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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NHS organisations facing “significant” digital transformation challenges
A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has concluded that local NHS organisations are facing “significant challenges” when it comes to working towards digital transformation.
Hanna Crouch – 15 May, 2020
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the NAO looked into the state of digital services across the NHS in England and its readiness to deliver digital transformation, focusing on plans, governance arrangements, resources and technical challenges.
The report, published on May 15, concluded that while the main bodies plans for digital transformation are “ambitious”, the track record in the NHS has been “poor”.
“Local NHS organisations face significant challenges in working towards digital transformation. This includes outdated IT systems that do not connect to other systems and competing demands on their resources,” the report states.
“The Department [of Health and Social Care] and its arm’s-length bodies need to set a clear direction for local organisations and to ensure resources are directed to the right priorities nationally.
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It Is Becoming Much Harder to Access Mental Health Support Anonymously
The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t just a physical health crisis—it’s also a mental one. But online resources for mental health come with privacy risks.
May 13, 20205:45 AM
This article is part of Privacy in the Pandemic, a Future Tense series.
The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t just a physical health crisis—it’s also a mental one. Millions of people face the prospect of infection and death, as well as job losses, social isolation, and a fracturing of community life on a massive scale.
Spikes in suicide-related calls in the U.S. reflect a growing sense of anxiety and dread as the virus spreads. And some health workers are warning of large-scale psychological trauma of both health care providers and patients as hospitals become overwhelmed. While it would be simplistic to suggest that social distancing itself causes increasing rates of suicide or drug use, online support for people in distress is about to become more important than ever. This urgency is reflected in the unprecedented waiving of rules and regulations for telehealth by the U.S. government on March 27. It’s likely that infrastructure for digital mental health care will accelerate rapidly in coming weeks and months—as well it should. But this acceleration also comes with steep risks.
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CVS is adapting its strategy for specialty pharmacy for COVID-19. Here's how
Protecting them from COVID-19 has meant moving full speed ahead in growing digital solutions.
The pandemic has helped make the case for CVS Health's digital solutions, said Prem Shah, executive vice president of specialty pharmacy and product innovation.
That includes, for example, a 30% increase in March alone in encounter volume through CVS Specialty’s secure messaging tool, which allows pharmacists to text members directly to discuss their medications.
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May 13, 2020,07:10am EDT
Moving From Passive To Aggressive In Stopping Network Attackers
Albert Zhichun Li
Albert Zhichun Li, Ph.D., is Chief Security Scientist at Stellar Cyber. He has over 15 years of experience in cybersecurity research.
One of the unfortunate realities of network security is that it is largely reactive. To be fair, organizations are adept at testing and ensuring that the known holes or vulnerabilities are shored up and systems and devices are kept current and optimized to prevent against a successful attack.
Tough perimeter security and mandatory personnel training help to keep a network safe. Despite these efforts, attackers have a firm advantage in that they get practically an unlimited number of attempts to penetrate a network, and all it takes is one instance of security failing for an attack to be successful. Deflecting attackers is like a game of whack-a-mole, where the mole gets to decide the rules and devise the tactics.
Attackers have newness and innovation on their side to use or invent what they need to get into a network. Most data breaches result from an attacker compromising a client computing device or user account, and there are thousands of ways to accomplish this, from spear phishing and social engineering to web-based exploits, and even from legitimate sites.
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Amazon, UCSF Partner for COVID-19 Genome Sequencing Projects
The genome sequencing projects will leverage data and cloud computing to help the medical community better understand COVID-19.
By Jessica Kent
May 15, 2020 - Amazon Web Services (AWS) is partnering with researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to conduct genome sequencing on the viruses infecting hundreds of COVID-19 patients in the Bay Area.
AWS is connecting with the laboratory of Charles Chiu, PhD, MD, to enable two projects using cloud computing and data.
“In today’s rapid-changing environment around the COVID-19 pandemic, cloud computing resources will accelerate our efforts to design the next-generation of diagnostic tests and provide real-time, actionable genomic data to inform the public health response,” said Chiu.
In the first project, Chiu and his team are performing transcriptome analysis of nasal swab and whole blood samples from patients with viral respiratory infection to identify specific biomarkers of the disease. To date, they have detected distinct signatures for influenza, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), bacterial sepsis, Lyme disease, babesiosis.
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This Online Calculator Shows How Likely a Person Is to Die During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Scientists in the U.K. have created an online calculator that predicts a person's risk of dying of during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The calculator, named OurRisk.CoV, shows how a person's age, sex, and underlying health conditions—such as diabetes, severe obesity, as well as heart, kidney and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases—affect their chances of dying in different COVID-19 scenarios over a one year period in England.
OurRisk.CoV is part of a wider study estimating excess deaths related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with those findings published in the journal The Lancet. The researchers forecast that in the first year of the pandemic, between 37,000 and 73,000 more people in the U.K. could die than would normally, on average. The result depends on how lockdown restrictions are relaxed, according to the researchers.
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The Deadly Consequences of EHR Clinical Decision Support Tools
The Practice Fusion kickback scheme highlighted the dangers of EHR clinical decision support tools and a group of healthcare professionals say there is too much commercial influence in the EHR space.
May 13, 2020 - When clinical decision support (CDS) tools are properly implemented into the EHR, they can help out a physician immensely. However, when EHR vendors are implementing these tools into the EHR with a commercial influence, it can result in deadly consequences, wrote three health experts from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
The viewpoint, written by Julie K. Taitsman, MD, chief medical officer at OIG; Andrew Vanlandingham, JD, general attorney at OIG; and Christi A. Grimm, principal deputy inspector general at OIG, explored why clinical decision support has been gone without scrutiny for far too long for its potential as a powerful marketing device.
Back in January, Practice Fusion was fined a historic $145 million after admitting to a kickback scheme aimed at increasing opioid prescriptions.
Practice Fusion divulged that it solicited and received kickbacks from a major, unnamed opioid company in exchange for utilizing its EHR software to manipulate physician prescribing of opioid pain medications.
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51% of Americans would let CDC track coronavirus via their cellphones, poll says
Anuja Vaidya (Twitter) - Tuesday, May 12th, 2020
Slightly more than half of Americans (51 percent) would be willing to join a cellphone-based contract-tracing program sponsored by the CDC, according to a new Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index poll.
The poll is conducted weekly. Results are from the ninth wave of the poll, conducted May 8-11, and include responses from 980 U.S. adults.
About one-third of respondents said say they are likely to opt in to cellphone-based contact-tracing systems established by major tech companies (33 percent) or cellphone companies (35 percent).
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Why Anti-Vaxxers Often Win Out on Facebook
WEDNESDAY, May 13, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Groups that spread vaccine misinformation on social media have more impact than government health agencies and other expert organizations on undecided people, a new study finds.
The spread of false information could have significant public health consequences if an effective COVID-19 vaccine is developed, the researchers noted.
For the study, investigators developed an innovative tool to map vaccine conversations among 100 million Facebook users during the height of the 2019 measles outbreak.
"There is a new world war online surrounding trust in health expertise and science, particularly with misinformation about COVID-19, but also distrust in big pharmaceuticals and governments," said lead author Neil Johnson, a professor who heads a new initiative in Complexity and Data Science at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "Nobody knew what the field of battle looked like, though, so we set to find out."
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Atrium Health deploys point-of-care ultrasound to assess COVID-19 patients
POCUS technology from Butterfly Network expands screening capabilities, offering "an immediate and clear picture of what’s happening in a patient’s lungs."
By Mike Miliard
May 14, 2020 02:46 PM
Atrium Health announced this week that it's now widely using point-of-care ultrasound devices to help its assessments of COVID-19 patients.
WHY IT MATTERS
With Butterfly iQ technology – portable, single-probe, whole-body ultrasound devices developed by Butterfly Network – Atrium clinicians are able to use the tools, which connect to smartphones or tablets, to quickly examine patients in the hospital or at home.
With Butterfly iQ technology – portable, single-probe, whole-body ultrasound devices developed by Butterfly Network – Atrium clinicians are able to use the tools, which connect to smartphones or tablets, to quickly examine patients in the hospital or at home.
The Butterfly iQ devices, which also help with procedures such vascular access and putting in central lines, are now active at more than 30 high-priority locations across the Charlotte, North Carolina-based health system, including COVID-19 testing centers, emergency departments, intensive care units and the Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute.
Butterfly iQ runs on a simple platform for a more efficient ultrasound workflow, and it can integrate existing systems while staying secure with cloud-based security tools.
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Texting + Telehealth Together in a Single Platform from TigerConnect
May 14, 2020
Of all the new healthcare technologies coming to market, TigerConnect’s TigerTouch solution may be one of the best-timed. When combined with the company’s other products, it offers a truly seamless communication experience. Patients and providers are able to move from a text conversation to a real-time video chat and back again without changing apps or losing continuity.
The team at TigerConnect had been developing a video and voice telehealth solution for quite some time. When COVID-19 swept across the globe, however, the company decided to accelerate their development. “We had been working on the solution prior to COVID-19, and the timing really ended up perfect,” explained Dr. William O’Connor, CMIO at TigerConnect in an interview with Healthcare IT Today. “We were scheduled to launch the solution this summer, but we pushed our development up so we could better help our customers during the pandemic.”
When TigerTouch launched, it combined two worlds: asynchronous text communications with real-time synchronous video chat. This capability is sorely lacking in many other stand-alone telehealth solutions. Why is this important? Not every patient needs a video consult with a physician. Sometimes a quick one or two sentence exchange can get patients the answers they need without the need to book an appointment (virtual or in-person).
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New free course: COVID-19 Contact Tracing
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts have identified contact tracing as a key strategy for limiting the spread of the virus. Contact tracers help provide guidance to COVID-19 patients and also warn contacts of exposure to help stop chains of transmission. In this free course, you’ll get an introduction to the basics of COVID-19 and learn how to implement case investigations as a contact tracer.
In this course, you’ll:
As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts have identified contact tracing as a key strategy for limiting the spread of the virus. Contact tracers help provide guidance to COVID-19 patients and also warn contacts of exposure to help stop chains of transmission. In this free course, you’ll get an introduction to the basics of COVID-19 and learn how to implement case investigations as a contact tracer.
In this course, you’ll:
· Gain an understanding of COVID-19, including symptoms, case fatality rates, infectious and incubation periods, risk factors, and transmission
· Learn how to ethically implement case investigations and interview people during the contact tracing process
· Understand the challenges of contact tracing and the technologies used in this effort
Whether you’re interested in becoming a contact tracer or you just want to understand the process, you’ll learn important public health information in this free course. Get started today.
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Lessons Learned from Ebola Help UVA’s Telehealth Center Take on COVID-19
The University of Virginia Health System's telehealth center is using technology created during the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak to improve access and care management for COVID-19 patients.
May 12, 2020 - The University of Virginia Health System is applying lessons learned during the Ebola crisis to advocate for telehealth expansion during the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and beyond.
Telemedicine technology used during the 2014-16 outbreak, which killed more than 11,000 Africans and one person in the US, helped the health system contain the deadly outbreak, reduce instances of patient-to-provider transmission and reduce the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), according to a paper published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
That, in turn, has helped UVA’s Karen S. Rheuban Center for Telehealth improve access and care management during the COVID-19 crisis.
“One of the few bright spots of the COVID-19 crisis is that it’s shown us how remarkably powerful and versatile telemedicine can be during outbreaks of novel contagious diseases,” UVA Health epidemiologist Costi Sifri, MD, said in a press release. “Its importance in helping us care for patients in their home while sheltering-in-place is clear. What we show here is that telemedicine solutions can also be used within the walls of hospitals, emergency rooms and clinics to help provide enhanced, more efficient and safer patient care for those potentially infected with high-risk pathogens.”
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Using Remote Patient Monitoring to Drive Pandemic Communication
Remote patient monitoring has helped the M Health Fairview keep in contact with their patients during the pandemic, ultimately assuaging patient fears.
By Sara Heath
May 11, 2020 - The coronavirus outbreak has turned healthcare on its head. Patients need their providers right now, both for their healthcare concerns and to assuage the fears that naturally crop up during a pandemic. But organizations are spread thin right now, between pushes for social distancing and the increased patient demand. Remote patient monitoring can help.
“Now, perhaps more than ever, our patients and their families need the right empathetic information at the right time to help mitigate any confusion, anxiety and risk they may be having,” said Genevieve Melton-Meaux, MD, PhD, a professor in the department of surgery at the Minnesota-based M Health Fairview. “As healthcare providers, we need to communicate in real time to reduce concerns and coordinate care effectively and efficiently during this pandemic.”
But paradoxically, just when patients need their providers the most, healthcare organizations are facing their biggest hurdles in patient outreach. The coronavirus pandemic has introduced a laundry list of unexpecteds, with the inability to make meaningful connections with patients in need leading the way.
Notably, healthcare organizations are facing an onslaught of patient requests, whether they have tested positive for COVID-19 or not.
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Feds Alert to New North Korean Malware Threats, Mitigation Tactics
DHS CISA, the FBI, and DOD are urging organizations to review insights into three recent malware variants tied to North Korea and recommended mitigation techniques to bolster defenses.
May 12, 2020 - The Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert regarding three newly identified malware variants being used by the North Korean government, referred to as HIDDEN COBRA.
HIDDEN COBRA has long targeted US industries and is allegedly behind some of the largest hacking incidents, including the global WannaCry cyberattack in 2017. And throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, nation-state hackings groups have continued to target healthcare providers with Coronavirus-related campaigns.
Data from Carbon Black found 45 percent of the healthcare sector’s chief information security officers experienced a cyberattack focused on data destruction in 2018, explaining “these attacks are often carried out by punitive and malicious nation-states, including Russia, China and North Korea.”
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Senators Seek Broadband Funds for Telehealth Expansion in Next Relief Bill
Four senators are asking Congress to include $2 billion in the next COVID-19 relief package to help rural communities and healthcare providers improve broadband connectivity to fuel telehealth expansion.
May 12, 2020 - While telehealth interests have been broadly served by Coronavirus relief bills to date, a group of lawmakers is looking for more support in the next package.
Led by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), a longtime supporter of connected health adoption, a group of senators is lobbying to add $2 billion to the next relief bill for broadband expansion, a key and often overlooked component to nationwide telehealth adoption. They’re calling on Congress to add that money to the Rural Health Care (RHC) Program.
“Congress must do more for our health care providers so that they can meet telehealth needs during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the senators wrote in a letter to Congressional leadership. “This additional support would expand the reach of the RHC Program to enable health care providers at non-rural and mobile health care facilities to engage in telehealth, eliminate administrative red tape that slows down the ability of front-line providers to obtain broadband connectivity, and provide more resources to current health care providers in the RHC Program so they can increase their broadband capacity to effectively treat their patients.”
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Smartwatch notifications improve medication adherence for AF
May 12, 2020
Patients with atrial fibrillation who received smartwatch notifications in addition to standard care had better adherence to oral anticoagulation compared with those who received standard care alone, according to data presented at the virtual Heart Rhythm Society Annual Scientific Sessions.
In this multicenter, prospective, randomized controlled trial, Zhan Shi, MD, of Beijing Chao-yang Hospital at Capital Medical University, and colleagues analyzed data from 160 patients with AF who were assigned a smartwatch reminder (mean age, 69 years) or standard care (mean age, 70 years).
Patients assigned standard of care were scheduled for outpatient visits and received regular follow-up calls. Those in the smartwatch reminder group received daily intake reminders and intake errors including missed or delayed doses from their smartwatch in addition to standard care. These patients also had the ability to use an immediate telephone feedback function,
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Intentional Bias in EHR Clinical Decision Support Tools May Be Criminal
May 11, 2020
Clinical decision support tools in EHRs are prone to abuse could lead to criminal prosecution, warn top officials in an HHS Inspector General’s office in an opinion piece published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The direct access to physicians and the assumption that the tools are unbiased make them a potentially powerful marketing device, note the authors, Julie Taitsman, M.D., J.D.. Andrew VanLandingham, J.D., and Christi Grimm, M.P.A.
“How can a physician at the point of care differentiate between a clinical decision support tell that is objective and evidence based or one that is biased by industry,” they write. “A tool that is commercially biased is analogous to a physician consulting a trusted colleague but unknowingly talking to a sales representative whose goal is to promote a particular drug.”
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Psychiatrists 'pleasantly surprised' with transition to telemedicine
Though mental health professionals say they're mostly pleased with the rapid shift to phone or video services, most plan to return to in-person care once the dangers from COVID-19 have subsided.
By Kat Jercich
May 13, 2020 01:58 PM
A qualitative RAND Corporation study finds that psychiatrists offering telemedicine for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic have had largely positive perceptions of the transition. Many, however, say they plan to return to in-person care when possible, due to the challenges psychiatric telemedicine entail.
WHY IT MATTERS
Before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, a variety of logistical and regulatory hurdles prevented many psychiatrists from using telemedicine. Although research supported the efficacy of video telepsychiatry, the National Institute of Mental Health-funded study notes, only 5% of psychiatrists in the Medicare program had ever provided a telemedicine visit.
"While there were some pockets where psychiatrists were doing a lot of telemedicine, that wasn't the norm in the United States," said Lori Uscher-Pines, lead author on the report and senior policy researcher at RAND.
The research team interviewed 20 outpatient psychiatrists in regions where early flares of COVID-19 activity had triggered social distancing measures and shelter-in-place orders, such as New York, California, and Louisiana.
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Cyber Risk in the time of COVID-19: Why Hospitals Are More Vulnerable than Ever – and How to Respond
May 13, 2020
In the midst of a pandemic in which more than 2 million people have gotten sick worldwide and 130,000 have died, you’d like to think that cybercriminals would recognize the gravity of the situation and agree to a collective humanitarian “cease fire” against healthcare organizations so medical teams can focus on saving lives instead of overcoming IT and care disruptions.
But this is not how the darker side of human nature works, especially when COVID-19 has created desperate economic circumstances which, in turn, encourage crimes of desperation. There are considerable monetary rewards to reap in a successful attack, after all. A hospital with every bed occupied, for example, might be tempted to pay a significant ransom to keep compromised systems running.
At Pondurance, we work on the front lines with hospitals to help them detect and respond to threats. Unfortunately, in recent months we’ve seen systemic and operational issues which existed well before the pandemic that are now amplifying the vulnerable state of healthcare.
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Striving for Inclusivity in COVID-19 Public Health Messaging
The US has dealt with COVID-19 for months now, and health inequities are getting inflamed. Adjusting public health messaging for inclusivity is the first step toward addressing that problem.
May 08, 2020 - Flip on a TV right now, and the odds are high it will air a public service announcement from the CDC, or show a local politician holding a press conference outlining current coronavirus trends. Maybe it’s a group of television stars imploring fans to practice social distancing. Whatever form it may take, this kind of public health messaging has been crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That public health messaging includes more than just PSAs on TV, although those are plentiful (the National Association of Broadcasters recently reported it’s broadcasted over 4,000 ad spots, adding up to a value of more than $90,000,000).
Instead, healthcare organizations, state and local health officials, and key public health groups have been leaning on their own media to get the message out. Social media posts have been used to debunk false information, to promote social distancing, and educate the masses about how to access COVID-19 testing and care.
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Data Interoperability and Exchange Recommendations During COVID-19
The recommendations regarding data interoperability and exchange during COVID-19 will inform and guide policymakers addressing the pandemic in the US and globally.
May 05, 2020 - The Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy released short-term steps to improve data interoperability and exchange as states prepare to re-open.
The center convened multi-stakeholder working groups to identify feasible healthcare data interoperability recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The expected surge in testing through point-of-care devices may further challenge reliable public health access to timely and complete information on laboratory-positive COVID-19 cases.
“Containment strategies across the country depend on effective collaboration of public health authorities with health care providers, laboratories, and community-based organizations to conduct testing, support effective contact tracing, quickly discern new patterns in health care use plausibly related to COVID-19, and identify ways to improve all of these activities over time,” the center noted.
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How COVID-19 Triggered a Remote, Virtual EHR Implementation
A COVID-19 travel ban created the opportunity for an EHR vendor to complete its first ever remote, virtual EHR implementation.
May 11, 2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked challenges for health organizations across the country. However, the pandemic has made hospitals and EHR vendors more creative in forming new ideas because of certain restrictions, resulting in a rural hospital completing Cerner’s first ever virtual EHR implementation.
Macon Community Hospital (MCH), a rural 25-bed critical access hospital, and its previous EHR vendor were at the end of its contract right as the coronavirus began to spread in March. The hospital was looking for a better billing system, along with a quick and efficient EHR implementation.
After weighing its options, they chose Cerner.
“There was a lot of preparation and communication between our team and Cerner,” said Thomas Kidd, CEO of Macon Community Hospital. “We had conducted the testing and training before the pandemic hit. With those out of the way, I felt like it was a simple go-live.”
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Researchers analyse 17.4 million NHS patient EHRs in the world’s largest study to date on COVID-19 deaths
Study found that increased mortality risk for ethnic minorities is only partially attributable to pre-existing clinical risk factors.
By Tammy Lovell
May 12, 2020 01:59 AM
A study on behalf of NHS England analysed the electronic health records (EHRs) of 17.4 million UK adults, to examine the risk factors associated with death from COVID-19.
Academics at the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) carried out the research using the OpenSAFELY analytics platform, which allows GP records to be linked where they are stored for individual care.
The platform aims to minimise security risks associated with transferring and storing data elsewhere and deliver analyses quickly while preserving patient privacy.
Researchers analysed primary care EHRs between 1 February and 25 April 2020, pseudonymously linked to patient-level data from the COVID-19 Patient Notification System (CPNS), for death of hospital inpatients with confirmed COVID-19.
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Tech optimization: Unlocking the promise of precision medicine
In this special report, seven experts in personalized medicine – from Accenture, CereCore, Chilmark Research, Deloitte and Orion Health – offer best practices for optimizing technology to help health systems advance innovation.
By Bill Siwicki
May 12, 2020 12:35 PM
The healthcare provider organization is a crucial participant in a fast-evolving ecosystem around precision medicine, which includes pharma and biotech companies, medical device manufacturers, national research organizations, academic medical centers, patient advocacy groups, and others.
According to the Precision Medicine Initiative, precision medicine is “an approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyles.”
Precision medicine and personalized medicine often are used interchangeably, but have slightly different connotations – with the former focused more on the clinical realm of genomics and the latter taking a more expansive view of social and behavioral health.
Both hold huge potential for better health outcomes – but also require complex and challenging technology deployments, changes to clinical workflow, and education for physicians and patients alike.
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COVID-19: Lessons from the Nordics
A recent HIMSS Nordic Community webinar addressed how Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway have enabled a sustainable human-centred health environment that influenced their crisis management during the pandemic.
May 12, 2020 03:43 AM
In August 2019, the Nordic countries embarked on a collaborative, data-driven approach to healthcare. In the HIMSS webinar "Pandemics: How Has Innovation Prepared the Nordic Countries," health representatives from each country discussed how the Nordic Health 2030 scheme influenced their response to the COVID-19 crisis. It was clear that a shared engagement with digital innovation and integrated data solutions transcended their individual approaches to benefit the Nordic response.
WHY IT MATTERS
Pre-crisis Denmark already had telemedicine integrated into its healthcare model, so the release of two online consultation tools – Min Laege for GP appointments and another for specialist video-consultations – was achieved within two weeks of the outbreak with immediate uptake. “We’ve spent 20 years preparing the system, creating the infrastructure, pushing for the use of video-consulting and then suddenly it came out of the box,” said Claus Pedersen, director of sentinel unit for the Danish eHealth Portal Sundhed.
Digital healthcare tools were also central to the Finnish healthcare system, with digital prescriptions and the national electronic health record managed by the KANTA Services garnering over one million discrete users per month. This enabled Finland to respond to the crisis early, launching a successful, COVID-19-specific online symptom checker and education tool in just six days. “Now we can record all the data, we can get statistics on the symptoms, and we have research plans to combine all the data from different sources,” commented Illka Kunnamo, adjunct professor of general practice at the University of Helsinki.
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Faxing: How to Stay HIPAA Compliant When Working Remotely
May 12, 2020
There are thousands of articles on the internet about how to best work remotely from home. What has not been covered is faxing from home, especially when it relates to faxing medical records or Protected Health Information (PHI)
Utilizing a HIPAA Compliant cloud fax service
Let’s go over what makes a fax service HIPAA compliant. There are several key factors to consider. The first and foremost is security. Below are some of the questions that should be asked to understand how secure the fax service is. Do they utilize a secure data center? Are faxes encrypted in transit and at rest? Do they utilize TLS 1.2+ for web communications? Do they provide details on their security and the methods they use to ensure security? Are they willing to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)? What is their data retention policy? Is data retention configurable for your HIPAA requirements? Do they provide confirmation that a fax has been sent or received? These are all critical questions to ask of any cloud fax provider that claims to be HIPAA compliant. The provider should be able to satisfy all of these requirements; otherwise, you should move on to another service provider.
Let’s go over what makes a fax service HIPAA compliant. There are several key factors to consider. The first and foremost is security. Below are some of the questions that should be asked to understand how secure the fax service is. Do they utilize a secure data center? Are faxes encrypted in transit and at rest? Do they utilize TLS 1.2+ for web communications? Do they provide details on their security and the methods they use to ensure security? Are they willing to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)? What is their data retention policy? Is data retention configurable for your HIPAA requirements? Do they provide confirmation that a fax has been sent or received? These are all critical questions to ask of any cloud fax provider that claims to be HIPAA compliant. The provider should be able to satisfy all of these requirements; otherwise, you should move on to another service provider.
Cover pages
The same rules for working in the office apply to working from home. All faxes that contain PHI must have HIPAA approved cover pages. Be sure to prepend it to all outbound faxes that contain PHI. Do not use standard fax cover pages that come with MS Word. HIPAA Compliant cover pages have specific requirements.
The same rules for working in the office apply to working from home. All faxes that contain PHI must have HIPAA approved cover pages. Be sure to prepend it to all outbound faxes that contain PHI. Do not use standard fax cover pages that come with MS Word. HIPAA Compliant cover pages have specific requirements.
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How Will Big Data Analytics Factor into the Next Phase of COVID-19?
As the US thinks about moving toward the next phase of its COVID-19 response, leaders will need to leverage big data analytics to stay ahead of the virus.
By Jessica Kent
May 07, 2020 - As COVID-19 has made its way across the US and around the world, healthcare stakeholders from all areas of the industry have prioritized containing the outbreak. Leaders at all levels have utilized advanced big data analytics tools and other technologies to reduce the impact of the virus, understand its nature, and protect those who are most vulnerable to severe illness.
Phrases like flattening the curve and social distancing have become regular adages in the nation’s vocabulary, with the whole country seemingly holding its breath in anticipation of the end of the pandemic.
In the midst of the silence that has abruptly settled over the US, there are initial talks of reopening the country, reducing quarantine measures, and beginning to get closer to normal – the next phase of the coronavirus response.
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Federal health IT rules remain on track to improve care and public health
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill
At a time when the novel coronavirus has made visiting a doctor’s office a risky proposition, more patients than ever are turning to telemedicine to get the care they need without leaving their homes. This rapid shift has shined a spotlight on an ongoing problem that both hampers routine care and introduces challenges in fighting a pandemic: the inability to effectively share health data across medical organizations and with patients.
As much of the world was turning its attention to the rising pandemic, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in March released two long-awaited federal rules to reform the way America’s health care system uses and exchanges electronic health information. Among other things, the rules require that clinical and claims data be made available in the electronic form to patients at no cost, facilitating the flow of data among health care providers and to patients.
Recently, to avoid creating new compliance requirements on plans, providers, or technology developers as they rightly focus on COVID-19, the Department of Health and Human Services announced three- to six-month delays on the enforcement of some rules. When the initial peak of COVID-19 passes, technology developers and health care organizations can then redouble their efforts to meet the new requirements and address the inability to effectively exchange information that has hampered patient care.
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COVID-19 is widening gaps in health equity. Here are some ways organizations are trying to address it
May 11, 2020 1:03pm
The COVID-19 pandemic is hitting low-income, underserved populations particularly hard, experts say.
Many people who have been furloughed or lost their jobs are struggling to pay for basic needs, increasing the risk for food insecurity and homelessness in some neighborhoods in hard-hit areas like New York and New Jersey.
And in communities of color across the country, COVID-19 has exposed existing inequalities, causing an already unleveled playing field to tip over.
Case in point: Newark, New Jersey is a predominantly African American community.
Even so, the disparately high numbers of COVID patients coming into Newark Beth Israel Medical Center who are African American—about 95%—have been stark, said Dr. Frederick Waldron.
“The numbers have been overwhelming,” Waldron said. “What is different is the acuity. Most of the patients now are very very sick. The ER is almost saturated with COVID patients, some of them intubated.”
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New Federal Rules Pave The Way For Patient-Driven Health Information Exchange And Real-World Evidence On COVID-19 Surveillance And Treatment
Now nearly forgotten in the midst of the worst global pandemic of the past century, the recently released federal rules governing electronic health data presage an era in which patient-driven health information exchange enables patients to have greater agency over all of their health care data. This could transform evidence generation and accelerate the discovery and delivery of novel drugs and medical devices to patients, including for COVID-19, by overcoming challenges inherent in traditional clinical research. The rules, which derive from the 21st Century Cures Act, will enable researchers and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to partner with patients to produce real-world evidence (RWE) to support regulatory decision making spanning the total product life cycle, including drug and vaccine approvals, label expansions, and post-approval study requirements. This RWE will also support payer coverage decisions and outcomes-based contracts. Ultimately RWE-based evaluations can further inform clinician decision making, enabling safer and more effective care for patients.
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AI improves value in radiology, but needs more clinical evidence
Radiologists have to agree on what kind of evidence matters, especially in the clinical setting, before they can unleash the power of medical imaging AI in patient care.
May 11, 2020 01:19 AM
Ever since the movement surrounding value-based healthcare started, radiologists have understood the potential of showing their contribution in patient care, from disease prediction to follow-up. These are figures from the 4G age.
GSMA has published a new report on the 'Future of Devices in the age of 5G networks' in January 2020, and it identifies China as the place in which this next mobile revolution will adopt quickest. Nearly 50% of Chinese consumers say they will get a 5G phone as soon as the service is available, compared to 30% in the US and between 15-20% in Europe.
Taking a look at this closer, the GSMA survey shows that, for mobile phone customers, 5G is all about speed and coverage. Fifty-three percent say that they expect 5G to bring faster networks, and 37% look forward to better coverage. Only 27%, in contrast, expect cool new services, and no more than 23% say that 5G is about connecting new tools to the mobile networks.
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May 11 More on Telehealth
Telehealth is driving a boom in digital communications
Recent data breaches in digital health platforms have raised awareness for privacy protection and questions over who is responsible.
The coronavirus pandemic has slowed the momentum in growth for the healthcare industry this year, but experts say COVID-19 has brought opportunities for healthcare startups to succeed and innovate.
In 2019, billions were invested in digital healthcare companies, with $7.4 billion invested across 359 deals, according to Rock Health, a venture fund for digital health. A strong first quarter showed 2020 would have continued on that trend, but the pandemic caused investors to slow down, according to a panel of industry experts who spoke on Industry Update and Market Trends for HIMSS20 Digital. Moderator Indu Subaiya is a cofounder of Health 2.0 and senior advisor for HIMSS.
Still, digital communication companies are thriving amidst a boom in telemedicine brought on by the pandemic, while companies such as Doctor on Demand are hiring more physicians to meet the surge in virtual care.
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Why COVID-19 is a Breakout Moment for HIEs
May 11, 2020
The COVID-19 crisis has exposed a painful number of deficiencies in our nation’s healthcare system, including just how severe the lack of an interconnected health infrastructure has hampered response efforts. As the need for collaboration and access to quality data for tracking and reporting cases intensifies, many organizations remain stifled by applications and systems that fail to transmit information effectively.
However, amid the turbulence and enormous obstacles brought on by this pandemic, health information exchanges (HIEs) have risen to the challenge as vital contributors—sharing and aggregating essential information. As hospitals, health systems and public health agencies look to overcome the sticky data challenges of COVID-19, state and regional HIEs are stepping up in five crucial areas to support emergency preparedness and response efforts.
Complete view of patient data
Whenever clinical staff treat a patient, they need to know as much about a patient as possible – pre-existing conditions, medications, allergies, recent hospitalizations, and so on. This enables them to make the most informed care decision possible.
During an emergency situation, this need for information is only heightened. Some patients may need to be treated at a hospital they have never been to – or at a pop-up triage clinic that was quickly built to handle a surge in patients. Others may be unable to communicate their medical history. Under this stress, providers simply don’t have time to pick up the phone and ask other facilities to send information by fax, email, and other outdated and insecure media.
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Platform Uses Video-Based AI To Automate COVID Contact Tracing
May 11, 2020
If you had asked me about the benefits of computer vision AI in healthcare settings, I would not have known what you were talking about. Since then, though, I’ve learned about a company that is using this technology in interesting ways to forward the fight against COVID-19.
The vendor, Inspiren, has created a solution that uses computer vision to track and report on what happens at the patient’s bedside. Computer vision is a field of AI in which systems are trained to identify and classify objects found in digital images from cameras and videos by leveraging deep learning models.
Inspiren’s iN hybrid sensing platform combines computer vision capabilities with environmental sensing and IoT connectivity to analyze the physician and digital environment in which care takes place.
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COVID Survivors' Blood Plasma is a Sought-After New Commodity
By Kaiser Health News | May 11, 2020
For-profit companies that typically pay $50 per donation of plasma used in other lifesaving therapies are advertising aggressively — and significantly bumping up their rates for COVID donors.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Convalescent plasma from COVID-19 patients is being tested as a possible therapy to promote recovery in people who are critically ill with the disease.
· It's also being collected to create a concentrated antibody serum known as hyperimmune globulin that may prevent or halt infection in the future.
· If plasma from COVID-19 donors is shown to halt the disease, coming up with an antidote could offer companies the prospect of making millions of dollars.
This article was first published on Monday, May 11, 2020 in Kaiser Health News.
Diana Berrent learned she had tested positive for COVID-19 on a Wednesday in mid-March. Within a day, she had received 30 emails from people urging her to donate blood.
Friends and acquaintances, aware of her diagnosis, passed along a pressing request from New York's Mount Sinai Health System, one of the first centers to seek plasma, a blood component, to be used in a therapy that might fight the deadly disease. Berrent, 45, said she immediately recognized the need for the precious plasma — and the demand that would follow.
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German Federal Agencies Publish Privacy and IT Security Requirements for Digital Health Applications
Blog Inside Privacy
On April 21, 2020, the Regulation on the Requirements and Reimbursement Process for Digital Health Applications (Digitale Gesundheitsanwendungen-Verordnung or „DiGAV“, available here) entered into force in Germany. Among other provisions, the DiGAV includes specific IT security and privacy requirements. Shortly after the law took effect, Germany’s Federal Medicines and Medical Devices Agency (“BfArM”) also released an extensive explanatory Guidance (Leitfaden, available here) to the DiGAV.
Independently, on April 15, 2020, the German Federal Office for IT Security (“BSI”) published a draft version of its guidance on “Security Requirements for Digital Health Applications” (BSI TR-03161) (available here). The BSI is now seeking feedback from industry on this draft guidance before releasing a final version.
While the scope of application of the DiGAV and the BSI draft guidance may be limited, the documents can serve to provide useful insights and benchmarks for health applications generally.
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How IoT is becoming the pulse of healthcare
Healthcare CIOs’ budgeting for IoT devices is surging. Uses range from managing hospital facilities, medicines and medical equipment to monitoring patients’ locations, vitals and symptoms, with increased efficiency and data accuracy.
Senior Reporter, Computerworld | 11 May 2020 20:00 AEST
The Internet of Things is made up of small computing devices with unique IDs connected together through a network and performing specific tasks. In healthcare that can mean monitoring building temperatures, air flow, medical devices or even the health of a patient in or out of a healthcare facility.
Because of their ability to independently communicate data, there’s potential for eliminating direct human interaction with systems equipped with IoT devices and central data respositories, automating processes and increasing efficiency and data accuracy.
A Gartner survey of 511 U.S.-based enterprise IT managers, released in January, revealed that IoT adoption is becoming mainstream. Eleven percent of those surveyed worked in healthcare enterprises, and 86% of those respondents reported having an IoT architecture in place for most lines of business.
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WHO readies coronavirus app for checking symptoms, possibly contact tracing
By Paresh Dave on May 10, 2020 8:52PM
To enable people in under-resourced countries to assess.
The World Health Organization (WHO) plans to launch an app this month to enable people in under-resourced countries to assess whether they may have the novel coronavirus, and is considering a Bluetooth-based contact tracing feature too, an official told Reuters on Friday.
The app will ask people about their symptoms and offer guidance on whether they may have COVID-19, the potentially lethal illness caused by the coronavirus, said Bernardo Mariano, chief information officer for the WHO. Other information, such as how to get tested, will be personalized according to the user's country.
Though the WHO will release a version on app stores globally, any government will be able to take the app's underlying technology, add features and release its own version on app stores, Mariano said in a phone interview.
India, Australia and the United Kingdom already have released official virus apps using their own technology, with common features including telling people whether to get tested based on their symptoms and logging people's movements to enable more efficient contact tracing.
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Weekly News Recap
- Allscripts reports Q1 results that miss Wall Street expectations for both revenue and earnings.
- CVS Health beats Q1 expectations and reports a 600% increase in telemedicine visits in its MinuteClinic business.
- Change Healthcare acquires ERx Network, sells its Connected Analytics business.
- Johns Hopkins recommendations for addressing COVID-19 include making EHRs searchable by public health officials, creating a platform for hospitals to share PPE and medical supply availability, and improving healthcare supply chain tracking and coordination.
- Duke University’s interoperability recommendations for containing COVID-19 include collecting and reporting patient demographics with samples, defining a minimum data set, and expanding the use of the National Syndromic Surveillance Program.
- CMS issue waivers to pay full rates for telephone-based encounters.
- Epic launches a public website where customers can post their observational findings about COVID-19 or other health and public health issues.
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Online funerals take off during coronavirus crisis
· By Margot Boyer-Dry
· The Wall Street Journal
· May 11, 2020
Last month, when Jill Frechtman lost her grandmother, she wanted to mark her passing with a memorial service — an effort complicated by a lockdown that prohibited gatherings of family and friends.
With some cajoling, she convinced her parents to try GatheringUs, an online service that hosts memorials on Zoom, starting at $US1400 ($2140). Without leaving her Manhattan apartment, Frechtman put together an online service for 89-year-old Blanche Frechtman, the head of their family and a beloved community figure, in just two hours.
During the proceedings, GatheringUs handled the technical issues and logistics, like auto-muting participants during the live stream of the burial on Long Island. Following the burial, the nearly 30 attendees stayed on the video chat for hours, sharing memories of Blanche — from her tendency to make friends of strangers to her nightly phone calls with Frechtman following the nightly news.
“I thought we were going to have to bury her alone,” Frechtman recalls her mother saying, “but I felt like you were all there.”
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Point-of-care ultrasound: levelling the healthcare playing field
Med tech company Butterfly Network is on a mission to democratise health care for the 4.7 billion people around the world who lack access to medical imaging. Its Ultrasound-On-Chip technology is paving the way for earlier detection and remote management of health conditions around the world.
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is emerging as a valuable tool at the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the device, healthcare professionals can instigate mobile lung ultrasound procedures, triage patients according to disease severity and ensure hospital systems and testing facilities aren’t overwhelmed. Disease progression can also be monitored in patients who are receiving treatment or quarantined in homes, temporary hospitals and urgent-care facilities.
Butterfly Network’s low-cost portable whole-body ultrasound technology — Butterfly iQ — is currently used in more than 20 countries by tens of thousands of healthcare practitioners. The enormous cost differential between Butterfly iQ and traditional ultrasound systems (US$2000 vs US$50,000) makes the device a game changer when it comes to remote communities or those with limited resources.
The technology focuses on three key areas:
1. Helping doctors to assess whether patients should be admitted to hospital or rest at home by using POCUS to assess the condition of their lungs. This assessment can be made outside of medical facilities, ensuring only those who need to be in hospital are there.
2. If patients need to be admitted to hospital, POCUS can be used to monitor progression or regression of the virus. This can be done quickly and without having to move patients around wards, therefore helping contain treatment to just one part of the hospital.
3. Ongoing assessment is investigating how the technology can be used for caring for patients at home. POCUS will be crucial in allowing COVID-19 patients to recover at home and ensure the virus is contained.
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Enjoy!
David.
