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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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/07/free-app-which-helps-people-navigate-covid-19-is-launched/
Free app which helps people navigate Covid-19 is launched
A new free-to-download app to help people navigate the coronavirus pandemic has been launched for Apple and Android devices.
Hanna Crouch 27 July, 2020
Designed and made in Bristol, the Coronavirus Support App (UK) has been created by Expert Self Care, alongside a team of volunteers and eight partner organisations, including NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) West – an organisation which aims to address the immediate issues facing the health and social care system.
The app is aimed at people in the UK aged 16 and over who would like to learn more about coronavirus and Covid-19. Accurate information can help people to protect themselves, the people close to them and the wider public, and reduce avoidable pressure on the NHS.
It gives users easy and quick access to evidence-informed information about coronavirus and Covid-19 all in one place, even when offline. It also signposts to reliable, trusted sources of information.
Project lead Dr Knut Schroeder, a practising GP and founder of Expert Self Care, said: “In the current coronavirus crisis, reliable information is more important than ever. We designed this app to bring together all the best sources of information to support people during the pandemic and beyond. False information leads to rumours and myths that can hamper public health efforts, which may result in preventable disease and deaths.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/new-machine-learning-approach-supports-patient-data-privacy
New Machine Learning Approach Supports Patient Data Privacy
A machine learning method allows researchers to train an algorithm across multiple datasets without exchanging them, supporting patient data privacy.
By Jessica Kent
July 29, 2020 - A new technique enables clinicians to train machine learning models while preserving patient data privacy and could advance the field of brain imaging, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
To train machine learning models, researchers typically have to use large, diverse datasets from a variety of organizations. However, this can be challenging as hospitals and health systems are often resistant to sharing patient data due to legal, privacy, and cultural obstacles.
An emerging method called federated learning could be the solution to this issue, researchers stated. The approach trains an algorithm across multiple decentralized devices or servers holding local data samples without exchanging them.
“The more data the computational model sees, the better it learns the problem, and the better it can address the question that it was designed to answer,” said senior author Spyridon Bakas, PhD, an instructor of Radiology and Pathology & Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/new-hhs-report-makes-the-case-for-continued-telehealth-coverage
New HHS Report Makes the Case for Continued Telehealth Coverage
A new report issued by the Health and Human Services Department tracks the effects of expanded Medicare telehealth coverage during the COVID-19 crisis and calls for more discussion on 'the future of patient-centered care.'
July 29, 2020 - Federal efforts to expand Medicare’s telehealth coverage during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic “played a critical role in helping to maintain access to primary care services,” says a new report from the Health and Human Services Department.
The issue brief, released on Tuesday by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, credits federal officials with creating new opportunities for telehealth at a time when access to in-person care was sharply restricted. According to the report, which analyzes Medicare claims from January through June, the percentage of fee-for-service Medicare services accessed via telehealth jumped from 0.1 percent in February to almost 44 percent in April.
“As soon as we declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, the Trump Administration took bold and rapid action to dramatically expand services that can be provided via telehealth and make it far more convenient for patients and providers,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a press release accompanying the 24-page brief. “Today's ASPE report shows that Medicare providers and beneficiaries rapidly embraced these new opportunities. The meteoric rise of telehealth during the pandemic has not only helped us combat the virus, but also prompted a new conversation around the future of patient-centered care.”
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https://www.thejournal.ie/oxford-artificial-intelligence-test-covid-5164866-Jul2020/
Oxford researchers say new artificial intelligence test could identify coronavirus within one hour
Researchers said the tool accurately predicted a patient’s Covid-19 status in more than 90% of cases.
31 July, 2020
A NEW TEST powered by artificial intelligence (AI) could be capable of identifying coronavirus within one hour, according to new research.
Its developers say it can rapidly screen people arriving at hospitals for Covid-19 and accurately predict whether or not they have the disease.
The Curial AI test has been developed by a team at the University of Oxford and assesses data typically gathered from patients within the first hour of arriving in an emergency department – such as blood tests and vital signs – to determine the chance of a patient testing positive for Covid-19.
Testing for the virus currently involves the molecular analysis of a nose and throat swab, with results having a typical turnaround time of between 12 and 48 hours.
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https://www.govinfosecurity.com/oncs-donald-rucker-more-work-to-do-on-health-data-privacy-a-14730
ONC's Donald Rucker: More Work to Do on Health Data Privacy
'As a Country, We Really Haven't Sorted Out Privacy' July 30, 2020
Despite recently adopted final regulations designed to enhance health IT interoperability, prevent the blocking of patient information sharing among clinicians and ensure patients have secure access to their health information, many health data privacy issues still need to be addressed, says Don Rucker, M.D., national coordinator for health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services.
"As a country, we really haven't sorted out privacy. The Europeans with their global digital privacy directives are taking a stab at it," he says in an exclusive video interview with Information Security Media Group.
Rucker points to the need to ensure that health data collected by location-based technologies, wearable devices and websites is adequately protected. "I don't think any sort of reasonable person looking at this would say we've really sorted out ... what's appropriate to share and when."
'Faux' Consent
Rucker also says "we still have a long way to go" to ensure that patients have a clear-cut right to consent to how their data is used.
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UK health secretary says GP consultations should be remote by default
GPs call for caution as remote consultations may increase stress levels for both patients and doctors.
By Sara Mageit
July 31, 2020 06:04 AM
In a speech on the future of healthcare and lessons for the NHS from the coronavirus pandemic, health secretary, Matt Hancock, said all GP appointments should be done remotely by default unless a patient needs to be seen in person.
Hancock admitted that while some mistakes were made, “so many things went right” in the response to the pandemic, and remote consultations should continue.
However, the Royal College of GPs have expressed concern, with some arguing remote consultations increased stress levels for patients and doctors and that removing face-to-face appointments could take the human touch out of general practice.
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https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/house-votes-overturn-unique-patient-identifier-ban
Jul 31, 2020
House votes to overturn unique patient identifier ban
The voice vote approves the Foster-Kelly Amendment, which removes language that prohibits federal funding for the adoption of a unique patient ID.
, Associate Editor
The House of Representatives today approved the bipartisan Foster-Kelly Amendment as a part of the six-bill FY2021 minibus package that includes the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which also passed today.
The Foster-Kelly Amendment, led by representatives Bill Foster, D-Ill., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa., removes Section 510 of the Labor-HHS bill, which prohibits federal funds for the promulgation or adoption of a unique patient identifier.
With this amendment, the Department of Health and Human Services could work with the healthcare community to develop a nationwide patient-matching strategy.
The Senate must still OK the policy change, which an array of healthcare stakeholders have been pushing for more than two decades.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/clinician-burnout-correlates-volume-ehr-patient-call-messages
Clinician burnout correlates with volume of EHR patient call messages
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association also found that EHR-based efficiency tools were largely not associated with decreased odds of burnout.
By Kat Jercich
July 31, 2020 09:22 AM
It's no secret that health IT-associated clinician burnout – especially where electronic health record usage is concerned – is widespread. But a new study seeks to identify which individual EHR elements might be most associated with burnout.
The study, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, found that clinicians with high volumes of patient call messages had almost four times the odds of burnout compared to those with the fewest.
Researchers Dr. Ross Hilliard, Jacquelyn Haskell and Rebekah L. Gardner also found that EHR-based efficiency tools – except for the ability to copy and paste – were not associated with decreased odds of burnout.
"In fact, these suggested efficiency tools may not provide for or measure efficiency at all," wrote the research team.
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HIMSS 2021 Conference Officially Moved to August 9-13 in Las Vegas
July 31, 2020
As we reported previously, the HIMSS 2021 conference is officially being moved to August. It will still be held in Las Vegas at the Sands EXPO Center, but now shifted to the summer – August 9-13, 2021. In a press briefing today, Hal Wolf, CEO of HIMSS mentioned that they have secured additional space to accommodate social distancing or other changes that may be needed.
The obvious concern for August in Las Vegas is the heat. According to Vegas.com, the average high in August is a balmy 102F. This can make walking from place to place during HIMSS21 rather uncomfortable. Luckily several of the hotels are already connected via air conditioned walkways and more are being built.
The HIMSS21 conference website now lists the event location as: Venetian-Sands Expo Center – Caesars Forum – Wynn. Wolf mentioned in the press conference that by August next year Las Vegas is working on a bridge with A/C that connects casinos. I believe the bridge mentioned is between the Wynn and the Venetian-Sands Expo Center, which is a fair distance to walk. However, the walk to the Caesars Forum convention space from the Venetian-Sands is far. Even if you’re staying at Caesar’s it’s a long walk from the hotel towers to their convention space, let alone coming all the way from Venetian. Hopefully they plan for a shuttle to Caesars if they’re holding many events there.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/health-information-exchange-sees-participation-surge-amid-covid-19
Health Information Exchange Sees Participation Surge Amid COVID-19
Nevada’s statewide health information exchange has added 50 percent more patients to its database, increasing patient data exchange during a much-needed time.
July 28, 2020 - Ready access to patient data has been a common roadblock for providers and this issue has been especially apparent during COVID-19.
To lessen this burden, HealtHIE Nevada, the state’s health information exchange (HIE), wanted to give clinicians full access without barriers to patient data. Michael Gagnon, executive director of HealtHIE, and his team decided to give this access to providers who had not yet signed up for the service.
Because the statewide HIE had recently connected to the Southern Nevada health district and to the Nevada State Public Health Lab, HealtHIE had the ability to incorporate the health district’s reporting, as well as getting COVID-19 tests from the Nevada State Public Health Lab.
“We thought that having that information would be very valuable to providers,” said Gagnon in an interview with EHRIntelligence. “We offered it as somewhere between 90 and 120 days and we would give free access to up to five people per site. It's been quite successful and it's worked out quite well.”
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https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns-about-lasting-heart-damage/
Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage
July 27, 2020
Two new studies from Germany paint a sobering picture of the toll that Covid-19 takes on the heart, raising the specter of long-term damage after people recover, even if their illness was not severe enough to require hospitalization.
One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of the patients had recovered at home. More than two months later, infected patients were more likely to have troubling cardiac signs than people in the control group: 78 patients showed structural changes to their hearts, 76 had evidence of a biomarker signaling cardiac injury typically found after a heart attack, and 60 had signs of inflammation.
These were relatively young, healthy patients who fell ill in the spring, Valentina Puntmann, who led the MRI study, pointed out in an interview. Many of them had just returned from ski vacations. None of them thought they had anything wrong with their hearts.
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https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/29/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html
As US passes 150,000 coronavirus deaths, experts at Johns Hopkins call for reset in national response
By Steve Almasy, Jason Hanna and Madeline Holcombe, CNN
Updated 0217 GMT (1017 HKT) July 30, 2020
(CNN)The United States on Wednesday surpassed 150,000 recorded Covid-19 deaths -- a milestone that comes as the country's number of daily coronavirus deaths is the highest it's been since the spring.
The first death in the US was reported on February 29. The country reached 50,000 deaths 54 days later on April 23, and 34 days later, on May 27, crossed 100,000 deaths. It has taken 63 days to add another 50,000 to reach the 150,000 mark.
The country's coronavirus death toll was 150,676 as of Wednesday evening -- more than a fifth of the world's recorded deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
"I think the fact that we as a country have not been able to get our arms around this, have not prioritized preventing those deaths is all that much more maddening. And so, for me it's frustration, it's sadness. And a resolve to try to figure out how we prevent the next 150,000," Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/practicemanagement/telehealth/87813
Pandemic Spike in Telehealth Levels Off
— But still significantly up among Medicare patients, HHS says
by Crystal Phend, Senior Editor, MedPage Today July 29, 2020
Telehealth's early bonanza during the pandemic has given way to persistently elevated use in primary care, a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report showed.
Analysis of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) data showed an increase in Medicare primary care visits from 0.1% of all primary care in February to 43.5% in April, representing an increase from about 2,000 to 1.28 million telehealth visits per week.
Meanwhile, there was a "precipitous" drop in in-person visits for primary care in mid-March as COVID-19 took hold in the U.S., then a rise from mid-April through May, according to the report from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/directtrust-announces-draft-industry-first-134700480.html
DirectTrust Announces Draft of Industry-First Trusted Instant Messaging Standard Now Available for Testing
DirectTrust
GlobeNewswire July 30, 2020
Consensus Body for TIM+ standard to host Connectathon to garner input on implementations, workflows, and interoperability
WASHINGTON, July 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DirectTrust today announced the draft of its Trusted Instant Messaging+ (TIM+) standard is now available for testing. TIM+ is the industry-first standard to enable real-time healthcare communication that incorporates trust network concepts to ensure secure transmissions between known, trusted entities within and across enterprises. DirectTrust is a non-profit healthcare industry alliance created to support secure, identity-verified electronic exchanges of protected health information (PHI) between provider organizations, and between providers and patients, for the purpose of improved coordination of care.
“We’re thrilled to have a draft of the TIM+ standard ready for testing. It’s been exciting to see the standards process in action as the Consensus Body developed it,” said Scott Stuewe, DirectTrust President and CEO. “We’re eager to learn the industry’s response as various entities explore this timely and necessary new standard, and look forward to further testing and developments in the areas of workflow and policy at our Connectathon in November.”
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/real-time-health-system-adapting-healthcare-new-normal
The real time health system: adapting healthcare to the new normal
A healthcare system in which stakeholders share, adopt and apply medical knowledge in real time enables improved care, accelerated workflows, streamlined business processes and a better balance of resources with demand.
By Rick Krohn
July 30, 2020 02:22 PM
Right now, in the midst of a pandemic, our healthcare system is struggling with uncertainty – some might even say chaos – as it tries to stem the tide of infections that are sweeping across the nation. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates, vividly, that our healthcare system is unsuited to delivering systemic services to preempt, intervene and mitigate health crises affecting the general population.
It’s a problem as old as organized medicine, and we have yet to effectively harness the collective resources of healthcare to optimize human and physical assets, eliminate the frictions, and introduce the efficiencies that remove gaps in care and uneven outcomes. The solution set is going to require a departure, maybe a divorce, from traditional care delivery, and a pivot towards a data driven, real time health system.
U.S. healthcare has reached an inflection point – accelerated by COVID-19, in which the industry’s’ brick-and-mortar, encounter based business model is being extended and magnified by technology-inspired care innovation.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/what-it-takes-successfully-deliver-hiv-care-remotely
What it takes to successfully deliver HIV care remotely
Arizona-based Petersen HIV clinic has used Zoom for Healthcare to continue providing care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Kat Jercich
July 30, 2020 01:21 PM
For years, staff at the Petersen HIV clinic in Tucson, Arizona, had been working on implementing a telemedicine protocol for their patients in the region. They knew HIV care could be provided efficiently via telehealth and had been studying best practices of other facilities around the country. But they'd been stymied by hurdles, particularly when it came to getting administrative buy-ins.
"Of course, all that changed in March," said Cesar Egurrola, lead clinical coordinator at Petersen.
As was the case with other healthcare specialties, the care at Petersen swiftly transitioned in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to a virtual model, aided by the staff's preparatory efforts.
During a webinar on Wednesday, Egurrola and his colleagues Dr. Stephen Klotz and Larry York explained that the three of them represented the three participants, at a minimum, needed to run a successful HIV telemedicine clinic: a physician, a pharmacist and a coordinator.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/onc-releases-updated-recommendations-pediatric-health-it
ONC releases updated recommendations for pediatric health IT
The guidelines suggest the ability to document all guardians and caregivers, compute weight-based drug dosage and track incomplete preventative care opportunities.
By Kat Jercich
July 30, 2020 09:38 AM
Children have specific and unique medical needs – and software supporting their care should be tailored to help address those needs.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has published a new informational resource aimed at shaping the specifications of technology products intended for pediatric use.
"There are critical functionalities, data elements, and other requirements that should be present in health IT products to address healthcare needs specific to the care of children," according to ONC.
The agency focuses on 10 recommendations that align to "clinical priorities that were identified by the American Academy of Pediatrics in partnership with relevant stakeholders across the country," wrote Senior Policy Advisor Samantha Meklir and Medical Informatics Fellow Al Taylor in a blog post Wednesday.
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Some Providers Say COVID-19 Has Forced Through Changes Too Quickly
July 30, 2020
A new survey has found that some healthcare providers feel that the rush to tackle COVID-19 may actually have worsened existing problems with their infrastructure and workflow.
The survey, which was sponsored by secure document transfer solutions vendor Biscom, connected with 756 respondents working in healthcare who were responsible for capturing, managing or transferring patient health records.
When asked about the impact of the pandemic, 90% of respondents said that it had highlighted existing problems in their healthcare infrastructure.
Less than 60% felt that their organization had been fully prepared to have people and staff work from home, and 70% agreed that the rising use of telehealth exacerbated the problems facing an already-broken communications system, Biscom’s survey found.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/health-information-exchange-sees-participation-surge-amid-covid-19
Health Information Exchange Sees Participation Surge Amid COVID-19
Nevada’s statewide health information exchange has added 50 percent more patients to its database, increasing patient data exchange during a much-needed time.
July 28, 2020 - Ready access to patient data has been a common roadblock for providers and this issue has been especially apparent during COVID-19.
To lessen this burden, HealtHIE Nevada, the state’s health information exchange (HIE), wanted to give clinicians full access without barriers to patient data. Michael Gagnon, executive director of HealtHIE, and his team decided to give this access to providers who had not yet signed up for the service.
Because the statewide HIE had recently connected to the Southern Nevada health district and to the Nevada State Public Health Lab, HealtHIE had the ability to incorporate the health district’s reporting, as well as getting COVID-19 tests from the Nevada State Public Health Lab.
“We thought that having that information would be very valuable to providers,” said Gagnon in an interview with EHRIntelligence. “We offered it as somewhere between 90 and 120 days and we would give free access to up to five people per site. It's been quite successful and it's worked out quite well.”
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Massachusetts payer expands telehealth coverage for mental health services
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has added telemental health services to its telehealth platform and expanded access to an online wellness program and will be maintaining reimbursement parity for telehealth visits.
July 28, 2020 - A Massachusetts insurer is expanding coverage for mental health services delivered via telehealth.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts announced last week that it would offer telemental health visits through its WellConnection platform, expand access to an mHealth platform that helps address mild to moderate mental health concerns and maintain reimbursement parity for telehealth visits – including those done over a phone – beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
“We know that far too many of our members – both children and adults—are not getting the mental health care they deserve,” Andrew Dreyfus, the health plan’s president and CEO, said in a press release. “Taken together, we believe these initiatives will help address a critical need at a time when access to high quality mental health services has never been more important.”
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Average cost of healthcare data breach rises to $7.1M, according to IBM report
Jul 29, 2020 12:58pm
A healthcare data breach comes with a hefty price tag—to the tune of $7.13 million on average.
That's up more than 10% from last year, when the average data breach cost healthcare organizations $6.45 million, according to IBM Security’s 2020 data breach cost report.
Healthcare organizations continue to have the highest costs associated with data breaches, according to the report, which looked at more than 500 data breaches that occurred last year across 17 industries.
Across all industries, data breaches cost companies $3.86 million per breach on average, or $1.49 per record.
The IBM study found that 80% of these incidents resulted in the exposure of customers' personally identifiable information (PII). Out of all types of data exposed in these breaches, customer PII was also the costliest to businesses.
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https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/humana-to-make-100m-investment-home-health-startup-heal
Humana to make $100M investment in home health startup Heal
Jul 29, 2020 8:00am
Humana is aiming to broaden its home care options by joining forces with home health startup Heal.
The insurer will make a $100 million investment in Heal and will expand the platform’s reach into new geographic regions such as Chicago, Houston and Charlotte, North Carolina, to align with its Bold Goal population health initiative.
Heal’s approach is built on a 21st century reimagining of the house call. The company has made 200,000 home visits over the past five years. It also offers telemedicine, telepsychiatry and remote monitoring services, and it currently operates in New York, New Jersey, Washington, California, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
A home visit, according to Heal, allows physicians to both meet patients where they are and to observe potential risks or health concerns such as allergens, food insecurity and fall risk. Heal’s services will be available to Medicare Advantage, group commercial and individual market coverage.
Humana said many members sought out home health options due to COVID-19, so it worked with Heal to offer home primary care to members, especially as most are in Medicare Advantage plans and are at high risk for complications related to the virus.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/politics/russia-disinformation-coronavirus.html
Russian Intelligence Agencies Push Disinformation on Pandemic
Declassified U.S. intelligence accuses Moscow of pushing propaganda through alternative websites as Russia refines techniques used in 2016.
By Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON — Russian intelligence services have been spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, according to newly declassified intelligence, material that demonstrates how Moscow is continuing to try to influence Americans as the election draws closer.
Russian military intelligence, known as the G.R.U., has used its ties with a Russian government information center, InfoRos, and other websites to push out English-language disinformation and propaganda about the pandemic, such as amplifying false Chinese arguments that the virus was created by the United States military and articles that said Russia’s medical assistance could bring a new détente with Washington.
The disinformation efforts are a refinement of what Russia tried to do in 2016. The fake social media accounts and bots used by the Internet Research Agency and other Russia-backed groups to amplify false articles have proved relatively easy to stamp out. But it is far more difficult to stop the dissemination of such articles that appear on websites that seem legitimate, according to outside experts.
“Russian intelligence agencies are taking a more central role in disinformation efforts that Russia is pushing now,” said Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “It is not the blunt force” of the operations mounted by the Internet Research Agency.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/national-cardiovascular-partners-email-hack-impacts-78k-patients
National Cardiovascular Partners Email Hack Impacts 78K Patients
A hacker gained access to the email account of an employee of National Cardiovascular Partners for nearly a month; a phishing incident, ransomware, and medical record theft completes this week’s breach roundup.
July 27, 2020 - National Cardiovascular Partners recently notified 78,070 patients that their data was potentially compromised after an attacker gained access to an employee email account.
According to its notice to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, NCP first discovered the account breach on May 19. However, access first began nearly a month earlier on April 27. Upon discovery, the account was secured and access to the account was terminated.
An investigation led with support from an outside cybersecurity forensics firm determined the account contained patient information, including names, contact information, and a host of other sensitive data that varied by patient.
But officials believe the goal of the hack was to commit financial fraud against NCP. Out of an abundance of caution, the impacted patients will receive a year of identity detection and identity theft resolution.
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https://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=aic&pag=dis&ItemID=129709
AI boosts MRI's performance for detecting liver lesions
Kate Madden Yee, AuntMinnie.com staff writer
July 29, 2020 -- An artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm improved MRI's performance when it comes to tracking changes in liver lesions after therapy has started, according to a study published July 25 in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
The findings suggest that AI could streamline radiologist workflow and free them up to devote their time to more complex tasks, wrote a team led by Dr. Alexander Goehler, PhD, of Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
"With recent advances in neural networks for medical imaging, the possibility to automate segmentation tasks offers the promise of helping clinical radiologists by completing tedious tasks more quickly and comprehensively and thus allowing them more time to focus on higher-level interpretive and cognitive tasks," the team wrote.
Tumor response to therapy is often evaluated by tracking changes in liver lesion size using MRI, but these exams can be time-consuming, the team noted. Goehler and colleagues investigated whether AI for detecting liver metastases on MRI could effectively assess changes in tumor size on ensuing exams and therefore evaluate patients' therapy response.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/high-ehr-inbox-volume-is-the-leading-cause-of-clinician-burnout
High EHR Inbox Volume is the Leading Cause of Clinician Burnout
Outside of the copy and paste method, EHR efficiency tools do not reduce clinician burnout.
July 29, 2020 - Increased clinician workload, primarily due to a high volume of patient call messages in the EHR inbox, is the predominant cause of clinician burnout according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).
To that end, EHR efficiency tools are unlikely to reduce burnout symptoms, the study authors asserted.
An abundant number of studies have shown that a high EHR workload is a primary cause of clinician burnout. And although there is an increasing amount of analysis and awareness on the subject, researchers are still trying to uncover and test approaches to mitigate clinician burnout.
Researchers gathered data from a Rhode Island clinician survey on burnout with EHR data from two large health systems that included over 400 clinicians.
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Why did Lifespan Health face such a stiff HIPAA penalty for a stolen laptop?
On the surface, like with other HHS settlements, it may seem harsh when looking at only the amount of money vis-a-vis the number of patients affected. But it's important to consider what OCR is trying to accomplish.
By Shawn Tuma
July 29, 2020 10:00 AM
The United States Department of Health and Human Services recently reached an agreement with Lifespan Health System Affiliated Covered Entity in which Lifespan agreed to pay HHS Office for Civil Rights $1,040,000 and adopt a corrective action plan in the wake of a data breach that exposed over 20,431 patients' protected health information.
The breach occurred when an employee's unencrypted laptop was stolen which contained electronic protected health information – including patients' names, medical record numbers, demographic information and medication information.
On the surface this settlement, like many other OCR settlements, may seem harsh when looking at only the amount of money vis-a-vis the number of patients affected. In the world of HIPAA breaches, and data breaches in general, 20,431 affected individuals is not a large breach. And for a stolen laptop? Laptops get stolen everyday, right?
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/07/29/cyberattackers-hit-hospitals-hard-during-pandemic/
Cyberattackers Hit Hospitals Hard During Pandemic
July 29, 2020
Being a hospital CIO can be an unenviable – and sometimes nearly thankless – job even at the best of times. Things have arguably gotten even worse for health IT leaders as COVID-19 caseloads mount and the need to slap together solutions addressing the pandemic grows.
Given this level of chaos, it’s predictable that cyberattackers would materialize en masse to see if they can exploit newly vulnerable hospitals. And according to an article in USA Today, that’s exactly what’s happening now.
According to the story, the pounding hospitals take from malign hackers has gotten much worse since the pandemic settled in. This could prove to be a disaster for some facilities, particularly given the extent to which the staff members have retreated to their home offices and their budgets have been compromised by the costs of COVID-19 care and lack of elective procedures.
The article reports that between March and April of this year, IBM saw a 6000% increase in spam attacks targeting IT systems, many that are healthcare facilities. If you want to learn more about the growth of these attacks and what to do about them, we’re hosting two free webinars. The first is focused on Cybersecurity’s Impact on Patient Safety and Trust and the second will look at How Healthcare Institutions Are Being Attacked and What You Can Do About It.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/understanding-barriers-gaps-in-womens-primary-care-quality
Understanding Barriers, Gaps in Women’s Primary Care Quality
Researchers said policy, care delivery models, and social determinants of health impact quality for women's primary care.
By Sara Heath
July 27, 2020 - Improving primary care access and quality for women will require an allover approach to providing sex-specific, sex-aware, and gender-sensitive care that is coordinated across a woman’s lifetime, according to a new report published by the Commonwealth Fund and Manatt Health.
Primary care is foundational to health and wellness, serving as a key place for patients to receive preventive screenings, early interventions, and health coaching that will ultimately keep them well in the long run.
For women, the role of primary care is enhanced. Although women see a number of specialists to attend to their normal health needs — an OBGYN, for example — primary care serves as the epicenter for all of this care.
It’s for that reason that, although primary care needs a boost for every patient, examining the barriers and gaps for women specifically is of high importance.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/covid-19-cybersecurity-building-resilience-beyond-the-crisis
COVID-19 Cybersecurity: Building Resilience Beyond the Crisis
Visibility, network access management, and automation are crucial to securing and building resilience to the healthcare infrastructure long after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.
July 27, 2020 - A recent Forescout report showed more than a third of workstations in healthcare operate on unsupported versions of Windows, among a host of other vulnerabilities found in everyday medical devices. The COVID-19 crisis fueled the adoption of even more remote connections and devices on the network, thus increasing cybersecurity risks across the sector.
At the start of the national emergency, the Office for Civil Rights lifted penalties around telehealth to expand care options amid the crisis. These changes fueled the adoption of new telehealth platforms, as well as the use of platforms not previously allowed by HIPAA.
During the same time period, telework increased as did the need for temporary hospitals and supporting remote devices. As previously noted by security researchers, many of these platforms were quickly put onto the network – and not always with security at the forefront.
Security researchers, the FBI, and other federal agencies have ramped up alerts during the crisis, in light of an increase in traffic and targeted attacks on the sector. These vulnerabilities range from COVID-19 fraud schemes and personal protective equipment, to nation state-sponsored hacking on healthcare and pharma entities.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/epic-systems-cerner-exceeds-ehr-client-expectations-during-covid-19
Epic Systems, Cerner Exceeds EHR Client Expectations During COVID-19
KLAS surveyed over 170 healthcare professionals to gauge their respective EHR vendor satisfaction levels throughout COVID-19.
July 27, 2020 - Epic Systems and Cerner have both stepped up and exceeded expectations as EHR vendors throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent KLAS report.
KLAS researchers asked healthcare professionals to rate their vendor’s reaction and support to the coronavirus on a 9-point scale. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said their vendor generally exceeded expectations. According to KLAS, vendors that received a high overall satisfaction rating before the pandemic, scored higher during the pandemic.
Researchers surveyed more than 170 healthcare professionals to gain EHR vendor insight, with at least 15 customers per vendor.
Epic, which was awarded 2020 Best in KLAS, stood above the rest of the EHR vendors, scoring an 8.1 on the 9-point scale.
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https://undark.org/2020/07/27/ai-medicine-racial-bias-covid-19/
Artificial Intelligence, Health Disparities, and Covid-19
How racially biased is AI medicine? Experts are asking if biased algorithms worsen Covid-19’s toll on Black Americans.
07.27.2020
The power of artificial intelligence has transformed health care by using massive datasets to improve diagnostics, treatment, records management, and patient outcomes. Complex decisions that once took hours — such as making a breast or lung cancer diagnosis based on imaging studies, or deciding when patients should be discharged — are now resolved within seconds by machine learning and deep learning applications.
Any technology, of course, will have its limitations and flaws. And over the past few years, a steady stream of evidence has demonstrated that some of these AI-powered medical technologies are replicating racial bias and exacerbating historic health care inequities. Now, amid the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, some researchers are asking whether these new technologies might be contributing to the disproportionately high rates of virus-related illness and death among African Americans. African Americans aged 35 to 44 experience Covid-19 mortality rates that are nine times higher than their White counterparts. Many African Americans also say they have limited access to Covid-19 testing.
During the early weeks of the pandemic, there were few — if any — Covid-19 testing locations in African American communities. Public health officials in states such as California, Illinois, Tennessee, and Texas have said that decisions about whom and where to test were data-driven and reflected the demographics of early cases. Yet the initial focus on affluent White communities allowed thousands of infections to quickly spread across cities and towns whose residents experience disproportionately high rates of underlying health conditions.
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Ransomware: These free decryption tools have now saved victims over $600m
Four years on from launch, the No More Ransom initiative has helped over four million victims of ransomware attacks retrieve their files for free.
By Danny Palmer | July 27, 2020 -- 12:01 GMT (22:01 AEST) | Topic: Security
Over four million victims of ransomware attacks have now avoided paying over £600 million in extortion demands to cyber criminals in the first four years of Europol's No More Ransom initiative.
First launched in 2016 with four founding members, No More Ransom provides free decryption tools for ransomware and has been growing ever since, now consisting of 163 partners across cybersecurity, law enforcement bodies, financial services and more.
Together, they've released free decryption tools for over 140 families of ransomware that have been downloaded a combined total of over 4.2 million times – something that Europol estimates has prevented $632 million from being paid out to cyber criminals.
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Are newer medical IoT devices less secure than old ones?
Legacy medical IoT devices may lack security features, but newer ones built around commodity components can have a whole different set of vulnerabilities that are better understood by attackers.
By Jon Gold
Senior Writer, Network World | Jul 27, 2020 6:12 am PDT
Experts differ on whether older connected medical devices or newer ones are more to blame for making healthcare networks more vulnerable to cyberattack.
The classic narrative of insecure IoT centers on the integration of older devices into the network. In some industries, those devices pre-date the internet, sometimes by a considerable length of time, so it’s hardly surprising that businesses face a lot of challenges in securing them against remote compromise.
Even if those devices aren’t quite that old, they often lack key capabilities – in particular, remote software updates and configurable password protection – that would help IT staff defend them against modern threats.
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https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-ai-researchers-amass-patient-lung-scans/
As Covid-19 surges, researchers amass lung scans to build AI systems for patient care
By Casey Ross
July 27, 2020
At first, the images of lungs infected by the novel coronavirus were hard to come by. It was early in the pandemic, and Joseph Paul Cohen, a researcher at the University of Montreal, was trying to stockpile radiology scans to train an artificial intelligence model to recognize warning signs of severe illness.
With so few images available, the work was next to impossible. But in recent weeks, the resurgence of Covid-19 in the U.S. and other hotspots has solved that problem, allowing him to amass hundreds of lung scans from clinical reports published around the world. “We’re at a good number now,” said Cohen. “There’s a sufficient amount to start doing this.”
Little more than six months after the pandemic emerged, a number of researchers and companies are already testing the ability of AI systems to aid diagnosis of Covid-19 from lung images, and with the data on patients flowing more freely, researchers like Cohen say they can begin to build more reliable AI models that seek to predict the severity of disease, gauge patients’ response to various treatments, and determine whether they are likely to need a ventilator or transfer to an intensive care unit.
Radiologists said demand for such AI-powered tools may increase significantly in the months ahead, as surging numbers of infections threaten to strain medical resources in the United States and around the globe.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/unencrypted-stolen-laptop-costs-lifespan-more-1-million
Unencrypted stolen laptop costs Lifespan more than $1M
The Rhode Island health system has settled with OCR for the HIPAA violation after an employee's computer went missing – with protected health information of 20,431 individuals left accessible.
By Mike Miliard
July 28, 2020 03:20 PM
Providence, Rhode Island-based Lifespan Health System will pay $1,040,000 and put a corrective action plan in place to settle a potential HIPAA violation with the HHS Office for Civil Rights.
ON THE
RECORD
The case involves an employee's stolen MacBook laptop, which was solemn from
their car in a public parking lot on February 25, 2017, and never recovered.
"Lifespan ascertained that the employee's work emails may have been cached in a file on the device's hard drive," according to the OCR settlement.
"The analysis revealed that the thieves had access to: patient names, medical record numbers, demographic information, including partial address information, and the name of one or more medications that were prescribed or administered to patients. The protected health information on the stolen laptop may have included information for patients across various affiliated provider facilities and belongs to Rhode Island Hospital, Lifespan Pharmacy LLC, retail pharmacies and affiliated hospitals of Lifespan."
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/asia-pacific/combating-pandemics-view-across-apac
Combating pandemics – A view across APAC
“In APAC’s response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is absolutely no doubt that digitally enabled systems made for better outcomes,” said Dr Charles Alessi.
By Dean Koh
July 28, 2020 01:40 AM
At the BIO Asia–Taiwan 2020 Online + Live conference organized by global Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and the Taiwan Bio Industry Organization (Taiwan BIO), Dr Charles Alessi, Chief Clinical Officer of HIMSS, was invited to share his insights about how various APAC countries successfully managed the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic based on his experience as the host of the HIMSS APAC series of webinars and virtual dialogues on tackling the pandemic.
He summarized these insights in seven key values or factors that encouraged success:
- The value of a short term memory
- The value of preparation – in practice, not in theory
- The value of constant and trusted communicating with the population
- The value of protecting the workforce and population
- The value of managing the non-COVID conditions in a pandemic
- The value of managing community care including care homes, not only hospitals
- The value of already being on a journey towards digital transformation
The value of a short term memory
In APAC, many countries were caught unprepared for pandemics such as SARS in 2002, H1N1 in 2009 and MERS in 2012. These pandemics had relatively little effects in the US and Europe, which meant that they ‘forgot’ how to manage them while APAC countries were more ready with their previous encounters with pandemics. In addition, APAC countries have to regularly deal with civil emergencies such as tsunamis and earthquakes, which really prepared the populations and systems to manage things very quickly.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/tech-optimization-getting-most-out-telehealth
Tech optimization: Getting the most out of telehealth
This special report brings together four telemedicine experts from Amwell, Caregility, Eko and emocha Health to offer best practices for optimal technology performance.
By Bill Siwicki
July 28, 2020 11:23 AM
With the sudden easing of restrictions by the government and equally sudden reimbursement from payers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s very clear telemedicine has never been more used or more vital. Hospitals and health systems have gone from dozens to thousands of telehealth visits per week.
Just as telehealth has never been more important, it’s never been more important for healthcare provider organizations to make sure their telemedicine technology is finely tuned so that patients are getting the best distance care and the organizations are getting the most out of their tech investment.
In this Healthcare IT News special report, telemedicine technology experts from Amwell, Caregility, Eko and emocha Health offer readers their decades of expertise in the form of best practices for optimizing the technology.
Scalable across use-cases and workflows
When implementing telemedicine programs, healthcare provider organizations will see the best results if they use technology that is scalable across a variety of use cases and can accommodate various clinical workflows, said Dr. Roy Schoenberg, CEO and cofounder of Amwell, a telemedicine technology and services company.
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Top 5 Risks to Address when Converting Data to MEDITECH Expanse
July 28, 2020
The following is a guest article by Justin Campbell, Vice President, Strategy, at Galen Healthcare Solutions.
Note: While this article addresses specifically converting data to MEDITECH Expanse, most of these principles apply to any EHR data conversion.
With Expanse, MEDITECH has delivered a single EMR platform that gathers all the health data needed for treatment across care settings. But if your organization utilizes an EHR that is not built or supported by MEDITECH, you should maintain the value of your clinical data that has already been entered into existing EMRs through a data conversion to Expanse.
Converting legacy system data to Expanse ensures clinical continuity and maximization of usability at go-live. Migrating that data makes a marked difference in the ability to achieve increased provider satisfaction and return to full utilization. That said, a data conversion project does come with its own risks, and we have distilled the top considerations to address:
1. Data Access
The single biggest hurdle to starting and delivering a project on time is obtaining required access to the legacy data. Typically, this an afterthought, but once an organization starts to request access, the institutional knowledge needed for dependencies including granting database and front-end access to several in-scope applications can be elusive. This can be mitigated by organizations starting well before contract signature to identify who is able to grant and process the access.
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https://mg.co.za/africa/2020-07-28-challenges-and-opportunities-for-telemedicine-in-africa/
Challenges and opportunities for telemedicine in Africa
Fejiro Chinye-Nwoko Utibe Effiong Nchiewe Ani
28 Jul 2020
COMMENT
In response to the harsh realities of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) recently amended its guidelines for telemedicine. Telemedicine is the art of remotely diagnosing and treating a patient. It involves a network of service providers who work with remote clinics using communication technology to connect patients with healthcare workers. It provides on-demand access to healthcare services, with mutual financial benefits to the service providers and the patient.
The telemedicine services available in Africa include neonatal care; maternal and child healthcare; intensive-care services; trauma care; occupational healthcare, especially for farmers and factory workers; mental-health services; geriatric medicine; nutritional health; radiological services and e-pharmacy services.
Telemedicine has arisen to fill the void created by the dearth of medical personnel in many parts of Africa. More than 400-million people live on the continent with little or no access to healthcare. Half of this population lives in rural areas, but only one-quarter of doctors in Africa are deployed to rural areas. According to the World Health Organisation, there are only four doctors per 10 000 patients in Nigeria, Africa’s richest and most populous country. This hardly compares to physician density of 26 and 28 doctors per 10 000 people in the United States and United Kingdom, respectively.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/how-precision-medicine-genomics-research-is-decoding-covid-19
How Precision Medicine, Genomics Research is Decoding COVID-19
The industry is conducting precision medicine and genomics research to better understand COVID-19 susceptibility, measure its impact, and discover potential therapies.
By Jessica Kent
July 22, 2020 - Since COVID-19 has entered and spread across the US, healthcare researchers have aimed to learn everything they can about the virus.
Studies have sought to discover why the disease affects some individuals more severely than others, how communities can reduce the spread of infection, and which states or cities will likely see a surge of new cases.
A critical feature of this research – and the key to achieving an enhanced understanding of the virus – is the field of precision medicine and genomics. In order to treat COVID-19, healthcare professionals first have to know how the virus operates, as well as who is most likely to experience negative outcomes from the disease.
To answer these questions, researchers have doubled down on their precision medicine efforts. Recently, the San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics (SAPPT) announced the funding of three projects that will aim to accelerate treatments for COVID-19.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/new-genomics-lab-will-leverage-ai-to-advance-precision-medicine
New Genomics Lab Will Leverage AI to Advance Precision Medicine
The state-of-the-art laboratory will use artificial intelligence algorithms to conduct molecular testing and accelerate precision medicine.
By Jessica Kent
July 24, 2020 - Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) and Genomic Testing Cooperative (GTC) are launching a next generation sequencing reference laboratory that will use artificial intelligence to advance precision medicine.
The state-of-the-art laboratory will be located at JFK Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey, and will initially focus on cancer before expanding to immune diseases and various chronic conditions. The lab will bring genomics to the active screening and prevention program at HMH.
“Investing in genomics and establishing a reference laboratory in genomics represents a new phase for Hackensack Meridian Health and demonstrates our commitment to be a leader in improving patient care,” noted Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, chief executive officer, Hackensack Meridian Health. “We believe that precision medicine based on genomics not only delivers better medicine but is more efficient and cost effective.”
Molecular testing can provide deeper insight into tumors’ genomic signature. Molecular tests look for alterations in the cancer’s DNA and RNA that drive the disease’s growth and spread. Testing could uncover one or several causes that could offer insight into how the tumor will behave.
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https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768927
July 24, 2020
Clinical, Legal, and Ethical Aspects of Artificial Intelligence–Assisted Conversational Agents in Health Care
John D. McGreevey III, MD1C. William Hanson III, MD2,3Ross Koppel, PhD2,4
Author Affiliations Article Information
Conversational agents (CAs) are artificial intelligence (AI) programs that engage in a dialogue with users by interpreting their questions or concerns and replying to them in a text message, image, or voice format. Conversational agents typically imitate human conversation by applying natural language processing and machine learning and stand in contrast to text-based engagement platforms that accept discretely formatted human inputs and reply with preset messages. Conversational agents are now familiar tools in consumer life (eg, billing issues). They have increasingly become more common in health care spaces, especially during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, as well as in direct-to-consumer or clinical capacities.1
A National Academy of Medicine (NAM) report2 offers guidance on a broad range of AI technologies and the foundational work necessary to implement them safely and effectively. In this Viewpoint, we focus on CAs in particular as we examine evidence supporting their use and propose 12 considerations for clinicians and health care organizations to help promote safe and effective deployment of CAs into clinical practice (Box). These considerations are especially critical given the intimacy that CAs allow in their interactions with patients, a privilege and responsibility previously reserved only for licensed clinicians. Although the focus is on CA use within traditional health care settings, these considerations also apply to other CA use cases, such as direct-to-consumer mental health platforms, which originated with a simulated psychotherapist (ELIZA).3
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/times-crisis-are-you-data-minded-or-numbers-minded
In times of crisis, are you 'data-minded' or 'numbers-minded'?
Data literacy, experts say, can empower us to be both predictive and prescriptive in the face of continuing public health emergencies.
By Kat Jercich
July 27, 2020 09:24 AM
By mid-February, the number of coronavirus patients had begun to increase around the world and set off alarm bells for many public health experts.
Still, said panelists in a recent HIMSS20 Digital presentation, many people were slow to recognize the truth about the looming pandemic.
"We tend to look at the world around us based on things that we know," said Dr. Barry B. Chaiken, clinical lead at Tableau Healthcare.
"As data started to come in about the problems … people saw that data but they really didn't have a foundation to be able to interpret it," said Chaiken.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/europe/lessons-sars
Lessons from SARS
During the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals in South-East Asia had an advantage over medical institutions in other parts of the world, since they had dealt with a SARS virus in 2003 already. So what do they recommend in terms of outbreak prevention?
By Philipp Grätzel von Grätz
July 27, 2020 03:22 AM
Hospital outbreaks of SarsCoV2 are considered important ‘milestones’ on the road from an unpleasant but manageable regional SarsCoV2 outbreak, to a major healthcare disaster with overcrowded hospitals and excess mortality. Once out of control, hospitals tend to act as super-spreaders and contribute to, rather than help contain the infection chains. Preventing hospital outbreaks, thus, is among the most important individual measures to contain the SarsCoV2 pandemic.
It will be impossible to prevent every single SarsCoV2 infection in a hospital. But there are options to reduce the likelihood of major hospital outbreaks, most importantly minimise the risk of infection and transmission, and optimise the way an infectious or potentially infectious patient is dealt with within an institution. Digital tools are important elements in this agenda, said Benedict Tan, chief digital strategy officer at SingHealth, one of the biggest healthcare providers in Singapore during a HIMSS webinar.
SingHealth is running four hospitals with around 250,000 in-house patients per years. The organisation also takes care of several million outpatients annually.
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Technology Divide Between Senior 'Haves' and 'Have-Nots' Roils Pandemic Response
By Kaiser Health News | July 24, 2020
Many poor seniors may not be able to telehealth devices or the associated internet service fees.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Older adults in the "haves" group have more access to virtual social interactions and telehealth services, and more opportunities to secure essential supplies online.
· Meanwhile, the "have-nots" are at greater risk of social isolation, forgoing medical care and being without food or other necessary items.
This article was first published on Friday, July 24, 2020 in Kaiser Health News.
Family gatherings on Zoom and FaceTime. Online orders from grocery stores and pharmacies. Telehealth appointments with physicians.
These have been lifesavers for many older adults staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic. But an unprecedented shift to virtual interactions has a downside: Large numbers of seniors are unable to participate.
Among them are older adults with dementia (14% of those 71 and older), hearing loss (nearly two-thirds of those 70 and older) and impaired vision (13.5% of those 65 and older), who can have a hard time using digital devices and programs designed without their needs in mind. (Think small icons, difficult-to-read typefaces, inadequate captioning among the hurdles.)
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Patients can't be held hostage to e-health system failure, Lithuanian president says
- 2020-07-27
- BNS/TBT Staff
VILNIUS - The Lithuanian government's urgent action to resolve the e-health system crisis should focus not only on data recovery, but also on ensuring patients' access to public services, President Gitanas Nauseda said on Monday.
E-health, the largest and most complex of the systems run by the Center of Registers, has been down for a week after the center's server room was flooded by a burst water pipe on July 20.
"The flooding of the Center of Registers' servers has revealed failure by public institutions to take sufficient steps to ensure the physical security of important registers and databases," Nauseda said in a press release.
Earlier on Monday, the president discussed the e-health crisis by phone with Economy and Innovation Minister Rimantas Sinkevicius and Justice Minister Elvinas Jankevicius, who is standing in for Health Minister Aurelijus Veryga while he is on vacation.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/cerner-launches-cloud-based-ehr-platform-for-cahs-rural-hospitals
Cerner Launches Cloud-Based EHR Platform for CAHs, Rural Hospitals
Cerner CommunityWorks Foundations is a cost-effective, cloud-based EHR platform geared towards critical access and rural hospitals.
July 23, 2020 - Cerner has launched a cloud-based EHR platform, CommunityWorks Foundations, aiming to reduce costs with a fixed-fee payment structure and no up-front fees at critical access (CAHs) and rural hospitals.
CommunityWorks Foundations scales Cerner Millennium EHR to accelerate EHR implementation to six months.
“Working with this segment of clients for more than a decade, we have evolved this cloud-based model to meet the various challenges community and rural health care organizations face,” Mitchell Clark, president of Cerner CommunityWorks, said in a statement.
“CommunityWorks Foundations is the next evolution based on what we’ve learned from our more than 200 rural and critical access clients and the broader industry. It is built to help reduce financial barriers and better support communities that sometimes face challenges accessing the most innovative health care technology.”
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https://histalk2.com/2020/07/24/weekender-7-24-20/
Weekly News Recap
- Symplr’s owner considers selling the company at a valuation of up to $2 billion.
- Publicly traded HCA Healthcare books a $1 billion Q2 profit, boosted by $822 million in federal CARES act stimulus money.
- Cerner announces CommunityWorks Foundations, a fixed-fee, quickly implementable version of Millennium for Critical Access Hospitals.
- HHS activates a new COVID-19 hospitalization data website that replaces the one that was previously operated by the CDC.
- WellSky’s private equity owner decides not to sell the company and instead will bring in an additional investor.
- Researchers ward that sloppy health system implementation of screening for social determinants of health could cause patient harm.
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Enjoy!
David.
