman, MD September 08, 2019
Returning from my week of vacation (see recent column ), I was greeted by the usual stack of mail, faxes, forms to be signed, throwaway journals, and a fully loaded group of in-basket messages that had piled up in the electronic medical record that needed attending to.
One of the pieces of mail was an unsolicited package with a bright red label on it, along with multiple very medical-looking symbols including red crosses and caducei. "Medical ID's Save Lives!"
Inside was a promotional packet that turned into one of those free-standing containers that they requested we open and assemble and place in a prominent location in our practice. It included some examples of the medical ID bracelets and pendants that this company prepares for patients, listing medical conditions, allergies, emergency contacts, and the like, along with a price list and application forms.
As I started to toss this in the trash (we don't leave any promotional or advertising materials around our practice, nor do we let drug reps in to talk to our faculty or residents), it made me wonder whether these things really do save lives.
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Social engineering helping hackers break past providers’ defenses
September 09, 2019, 12:54 a.m. EDT
In the past year, less than 1 percent of cyberattacks exploited a hardware or software vulnerability to get through a healthcare provider’s defenses and compromise data.
That means the vast majority of attacks required some form of human intervention, such as an email link clicked or an attachment opened, says Chris Dawson, threat intelligence lead at data security firm Proofpoint Research.
A health organization can take all the right steps to better secure itself against cybercriminals, but some level of malware will get in because the human factor will generally limit defenses.
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FHA, ONC transition CONNECT interoperability project to the private sector
While the agencies will no longer maintain or update the CONNECT wiki, it will continue to exist as an open source project whose code and community resources can be "used, adopted and implemented by any interested organization."
September 09, 2019 12:30 PM
The Federal Health Architecture and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT ended federal support for the decade-old CONNECT data exchange project on September 6.
WHY IT MATTERS
While FHA and ONC will no longer maintain or update the
CONNECT wiki , officials said, it will continue to exist as an open source project whose code and community resources can be "used, adopted and implemented by any interested organization," according to the wiki.
Developers can contribute bug fixes and new features back into the source code, and to the greater community, where health organizations can use its software to help establish health information exchanges and otherwise share data using its interoperability standards.
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The Future of Fax in Healthcare Is Paperless
September 9, 2019
Confidentiality Is A Cornerstone of the Healthcare Industry.
According to a recent QuickPulse survey by IDG Research, faxing is the most common method of communicating patient information, with 50% of all medical communications done via some form of fax: 44% is paper-based, and 56% is handled by paperless, electronic fax technology.
Fax is at a crossroads
Among the many disadvantages of paper-based fax are clinical inefficiencies, labor-intensive processes, limited access to patient information at the point of care, and slow care coordination between providers—all of which erode efficiency, increase costs, and put patient care in jeopardy. Even though these drawbacks are widely recognized, nearly half of patient information is still transmitted by paper-based fax. According to the QuickPulse survey, over two-thirds of the respondents think paper-based faxing should be phased out. However, only 4% said that all faxing should be eliminated. Since faxing is so prevalent in healthcare and paper-based faxing should be eliminated, that leaves a significant role to be played by paperless fax, which executes the secure exchange of patient information with fax protocols, but digitally and without the unwieldiness of paper.
Weekly News Recap
Cerner lays off at least 250 employees as part of a cost reduction effort intended to deliver investor-promised operating margin targets.
OptimizeRx acquires RMDY Health.
AMA releases 2020 CPT, which includes several new codes to cover digital communications with patients.
The Commons Project Foundation announces plans to work with partners to develop an Android alternative to IOS-only Apple Health Records.
ONC chooses The Sequoia Project as Recognized Coordinating Entity for TEFCA.
AMA and AHA ask for changes to proposed HHS rules that would force hospitals to share medical records with their patients, expressing concern that patients won’t understand them or that they won’t be aware of the possible exposure of their information to third-party apps.
Walmart launches a standalone health clinic pilot that will offer primary care, dental, labs, X-ray, audiology, and mental health counseling.
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Enjoy!
David.
