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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Managing the UK’s ‘next big crisis’ of disrupted cancer care and diagnosis
With a lot of medical care on hold during the coronavirus pandemic, Paul Landau, founder and CEO of digital cancer care company Careology, looks into how (this is) the UK’s ‘next big crisis’.
DHI News Team – 20 August 2020
On the 23rd March, the UK government announced that lockdown measures to combat coronavirus would come into play, sparking concern for thousands of people living and dealing with cancer.
For some, their treatment continued as planned, for others changes were made such as switching to oral chemotherapy tablets. But many faced anxiety-inducing delays to operations and treatment. this was combined with a sharp decline in those who suspected they had cancer symptoms from seeking help, causing new referrals to fall by an estimated 70%.
Delays in diagnosis have huge implications and according to Clare Turnball, a professor of genomic medicine: “for some cancers, a three-month delay could make the difference between a tumour being curable or not.”
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Telehealth Kiosks Give Homeless Veterans a Link to Healthcare, Other Services
Soldier On has partnered with Let's Talk Interactive to expand a telehealth platform that connects homeless veterans and those in transitional housing with mental health counselors and other sorely needed services.
August 17, 2020 - A non-profit that targets veteran homelessness is using telehealth to expand access to mental health and other services.
Soldier On, which was launched in 1994 in Pittsfield, MA and now serves thousands of veterans in the Northeast, recently Partnered with Let’s Talk Interactive to leverage telemedicine kiosks and telehealth platforms in transitional and permanent housing and jail programs.
The kiosks allow the organization’s 80 full-time case workers to conduct virtual visits with veterans who might otherwise ignore or skip appointments for care. They also give the organization a platform to help veterans with other issues, including financial literacy, social services, legal representation, housing needs and even employment counseling.
“It’s a great platform for connecting with veterans,” says Bruce Buckley, Soldier On’s CEO. Veterans “generally feel more comfortable in their own environment, and this gives them a chance to connect when and where they need to make that connection. When you’re in someone else’s office, you’re a visitor, and that isn’t always comfortable.”
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/deep-learning-models-can-detect-covid-19-in-chest-ct-scans
Deep Learning Models Can Detect COVID-19 in Chest CT Scans
The deep learning tools could distinguish between COVID-19 and other pneumonias in chest CT scans, enhancing coronavirus diagnosis.
By Jessica Kent
August 18, 2020 - Deep learning tools were able to identify COVID-19 in chest CT scans, indicating that artificial intelligence could enhance diagnosis of the virus, according to a study published in Nature Communications.
While CT scans have been useful in helping providers detect COVID-19, clinicians are discouraged from using these medical images for coronavirus diagnosis.
“CT evaluation has been an integral part of the initial evaluation of patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 in multiple centers in Wuhan China and northern Italy,” researchers noted.
“However, these guidelines also recommend against using chest CT in screening or diagnostic settings in part due to similar radiographic presentation with other influenza-associated pneumonias. Techniques for distinguishing between these entities may strengthen support toward use of CT in diagnostic settings.”
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/big-data-dashboards-to-help-us-colleges-track-covid-19-spread
Big Data Dashboards to Help US Colleges Track COVID-19 Spread
As students begin to return to campuses across the country, colleges are leveraging big data dashboards to monitor the spread of COVID-19 among students and staff.
By Jessica Kent
August 19, 2020 - To help track and monitor the spread of COVID-19 on college campuses, leaders across the country are implementing big data dashboards to promote transparency and comfort among students, faculty, and staff.
Boston University recently went live with its BU COVID-19 Testing Data Dashboard, a data visualization resource that allows users to see the number of tests conducted and the number of individuals who have tested negative, positive, or inconclusive.
Leaders will update the dashboard daily, and will include daily and cumulative numbers as well as seven-day averages and comparative figures from the local county. The university expects that the dashboard will enable proactive measures to stop further spread of the virus.
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https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/preventing-cyber-attacks/
17 Aug 2020 Opinion
Prevent-ilation: Airing out the Myths of Preventing Cyber Attacks
Zeki Turedi Technology Strategist, EMEA, Crowdstrike
Cyberspace remains plagued by vague assumptions surrounding the correct methods of preventing cyber-attacks. Whilst some of these preventative measures have merit (often there is no smoke without fire), they are often exaggerated in effectiveness against determined and multi-faceted attacks.
Our 2019 CrowdStrike Global Threat Report suggests that the cyber landscape once again changed with more frequent attacks coming via alternative methods such as malware-free intrusions. In fact, the report revealed 51 percent of cyber-attacks were orchestrated via malware-free means, whereby an actor doesn't employ a malicious file or file fragment to a computer disk. These attacks are usually perpetrated by more sophisticated adversaries, particularly in EMEA and North America, and are much harder to detect. Typically, organizations will have to rely on behavioral detection and human threat hunting to intercept malware-free attacks.
Despite the growing focus on best practices and increased regulation in recent years, businesses need to take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity. Here are some of the common misconceptions of attack prevention.
Anti-virus
is enough to prevent intrusion from adversaries
Anti-virus (AV) software is an important first step in protecting against
foreign infiltration. However, relying on it solely is a mistake. Traditional
anti-virus software can only go so far in preventing and detecting
infiltration, as traditional or legacy AV deployments can only detect known or
existing viruses.
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https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/phone-scam-circulating-callers-pose-as-covid-19-contact-tracers
Phone scam circulating, callers pose as COVID-19 contact tracers
By: Anthony Reyes
Posted at 4:23 PM, Aug 20, 2020
and last updated 6:23 AM, Aug 21, 2020
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — State and federal authorities say a phone scam is circulating where the callers pose as COVID-19 contact tracers.
Officials say the callers that pose as contact tracers try to obtain credit card or bank account information from their victims.
The Chautauqua County Department of Health and Human Services has issued information to help avoid this scam.
County officials say if you are tested for COVID-19 and your result is positive a Chautauqua County public health nurse will contact you and if you are named a close contact, a NYS contact tracer will contact you.
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AI may not predict the next pandemic, but big data and machine learning can fight this one
In Spain, a new observatory processes epidemiological, mobility and environmental data to manage COVID.
By Anna Solana for IT Iberia | August 21, 2020 -- 10:15 GMT (20:15 AEST) | Topic: Artificial Intelligence
In April, at the height of the lockdown, computer-science professor Àlex Arenas predicted that a second wave of coronavirus was highly possible this summer in Spain.
At the time, many scientists were still confident that high temperature and humidity would slow the impact and spread of the virus over the summer months, as happens with seasonal flu.
Unfortunately, Arenas' predictions have turned out to be accurate. Madrid, the Basque country, Aragon, Catalonia, and other Spanish regions are currently dealing with a surge in COVID-19 cases, despite the use of masks, hand-washing and social distancing.
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Health passports, distancing tools among COVID-19 tech climbing Gartner Hype Cycle
Those pandemic-era technologies will reach the fabled Plateau of Productivity sooner than other emerging innovations approaching the peak of the curve, such as digital twins, data fabric, SASE network architecture, researchers say.
By Mike Miliard
August 21, 2020 11:30 AM
Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2020 (Source: Gartner)
Gartner research's famous hype curve looks like a steep roller coaster leading to a launch pad. Beginning with the necessity-is-the-mother-of-innovation "Innovation Trigger," it predictively tracks new technologies as they might evolve over the next years and decades: a long, slow climb the Peak of Inflated Expectations, then falling with a reality check into the Trough of Disillusionment, before slowly, with tweaks and refinements, clawing back up the Slope of Enlightenment toward, eventually, the Plateau of Productivity.
WHY IT
MATTERS
With most technologies it can take five years or more to trace that bumpy path,
from shiny-object to indispensable tool (or, in many cases, obsolete fad).
And, indeed, plenty of the innovations on the most recent Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, published this week, will take plenty of time to evolve and either prove their worth or lose steam, whether two-way brain-machine interface, generative adversarial networks or responsible AI.
But at least a couple species of emerging tech are charting their course on the hype curve much faster than usual, and it probably won't be a surprise that they emerged in response to the COVID-19 public health crisis.
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Cerner Follows Epic In Adding Consumer-Friendly Digital Health Tools To Its Platform
August 21, 2020
Following in Epic’s footsteps, Cerner has struck a deal with a vendor supporting a range of digital health tools designed for both consumers as well as physicians. What makes the agreement notable is less the fact that both Cerner and Epic have signed on with digital health vendor Xealth – though a bit unusual – but rather, that the deals suggest that the two have similar ideas as to how patient outreach and patient engagement should work.
Cerner is so impressed by Xealth that in addition to using Xealth technology, it partnered with LRVHealth on a $6 million investment in the company. This follows investments by a number of other healthcare organizations, including the Cleveland Clinic, Froedert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, UPMC, McKesson, Novartis, Phillips and ResMed. In other words, it’s not only the two EHR giants who think the vendor has the right approach to digital health management.
According to a news release, the Xealth platform connects with more than 30 digital health solutions, including remote patient monitoring, virtual care platforms and e-commerce tools making product recommendations.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/covid-19/californias-data-failures-stymie-efforts-curb-virus
California's Data Failures Stymie Efforts to Curb the Virus
By Kaiser Health News | August 21, 2020
Data system failures left California with a backlog of about 300,000 lab reports. Of those, nearly 15,000 turned out to be positive for COVID-19.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration is still struggling to fix the problems and prevent future breakdowns.
· Iowa recently discovered a major flaw that backdated thousands of test results.
· North Carolina learned that another commercial testing company, LabCorp, had been including out-of-state tests in its data since April.
· Alabama found that some labs were not properly sending test results to the state.
This article was first published on Friday, August 21, 2020 in Kaiser Health News.
By Anna Maria Barry-Jester and
The failure of California's infectious disease monitoring system for a stretch of at least 20 days in July and August triggered potentially deadly fallout that continues to reverberate across the state.
The fallout has been most severe in heavily populated counties, which rely primarily on a statewide electronic information system to guide their pandemic response. Local health departments couldn't clearly see where the coronavirus was spreading, dramatically slowing their efforts to trace and track new infections — leading to more death and disease, public health officials said.
Data system failures left California with a backlog of about 300,000 lab reports. Of those, nearly 15,000 turned out to be positive for COVID-19, according to state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly.
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COVID-19 Pushed Older Adults to Telehealth, Quality Concerns Persist
Although telehealth use is growing among older adults, patients still have fears about privacy and care quality over video visit.
By Sara Heath
August 19, 2020 - Adult patients over age 50 are warming to telehealth, with one in four patients saying they had used telehealth to access care between March and June of 2020, the National Poll on Healthy Aging revealed.
That is up from the only 4 percent of patients over age 50 who said the same in a similar 2019 National Poll on Healthy Aging, which like the 2020 poll was conducted by University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation (IHPI) with support from AARP and Michigan Medicine.
This surge in telehealth access and satisfaction can largely be credited to the novel coronavirus, which pushed individuals to lean on digital technologies to access healthcare.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/icd-10-codes-unreliable-for-covid-19-symptoms-ehr-surveillance
ICD-10 Codes Unreliable for COVID-19 Symptoms, EHR Surveillance
A high number of false negative tests were observed when researchers examined ICD-10 data codes to capture COVID-19 symptoms and conduct disease surveillance in the EHR.
August 18, 2020 - Symptom-specific ICD-10 codes do not accurately capture COVID-19 related symptoms and should not be utilized for disease surveillance in the EHR, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open.
EHR data is being used by health systems to learn more about the coronavirus and how to treat the pandemic accurately. Notably, ICD-10 is a key code set clinicians use for disease surveillance.
In this study, researchers from the University of Utah Health assessed the accuracy of ICD-10 codes through EHR review to capture COVID-19 symptoms, such as fever, cough, and dyspnea. Researchers examined more than 2,200 patients who underwent COVID-19 testing for those symptoms between March and April 2020.
Researchers compared the sensitivity, specificity, and both the positive and negative predictive code values for the three symptoms. Looking at those measures set to help the researchers understand how well ICD-10 codes could demonstrate whether or not a patient had COVID-19.
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August 18, 2020 By Scott Buzby
YouTube as educational tool in MI may help patients understand DAPT use after PCI
YouTube was found to be an effective tool for educating patients who had PCI for MI on their condition and the significance of adherence to their prescribed dual antiplatelet therapy, researchers reported.
For the study presented at the virtual Association for Healthcare Social Media meeting, investigators administered two tests to 21 patients with acute MI who had PCI that evaluated their understanding of the importance of adherence to DAPT. In between the two tests, patients were shown a standardized educational YouTube video that addressed their condition and why they were prescribed DAPT.
“PCI with coronary stenting is nothing without appropriate concurrent and complimentary medications like dual antiplatelet therapy, and medications only work if the patients take them,” Marc Katz, MD, cardiology fellow at St. Luke’s University Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, said during the presentation. “We’ve all experienced that we have a limited amount of time in clinic and at bedside with our patients, and there are many reasons why a patient might not take their medications as prescribed, but not understanding why they’re taking their meds and not understanding the possible side effects shouldn’t be one of them.”
Each patient (mean age, 63 years; 38.9% women; 9% with prior DAPT) was administered the same exam of four true or false statements:
- Antiplatelet medications help prevent future heart attacks by preventing platelets from activating and forming clots inside stents placed in the heart.
- Stopping DAPT early may lead to serious complications.
- While taking DAPT, if bleeding occurs, it is most commonly a nuisance or nonserious bleeding and DAPT should be continued.
- DAPT may be stopped without confirming with a cardiologist.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/europe/nurses-20-digital-transformation-nursing
Nurses 2.0 - The digital transformation of nursing
Healthcare IT News spoke to nursing and informatics experts to find out how exactly nurses have led the digital transition.
August 20, 2020
Digital innovation is becoming increasingly critical to clinical practice, not just as a workforce management tool, but as a foundation to change the way care is delivered. Healthcare IT News spoke to senior nursing informatics officer for Abu Dhabi Health Services, Hana Abu Sharib and professor in health and human services informatics at the University of Eastern Finland, Dr Kaija Saranto, to find out exactly how nurses and midwives are leading the digital transition.
Nurses and midwives have played a key role in leading the digital and informatics arena to improve patient care, particularly in the COVID environment where the quality of digital care delivery has come to the forefront of healthcare and been under more scrutiny than ever. In September, they will be speaking at the HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Digital Event, in the ‘Nurses 2.0’ session, where they will expand on some of these key issues in greater detail.
“During the pandemic, nurse informatics teams were involved in training for different EMR applications and devices for nurse shifting cross settings (ED-OPD-Inpatient) based on operational needs. They were also very actively involved in building the input forms for nursing and addressing the patient surge during the crisis. From a data perspective, they were validating the reports and dashboard,” explains Abu Sharib.
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Project will use HIMSS Digital Health Indicator to create roadmap for health services in Queensland, Australia
The initiative aims to drive digital transformation across the state and identify services in need of investment.
By Tammy Lovell
August 20, 2020 01:35 AM
A Queensland government project will use the HIMSS Digital Health Indicator to help health workers in the Australian state understand the technology used in local health services.
The initiative will run in hospitals and health services, as well as some primary health networks across the state, with the aim of building a data-driven roadmap for digital transformation.
Health research body, the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC) is supporting the collaboration between the state’s largest healthcare provider, Queensland Health, the University of Queensland and HIMSS.
HIMSS, which owns Healthcare IT News, has developed a virtual assessment process, which will reduce the burden on the hospitals and health services and Queensland health team.
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HHS said to reverse course, with hospitals to report COVID-19 data to CDC again
White House task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said the process of HHS bypassing the CDC was meant to be "solely an interim system," according to a WSJ report that HHS later denied.
By Kat Jercich
August 20, 2020 04:05 PM
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reportedly said Thursday that it would return responsibility for collecting data from hospitals about COVID-19 patients back to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but HHS later said the process would not change.
Dr. Deborah Birx told hospital executives and government officials that the HHS system was "solely an interim system" while the CDC worked to build a new data system "so [reporting] can be moved back to the CDC," according to The Wall Street Journal.
The CDC will work with the U.S. Digital Service to "build a modernized automation process" for hospital data, an HHS official told The Journal. The modernized automation process will still send data to HHS Protect, where all agencies who need it, including the CDC, will have access to it.
HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo denied the reports Thursday afternoon, telling Healthcare IT News that the process for data reporting "has not and is not changing."
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Have You Tried To Make An Appointment With Your Own Doctors Lately? It May Be Harder Than You Expected
August 20, 2020
As the pandemic grinds on, healthcare systems are looking for ways to adapt to the situation and better meet the new demands imposed by caring for COVID-19 patients. This includes improving how they handle their communications with patients. For example, at New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, they’re planning to introduce robotic process automation to direct inbound callers to an appropriate level of care.
Other health systems, unfortunately, don’t seem to have gotten this particular memo. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that the leaders of these institutions haven’t tried to make an appointment with their own doctors lately. If they did, some would be aggravated or even horrified by the inefficiency and poor design within their interactive voice response systems.
Unfortunately, my personal experiences provide a good example of what can go wrong with IVR systems. Due to flawed IVR logic, scheduling a visit with a Johns Hopkins-affiliated doctor turned out to be something of, let’s say, an adventure due to its crazily disorganized IVR and telephony infrastructure. Even given my experience as an e-patient with chronic conditions, it took multiple calls to navigate to where I needed to be and at several points I almost gave up the fight.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/telehealth/telehealth-visits-skyrocket-among-americans-age-50-80
Telehealth Visits Skyrocket Among Americans Age 50-80
By Alexandra Wilson Pecci | August 18, 2020
A new poll reveals several threats and opportunities for the future of telehealth among older Americans.
The percentage of older adults who had ever participated in a telehealth visit rose from 4% in May 2019 to 30% in June 2020, according to the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging.
However, the poll also found that these patients still considered in-office visits more effective, and many of them had no choice but to see their doctor via telehealth.
Nearly half of those who had a telehealth visit said their healthcare provider canceled or rescheduled an in-person visit between March and June, and 30% said that a virtual visit was the only option when they called to schedule an appointment.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/machine-learning-tool-predicts-staffing-needs-during-covid-19
Machine Learning Tool Predicts Staffing Needs During COVID-19
The machine learning model tracks local hospitalization volumes and the rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases to predict staffing needs during the pandemic.
By Jessica Kent
August 17, 2020 - Researchers from Cedars-Sinai have developed a machine learning tool that can forecast data points related to the COVID-19 pandemic and predict staffing needs.
When COVID-19 began to spread across the US, healthcare organizations were faced with the challenge of accurately forecasting the number of patients who would need hospitalization. Entities also needed to have an idea of how many patients would be in the ICU and would need ventilators, as well as how much personal protective equipment (PPE) staff would use.
A data science team at Cedars-Sinai adjusted a machine learning platform’s algorithm to predict factors related to coronavirus. The platform now tracks local hospitalization volumes and the rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases, running multiple forecasting models to help anticipate and prepare for increasing COVID-19 patient volumes with an 85 percent to 95 percent degree of accuracy.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/understanding-the-new-patient-preference-for-telehealth-access
Understanding the New Patient Preference for Telehealth Access
Emory Healthcare, like other systems during the pandemic, has leaned heavily on telehealth access. And now, there's no going back.
By Sara Heath
August 17, 2020 - March 2020 brought about one of the biggest catalysts for care delivery change at Emory Healthcare. Telehealth access, which once was a key tool for the health system mostly on the hospital side, soon became the crux of the patient experience in ambulatory care, too.
This isn’t a novel story. Most healthcare organizations, big and small, saw a major problem on their hands when the novel coronavirus quarantined people in their own homes and sparked industry-wide calls to postpone non-urgent or elective healthcare. Clinics and hospitals could be a breeding ground for the virus, logic held, and so it was best for patients who weren’t urgently sick or injured to stay at home for the time being.
But also like organizations across the country, Emory Healthcare knew that would leave a major patient cohort behind. Chronic disease management, which hinges on a high-touch and communicative patient engagement strategy, would fall by the wayside of patients couldn’t get into ambulatory clinics to see their doctors.
In a short period of time, these medical facilities put up advanced telehealth access programs that helped patients receive the care they needed without going into the office.
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Nearly half of physicians believe it will take a year to get COVID-19 under control
Aug 18, 2020 1:09pm
The majority of physicians believe COVID-19 won’t be under control until January 2021, and nearly half (49%) expect it will take much longer to get the virus under control.
Most doctors (59%) also see opening businesses, schools and public places as a bigger risk to patients than continuing policies of social isolation, according to survey of 3,500 providers conducted by The Physicians Foundation.
The results are part of a three-part survey examining how COVID-19 is affecting and is perceived by U.S. physicians.
A majority of physicians (72%) believe that the virus will severely impact patient health outcomes due to delayed routine care during the pandemic, the survey found.
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https://abcnews.go.com/Health/teletherapy-meets-teens-live-screen/story?id=72374725
Teletherapy meets teens where they live: On-screen
New apps help teens access mental health services during the pandemic.
By Jay Bhatt
19 August 2020, 20:03
Due to the coronavirus, many teens have been missing their proms, graduation ceremonies, daily routines and their friends. These missed events and social interactions are only adding to the additional stress many adolescents are facing amid the pandemic, health experts say.
"A lot of my clients have been more depressed, more anxious,” said Geovany Martinez, a bilingual social worker who treats at-risk clients in New York City and Yonkers, New York.
Some feel isolated and lonely even as they might be stuck in crowded apartments, perhaps with difficult or abusive family members. Previous coping practices like seeing friends and playing sports are risky, Martinez said.
And in a coronavirus hotspot that's also home to the nation's poorest congressional district—where many employed adults have to take public transit to essential jobs, while many who are no longer employed worry about paying for food—parents’ angst often filters down to their teenage children.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/data-standardization-tool-normalizes-covid-19-test-terms-in-ehr
Data Standardization Tool Normalizes COVID-19 Test Terms in EHR
Researchers developed a data standardization tool that yielded 99 percent accuracy when characterizing COVID-19 testing names to LOINC codes.
August 19, 2020 - A well-developed data standard tool that automatically normalizes and characterizes COVID-19 testing names to the Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) dataset can support secondary use of EHRs for COVID-19 research and enhance interoperability, according to a recent article published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).
Patient data stored in EHRs is a crucial source of data for COVID-19 research and studies. While having access to the actual data is key, one requirement is to normalize or characterize the data to standard terminologies. To understand and address the pandemic, institutions such as Regenstrief Institute, have developed local codes and names for COVID-19 tests.
LOINC aims to streamline health data standardization for more efficient EHR use and health data exchange, which is critical when a pandemic, such as COVID-19 occurs.
As one of the most widely-used code systems, LOINC seeks to provide standardization in medical test result identification, observations, and a variety of other clinical measures. LOINC promotes interoperability with new terms for tests and clinical observations available through requests from end-users.
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August 19, 2020 / 11:08 PM / Updated 15 hours ago
On Facebook, health-misinformation 'superspreaders' rack up billions of views: report
(Reuters) - Misleading health content has racked up an estimated 3.8 billion views on Facebook Inc (FB.O) over the past year, peaking during the COVID-19 pandemic, advocacy group Avaaz said in a new report here on Wednesday.
The report found that content from 10 “superspreader” sites sharing health misinformation had almost four times as many Facebook views in April 2020 as equivalent content from the sites of 10 leading health institutions, such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The social media giant, which has been under pressure to curb misinformation on its platform, has made amplifying credible health information a key element of its response. It also started removing misinformation about the novel coronavirus outbreak that it said could cause imminent harm.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/europe/uk-government-seeks-new-healthcare-data-guardian
UK government seeks new healthcare data guardian
The new national data guardian will oversee the collection and use of patient data.
By Sara Mageit
August 19, 2020 10:50 AM
The Department of Health and Social Care is seeking a new national data guardian (NDG) to advise and challenge the healthcare system on safeguarding patient data.
The data guardian is expected to represent the interests of patients and the public, ensuring people’s confidential information is kept securely and shared appropriately.
The role is offered at £45,000 per annum, working two to three days per week and will be chosen by a panel including NHSX chief Matthew Gould and deputy director of data and information governance policy, Simon Madden.
WHY IT MATTERS
In 2018, the NDG role was given statutory powers to guide and challenge the health and social care system.
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The Importance of Handling Legacy EHR Data During the Move to a New EHR
August 19, 2020
While many EHR projects were put on hold or at least slowed down during COVID-19, we’re starting to see many of these projects revving back up. Just because COVID-19 happened doesn’t mean it changed the fact that many healthcare organizations need to upgrade and switch out their EHR software or consolidate onto one EHR. In fact, in many cases COVID-19 highlighted the need to move to a more modern EHR across their organization.
Plus, I predict that the market is ripe for a bunch of EHR switching and consolidation over the next couple years. For example, Marlin Equity Partners has acquired AdvancedMD, Aprima, Practice Partner, and e-MDs. It’s hard to imagine them going forward with all of these software platforms. At some point I think they’re going to consolidate onto one and then those practices are going to have to move to a new EHR.
In my interview with Howard Messing, CEO of MEDITECH, we highlighted the 50 year history of MEDITECH and how they essentially launched a new EHR every decade. While MEDITECH has been and seems to continue to be a strong partner when it comes to not sunsetting their legacy products, our recent MEDITECH EHR telehealth interview highlighted why it pays to be on their latest version to receive the most highly integrated telehealth possible. Some of the latest features that healthcare organizations want can’t be built on the legacy systems. It just makes sense that many organizations need to bite the bullet and move to MEDITECH Expanse.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/covid-19-home-monitoring-tools-pose-patient-privacy-safety-risks
COVID-19 Home Monitoring Tools Pose Patient Privacy, Safety Risks
A study published in Nature Medicine reveals potential risks caused by the rapid adoption of home monitoring tools in light of COVID-19, including risks to patient privacy and safety.
August 14, 2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic spurred the rapid adoption of remote patient monitoring tools to support patient care in light of social distancing needs. But the accelerated development of these technologies potentially increased risks to patient safety and privacy, among other regulatory concerns.
Published in Nature Medicine, a group of Harvard University researchers assessed the adoption of these home monitoring technologies amid the pandemic and needed interventions to ensure patient safety and compliance with regulatory requirements, privacy laws, and Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs).
The study defined home monitoring technology as products used for monitoring without direct supervision from a healthcare professional and that collects healthcare-related data. Remote patient monitoring tech is included, while a telehealth visits were not considered for the purposes of the study.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-a-ny-hie-transformed-healthcare-for-its-homeless-population
How a NY HIE Transformed Healthcare for its Homeless Population
Healthix, one of the largest public health information exchanges (HIEs) in the country, was faced with major challenges that severely impacted healthcare for the homeless community.
August 17, 2020 - In March, roughly 61,000 people in New York City were reported homeless, a number that rivaled the Great Depression. As a result of this staggering number, Healthix, a public health information exchange (HIE) that covers New York City and Long Island, used a coordinated approach to improve the health outcomes of individuals without stable housing.
However, Tom Moore, VP of innovation for Healthix, and its provider partners, quickly found three major challenges that stood in the way of executing that goal.
For one thing, it’s hard to connect an individual who is homeless to an HIE if you can’t connect the individual to an address.
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https://www.aiin.healthcare/topics/research/cds-software-improves-outcomes-performance
CDS software improves patient outcomes as well as practitioner performance
Dave Pearson | August 17, 2020 | Research
Computerized clinical decision support has strong upsides and few to no downsides for both clinicians and patients, according to a systematic literature review conducted at Texas State University’s school of health administration.
Analyzing a small but representative set of articles meeting the review’s criteria, Clemens Scott Kruse, PhD, MHA, MBA, and Nolan Ehrbar, BHA, made several key findings:
- 61% of 36 articles described occurrences of positive patient medical outcomes, while
- 8% found no statistically significant difference in medical outcomes between intervention and control groups, and
- 31% did not report or discuss medical outcomes.
- 66% of 38 articles documented occurrences of positive practitioner performance, while
- 13% found no difference in practitioner performance, and
- 21% did not report or discuss practitioner performance.
Similarly encouraging for clinical CDS proponents: Zero articles turned up reporting negative patient outcomes or negative practitioner performance associated with the use of CDS.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/technology/coronavirus-disinformation-doctors.html
Coronavirus Doctors Battle Another Scourge: Misinformation
Physicians say they regularly treat people more inclined to believe what they read on Facebook than what a medical professional tells them.
· Aug. 17, 2020
An emergency room doctor in Illinois was accused in April of profiting from naming coronavirus as the cause of a patient’s death, a rumor spreading online.
An internist in New York treated a vomiting patient in May who drank a bleach mixture as part of a fake virus cure found on YouTube.
And in June a paramedic in Britain aided a clearly sick man who had refused to go to a hospital after reading misleading warnings about poor coronavirus treatment on social media.
Doctors on the front lines of the global pandemic say they are fighting not just the coronavirus, but also increasingly combating a never-ending scourge of misinformation about the disease that is hurting patients.
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Many Americans may not comprehend COVID-19 information as agencies fail to meet health literacy guidelines, study says
USA TODAY
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and state health departments failed to meet guidelines when communicating vital information about COVID-19 to the public, according to a study released Tuesday.
The CDC, the American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health all recommend that medical information for the public be written at no higher than an eighth-grade reading level.
But after studying 137 federal and state web pages, Dartmouth College researchers found that public information about the coronavirus averaged just over an 11th-grade reading level.
The study worries public health experts, who reference previous research highlighting health inequities among vulnerable communities impacted most by the coronavirus pandemic.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/europe/covid-19-and-future-care-delivery
COVID-19 and the future of care delivery
It was quickly recognised that the pandemic required tools to provide safe access to health and care at a distance. Scotland is demonstrating how a rapid telehealth transformation can be achieved says Nessa Barry of the Scottish government.
August 18, 2020 03:56 AM
The opportunity to deliver a session for new healthcare students on the subject of telehealth is an enjoyable one. However, these sessions usually begin with a hurdle to be overcome – that of terminology. Discussion on the definitions for telehealth, telecare, telemedicine and other terms under the digital health and care umbrella is always required, and will be discussed in greater detail during the HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Digital Event taking place on 7-11 September 2020..
We start with a graphic that shows citizens accessing health and care at different points along a continuum of care. The continuum runs from the home or community setting – through to an acute hospital setting. In these conversations about how technology might be used in different scenarios, and the terms that are applied, we always emphasise that the prefix ‘tele’ simply means ‘at a distance’ and that students should focus on the intervention, the health and care being provided. I have repeated that sentence many times over the years and it comes to mind now, more than ever, as we look for tools to maintain and provide safe access to health and care services at a distance.
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When will medical simulation catch up to consumer video games?
In a HIMSS20 Digital session, Level Ex CEO Sam Glassenberg discusses his company's efforts to bridge the gap.
August 18, 2020 03:02 pm
Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Level Ex, dodged the family business of medicine and went into video game design. But his path led him right back to the world of medicine
“All of this came to a head in 2012 when my father, who is an anesthesiologist, finally gave up and said ‘All right Sam, you’re not going to medical school. It’s too late. So at least put this game silliness to good use and make me a game to train my residents to do a fiber optic intubation.”
He made a game. And, to make it easy for his fathers’ residents to access it, he put it on the app store. A little while later his father, hoping to check in on his students, asked him how many times the game had been downloaded.
The answer was 100,000, Glassenberg revealed in a recent HIMSS20 Digital session. And not only that, a peer-reviewed paper about his game had come out demonstrating its effectiveness in training anesthesiologists on the procedure.
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Aug 18 2020
Technology that prioritizes patient dignity is essential, expert panel says
Dignity-preserving technology allows the patient to decide what information is shared and for how long.
Mallory Hackett, Associate Editor
Preserving a patient's dignity is essential to creating a human-driven healthcare model, according to panelists from the HIMSS 2020 digital session "Dignity-Preserving Technology: Addressing Global Health Disparities in Vulnerable Populations."
A person's dignity is becoming increasingly intertwined with technology, according to panelist Dr. Alex Cahana, chief medical officer at ConsenSys Health. He says that technology has become an important mode for sharing how people think, feel and speak.
"And so if we are in essence our data, then any third party that takes that data – with a partial or even complete agreement of consent from my end, and uses it, abuses it, or loses it – takes actually a piece of me as a human," Cahana said during the panel.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ai-bias-may-worsen-covid-19-health-disparities-people-color
AI bias may worsen COVID-19 health disparities for people of color
A new article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association points to the dissemination of "under-developed and potentially biased models" in response to the novel coronavirus.
By Kat Jercich
August 18, 2020 02:17 PM
Developers and data scientists have long said that biased data often leads to biased models when it comes to machine learning and artificial intelligence.
A new article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association argues that such biased models may further the disproportionate impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on people of color.
The article's authors, Eliane Röösli, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Brian Rice and Tina Hernandez-Boussard, of Stanford University, noted that even as the global research community has rushed to push out new findings, it risks producing biased prediction models.
"If not properly addressed, propagating these biases under the mantle of AI has the potential to exaggerate the health disparities faced by minority populations already bearing the highest disease burden," wrote the researchers.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/08/18/data-driven-decisions-for-care-transitions/
Data Driven Decisions for Care Transitions
August 18, 2020
Transitioning elderly patients from acute care facilities continues to be inefficient, inconvenient, and fraught with risk. Most are still done via paper and fax machines. In addition, the decision on the patient’s most appropriate next level of care is often made without using patient data or using only superficial information like primary diagnosis. It shouldn’t be this way.
naviHealth is a company that makes a technology platform that uses evidence-based protocols along with dedicated staff to track patient recoveries, manage hospital discharges and improve clinical decision making. Their goal is to help build a future with more senior-centered care.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jay LaBine MD, Chief Medical Officer at naviHealth. We discussed how decisions are made when transitioning patients to post-acute care, the future of homecare, and the overall lack of investment in this area.
Determining
Next Level of Care
“The first part of the care transition is determining what’s the most
appropriate next level of care setting for that individual,” stated Dr. LaBine.
“But how is that determination made?”
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/whats-next-telehealth-opportunities-innovation
What's Next for Telehealth? Opportunities for Innovation
By Mandy Roth | August 18, 2020
Experts point to areas of potential growth and improvement in the telehealth landscape.
While telehealth has accelerated in popularity, it is far from reaching its zenith. Tremendous innovation is needed to help it reach its potential. BDO USA, part of BDO International, an accounting network, published the 2020 Healthcare Digital Transformation Survey earlier this year. HealthLeaders spoke with Deb Sheehan and Chris Cooper, both managing directors of the BDO Center for Healthcare Excellence and Innovation who were involved with the study, to obtain their insights regarding where opportunities for improvement exist in the virtual care arena. Among their recommendations:
- EMR enhancements: During in-person
visits, physicians have time to check in with staff members and orient
themselves to the patient outside of the examination room. As physicians
conduct virtual care, that dynamic changes. They need to be able to
quickly reference the EMR on demand. Enabling technology is needed so
providers can easily access necessary screens to enhance workflow and
reduce time needed to navigate through the EMR platform.
· Balancing virtual and in-person visits: As patients begin returning for in-person visits, new workflow issues exist with the current need for social distancing and the inability to keep multiple patients in the waiting room. Coupled with longer patient turnover rates due to the extra time it takes to sanitize rooms between visits, physicians may design their workflow to alternate between virtual and in-person visits throughout the day. Data is needed to help physicians determine the optimal mix.
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3 Ways COVID-19 Transformed Healthcare Delivery Through Telehealth
By Mandy Roth | August 18, 2020
With the coronavirus crisis, health systems catapulted the industry into the future by accelerating virtual care initiatives that will forever change the way healthcare is delivered in the U.S.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· The ability to rapidly scale solutions that were already in place was an essential component of telehealth success stories.
· Massive training initiatives were necessary to deploy technology to thousands of new users.
· With access to new tools, novel uses for virtual care evolved, such as virtual rounding and ER video handoffs.
As 2020 launched, healthcare executives had no way of knowing the havoc a novel virus that had emerged in Wuhan, China, would wreak on the healthcare industry. By March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization acknowledged a pandemic was in progress, and COVID-19 began impacting the U.S. population. Hospitals and healthcare systems went into overdrive, brainstorming new ways to protect patients, and providers set out to devise new ways to deliver care.
Between mid-February and April, healthcare innovation was happening everywhere at a rate and scale never before experienced. New ideas were quickly greenlighted; funds were released to purchase new technology; and staff members were reassigned to deliver care in new ways. In this wellspring of ingenuity, one innovation that was already entrenched—yet mired in a bog of skepticism, regulations, and reimbursement restrictions—was ready to break loose: telehealth.
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Healthcare Looks to Telehealth to Address Physician Burnout, Stress
In an industry plagued by burnout, hospitals and health systems are using telehealth to give providers virtual access to mental health counselors - and to make their jobs less stressful.
August 14, 2020 - Like any profession that deals in life and death, healthcare has a stress and burnout problem - to which telehealth could be the answer.
Physicians have the highest suicide rate of any profession, losing 300 to 400 of their colleagues a year, and their struggles with stress and depression have an adverse effect on the healthcare industry’s economic health – a 2019 study posted in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that burnout adds roughly $4.6 billion in costs each year.
Writing in the American Journal of Medicine, Scott Yates, MD, MBA, MS, FACP, of the Plano, Texas-based Center for Executive Medicine, says burnout affects roughly half of all physicians in practice, manifesting itself in medical errors, lower quality of care and higher costs. Furthermore, it’s a systemic issue, rather than an individual one, and COVID-19 certainly isn’t helping.
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How Big Data Analytics Models Can Impact Healthcare Decision-Making
Big data analytics models can help policymakers make more informed healthcare decisions, contributing to better public and population health.
By Jessica Kent
August 17, 2020 - In healthcare, providers and lawmakers are faced with the task of making the best possible decisions for patients and the industry as a whole. From choosing the best treatments, to determining the most effective ways to utilize resources, leaders are making decisions every day that can impact health outcomes and costs.
With all of this information to consider, it’s no wonder that big data analytics tools have played an increasingly significant role in healthcare decision-making.
Researchers, providers, and policymakers are turning to big data analytics models to help improve care delivery, allocation of resources, and preventive health measures.
As the industry continues to innovate and refine these tools, data-driven decisions will soon become standard, leading to more proactive, successful healthcare operations.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/harnessing-big-data-to-enhance-population-health-management
Harnessing Big Data to Enhance Population Health Management
Big data and analytics tools can help providers meet the clinical and social needs of the patients they serve, paving the way for improved population health management.
By Jessica Kent
August 13, 2020 - As the industry continues its quest to provide holistic, comprehensive, and cost-effective care to patients, the term population health management has emerged as a crucial task for organizations to undertake.
Understanding the needs of particular patient groups, targeting resources to those who need them most, and measuring outcomes are all part of advanced quality care delivery. But in order to successfully manage patient populations, institutions must have a solid grip on something the industry contains in multitudes: Data.
“Healthcare is typically slow to take things up, but the industry was always big data even before there was big data,” Brian Coffey, senior vice president and chief data insight and innovation officer at Southwestern Health Resources (SWHR), told HealthITAnalytics.com.
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https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/practices/how-covid-19-shaking-up-medical-education-for-good
How COVID-19 is shaking up medical education—for good
Aug 14, 2020 10:54am
As the wave of closures swept across the U.S. due to the COVID-19 pandemic this spring, Jason Rosenstock, M.D. found himself among the educators scrambling to totally rethink how school would work.
For the interim associate dean for medical education at the Univeristy of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, that meant rethinking the delivery of medical education using pre-recorded classes while lecturers connected with students in active discussions through online platforms like Zoom, Rosenstock said.
“It was okay, but it really wasn’t as good as doing synchronous discussions,” he said.
With COVID-19 shows no signs of letting up soon, leaders at medical schools like Rosenstock are adapting their plans for education in the fall to meet the new demands of the pandemic. That means going digital in an unprecedented way—both in terms of classes and in terms of the type of clinical care students are learning about.
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14 States Make Contact Tracing Data Public. Here's What They're Learning
August 14, 20205:00 AM ET
Updated 3:40 p.m. ET
Note: This story was updated to include Massachusetts, which began to share contact
When everyone who tests positive for coronavirus in your community gets a call from a public health worker asking them about their contacts and those contacts are then asked to quarantine, the process creates a powerful way to keep the virus from spreading.
But contact tracing can do more than that: At scale, the data gathered in those calls also offers vital information about where transmission is happening in a community. That data can drive policy and even guide individuals in assessing what's more or less safe to go out and do.
NPR has surveyed the health departments of all U.S. states and territories three times about contact tracing capacity — first in April, then again in mid-June, and most recently in late July. The latest survey, done in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, also asked states about contact tracing data: what they were gathering and what they're making public.
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CMS issues Medicaid guidance for states on implementing interoperability rule
Aug 14, 2020 11:48am
A new federal regulation requires state Medicaid agencies to make it easy for patients to access their health information via smartphone by January 1.
To help with the heavy lift, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance (PDF) Friday to help states implement the Interoperability and Patient Access final rule in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
"The timeline for compliance with the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule is aggressive, and CMS is committed to providing states with the necessary technical assistance to implement these advancements in improving patient access to their data and interoperability," said Calder Lynch, deputy administrator and director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services in the guidance.
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Jordanian telehealth solution to provide free medical access for Beirut residents
Altibbi will provide the Arabic-language consultations for a month, allowing anyone who needs medical assistance to connect directly with doctors via audio calls and online chats.
August 17, 2020 02:26 AM
Jordan’s Altibbi has announced it is to provide free telehealth consultations for Beirut residents “to support the overstretched healthcare system in Lebanon.” This comes following the devastating explosions that recently took place in the capital.
Dubbing itself as the “first and largest platform in the Arab region that offers telemedicine consultation services”, Altibbi will provide the free Arabic-language consultations for a month, allowing anyone who needs medical assistance to connect directly with doctors via audio calls or online chat. Those requiring the service can visit altibbi.com/consultation or download the app after which they will be connected with a doctor “within minutes”.
CEO Jalil Allabadi explained: “Telehealth has proven vital with its ability to surpass physical boundaries to support the masses: from empowering governments with their fight against the spreading of COVID-19 to aiding a country in need of humanitarian healthcare aid.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/interoperability-improved-care-coordination-amid-covid-19
Interoperability for improved care coordination amid COVID 19
How healthcare providers can leverage interoperability across the care continuum for improved care coordination and patient empowerment.
August 17, 2020 11:46 AM
COVID-19 has brought up the issue of fragmented health information again, making interoperability of health data paramount. Therefore, there could have been no better time for the interoperability and patient access rule.
The rule helps improve the decision-making process for physicians and health systems by connecting siloed information across the care continuum. According to Grahame Grieve, the founder of HL7 FHIR, interoperability is all about people and connecting their health stories across different specialties, visits, and consults across multiple locations. Connecting the health story of an individual holds valuable clues to the diagnosis and treatment.
Advantages of FHIR
Data today is still locked down in individual EMR systems after each patient visit. The payers, too, have a large portion of this data through the claims and encounter data that flows to them during billing processes.
As an example, a patient’s journey from ambulatory care to urgent care and acute care in an episode of COVID has tons of important healthcare information generated in a short span. Seamless access to this information about a patient across the care continuum is the solution to better care coordination that can be solved by the Interoperability and Patient Access rule primarily by using FHIR APIs.
- FHIR is free to use. FHIR is built on existing web technologies such as https, REST, XML, and JSON. The FHIR API standards support technologies that mobile devices use - both Android and iOS devices - making it easy for developers to build on it.
- FHIR allows for vendor-neutral information exchange. The HL7 Argonaut project is a private sector initiative that is an implementation community led by technology leaders in healthcare. The primary goal is to collaboratively work on industry use cases using FHIR and secure authentication protocols for healthcare information exchange. The goal is to create vendor-neutral applications that can be leveraged across the healthcare industry by all patients. So, it becomes easier for patients to visit multiple facilities using different EMR technologies to get information on their smartphones using standard technologies and interfaces.
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Public Health England’s chief executive reflects on lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis
HIMSS chief clinical officer, Dr Charles Alessi, sat down with Duncan Selbie, chief executive, Public Health England, to discuss the positive outcomes of the COVID-19 crisis.
By Sara Mageit
August 17, 202010:54 AM
Although Public Health England has played an integral role in the global pandemic, it was announced yesterday that it is to be replaced by a new agency with a sole focus on health protection specifically designed to protect the nation from pandemics. This new body, modelled on Germany's independent agency, Robert Koch Institute, will be announced later this week by health secretary, Matt Hancock.
In a recent interview for Healthcare IT News, HIMSS chief clinical officer, Dr Charles Alessi, spoke to Duncan Selbie, chief executive, Public Health England, about the nation’s response to the pandemic and the outcomes that have followed.
“In a time of pressure and adversity during the COVID-19 crises, there have also been some positive outcomes like the implementation of more granular surveillance systems and improvements to the quality of data that we have collected,” said Selbie.
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ICD-10 codes don't accurately capture COVID-19 symptoms, study shows
A JAMA Network Open study suggested that ICD-10 codes had poor sensitivity for fever, cough and dyspnea.
By Kat Jercich
August 17, 2020 12:27 PM
A study published this past week in JAMA Network Open suggests symptom-specific ICD-10 codes don't always capture COVID-19-related symptoms.
An electronic health record review of 2,201 patients who had been tested for COVID-19 found that ICD-10 codes had low sensitivity and negative predictive value for capturing cough, fever and labored breathing.
"Symptoms are an essential part of data collection for SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 surveillance and research, but symptom-specific ICD-10 codes lack sensitivity and fail to capture many patients with relevant symptoms; the false-negative rate is unacceptably high," wrote researchers.
WHY IT MATTERS
Researchers at the University of Utah reviewed the EHRs of 2,201 patients who had been tested at UU Health for COVID-19. Most of the patients had been tested in an outpatient setting; 7% had been tested in the emergency department; and 3% were tested in an inpatient setting.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/08/17/possible-discrimination-against-remote-workforce/
Possible Discrimination Against Remote Workforce
August 17, 2020
One of the big optimization lessons learned as people quickly shifted to remote work was that if one person is remote, then everyone should connect in as if they were remote (whether they’re remote or not). It creates some really tough dynamics if a few people are hopping on Zoom or Google Meet remotely and the rest of the people are in person. There may be some technology companies trying to make this better, but I haven’t seen a good solution for it yet.
My guess is that most of you have experienced this. In some cases, the remote person isn’t an intimate part of the discussion and they just need to hear what’s being shared. If that’s the case, then it can work fine. However, if you want them to be an active contributor to the discussion, then having them remote while others are in person is problematic. The remote person will have a hard time interjecting their thoughts and sometimes even keeping up with the conversation. Thus, the advice that if one person is remote, everyone should hop on a virtual meeting so the playing field is equal.
This is going to become a major issue in most healthcare organizations as companies encourage their employees to return to work while allowing some of their employees to continue to remote work. The desire to have a meeting in person might be there, but you’ll want to consider how that’s going to impact those who can’t attend in person. Is it better to just go fully virtual so everyone can equally contribute?
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Millions Of Elderly Patients In U.S. Aren’t Prepared To Participate in Telehealth Visits
August 17, 2020
New research appearing in a high-profile medical journal suggests that millions of U.S. seniors aren’t ready to participate fully – or in some cases, at all – in telehealth visits due to a lack of technical knowledge or health-related issues.
The study, which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked the degree to which U.S. seniors were ready to participate in telemedicine sessions. To look at these issues, the researchers analyzed 2018 data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, a nationally representative study of Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older. The mean age of patients included in the study was 79.5 years.
When looking at whether these seniors were prepared to participate in telehealth sessions, they assumed that the elderly patients were unready if they had health issues such as difficulty hearing well, problems with speaking, possible or established dementia or limited vision.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/healthcare-next-steps-to-opening-the-digital-front-door
Healthcare’s Next Steps to Opening the Digital Front Door
As healthcare increasingly approaches the digital front door, an industry-wide goal to humanize care will help organizations walk all the way through.
Source: Getty Images
By Sara Heath
August 13, 2020 - Before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, healthcare didn’t even have its hand on the knob of the digital front door. The industry was only in what Summer Knight, MD, managing director in Deloitte Consulting’s Life Sciences & Health Care practice, calls the first phase of overall transformation.
“The first wave of industry transformation is having group think identifying that, ‘hey, we have a major problem and we need to get on a path to solve it for the stability of our industry,’” Knight told PatientEngagementHIT in an interview. “And then we begin to start to see early actions and early destructors come into the marketplace.”
That’s about where healthcare was back in the early months of 2020, before the world got turned upside down with the COVID-19 pandemic. The US healthcare system knew it needed to undergo change, that it needed to push for more patient centricity, and it was even already seeing some big disruptors and some articulation of a digital front door.
But it wasn’t until the middle of March when the virus — and fear — spread at pandemic levels that the medical field began creeping into phase two transformation territory.
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New Telehealth Bill Seeks Funding for Broadband Expansion Programs
The ACCESS the Internet Act, introduced last week, proposes to designate $400 million to restart the FCC's COVID-19 Telehealth Program and give the VA $100 million to boost telehealth access for rural and remote veterans.
August 10, 2020 - A new bill before Congress aims to increase funding for telehealth expansion programs that target improved broadband connectivity.
The Accelerating Connected Care and Education Support Services on the Internet (ACCESS the Internet) Act, introduced this past week by Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Cornyn (R-TX), proposes to add $400 million to Federal Communications Commission’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program, which was shut down last month after exhausting its $200 million allocation through the CARES Act. It would also set aside another $100 million for the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand connected health access for veterans in rural and underserved areas.
The bill targets a significant barrier to telehealth expansion in rural and remote areas of the country. Healthcare providers can’t extend programs and services into these areas – and residents can’t use them – unless they have access to reliable and uninterrupted broadband.
“The current COVID-19 pandemic has shone a new light on the broadband issues in West Virginia and across rural America,” Manchin said in a press release. “Americans and West Virginians have had to adjust to a new way of working, learning, and living from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and for most people, this change relies on accessible, reliable broadband which many rural Americans do not have.”
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PM Modi launches National Digital Health Mission
3 min read . Updated: 15 Aug 2020, 06:46 PM IST Neetu Chandra Sharma
The National Digital Health Blueprint of the mission was prepared by a health ministry panel to create a framework for the national health stack proposed in 2018 by the NITI Aayog
NEW DELHI : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday launched the National Digital Health Mission, while addressing the nation from Red Fort on India's 74th Independence Day.
Modi said that the initiative which is completely technology based will revolutionise the health sector in India.
Every Indian under the mission would get an ID card containing all relevant information about his/her medical conditions and treatments, tests etc, the Prime Minister said.
"Every Indian will get a Health ID card. Every they visit a doctor or a pharmacy, or a lab, all the detail will be registered in this health card. Ranging from doctor appointment to the medication prescribed, medical tests, when were they done, every bit of detail will be available in your health profile," Modi said.
The National Digital Health Blueprint of the mission was prepared by a health ministry panel to create a framework for the national health stack proposed in 2018 by the NITI Aayog, the government think tank.
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https://histalk2.com/2020/08/14/weekender-8-14-20/
Weekly News Recap
- MDLive announces plans to go public early next year.
- Health Catalyst announces its acquisition of Vitalware for $120 million.
- Epic reverses its mandatory return to campus policy, approving working from home through at least the end of the year.
- Waystar will acquire ESolutions, valuing the company at $1.3 billion.
- Craneware raises $100 million for acquisitions.
- Providence Services Group acquires Navin Haffty.
- VA OIG recommends that the VA work on increasing its use of VA Direct and improve oversight of its VHIE community coordinators.
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https://www.digitalhealthcrc.com/professor-roughead-in-iran/
August, 2020
Professor Libby Roughead’s Surprising eHealth Adventures in Iran
A new collaboration between the Digital Health CRC, Macquarie University, Outcome Health and three Primary Health Networks in Victoria promises to deliver important public health insights through real-time reporting on the primary care frontline.
But while Australia’s world-class health system rates very highly in most aspects, Professor Libby Roughead says that this project shows Australia’s digital health readiness lags behind that of Iran, which began trialling real-time primary care reporting more than three years ago.
Professor Roughead is Director of the Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre at the University of South Australia (UniSA). She has extensive expertise in pharmaceutical policy, adverse events and improving use of medicines. UniSA is a participant in the Digital Health CRC.
Libby has been an advisor on medicines policy, pricing and quality use of medicines at regional and global meetings of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
As the Islamic Republic of Iran extended their digital health services into pharmaceutical services, Libby was asked by the WHO in 2017 to visit Iran on their behalf as a consultant to share her expertise and advice on the nation’s developing e-prescription system.
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Enjoy!
David.
