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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WellSky offers digital support to NHS Nightingale sites
WellSky International Ltd is helping to digitally support the running of the NHS nightingale sites across England.
Hanna Crouch 9 April 2020
The medicine management solutions company has contacted its customers who are actively involved in the creation of field hospitals across the UK.
NHS England is planning to build Nightingale sites in Bristol and Harrogate in addition to those already in development in London, Manchester and Birmingham. The hospitals will provide hundreds of extra beds if local services need them during the peak of coronavirus.
WellSky has offered additional services and support for these sites which includes software license extensions from WellSky and its partners to help facilitate the rapid service provision needed.
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The month primary care went remote due to Covid-19
The Covid-19 crisis has, in a few short weeks, led to the most dramatic transformation of primary care services ever seen, with most consultations moved to remote and virtual to comply with social distancing.
John Hoeksma
15 April, 2020
In the space of a few short weeks primary care services in the UK have switched wholesale from 1.2m face-to-face consultations a day to the vast majority of consultations carried out remotely.
According to a 12 April BBC report, GPs are now seeing just seven in every 100 patients face-to-face, following a “remarkable” shift to online and telephone appointments across England in response to the coronavirus crisis.
This is a truly remarkable reconfiguration of the NHS front door that has so far attracted relatively little attention in the national coverage of coronavirus, and may be one of the mist radical long-term changes to the way health services are delivered in the UK.
Sweeping away long-standing barriers
Dr Clare Gerada, former chair of the RCGP and head of digital, described in a recent HSJ article how her practice has gone digital using online triage, electronic prescriptions, text messaging and video conferencing tools.
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Apps collecting data to help stop the virus spread must limit sharing of information, cybersecurity expert says
Published Mon, Apr 13 20201:26 AM EDT Updated Mon, Apr 13 20209:10 PM EDT
Key Points
- While Apple and Google’s joint initiative to build a platform that helps contain the spread of the coronavirus, steps have to be taken to prevent it into a mass invasion of privacy long term, Josephine Wolff from Tufts University told CNBC.
- The tech giants announced Friday they were working together to provide tools that help track the spread of coronavirus, a process commonly referred to as “contact tracing.” They will do so by allowing app makers to use Bluetooth technology to inform people when they’ve come into contact with an infected individual.
- Some countries have also turned to various means of technology in their efforts to stop the virus from spreading, raising concerns among privacy advocates.
South Korea’s virus alerts shared ‘excessive’ personal information, says expert
Apple and Google’s joint initiative to build a platform that helps contain the spread of the coronavirus looks promising, but steps have to be taken to prevent it from invading the privacy of users for the long term, an academic with expertise on science and tech policy told CNBC.
The tech giants announced Friday they were working together to provide tools that help track the spread of coronavirus, a process commonly referred to as “contact tracing.” They will do so by allowing app makers to use Bluetooth technology to inform people when they’ve come into contact with an infected individual.
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https://khn.org/news/big-brother-wants-to-track-your-location-and-health-data-and-thats-not-all-bad/
Big Brother Wants To Track Your Location And Health Data. And That’s Not All Bad.
By Julie Appleby and Victoria Knight April 16, 2020
A growing mix of health and technology experts are convinced that if the United States is to ever effectively track the coronavirus and slow its spread, then both self-reported and more surreptitiously gathered personal data — a mix of information about location, travel, symptoms and health conditions ― must be gathered from millions of Americans.
With the pandemic far from over, public health needs are paramount. Public health experts say that collecting personal data may be the only way to analyze information on the massive scale needed. But how that information is used and by whom worries some privacy advocates.
A number of academics, data firms and technology companies are using mobile devices to gather data. Some use the phones’ Bluetooth signals to aid in contact tracing by registering other nearby devices. Location information recorded on smartphones can help them map whether people are staying home and where they do venture out. Others have built symptom-tracker apps designed to predict where the virus might turn up next.
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Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say
April 17, 2020
A widely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever, and now epidemiologists are criticizing it as flawed and misleading for both the public and policy makers. In particular, they warn against relying on it as the basis for government decision-making, including on “re-opening America.”
“It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited” to projecting Covid-19 deaths, epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told reporters this week, referring to projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Others experts, including some colleagues of the model-makers, are even harsher. “That the IHME model keeps changing is evidence of its lack of reliability as a predictive tool,” said epidemiologist Ruth Etzioni of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, who has served on a search committee for IHME. “That it is being used for policy decisions and its results interpreted wrongly is a travesty unfolding before our eyes.”
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Volunteers create world's fastest supercomputer to combat coronavirus
Participants ‘folding proteins’ on home PCs, a task that could prove instrumental in tackling disease
Alex Hern Technology editor
Wed 15 Apr 2020 21.23 AEST Last modified on Thu 16 Apr 2020 04.05 AEST
The world’s fastest supercomputer has been created from volunteers loaning spare time on their home PCs to fold proteins, a scientific task that could prove instrumental in the fight against the coronavirus.
According to Folding@Home, the organisation that runs the distributed computing effort, the combined power of the network broke 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second – or one “exaflop” – on 25 March.
That made it six times more powerful than the current world’s fastest traditional supercomputer, the IBM Summit, which is used for scientific research at the US’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. By Monday, it had more than doubled that, hitting a new record of 2.4 exaflops, faster than the top 500 traditional supercomputers combined, thanks to almost 1 million new members of the network.
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Google says it blocks 18 million COVID-19 related scam emails each day
And that's not counting more than 240 million daily spam messages launched at Gmail users that try to capitalize on the coronavirus crisis.
By Nathan Eddy
April 17, 2020 12:31 PM
The COVID-19 pandemic has paved the way for a flood of cybersecurity threats, including email-based phishing and malware threats. Google reported this week that it is currently blocking 18 million emails per day targeting its Gmail users.
WHY IT MATTERS
Google also says it is using sophisticated machine-learning technology to track more than 240 million COVID-related daily spam messages, which use a mix of fear and financial incentives to create urgency to prompt users to respond.
In a blog post from Neil Kumaran, product manager for Gmail Security, and Sam Lugani, lead security PMM for the G Suite and GCP platforms, the Google execs shared some steps for admins to effectively deal with the rising tide of spam emails, and detailing best practices for users to avoid threats.
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Cybersecurity in the time of COVID-19
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of cybersecurity and digital transformation, argues Dr Charles Alessi, chief clinical officer at HIMSS.
April 17, 2020 03:51 AM
The age of COVID-19 is now established as one of those totemic moments in this digital age.
Digital transformation is key
Paradoxically, largely because the rapid spread of this pandemic where it is present in every country other than Antarctica (to date), mimics the new connected world and is a product of the digital and technological revolution that has transformed the way we live.
The contrast with the Spanish flu which occurred 98 years ago really demonstrates this. Whilst in 1918, there was little in the way of lockdown and mitigation, at least countries had time to prepare. What has happened to us in a matter of weeks took a year to play out in 1918.
The other paradox is that although the world has obviously changed, the health systems have changed far less than the ecosystems they inhabit, and analogue responses based on bricks and mortar visits are all too often still being deployed. Health and care systems are, however, having to adopt to this new world and suddenly different modalities from face-to-face consultations and the office visit are becoming the mainstream, not the exception.
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A Wide Range Of Problems Still Holding Back Health Data Interoperability
April 17, 2020
A new health data interoperability survey by Healthcare IT Today with 82 responses suggests that when it comes to interoperability, healthcare organizations are struggling with many of the same challenges they faced five or even 10 years ago.
Without a doubt, respondents are still interested in fostering health data sharing. Their objectives for doing so include improving patient care, streamlining revenue cycle management functions, increasing the accuracy of patient records, making sure patients have access to those records, supporting population health and value-based contracting, and automating more processes.
However, few organizations are meeting these goals, according to the respondents. “Most systems are only using the interoperability piece such as direct messaging to throw information back and forth to satisfy the requirements for MIPS/MACRA,” one health IT leader wrote. “Clinics are still relying on faxing and phone calls to obtain the data they need. Staff go through the motions to send and receive the data into their EMRs but rarely use the data for caring for the patient.”
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How Has Coronavirus Affected Healthcare Consumerism, Tech Use?
More patients are using virtual visits and chatbots to access healthcare during the coronavirus outbreak, suggesting a tip toward more healthcare consumerism.
By Sara Heath
April 15, 2020 - The outbreak of the novel coronavirus is propelling healthcare consumerism, pushing new patients to adopt the patient engagement technologies that experts have long said will herald in a new era in the medical industry, according to new survey data from IDC.
Healthcare consumerism is a key industry buzzword born out of increased patient financial responsibility, a push for more patient engagement, and the prevalence of patient-facing healthcare tools.
As patients held more of a financial stake in their own health and wellness, they took ownership of their own care, theoretically jumping on the patient engagement bandwagon and adopting the health technologies clinicians offered along with it.
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4 Key Surge Capacity Recommendations to Prepare for COVID-19
Health organizations need to strategize a way to efficiently plan, build, supply and staff, and operate amid the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 15, 2020 - A planning, building, supplying and staffing, and operating framework will be essential for providers as they prepare for surge testing and treatment demands, according to Cerner.
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced providers, stakeholders, and government agencies to develop strategies to prepare for the surge of testing and treatment demands.
The vendor suggests that health organizations need to plan ahead by anticipating the testing surge.
If an emergency department (ED) is experiencing a surge level one, which is 20 percent over capacity, the organization should plan on splitting the ED in half. If an ED is 100 percent over capacity, then additional pods need to be planned out. If an ED could be 200 percent over capacity, the facility needs to plan for temporary areas, such as patient screening outside of the ED or utilizing an alternate care facility.
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Digital Health Program Effective for Obese Patients With Hypertension
APRIL 16, 2020
Samara Rosenfeld
A self-administered internet-based intervention resulted in positive short- and long-term health benefits in patients who were obese with hypertension, according to recent study findings.
Juan Francisco Lison, MD, PhD, and a team of colleagues investigated the efficacy in terms of body composition and blood pressure parameters of an internet-based intervention. The program had different modules and learning techniques to promote lifestyle changes including physical activity and healthy eating in patients with obesity and hypertension.
Lison, from the Department of Medicine at Cardenal Herrera University in Spain, and the investigators included adults between 18-65 years old with hypertension and who were overweight (BMI >24.9 kg/m2 and <30 kg="" m="" sup="">2
) or had type 1 obesity (BMI >29.9 kg/m2 and <35 kg="" m="" sup="">2). The investigators defined hypertension as systolic blood pressure >140 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure >90 mmHg, or current use of antihypertensive medication.Juan Francisco Lison, MD, PhD, and a team of colleagues investigated the efficacy in terms of body composition and blood pressure parameters of an internet-based intervention. The program had different modules and learning techniques to promote lifestyle changes including physical activity and healthy eating in patients with obesity and hypertension.
Lison, from the Department of Medicine at Cardenal Herrera University in Spain, and the investigators included adults between 18-65 years old with hypertension and who were overweight (BMI >24.9 kg/m2 and <30 kg="" m="" sup="">2
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FBI Alerts to BEC Scams Targeting COVID-19 PPE Supply Procurement
Hackers are targeting those attempting to buy personal protective equipment (PPE) and other COVID-19-related medical supplies with business email compromise (BEC) scams, FBI warns.
April 15, 2020 - Cybercriminals are again leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic for financial benefit. The latest FBI alert warns hackers are targeting the government and other healthcare industry buyers attempting to purchase personal protective equipment (PPE) with business email compromise (BEC) scams.
The alert follows an earlier FBI warning that all sectors should expect an increase in BEC schemes tied to the pandemic.
The rapidly emerging fraud campaign is also tied to procurement of medical equipment, such as ventilators, and other equipment and supplies related to the Coronavirus response.
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https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/cdc-to-launch-clinical-reporting-app-for-covid-19-in-may/576129/
CDC to launch clinical reporting app for COVID-19 in May
Author Rebecca Pifer @RebeccaMPifer
Published April 16, 2020
Dive Brief:
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working to automate generation and transmission of COVID-19 case reports to deliver data put in provider EHRs directly to public health agencies.
- For providers that don't have EHRs with the ability to electronically send case reports, CDC is creating a FHIR-based app to connect COVID-19 electronic case reporting (eCR) to existing health IT infrastructure to confirm cases and route the data to appropriate end users. The goal is to give public health officials a more accurate, timely picture of the pandemic.
- The initial version of the app, called eCR Now, will be available May 1, Laura Conn, eCR lead in the CDC's Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services, said Wednesday at a virtual meeting of health IT congressional advisory group HITAC.
Dive Insight:
Electronic case reporting is automated sharing of health information between EHRs and public health agencies for earlier disease detection and intervention. CDC first extended electronic case reporting to COVID-19 in early January, but has seen piecemeal uptake in providers so far.
Health IT experts have called for the Trump administration to impose mandatory electronic lab and case reporting requirements to track and manage the epidemic and help inform decisions about when to reopen the economy. Large commercial labs like Quest and LabCorp report electronically, but hospital labs rarely do. Many providers' case reports are in the form of a PDF file sent to a CDC email address, Dell Medical School Chief Information Officer Aaron Miri and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow Daniel O'Neill wrote in a recent Health Affairs blog.
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Remote monitoring tech from GE Healthcare, Microsoft can help hospitals manage COVID-19 response
The cloud-based Mural virtual-care technology, hosted on Microsoft's Azure platform, enables clinicians to monitor the ventilation status of multiple ICU patients at once.
By Mike Miliard
April 16, 2020 12:28 PM
GE Healthcare has introduced a new cloud-based remote-monitoring tool designed to help clinicians look after ventilated COVID-19 patients.
WHY IT MATTERS
GE's Mural virtual-care technology aims to give hospitals visibility across their ventilated patient population, helping clinicians identify patients at risk of deterioration.
Delivered via Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, the tool is meant to help hospitals preserve clinical resources as more patients are admitted for COVID-19 treatment, according to the company.
By enabling broader surveillance of patients in a hospital's intensive care unit – even multi-site ICUs, with as many as 100 beds – the Mural technology, monitored continuously by nurses and intensivists, aggregates near real-time data to keep them apprised of patients' conditions.
This includes data from ventilators, patient monitoring systems, electronic health records, labs and other sources. In addition to enable the tracking of multiple patients at once, the surveillance tool can also help reduce clinicians' exposure to coronavirus.
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Lumeon Adapts Their “Autopilot” to Help Hospitals With COVID-19
April 16, 2020
Lumeon had planned to unveil a new product at HIMSS20 – an “auto-pilot” platform that would help guide patients through their care journey in an automated manner. When that conference cancelled due to the coronavirus, the Lumeon team didn’t put everything on hold. Instead, the team listened to their customers and quickly adapted their new platform to help providers battle the pandemic.
As part of our #HealthIT100in100 initiative, I have been reaching out to various companies that I had planned on meeting at HIMSS20. It’s been a really rewarding exercise. Instead of running around the exhibit hall and only getting the chance to spend 20min with each person, I am now having in-depth video conversations with everyone.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Rick Halton, VP Marketing and Product at Lumeon a company that offers “The autopilot for healthcare delivery”. When we spoke, Halton was self-isolating in Spain, while that country was in complete lock-down due to COVID-19. Naturally, we spoke about the coronavirus’s impact on business and healthcare.
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Research Offers Details On Exploding Telehealth Use
April 16, 2020
We all know that telehealth use has been mushrooming as providers struggle to address the demand for coronavirus care. However, the data is starting to come out on how much the use of telehealth has changed. These new studies look at the extent of telehealth use during the pandemic.
One physician-focused study comes from healthcare IT firm MTBC and their recently acquired CareCloud. The survey, the COVID-19 Practice Pulse, found that in-person appointment cancellations shot up starting in mid-March, especially in Pennsylvania (48%), followed by New York and California (both at 43%)
Meanwhile, telehealth appointments have increased by more than 200x as a percentage of all appointments, up from below 0.1% during the first week of March.
By this point, researchers found, 61% of practices had have converted to full or partially telehealth-based services. Urologists, dermatologists and mental/behavioral health clinicians topped the list of specialty adoption, with each leading specialty now seeing 25% to 40% of their patients in recent weeks.
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· 04-16-20
· 7:00 am
COVID-19 is normalizing telehealth, and that’s a good thing
Stuck at home, people are consulting doctors over the internet rather than in person—an approach to healthcare with many lasting benefits.
By Bob Kocher MD
Bob Kocher is a physician, a partner at venture capital firm Venrock, and a senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center. He was recently chosen by California Governor Gavin Newsom to serve on the state’s new public-private coronavirus testing task force, which seeks to significantly expand testing capacity across the state. Previously, Kocher served as a special assistant to President Obama and is credited with helping to shape the Affordable Care Act.
When the state of California enlisted my help working on our state’s coronavirus response, my goal was to address the enormous initial gap in testing. We’re ramping up testing to identify where the virus is spreading, how to contain it, and, ultimately, determine when it’s safe to go back to work. We have made a lot of progress and need to make sure that we can accurately and rapidly diagnose new infections, track the rate of viral spreading, and contain outbreaks.
While the risk of COVID-19 is greater for older and sicker patients, there have been hundreds of younger and healthier people dying from the disease. People of all ages are nervous—rightfully so—about going to hospitals and clinics during this time. Healthcare organizations are advising people to stay home unless they require urgent medical attention and are recommending virtual treatment options instead. Probably, many are forgoing useful treatments out of fear too.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/hackers-favor-small-hospitals-health-centers-as-ransomware-targets
Hackers Favor Small Hospitals, Health Centers as Ransomware Targets
Small hospitals and healthcare centers are prime ransomware attack targets, as hackers see an increased likelihood these providers will pay the ransom demand to prevent care disruption.
April 14, 2020 - The majority of reported successful ransomware attacks on the healthcare sector affect facilities with fewer than 500 employees. According to the latest RiskIQ report, these smaller providers are prime targets due to the increased likelihood that they’ll pay the ransom demand to prevent care disruption.
In fact, the RiskIQ intelligence brief on ransomware in the healthcare sector found that 70 percent of analyzed ransomware attacks impacted small providers. And these attacks on healthcare facilities have increased 35 percent between 2016 and 2019.
Calling the COVID-19 pandemic a perfect storm for cyberattacks, RiskIQ researchers studied 127 ransomware attacks from the last three years to determine how hackers have adjusted their attack methods to increase effectiveness of their attacks and ways providers can best protect patient data.
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Race Data for COVID-19 Patients Key to Assess Health Disparities
AMA and other leading physician groups are calling for access to race data in the context of COVID-19 testing, care access, and mortality data to identify health disparities.
By Sara Heath
April 14, 2020 - Leading physician groups, including the American Medical Association, are calling on the Trump Administration to collect racial and sociodemographic data about COVID-19 patients. This comes in an effort to understand the social determinants of health impacting coronavirus spread and address health disparities, AMA and partners say.
Specifically, the groups are looking for the Administration to collect, analyze, and disseminate data about patient race, ethnicity, and preferred spoken language alongside patient testing status, hospitalization, or mortality in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is well-documented that social and health inequities are long-standing and systemic disturbances to the wellness of marginalized, minoritized, and medically underserved communities,” AMA and partner signatories wrote in a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
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Health Information Exchanges Boost Interoperability in COVID-19
Health information exchanges across the country are making changes to improve patient data exchange amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 14, 2020 - Health information exchange (HIE) and interoperability are problems that run rampant throughout the healthcare industry. This issue is especially apparent during a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to the overcrowding of hospitals and patients being forced into unfamiliar health facilities, the need for a strong health data exchange is key.
“The pandemic has shattered our common beliefs about the type and scope of health information exchange,” Niam Yaraghi, a fellow in governance studies at the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings Institution, wrote in an op-ed.
“It has shown us that the definition of health data should no longer be limited to medical data of patients and instead should encompass a much wider variety of data types from individuals’ online and offline activity. Moreover, the pandemic has proven that healthcare is not local.”
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3 Ways the Industry Is Leveraging Real-World Data to Combat COVID-19
Organizations are using real-world data to gather evidence on utilization, population health, and the impact of interventions during COVID-19.
By Jessica Kent
April 09, 2020 - As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the status quo, the healthcare industry is turning to real-world data to better understand, monitor, and prepare for whatever the virus may bring.
From patient surveys and EHR information, to studies on past outbreaks and hospital capacity, leaders are harnessing the power of real-world data to observe patterns and make critical decisions.
Defined by the FDA as information derived from sources other than traditional clinical trials, real-world data can provide valuable insights into patient health status or care delivery.
With big data playing a major role in the COVID-19 pandemic, this kind of information will prove extremely valuable in the fight against the outbreak.
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The Fierce Urgency Of Now: Closing Glaring Gaps In US Surveillance Data On COVID-19
Where are the data on COVID-19 to understand who in the US population is being tested, who is ill, and who is dying? The sole data being reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is for the total population only, and just for the country as a whole and by state. Worse: case counts at the county level—for just a small subset of the 3242 US counties—are available not from the CDC, but from the websites of a private university (Johns Hopkins) using data credited to the CDC and those of several newspapers and volunteer groups frantically trying to track down data. All in this reporting hodgepodge are grappling with inconsistencies and gaps in state reporting on COVID-19, including some states publicly reporting only the number of confirmed cases without data on the number of persons tested (e.g., CA, NY, WA), or not reporting on the number of persons hospitalized.
Nor are any data available—at the national state, county, city, neighborhood, or health system levels—to enable monitoring and interpretation of testing patterns (including who is being tested), likelihood of positive tests (which will be related to testing strategy), or mortality (which is related to definitions and ascertainment of what is COVID-19 related) – especially in relation to core sociodemographic variables, such as age, race/ethnicity, sex/gender, and socioeconomic position. Health equity is literally off the map, made invisible because data to document inequities are unavailable, even as journalism and social media vividly attest to the risks of those who do not have the luxury to shelter safely at home and who cannot afford the economic disruption.
This is unacceptable and threatens prudent public health action.
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AMA and AHA team up to launch resource to fight malicious cyberactivity
By Tina Reed
Apr 15, 2020 3:05pm
The American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Hospital Association (AHA) teamed up to launch new guidance to fight malicious cyberactivity in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The joint cybersecurity resource from the AMA and AHA called Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic offers actions both physician groups and hospitals can take to strengthen their computers, networks and medical devices from the rise in COVID-19-themed security threats and attacks, particular as more employees work from home.
The resource includes checklists, sources, tips and advice on strengthening protections, they said.
“Amid increased reports of malicious cyber activity, some physicians and care teams are working from their homes and relying on technologies to support physical distancing measures while ensuring availability of care to those who need it,” said AMA President Patrice Harris, M.D., in a statement. “For physicians helping patients from their homes and using personal computers and mobile devices, the AMA and AHA have moved quickly to provide a resource with important steps to help keep a home office as resilient to viruses, malware and hackers as a medical practice or hospital.”
“Amid increased reports of malicious cyber activity, some physicians and care teams are working from their homes and relying on technologies to support physical distancing measures while ensuring availability of care to those who need it,” said AMA President Patrice Harris, M.D., in a statement. “For physicians helping patients from their homes and using personal computers and mobile devices, the AMA and AHA have moved quickly to provide a resource with important steps to help keep a home office as resilient to viruses, malware and hackers as a medical practice or hospital.”
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Physicians should protect personal information during telemedicine appointments
April 14, 2020
Using telemedicine technology to consult with patients is a valuable resource for physicians during the global coronavirus pandemic. However, physicians may be wary of using the technology if it means sharing personal information with patients.
Richard S. Davidson, MD, a professor and vice chair for quality and clinical affairs, cataract, cornea and refractive surgery at the UCHealth Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Eye Center in Aurora, Colorado, devised a way for physicians to implement iPhone FaceTime visits with patients without sharing personal information such as a cell phone number or personal email address.
This form of technology is usually not a HIPAA-compliant modality to meet with patients, but the Office for Civil Rights at HHS announced it would waive potential penalties for health care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re all learning as we go. We’re all trying to make sure patients have access to us and we have access to our patients as much as possible during these difficult times. This has been one way to connect the dots,” Davidson told Healio/OSN.
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04.14.2020 05:01 PM
Can a Wearable Detect Covid-19 Before Symptoms Appear?
Stanford researchers hope to find the answer, which could impact health care beyond the current pandemic.
The first thing you might notice about Michael Snyder is just how many gadgets he has strapped to his hands and wrists on any given day—an Apple Watch, a Fitbit, a Biostrap. The second is his enthusiasm for such devices. For more than a decade, Snyder, a biology researcher at Stanford University, has been using consumer wearables to determine whether these kinds of biosensors—and the data collected from them—can help track the onset of infections or illness.
Now Snyder and his team are launching a new research project. It’s one that he hopes will eventually alert people that they might have viral illnesses, including Covid-19, up to two to three days before symptoms of the virus show up. The team of about a dozen researchers has just started soliciting participants for the study, after what Snyder described as a fast-tracked approval process through Stanford’s Institutional Review Board. They’re using software algorithms that have been trained on health patterns shared during a previous study, and they’re opening this new study up to data from different brands of consumer wearables—Fitbit, Apple Watch, and more.
It’s an ambitious study, one made all the more complicated by how rapidly this particular virus spreads, the myriad symptoms of the novel coronavirus, the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers, the lack of available testing (which could make it challenging to confirm if and when the study participants have contracted Covid-19), and the inconsistencies in biometric tracking across different brands of wearable devices.
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COVID-19: eHealth is a never-ending journey
Florian Marcus, analyst at e-Estonia briefing centre, writes about eHealth services in the Baltic country and their response to COVID-19.
April 15, 2020 01:47 AM
At the beginning of April, I had the pleasure of talking about the state of eHealth in Estonia with Priit Tohver, adviser for digital services innovation at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs during a live webinar.
Estonia started implementing the first eHealth services such as the electronic patient record in the mid-2000s. This meant that patients could see everything the doctor had written down during a visit and doctors could get a comprehensive overview of ongoing treatments and the patient's current state of health. This system then quickly developed into a more sophisticated tool. One of the most useful tools is the digital prescription that is tied to the personal code and useable with an Estonian ID-card. According to Tohver, the ePrescription “is a no-brainer”, particularly because it does not require the patient to be digitally literate. All they have to do is go to their preferred pharmacy and present their ID-card. Doctors also benefit from this system, as a prescription can be renewed remotely within 10-15 seconds. Furthermore, the system automatically makes doctors aware of drug interaction issues that could render the prescribed drug ineffective or even counter-productive.
The COVID-19 impact
Then came COVID-19. Truth be told, Estonian doctors are working just as hard as doctors anywhere else around the world to contain and ultimately push back the pandemic. As part of this battle, however, it quickly became clear that technology could and should play a significant role. In Estonia, the information about new infections travels straight from the laboratories to the eHealth system, so that patients can access their data quickly and policymakers have the most up-to-date information at their disposal. But there are also more spontaneous developments in response to the crisis.
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With new Digital Health Indicator, HIMSS hopes global collaboration will lead to speedy innovation
The new effort is a measure of progress towards a digital health ecosystem.
By Laura Lovett
April 15, 2020
Whether it's tracking the prevalence of an airborne virus or figuring out the best way to shed those last holiday pounds, healthcare impacts everyone on the planet.
Today HIMSS launched its Digital Health Indicator, a measure of progress towards a digital health ecosystem that allows the patient to manage their own health with digital tools.
The organization describes it as “an ecosystem that connects clinicians and provider teams with people, enabling them to manage their health and wellness using digital tools in a secure and private environment whenever and wherever care is needed. Operational and care delivery processes are outcomes-driven, informed by data and real-world evidence to achieve exceptional quality, safety and performance that is sustainable.”
As the coronavirus continues to spread with nearly two million cases worldwide, digital tools have become a popular way to provide care to people in their homes and to manage new costs.
“Healthcare is incredibly meaningful, valuable and important for every global citizen. There isn’t a country that doesn’t see that as important, but health systems are very expensive,” Anne Snowdon, director of clinical research at HIMSS, told MobiHealthNews.
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Interoperability via a Single API is Possible
April 15, 2020
For Health IT companies, it’s so tempting to just dive in and build the point-to-point data integration that you need to get the job done. If you do that too many times, however, you’ll suddenly realize you have a mess of spaghetti on your hands that will hamper future development. The co-founders of Datica believe there is a better way – integration as a service – something that healthcare organizations and Health IT vendors could use right now as they rapidly build solutions to deal with COVID-19.
We all know that integrating healthcare systems isn’t easy. There are competing standards, siloed legacy systems, and insufficient IT resources. Plus, there is always the pressure to get things done quickly in order to roll out new technology to help clinical departments. That is especially true in a sustained emergency like COVID-19, where everything needs to be done yesterday and hacking something together just to make it work is acceptable.
But even in an emergency, there are ways to make system integration and data interoperability easier. Datica is a company that provides EHR integration & HIPAA compliant AWS infrastructure to healthcare developers – mostly at Health IT companies, but also directly to providers. With their solution, IT managers can rest easy, knowing that integration will not be a bottleneck or a labor-intensive hurdle.
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A 12-Step Program to Fix New COVID-19 Cybersecurity Risks
April 15, 2020
You built a strong IT security environment based on people working from your offices, including firewalls, endpoint protection, access controls, and automated processes that align with your cybersecurity policies.
What is your new environment like, with so many people working from home? Are they using personally owned computers? Are they using their phones to take pictures of documents, permanently copying your sensitive documents and Protected Health Information to their personal iCloud with their family pictures?
ACTION ITEM #1: In March, everyone was in a mad rush to get users set up at home, get everyone set up with teleconferencing, and deal with remote access issues. The goal was to get everyone working. Now it is time to take a hard look at your current cybersecurity risks.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that enforces HIPAA has been busy changing and relaxing regulations related to the COVID-19 pandemic. That doesn’t mean the OCR doesn’t care about enforcing HIPAA’s requirements to secure patient data. Be ready for them to enforce the rules that protect patient information.
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Michigan HIE Expands Coverage Area Amid COVID-19 Pandemic
A Michigan-based HIE is aiming to gain full patient data access from hospitals across the state to ease the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 13, 2020 - Michigan Health Information Network (MiHIN) Shared Services is aiming to widen its digital footprint by working hand-in-hand with Michigan Department of Health & Human Services (MDHHS) as part of its COVID-19 pandemic response.
To increase the number of patients covered by MiHIN, the HIE added the Detroit Medical Center, Trinity Health System, and Henry Ford Health System in the metro Detroit area to its repository. According to the network, MiHIN plans to expand this coverage throughout the state.
With an expanded outreach, MiHIN aims for increased efficiency, seamless care, and a decrease of clinician and healthcare worker burden due to an easier access to patient data.
“MiHIN is pleased to be a leader and innovator in health information exchange,” said Marty Woodruff, chief operating officer of MiHIN.
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Congress Presses Kushner on COVID-19 Health Data Surveillance Project
After reports showed White House Advisor Jared Kushner is creating a nationwide COVID-19 health data surveillance system, members of Congress are probing the effort due to privacy risks.
April 13, 2020 - Several members of Congress are pressing White House Advisor Jared Kushner amid privacy concerns, after reports showed the White House has assembled technology and healthcare firms to develop an extensive COVID-19 surveillance system.
Led by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, the letter argues the White House may not have been completely transparent about its surveillance efforts. And as many of the reported participating organizations have “have a checkered history when it comes to protecting patient and user privacy,” the effort raises several privacy red flags.
As noted repeatedly in the past, HIPAA was not designed to support to the mass amount of digital health technologies that allow medical data to be shared without consent from patients or providers.
As the Office for Civil Rights reminded covered entities in 2019, health apps chosen by patients are not covered under the privacy regulation. As a result, many of these health apps share health data with third-party vendors without user consent.
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Data Tool Maps How Social Determinants of Health Affect COVID-19
COVIDMinder from RPI maps out the effect social determinants of health are having on mediation efforts and outcomes for the coronavirus nationwide.
By Sara Heath
April 13, 2020 - A new data visualization tool out of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) will demonstrate how the social determinants of health are affecting COVID-19 risk and outcomes across disparate communities nationwide and throughout individual counties in New York.
COVIDMinder will look at community health risks, mediation measures, and coronavirus outcomes across different US states and visualize them in a data map. The tool will also use this process to explore health disparities across individual counties in New York, one of the hardest-hit regions in the US.
This tool comes as healthcare experts recognize the impact the social determinants of health — or the social factors that affect an individual’s ability to achieve health and wellness — are having on the coronavirus.
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Human Scribes Still Trump Digital Scribes in EHR Documentation
The implementation of a digital EHR scribe can lessen clinician burnout and cognitive workload, but it cannot take the place of a human medical scribe.
April 13, 2020 - Although a well-designed EHR scribe eases clinician burnout, developers are facing issues that make it tough to completely abolish the use of a human scribe, according to a study published in the Journal of Informatics in Health and Biomedicine
Clinician burnout runs rampant throughout the healthcare industry. According to the American Medical Association, the burnout rate for physicians is about 44 percent, which is much higher than other professions. That burnout is closely linked with EHR use and demanding reporting burden.
To decrease clinician burden, human scribes are hired to aid documentation. These assistants have been around just as long as the EHRs themselves, but common issues do occur.
According to the study, the number of medical scribes employed by US hospitals and facilities have been doubling annually since 2014. Research has showed that this number could reach 100,000 by this year.
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Microsoft extends AccountGuard service to healthcare orgs during COVID-19
The cybersecurity program will be made available to hospitals, clinics, labs, frontline providers, device manufacturers and life sciences companies that are researching treatments.
By Nathan Eddy
April 14, 2020 01:26 PM
Microsoft has announced the expanded availability of its AccountGuard security service program to help healthcare organizations guard against cyber attacks from nation-states.
WHY IT MATTERS
The software giant is making AccountGuard available to a number of healthcare providers, including hospitals, care facilities, clinics, labs and clinicians, as well as pharmaceutical, life sciences and medical device companies researching, developing and manufacturing COVID-19-related treatments.
The AccountGuard security service was first offered free to customers in the political space to account for the threats those organizations face, and it is available to organizations using Office 365 for business email.
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Following Demand Surge From COVID-19, Teladoc Health Projects Q1 Revenues Above $180M
By Jack O'Brien | April 14, 2020
The Purchase, New York–based telemedicine company said it is now providing more than 20,000 virtual medical visits per day in the United States.
Teladoc Health released its preliminary Q1 2020 financial results Tuesday afternoon, with projections for revenue between $180 million to $181 million, well above the $129 million in revenue that the company reported in Q1 2019.
Teladoc's adjusted EBITDA is projected to be between $10 million to $11 million, higher than the $1.2 million reported in Q1 2019, while total visit volume is projected to exceed 1.8 million, marking growth of 70% year-over-year.
As a result of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, utilization of telehealth services has increased significantly, creating greater demand for companies like Teladoc.
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AI tool predicts severe respiratory illness in early COVID-19
By Amy Sarcevic
Wednesday, 08 April, 2020
Wednesday, 08 April, 2020
A new experimental AI tool, developed by New York University (NYU)* could predict which COVID-19 patients will go on to contract acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), before any severe symptoms emerge.
ARDS, a life-threatening complication of COVID-19 which causes fluid to build up in the lungs, affects around 40% of those hospitalised with severe cases of the novel coronavirus.
Until now there has been little way of predicting the likelihood of ARDS among newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients. In fact, many have described a COVID-19 diagnosis as a “lottery” — you either get severe respiratory symptoms or you don’t.
“We were looking to develop a tool to reliably identify who will develop ARDS when they first present," explained co-author Dr Megan Coffee, a clinical assistant professor of infectious diseases and immunology.
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Can Telehealth Help Small Medical Practices Survive the Coronavirus?
A Kareo survey finds that independent medical practices are turning to telehealth to keep going during the Coronavirus pandemic, but will they have a strategy in place to stay afloat when the emergency ends?
April 08, 2020 - Independent medical practices are turning to telehealth in record numbers to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic, and many may need connected health to stay afloat once the emergency passes.
A survey of more than 600 healthcare providers conducted in March by Kareo found that 41 percent were using telemedicine technology, up from 22 percent reported in a 2018 survey, and another 34 percent were in the process of deploying virtual care services.
At the same time, the pandemic had prompted some 28 percent of the practices surveyed to offer only telehealth visits, and another 9 percent had closed their doors altogether. A separate analysis of patient traffic at more than 50,000 sites, meanwhile, saw a roughly 35 percent decline in patient volume.
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HCA, Google Cloud Launch COVID-19 Data Sharing Platform
The data sharing platform will aggregate ICU bed and ventilator utilization, test results, and other information related to COVID-19.
By Jessica Kent
April 09, 2020 - HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud have established a new open data platform designed to promote data sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 National Response Portal aims to help hospitals and communities understand how the virus is spreading, as well as how to prepare and respond.
“COVID-19 presents a unique and significant challenge to healthcare providers, and collaboration and coordination is more important than ever to help ensure the best possible response,” said Dr. Edmund Jackson, HCA Healthcare’s chief data officer.
“While COVID-19 has driven us apart physically, we will respond to it by coming together digitally. We are proud to work alongside Google Cloud to create a platform to help address this urgent public health challenge.”
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Medicare Data Reveal Wide Variety Across Regions Of COVID-19 Fatality Risk
Early evidence makes clear that some Americans are at much greater risk than others of severe COVID-19 symptoms, hospitalization, and death; less is known about which regions are especially vulnerable. In this post, we describe a collaboration between Microsoft Healthcare NeXT and Dartmouth Atlas Project researchers aimed at measuring the risk of severe COVID-19 across regions of the U.S.
We developed an index that captures both age and likelihood of key chronic illnesses, which together place people at the highest risk. We calculated the index for 3,436 Hospital Service Areas (HSAs), which are sorted into quintiles of population risk, from low (yellow) to high (red), on the map shown in exhibit 1. A copy of the map and data for downloading can be found here, while we also offer a website for interactive exploration of the map.
Who Is Most At Risk Of Severe Illness And Death From COVID-19?
Reports from countries and regions with the most COVID-19 experience to date, reveal characteristics of people most vulnerable to developing severe cases of the disease. The single strongest predictor of both ICU admission and mortality to date is age: for Italian data, the case fatality rate for 70-79-year-olds is 13 times the rate for 50-59 year-olds, the corresponding rate for 80+ is 20 times that. Similar though less pronounced gradients are observed in Chinese and American data. Data from Wuhan also suggest higher case fatality rates for those with chronic diseases of the lung, kidney, heart, and nervous system. We therefore use the presence of these chronic conditions in older populations to create our index of vulnerability to severe symptoms and death.
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Industry Voices—How Rush University Medical Center's virtual investments became central to its COVID-19 response
Apr 13, 2020 3:15pm
Three years ago, Rush University System for Health in Chicago began a concerted effort to grow a virtual care structure.
We—a team of like-minded doctors, nurses, administrators and other staff—insisted that an organized platform of digital tools must be designed to surmount the challenges of cost, quality and access in our healthcare system. At the time, we thought of these tools as critical to fueling our growth and differentiating our organization from competitors.
Now we know that virtual care is also critical for a public health crisis.
We believe the conversion to virtual care will be seen as one of the most important tools utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic to save lives—and to save healthcare workers from unnecessary exposure to this virulent pathogen.
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Stanford Medicine is using data and digital tools to predict the next COVID-19 surge
Apr 13, 2020 3:25pm
Stanford Medicine scientists are working to create an "early warning system" that predicts the next surge in COVID-19 cases.
Using a daily survey that tracks the occurrence of possible COVID-19 symptoms in communities could help raise the alarm far sooner and allow hospitals and healthcare workers to prepare, Lawrence “Rusty” Hofmann, M.D., a professor of radiology at Stanford School of Medicine, told FierceHealthcare.
Hofmann, who is chief of interventional radiology at Stanford Hospital, worked with a team of epidemiologists and data scientists to develop the national daily health survey to help learn and predict which geographical areas will be most impacted by coronavirus based on how survey takers are feeling.
The goal is to use survey responses to provide data that could flag communities at risk for a surge in cases of COVID-19 before they reach the hospital, Lawrence said.
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Industry Voices—New COVID-19 model can support those on the front lines, aid policymakers
Apr 13, 2020 12:01am
The COVID-19 pandemic is a major threat to the physical, emotional and economic health of our country and the world. To achieve the relief we need, we must prepare for the pandemic’s potential consequences and recognize that it will not impact every locale the same way.
One tool that we have is to build statistical models that allow us to predict where the virus will disproportionately harm a community and put together programs and policies to minimize its impact.
Many models exist to predict the spread of diseases, including those based on estimating the growth through the population or extrapolating other countries’ experiences with the disease and applying it to different areas.
We built a model based on the SIR (susceptibility, infection, recovery) framework that predicts the growth of COVID-19 for each state and county in the U.S. Additionally, we estimated the impact on the healthcare delivery system for each region and each hospital in the country, adjusting for things such as historical capacity, service area and elective admission rates. We individually estimated the expected number of COVID-related admissions, intensive care unit (ICU) visits and patients needing ventilators for each hospital, county and state.
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Don’t expect AI to solve the coronavirus crisis on its own
How optimistic should we be about the impact of artificial intelligence in a pandemic?
Scientists are exploring every possible option for help battling the coronavirus pandemic, and artificial intelligence represents an intriguing avenue. AI has been used to search for new molecules capable of treating Covid-19, to scan through lung CTs for signs of Covid-related pneumonia, and to aid the epidemiologists who tracked the disease’s spread early on. The technology is even powering new tracking software that might help identify those walking around with a fever or catch people violating quarantine rules. But how much faith should people really have in these untested tools?
In a recent brief, Alex Engler, who studies AI at the Brookings Institution, warned that people should manage their expectations. Artificial intelligence can be helpful, he says, but it’s important to be wary of tech companies making broad, unfounded claims about what AI can do, and question whether these companies really have the data and expertise to ensure that the application of this technology is actually helpful. Ultimately, Engler argues that AI could be helpful on the margins, but it’s nowhere near ready to replace human experts in the battle against Covid-19.
Just because we’re in a pandemic doesn’t mean that some of AI’s greatest challenges — accuracy, bias, and the risk of exacerbating surveillance — have gone away. Engler warns that people need to question whether the companies touting this technology really have access to the information they would need to build it, and whether the AI is even right to address many of the problems that Covid-19 has created.
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Look to CCPA for How States Will Handle Data Privacy Legislation After COVID-19
“Failure to comply will be investigated and enforced. Since that is the case, it behooves companies to focus on compliance and will put them in a better position when other bills are signed into law,” Glenn Brown, of counsel at Squire Patton Boggs in Atlanta, said.
The new coronavirus has forced many state legislatures to suspend their sessions or shift focus away from anticipated data privacy legislation.
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Pledge by telecommunications industry to support NHS during COVID-19
The UK government has released a statement in conjunction with many key players in the telecoms industry to announce their elevated support during the COVID-19 crisis.
April 11, 2020 08:56 AM
Companies such as BT, Virgin Media and Sky have committed to support the NHS with its increased need for connectivity as many essential services have moved online.
WHY IT MATTERS
Because of the strictures presented by the government to try and stop the spread of COVID-19, there has been a shift towards a digital-first approach where possible in the NHS. This means an increased number of remote consultations with many clinicians having to use their personal devices to conduct them.
In response, these major companies have agreed to provide confirmed NHS workers with the data, call and text access they need to offer remote consultations at no extra cost. They will upgrade NHS workers’ broadband speeds as required to facilitate remote work, sometimes at no extra cost. They will also improve connectivity in care homes and supply full-scale telecoms access to the emergency hospitals being built to combat the virus.
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Duplication, fragmentation hamper interoperability efforts, impact patient safety
Data-integrity challenges and repetition are posing big problems for electronic health records, with adverse financial and clinical costs, a new Black Book report shows.
By Nathan Eddy
April 13, 2020 10:46 AM
Duplicate patient records are wreaking havoc on error rates and driving up operating expenses, according to a BlackBook survey of nearly 1,400 health technology managers.
WHY IT MATTERS
The study revealed the ways that disparate patient-information systems classify, store, protect and share records also leads to repeated medical care or denied claims. The problems cost the healthcare industry billions annually.
The survey also found that, on average, nearly a fifth of an organization's patient records are found to be duplicates.
Duplicate and overlaid medical records also have a ripple effect on the entire revenue cycle, serving as a source of billing and coding errors, denials, and even serious medical errors that can jeopardize a patient's health and safety.
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Is Epic Building Its Own Telehealth Solution Using Twilio?
April 13, 2020
In my previous article on telehealth adoption due to COVID-19, I highlighted a number of telehealth adoption numbers that Epic shared. In the article, I asked the question about which telehealth applications these Epic customers were using. All of the Epic telehealth implementations I’d seen first hand were using Vidyo, but there were 15 telehealth providers in the Epic App Orchard (Note: Now there’s 16). I reached out to Epic to see if I could get the answer to the question of which telehealth applications Epic customers were using since Epic had supposedly “helped with the implementation.” However, I haven’t heard back from them. Not that this is any surprise since they only recently started engaging with the press at all.
A source of Healthcare IT Today recently reached out to let us know that Epic is working to develop their own Epic telehealth offering. The source told us that Epic was working with Twilio’s newly launched HIPAA compliant video application in order to offer their own telehealth solution within Epic. Word is that Epic has already started offering this solution to provider organizations and is an interesting move for Epic who’s largely touted the built in Verona approach to software development.
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Free CareSignal Solution Helps Providers Deliver COVID-19 Information to the Public
April 13, 2020
COVID-19 is stretching hospital resources thin. Not only are clinical areas like ER’s and ICU’s feeling the strain, but even call centers and websites are being overwhelmed. People want information about the novel coronavirus and are looking to healthcare providers for it. CareSignal created a solution specifically to deal with this and is giving it away for free to any organization.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with CareSignal’s co-founder and CEO, Blake Marggraff to find out more about what they are doing.
CareSignal
CareSignal is a company that makes a remote patient monitoring platform that helps providers and payers achieve their value-based care objectives. With their platform, care teams receive real-time alerts when patients respond to pre-configured questions via text messages or automated phone calls. It is often used to help manage CHF, CPOD, diabetes and depression, and other such conditions.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Marggraff saw an opportunity to help. Together, the team at CareSignal built a solution with patient communication at its core, to help healthcare organizations disseminate accurate information about the pandemic to their communities WITHOUT overburdening their call centers.
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Coronavirus Surge Offers Cover For Cybercriminals
April 13, 2020
Not surprisingly, hospitals struggling to manage the flood of COVID-19 cases are more focused on coping with the daily influx of infected patients than securing their networks and connected assets. As a result, black hat hackers are seizing the opportunity to strike while leaders’ backs are turned or at least distracted.
In response, international crime-fighting organization Interpol has released a warning that these ruthless criminals are leveraging the chaos to their benefit.
The dispatch, which went out to police in its 194 member countries, reports that as healthcare organizations immerse themselves in the business of caring for coronavirus patients, cybercriminals are launching a growing number of attempted ransomware attacks. The attacks are targeting both standard hospital platforms and digital medical services as well as exploiting unsecured medical devices.
Experts speaking with Healthcare Dive also noted that the extent of entryways attackers can use was growing even before the virus hit.
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UK government using confidential patient data in coronavirus response
Exclusive: Documents seen by Guardian show tech firms using information to build ‘Covid-19 datastore’
Mon 13 Apr 2020 02.30 AEST Last modified on Mon 13 Apr 2020 05.10 AEST
Technology firms are processing large volumes of confidential UK patient information in a data-mining operation that is part of the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
Palantir, the US big data firm founded by the rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel, is working with Faculty, a British artificial intelligence startup, to consolidate government databases and help ministers and officials respond to the pandemic.
Data is also being used by Faculty to build predictive computer models around the Covid-19 outbreak. One NHS document suggests that, two weeks ago, Faculty considered running a computer simulation to assess the impact of a policy of “targeted herd immunity”. Lawyers for Faculty said the proposed herd immunity simulation never took place.
NHSX, the digital transformation arm of the National Health Service that has contracted the tech companies to help build the “Covid-19 datastore”, said the technology would give ministers and officials “real-time information about health services, showing where demand is rising and where critical equipment needs to be deployed”.
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Weekly News Recap
- The COVID-19 global tracking website that was put together in a few hours by a first-year Johns Hopkins graduate student is drawing one billion page views per day.
- Allscripts lays off staff and cuts costs.
- HIMSS revises its “no exhibitor refunds”policy for HIMSS20 and offers a 25% credit that can be applied to the next two annual conferences.
- Despite an ongoing lack of COVID-19 testing nationally, hospitals aren’t using the available capacity of independent labs because they don’t have EHR ordering and results interfaces.
- Duke’s Margolis Center for Health Policy, along with two former FDA commissioners and former National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, proposes a national COVID-19 surveillance system.
- AMA publishes a physician guide for implementing virtual visits.
- FCC publishes details of its $200 million COVID-19 Telehealth Program.
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Enjoy!
David.
