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://healthitanalytics.com/news/deep-learning-may-detect-breast-cancer-earlier-than-radiologists
Deep Learning May Detect Breast Cancer Earlier than Radiologists
A deep learning algorithm accurately detected breast cancer in mammography images and generalized well to populations not represented in the training dataset.
By Jessica Kent
January 14, 2021 - A deep learning model may be able to detect breast cancer one to two years earlier than standard clinical methods, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.
The tool also demonstrated promising generalizability, performing well when tested across populations and clinical sites not involved in training the algorithm.
Breast cancer is a devastating disease, with high mortality rates around the world. Screening mammography is estimated to decrease breast cancer mortality by 20 to 40 percent. However, researchers noted that significant false positive and false negative rates, along with high interpretation costs, leave room to improve quality and access.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2021/01/why-automation-is-key-to-contact-tracing/
Why automation is key to contact tracing
Contact-tracing was one of the buzzwords of 2020 and Mark Tluszcz, co-founder and CEO at Mangrove Capital Partners, explores why automation could be the key to its success.
DHI News Team – 13 January, 2021
While there were multiple warnings from the World Health Organisation as well as flashing red lights from Wuhan, politicians in the West may be forgiven for not seeing the pandemic coming. It has after all been a crisis like no other in living memory and it would have been very difficult for any of us to imagine how quickly, and indeed dramatically, our way of life would change.
It has, however, been much harder to forgive the lack of ambition shown by Western governments since the pandemic began – particularly when the strategies of other countries have been so incredibly successful.
Taiwan, located off the coast of mainland China, was expected to be hard hit by the coronavirus. But thanks to its rapid response and use of Big Data, it has seen just a few hundred infections.
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https://medcitynews.com/2021/01/for-underserved-patients-the-promise-of-telemedicine-still-holds/
For underserved patients, the promise of telemedicine still holds
Despite concerns over broadband access and reimbursement, telehealth still brings many opportunities to care for patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid, panelists said at CES.
By Elise Reuter
Jan 13, 2021 at 6:29 PM
Before the pandemic, telehealth was often sold as a luxury — available to people who paid an extra fee for concierge practices or whose companies offered telehealth as a benefit. But in the last year, it’s become a lifeline for many patients to access care.
Recent regulatory changes have expanded telehealth as an option for many more people covered by Medicare or Medicaid. This provides an important opportunity to reach underserved communities, Dr. Liza Fitzpatrick, founder and CEO of Grapevine Health, said at CES.
Fitzpatrick, a former epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, created started Grapevine last year to address patient engagement in Medicaid populations.
One common refrain is that low-income patients might not have the needed technology for telehealth, or that older patients might not have the technical savvy. While offering telehealth visits over the summer — primarily to people covered by Medicare and Medicaid — Fitzpatrick found that wasn’t necessarily the case.
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90614
Op-Ed: How to Get Black and Brown Communities to Accept the COVID Vaccine
— Inject hope through authenticity
by Pilar Ortega, MD January 10, 2021
The Brothers Grimm told us the story of "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats." In response to the wolf's progressive deceptions, the little goats react with fear, mistrust, and anger. As the mother of young children, I know from many a bedtime story that quite a few tales across cultures, continents, and centuries explore similar themes: "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Three Little Pigs," "Pinocchio."
While the story of racism in United States healthcare is no fairy tale, the deception and discrimination of people on the basis of race or ethnicity have resulted in very real reactions of fear, mistrust, and anger.
This is the experience of millions of Black and Brown people who have been repeatedly subjected to mistreatment, often at the hands of people who were supposed to protect them. Take, for example, the experimental treatments on enslaved African American women given without consent or anesthesia in the 1840s, denial of lifesaving treatment to Black patients with syphilis at the Tuskegee Institute starting in the 1930s, the involuntary sterilization of Puerto Rican women in the 1930s-40s and as recently as 2020 in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.
These stories are real, and when they are ignored they take on the aura of a myth -- "that could never really happen." Yet, the falsehoods are not the stories themselves but rather the false beliefs that individuals in positions of power or privilege (knowingly or unknowingly) use to "justify" unethical behavior or unequal treatment.
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https://www.wired.com/story/can-an-ai-predict-the-language-of-viral-mutation/
Can an AI Predict the Language of Viral Mutation?
Computational biologists used an algorithm meant to model human language to instead predict how viruses could evolve to evade the immune system.
Viruses lead a rather repetitive existence. They enter a cell, hijack its machinery to turn it into a viral copy machine, and those copies head on to other cells armed with instructions to do the same. So it goes, over and over again. But somewhat often, amidst this repeated copy-pasting, things get mixed up. Mutations arise in the copies. Sometimes, a mutation means an amino acid doesn’t get made and a vital protein doesn’t fold—so into the dustbin of evolutionary history that viral version goes. Sometimes the mutation does nothing at all, because different sequences that encode the same proteins make up for the error. But every once in a while, mutations go perfectly right. The changes don’t affect the virus’s ability to exist; instead, they produce a helpful change, like making the virus unrecognizable to a person’s immune defenses. When that allows the virus to evade antibodies generated from past infections or from a vaccine, that mutant variant of the virus is said to have “escaped.”
Scientists are always on the lookout for signs of potential escape. That’s true for SARS-CoV-2, as new strains emerge and scientists investigate what genetic changes could mean for a long-lasting vaccine. (So far, things are looking okay.) It’s also what confounds researchers studying influenza and HIV, which routinely evade our immune defenses. So in an effort to see what’s possibly to come, researchers create hypothetical mutants in the lab and see if they can evade antibodies taken from recent patients or vaccine recipients. But the genetic code offers too many possibilities to test every evolutionary branch the virus might take over time. It’s a matter of keeping up.
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YouTube brings on CVS Health exec to launch healthcare content on its platform
The online video platform's push into health will be helmed by Garth Graham, M.D., who will serve as its director and global head of healthcare. Graham previously served as CVS' chief community health officer and president of the Aetna Foundation.
Graham also served in public health roles in two presidential administrations. He told Fierce Healthcare in an interview that people are already going to sites like YouTube in their daily lives, and this is one way to meet them more effectively where they are.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/meditech-launches-covid-19-vaccination-ehr-solution
MEDITECH Launches COVID-19 Vaccination EHR Solution
The MEDITECH COVID-19 Vaccination EHR solution embeds directly into a health system’s EHR to boost patient safety and mitigate clinician burden.
January 14, 2021 - MEDITECH announced the launch of its COVID-19 Vaccination EHR solution, intending to streamline COVID-19 vaccine administration across health systems.
The web-based solution aims to help health systems increase vaccine distribution speed and mobility in areas across the country that are hit hardest by the pandemic, along with pop-up hospitals, the vendor noted.
“Time is essential in fighting COVID-19, and we recognize that immunizing as many people as possible is imperative,” Leah Farina, MEDITECH vice president of client services, said in a statement. “We developed the Quick Vaccination solution to streamline the process and enable care providers to efficiently administer the COVID-19 vaccine to their patients while meeting CDC guidelines.”
Health IT professionals can integrate the solution directly into the EHR workflow and clinicians can access it through any menu that is chosen for integration. In order to mitigate clinician burden and expand the number of patients seen, the solution defaults to key vaccine and administration data. This default decreases EHR documentation for the clinician.
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USCDI Draft v2 and SVP Standards Approved by ONC for 2020
January 15, 2021
When you talk to people about healthcare standards, one of the biggest topics of discussion lately is the USCDI standard. After ONC released v1 of the USCDI standard, many were interested to see how far ONC would take it when they released v2 of USCDI. Some suggested that USCDI was too narrow, while others commented that as a core data standard it shouldn’t be all things to everyone.
ONC just announced the details of United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) v2 along with the Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP). For those looking for widespread changes, you’re going to be disappointed. The changes to USCDI in v2 are definitely more incremental progression than pushing the envelope. Here’s how ONC described the process:
The USCDI Draft v2 is the result of wide-ranging public input into the elements that should be included to enhance the interoperability of health data for patients, providers, and other users. ONC encourages the public to review this draft standard, including the list of data elements that didn’t make it into the standard, and provide comments through the USCDI home page by April 15, 2021.
ONC also released the Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP) Approved Standards for 2020. Under the SVAP, health IT developers can incorporate newer versions of health IT standards and implementation specifications used in certified health IT and update systems for their customers without undergoing certification testing again.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/acp-calls-to-end-health-disparities-racial-bias-in-healthcare
ACP Calls to End Health Disparities, Racial Bias in Healthcare
The American College of Physicians outlined policy changes that could address racial health disparities and bias in medicine.
By Sara Heath
January 13, 2021 - The healthcare industry needs to establish better policies to understand, address, and ultimately eradicate health disparities that often arise as a result of race, institutional racism, and discrimination, the American College of Physicians (ACP) wrote in a recent policy paper.
The paper, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, acknowledged the unequal health outcomes for certain populations, specifically communities of color, and asserted that discrimination plays a big role in those inequities.
“Racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States experience disparities in their health and health care that arise from a combination of interacting factors, including racism and discrimination, social drivers of health, health care access and quality, individual behavior, and biology,” the trade organization began its paper.
“Although the reasons for such disparities are multifaceted, discrimination and biases, both explicit and implicit, are major contributors to lower rates of health care access and coverage, higher rates of mortality and morbidity, and poorer health outcomes and health care quality.”
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What Is the Healthcare Cost of Racial Health Disparities, Inequity?
A new assessment in Texas found that racial health disparities are running up a bill of $7.7 billion in excess healthcare spending and lost productivity.
By Sara Heath
January 13, 2021 - There is a considerable human and healthcare cost that could have been avoided at the onset of COVID-19 had more been done to ameliorate eventual racial health disparities, amounting to thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars spent, according to analysis from Altarum on behalf of Episcopal Health Foundation.
Using figures up until the end of September 2020, the researchers found that had Black and Hispanic people in Texas been hospitalized at the same rate as their White counterparts, the state would have seen 24,000 fewer hospitalizations. That would have amounted to $550 million in healthcare cost savings, the analysis showed.
That is not to mention the human costs associated with racial health disparities during the pandemic. Had Black and Hispanic patients had the same COVID-19 mortality rates as White people, the state of Texas would have seen about 5,000 fewer deaths, cutting the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the state by 30 percent.
“These numbers are a glaring reminder of how non-medical factors like economic status and living conditions impact health and how COVID-19 is highlighting that in the worst way,” Elena Marks, president and CEO of the Episcopal Health Foundation, said in a statement. “The human and economic costs of health disparities continue to grow during the pandemic and we’re learning why we can’t address them through medicine alone. Something has to change in Texas.”
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Hackers Leak COVID-19 Vaccine Data Stolen During EU Regulator Breach
The COVID-19 vaccine data stolen from an EU regulator in December was leaked online by the hackers; phishing attacks and an email hack complete this week’s breach roundup.
January 13, 2021 - The European Medicines Agency discovered hackers have posted online the COVID-19 vaccine data exfiltrated during an earlier cyberattack on the EU regulator. As previously reported, the hacked server contained vaccine data from pharma giants Pfizer and BioNTech.
EMA is regulating the EU effort on vaccine assessments and approvals of COVID-19 research, treatments, and vaccines. Pfizer and BioNTech submitted their COVID-19 vaccine data to the regulator for approval prior of the attack.
But hackers breached the server containing that data ahead of a meeting to determine the vaccine’s conditional approval in early December, EMA reported . The attack was highly targeted and compromised data on the first authorized COVID-19 vaccines.
EMA reported the hackers accessed certain documents related to those regulatory submissions, specifically for the companies’ BNT162b2 vaccine candidate. The breach was contained to just one IT application and the documents stored on the impacted server.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/nqf-issues-guidelines-for-high-ehr-data-quality-quality-measures
NQF Issues Guidelines for High EHR Data Quality, Quality Measures
The National Quality Forum responded to its initial environmental scan with its final recommendations for EHR data quality.
January 13, 2021 - Improved EHR data quality can be utilized to support automated clinical quality measurement, according to The National Quality Forum (NQF).
NQF identified challenges that impact the healthcare performance measures from a development, endorsement, and implementation standpoint using EHR data and recommendations from a technical expert panel (TEP).
NQF established the multi-stakeholder TEP to create two reports. The first was an environmental scan report that recognized the current EHR data quality issues and the second was a final recommendations report, the Technical Expert Panel on Electronic Health Record Data Quality Best Practices for Increased Scientific Acceptability.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/fda-action-plan-puts-focus-ai-enabled-software-medical-device
FDA action plan puts focus on AI-enabled software as medical device
The agency plans to take a "multi-pronged approach" to advancing oversight of machine learning-enabled devices – with an eye toward ensuring patient safety, algorithm transparency and real-world results.
By Mike Miliard
January 14, 2021 03:44 PM
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week published its first action plan for how it intends to spur development and oversight of safe, patient-centric artificial intelligence and machine learning-based software as a medical device.
WHY IT
MATTERS
The AI/ML-Based Software as a Medical Device Action Plan is a project of the
Digital Health Center of Excellence at FDA's Center for Devices and
Radiological Health, which launched this past September.
The action plan outlines five next steps FDA intends to take as AI/ML-based SaMD continues to evolve:
- Continuing to develop its own proposed regulatory framework for draft guidance on a predetermined change control plan for software learning
- Supporting "good machine learning practices" for evaluation of ML algorithms;
- Enabling a more transparent patient-centered approach
- Developing new methods to evaluate and improve machine learning algorithms; and
- Creating new pilots to enable real-world performance monitoring
As for a more tailored regulatory approach, FDA says it will update the proposed framework for AI/ML-based SaMD, "including through issuance of Draft Guidance on the Predetermined Change Control Plan." The guidance will cover elements needed to support the safety and efficacy of SaMD algorithms, officials said, noting that the "goal is to publish this draft guidance in 2021."
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/states-rely-wide-range-it-systems-manage-covid-19-vaccines
States rely on wide range of IT systems to manage COVID-19 vaccines
Left to their own devices by the federal government, states are embracing an array of often ad hoc approaches to meet demand, manage allocation and schedule appointments.
By Kat Jercich
January 14, 2021 09:45 AM
In lieu of a federal vaccine management system – at least for now – states have turned to their own technology for allocating and tracking the COVID-19 vaccine.
As states begin to expand eligibility beyond healthcare providers alone, local officials are relying on a wide variety of tools to help manage the demand.
Given the logistical issues associated with the vaccines, in conjunction with the recent announcement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that states already lagging behind will be penalized with fewer doses, it's more important than ever for allocation to be as seamless as possible.
Healthcare IT News spoke to health department representatives from dozens of states to learn how they're leveraging tools to respond to the vaccination needs of their residents – and how they anticipate using that IT going forward.
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Epic, Cerner and other health IT heavy hitters join forces for Vaccine Credential Initiative
The new coalition, which also includes Carin Alliance, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft and Salesforce, is using FHIR standards to enable more secure, interoperable access to digital vaccination records.
By Mike Miliard
January 14, 2021 09:51 AM
The sluggish rollout of COVID-19 vaccines so far has many causes, but one of the biggest has been a suboptimal infrastructure for coordination and record-keeping. A new coalition of some of the biggest healthcare and technology organizations is hoping to change that, and quickly.
WHY IT MATTERS
The new Vaccination Credential Initiative announced Thursday is bringing together a wide array of stakeholders – CARIN Alliance, Cerner, Change Healthcare, the Commons Project Foundation, Epic, Evernorth, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MITRE, Oracle, Safe Health, and Salesforce – to work together on a new approach.
The widely varied public and private organizations say they'll collaborate on developing a standard model for organizations administering COVID-19 vaccines – helping to create a "trustworthy, traceable, verifiable, and universally recognized digital record of vaccination status"
The goal is to leverage open and interoperable standards to ensure vaccinations and securely demonstrate patients' vaccine status to enable safer return to a new normal.
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The Role of The Digital Health Doctor Continues To Expand
January 14, 2021
Over the past several years, the role doctors play in digital health organizations has been evolving, with their responsibilities shifting from pure clinical work to a mix of entrepreneurial, research-oriented and product development responsibilities that may define the entire company’s purpose for existing.
At the outset, digital health tools were developed to help doctors do their jobs effectively on the next front of healthcare. Back in the day, much of what was presented as digital health technology was really a technical or software development layer that brought routine medical processes online.
Now, however, the work of being a physician in a digital care environment has expanded well beyond that of a digital health product superuser. Increasingly, their job is to keep digital health products and services aligned with the larger forces affecting medicine as a whole and to spearhead activities that help vendors stay on top of these efforts.
Today, the job of practicing medicine in has expanded in ways that go well beyond managing care, and that calls for new skill sets, according to Anne Latz, chief medical officer at care management vendor Alley.
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COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Spurs 51% Rise in Health Web App Attacks
Imperva data finds cyberattacks targeting healthcare web applications increased by 51 percent since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccine distribution in December.
January 12, 2021 - Cyberattacks on web applications tied to the healthcare sector increased by 51 percent, since the start of COVID-19 vaccine distribution in December, according to a new report from Imperva Research Labs.
Imperva’s cloud network gathers data to compile its Cyber Threat Index, which researchers use to monitor and analyze threat activity.
In December alone, hackers leveraged a range of techniques to target vulnerable healthcare entities. The largest targeted facilities were found in the US, Brazil, the UK, and Canada.
Specifically, the data found an increase in the volume of four key attack areas, led by a 43 percent spike in cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks in December. The second-largest volume of attacks were SQL injections, which increased by 44 percent.
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What Role Will the Patient Portal Play in COVID-19 Vaccine Efforts?
The patient portal could help patients schedule the COVID-19 vaccine while helping them to manage where they are in the multidose regimen.
By Sara Heath
January 12, 2021 - Healthcare has finally seen its strong use case for the patient portal during the COVID-19 crisis, with patients and healthcare providers alike leaning on the technology to coordinate healthcare during the pandemic. Most recently, the patient portal has proven instrumental in coordinating at least the beginning stages of the COVID-19 vaccine effort.
The patient portal has always had the ability to help healthcare consumers coordinate their own health. Ever since the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs called on providers to offer up patient portal access, these technologies have had the ability to let patients see their own health information and manage some of their data, such as vaccine history.
But it wasn’t until COVID-19 struck the nation that these tools, accessible in most cases as both desktop and smartphone applications, became truly indispensable. Patients began using their portals to book telehealth appointments and even view COVID-19 test results.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/discovery-of-new-alzheimers-subtypes-may-speed-precision-medicine
Discovery of New Alzheimer’s Subtypes May Speed Precision Medicine
Researchers have identified and characterized three molecular subtypes of Alzheimer’s disease, which could accelerate development of precision medicine therapies.
By Jessica Kent
January 08, 2021 - Using data from RNA sequencing, a team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has detected three molecular subtypes of Alzheimer’s disease that could advance precision medicine treatments for the condition.
Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, but it ranges in its biological and pathological manifestations. Researchers noted that there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that disease progression and responses to interventions differ significantly among Alzheimer’s patients.
While some patients have slow cognitive decline, others decline rapidly; some have significant memory loss and an inability to remember new information while others don’t; and some patients experience psychosis or depression associated with Alzheimer’s while others don’t.
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Providers Seen as Less Liable for Following AI Recommendations
Potential jurors may believe that physicians who follow artificial intelligence recommendations are less liable for medical malpractice.
By Jessica Kent
January 12, 2021 - Potential jurors may not be strongly opposed to providers’ acceptance of artificial intelligence medical recommendations, indicating that clinicians may be less liable for medical malpractice than commonly believed, a study published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine revealed.
Clinical decision support tools increasingly rely on artificial intelligence algorithms for diagnosis and treatment recommendations, researchers noted. These personalized recommendations can deviate from standard care, potentially making providers vulnerable to increased liability in medical malpractice.
“New AI tools can assist physicians in treatment recommendations and diagnostics, including the interpretation of medical images,” said Kevin Tobia, JD, PhD, assistant professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, in Washington, DC.
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https://www.aiin.healthcare/topics/business-intelligence/fda-refines-its-approach-ai-based-software
FDA refines its approach to AI-based software
Dave Pearson | January 12, 2021 | Business Intelligence
The FDA’s new Digital Health Center of Excellence has released a document describing how it will henceforth oversee and evaluate software that incorporates AI and machine learning for medical applications.
The center, which launched in September as a part of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), says it will consider such incorporations as potential contributors to devices’ total lifecycle performance.
In its announcement of the plan’s release, FDA summarizes five primary actions it will now take:
1. Further developing the proposed regulatory framework, including through issuance of draft guidance on a predetermined change control plan (for software’s learning over time);
2. Supporting the development of good machine learning practices to evaluate and improve machine learning algorithms;
3. Fostering a patient-centered approach, including device transparency to users;
4. Developing methods to evaluate and improve machine learning algorithms; and
5. Advancing real-world performance monitoring pilots.
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https://www.cnet.com/health/ces-2021-showcases-tech-to-fight-back-against-covid-19/
CES 2021 showcases tech to fight back against COVID-19
The consumer tech conference was forced to go all-digital amid the pandemic, but there are still innovations to fight coronavirus.
Jan. 13, 2021 5:00 a.m. PT
Tech companies offer air purifiers, disinfectant and more.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended lives around the world over the past year, forcing changes in how we live, work and even eat. At the annual CES show this week, tech companies are discussing a variety of ways to fight back against COVID-19 through masks, disinfectants, air purifiers and touchless technology.
The companies understand that no one technology can win the battle against the virus, which is why many of them are positioned as part of the new normal that life's turning into. One such company, Plott, built a doorbell called the Ettie that can take people's temperature before they're allowed inside. Another, Alarm.com, created a Touchless Video Doorbell in an effort to cut down on transmission of bacteria and viruses that we otherwise often leave on places we touch.
It's "another way we can stay vigilant and protect one another," Alarm.com said.
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Sequoia Project seeks COVID-19 lessons learned with new interoperability workgroup
Its new emergency preparedness initiative is focused on helping state and local public health agencies better manage data exchange during times of crisis.
By Mike Miliard
January 13, 2021 10:19 AM
The Sequoia Project has launched a new Emergency Preparedness Information Workgroup, designed to learn from some of the specific interoperability challenges since the start of the COVID-19 crisis – and point the way toward more robust data exchange capabilities during future public health emergencies.
WHY IT
MATTERS
The workgroup, convened as part of the Sequoia''s Interoperability Matters
Cooperative, will assess an array of technology and information exchange
challenges for states – policy and regulatory hurdles, privacy challenges,
funding and resources – that might hamstring information availability for
emergency preparedness.
Participants will include representatives from California EMSA, California Health Information Exchange, Common Spirit, Florida HIE, Florida Public Health, Georgia HIE, North Carolina Department of Health, Texas eHealth Alliance, and Texas Health Services Authority. There are also participants from several key federal partners.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/supreme-court-rejects-using-telehealth-abortion
Supreme Court rejects using telehealth for abortion
Lower courts had blocked FDA in-person requirements for abortion medication last summer, finding them to be a "substantial obstacle" during the pandemic.
By Kat Jercich
January 13, 2021 11:22 AM
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday night granted the Trump administration's request to reinstate in-person abortion medication requirements during the pandemic.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations require mifepristone, which is used in medication abortion, to be dispensed at a clinic, hospital or medical office. Lower courts had blocked the requirements this past summer, finding them to be a "substantial obstacle."
"The question before us is not whether the requirements for dispensing mifepristone impose an undue burden on a woman’s right to an abortion as a general matter," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the opinion.
"The question is instead whether the District Court properly ordered the Food and Drug Administration to lift those established requirements because of the court’s own evaluation of the impact of the COVID–19 pandemic," Roberts continued.
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The challenges of cybersecurity during global mass vaccination programmes
For many of us, 2021 feels a lot like 2020 with lockdowns imposed and hospital pressures increasing. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel with several vaccines now being rolled out globally, says Dr Saif Abed, founding partner, AbedGraham.
By Saif Abed
January 13, 2021 02:08 AM
The mass vaccine roll-out across the world offers hope that by the summer we will see a glimmer of normality start to return to our lives. However, until then we also have to consider the profound challenges of delivering and administering vaccines at scale. The logistical hurdles have been well documented but the cybersecurity risks less so and that’s what I want to shed light on.
Clinical and organisational risks
There are two areas that concern me in particular. First is the persistence of legacy technology (e.g. workstations and network infrastructure) and unpatched devices that abound in most healthcare systems such as the NHS in the UK. The second are the increasing risk profiles associated with network connected medical devices which we can refer to as Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) Devices. Taken together these present significant clinical and organisational risks.
For example, a ‘standard’ opportunistic ransomware attack targeting a hospital or vaccination hub that makes patient administration and EMR systems unavailable would significantly disrupt vaccinations simply because patient details could not be validated. Take this a step further with a slightly more targeted attack, and you could see pharmacy systems and IoMT devices such as medication fridges and dispensing cabinets being compromised.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/01/13/pandemic-has-increased-demands-on-healthcare-networks/
Pandemic Has Increased Demands On Healthcare Networks
January 13, 2021
Driven by major changes in IT demands, providers are seeing a greater need for network resilience and security, a new study concludes. This includes the need to tackle soaring demand for the bandwidth needed to provide virtual services.
The survey, which was conducted by IDG and co-sponsored by Masergy and Fortinet, surveyed IT leaders working in hospitals, primary and urgent care centers, pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare entities. It was designed to examine how pandemic-driven changes such as increases in telemedicine use and a shift to remote work have impacted networks within these organizations.
It found that these forces have increased healthcare companies’ demands for network resiliency, cloud security and integrated approaches to address these problems.
Researchers found that 95% of respondents saw an increase in network traffic since March 2020, driven by services such as virtual doctor visits, pop-up clinics, and new work-from-home requirements. Ninety-two percent reported that they had to boost their network bandwidth capacity to support the growing number of connected medical devices running on their network.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/01/13/top-remote-patient-monitoring-rpm-companies/
Top Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) Companies
January 13, 2021
When COVID-19 really hammered us in April, it was amazing to see how quickly healthcare organizations had to turn on telehealth visits at their organization. It really wasn’t a surprise since the shutdowns and stay-at-home orders really gave healthcare organizations very few choices. Thus we saw the explosion of live video visits and you may remember that we published our list of live video telehealth companies.
While we didn’t see the same explosion in remote patient monitoring (RPM) like we did with live video visits, we have seen a new disposition towards the idea of remotely monitoring patients thanks to COVID. There’s a much greater acknowledgment that we need to find a way to more effectively monitor a patient remotely. It’s a mistake to just rely on the in person office visit to provide care to patients. Thus, the need for a wide variety of remote patient monitoring companies and tools to be able to help an organization track and treat a patient outside the 4 walls of their organization.
To help those who are looking at remote patient monitoring (RPM) options for their healthcare organization, we aggregated a list of the top remote patient monitoring (RPM) companies we could find. While we strived to find as many true RPM companies, I’m sure we missed some and will continue to add to the list as we find more. In fact, if you see a company missing from the list, let us know on our contact us page.
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https://hitinfrastructure.com/news/ge-healthcare-lets-hospitals-test-artificial-intelligence-tools
GE Healthcare Lets Hospitals Test Artificial Intelligence Tools
Customers, including radiologists and emergency physicians, will soon be able to try solutions powered by artificial intelligence prior to buying it through GE Healthcare’s Edison Marketplace.
December 08, 2020 - GE Healthcare recently announced that it will soon allow customers to find, try, and buy software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) through an online store featuring a range of third-party developers.
The offer will be available through Edison Marketplace, a key component of GE Healthcare’s AI software platform. Some of the apps currently available help doctors gather insights into clinical data and improve outcomes.
For example, radiologists can find applications that help to identify breast cancer or prioritize cases with possible collapsed lungs. Other apps will allow emergency physicians to track the extent of COVID-19 triggered pneumonia.
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HIPAA Safe Harbor Bill Becomes Law; Requires HHS to Incentivize Security
On January 5, the President signed the HR 7898, HIPAA Safe Harbor Bill, into law, which amends the HITECH Act to require HHS to incentivize best practice security.
January 11, 2021 - President Donald Trump officially signed HR 7898 into law on January 5. The HIPAA Safe Harbor bill amends the HITECH act to require the Department of Health and Human Services to incentivize best practice cybersecurity for meeting HIPAA requirements.
The bill was first introduced on July 31 and easily passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee to the Senate in mid-December, receiving strong support from a host of industry stakeholders.
The Senate unanimously passed the legislation without amendment on December 19.
The legislation directs HHS to take into account a covered entity’s or business associate’s use of industry-standard security practices within the course of 12 months, when investigating and undertaking HIPAA enforcement actions, or other regulatory purposes.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/revamping-medical-education-to-address-racial-bias-disparities
Revamping Medical Education to Address Racial Bias, Disparities
Researchers looked at medical education curricula, finding that they can perpetuate racial bias in medicine, leading to health disparities.
By Sara Heath
January 11, 2021 - As the medical industry begins to recognize institutional racism as a key influence in health disparities, inequities, and racial bias, it is becoming clear that medical schools need to revamp how they address race in their curricula, according to researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers asserted that previous medical school curricula focused on biological differences between races that led to racial health disparities. This is incongruent with today’s understanding of health disparities, the researchers said, suggesting a need to reconfigure medical school curricula.
“In medical school, 20 years ago, we often learned that higher rates of hypertension in certain racial and ethnic groups, was due to genetic predisposition, personal behaviors, or unfortunate circumstances,” Jaya Aysola, MD, MPH, study lead author and assistant dean of Inclusion and Diversity in the Perelman School of Medicine, said in a statement.
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Some ransomware gangs are going after top execs to pressure companies into paying
Ransomware gangs are prioritizing stealing data from workstations used by executives in the hopes of finding and using valuable information to use in the extortion process.
By Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day | January 9, 2021 -- 08:00 GMT (19:00 AEDT) | Topic: Security
A new trend is emerging among ransomware groups where they prioritize stealing data from workstations used by top executives and managers in order to obtain "juicy" information that they can later use to pressure and extort a company's top brass into approving large ransom payouts.
ZDNet first learned of this new tactic earlier this week during a phone call with a company that paid a multi-million dollar ransom to the Clop ransomware gang.
Similar calls with other Clop victims and email interviews with cybersecurity firms later confirmed that this wasn't just a one-time fluke, but instead a technique that the Clop gang had fine-tuned across the past few months.
Making the extortion personal
The technique is an evolution of what we've been seen from ransomware gangs lately.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/information-blocking-by-ehr-vendors-health-systems-still-prevalent
Information Blocking by EHR Vendors, Health Systems Still Prevalent
About half of the more than 100 health information exchange respondents said EHR vendors practice information blocking.
January 11, 2021 - Even with information blocking regulations looming, health systems and EHR vendors are still conducting information blocking practices, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).
The ONC final interoperability rule defines information blocking as the intentional withholding of patient health information either from provider to provider or provider to patient. This has long been a touchy subject, with some industry experts questioning what exactly qualifies as “intentional.”
With health systems and EHR vendors attempting to achieve interoperability and effective patient data exchange, both actors have encountered numerous challenges on the road to connectivity.
For health systems, seamless patient data exchange can allow competitors to own the market share by facilitating access to patients' prior medical history. Meanwhile, EHR vendors are able to increase costs, such as connectivity charges, since the prices are already high for health systems to switch EHR vendors, the research team said.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/hhs-launches-covid-19-antibody-treatment-locator-tool
HHS launches COVID-19 antibody treatment locator tool
The tool, which is based on shipments reported by the distributor, currently only displays information from 22 states.
By Kat Jercich
January 12, 2021 10:12 AM
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a treatment locator to help patients and providers find monoclonal antibody therapeutics for COVID-19.
Housed at HHS' Protect Public Data Hub, the tool displays locations that have received shipments of therapeutics under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority within the past several weeks.
As of Monday, the locator displayed data from only 22 states. HHS notes that states must opt in to have facility information displayed, and that it would not display locations that received fewer than five courses of treatment.
"The therapeutics have been allocated to all states and U.S. territories," explained an HHS spokesperson to Healthcare IT News. The spokesperson noted that more states have since opted in and that their information will show in the system soon.
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Ochsner Health successfully treats chronic disease patients via telemedicine
The Louisiana health system performed more than 300,000 virtual visits in 2020 and earned a Net Promoter Score of 87.5 out of 100 – better than Amazon and Netflix.
By Bill Siwicki
January 12, 2021 11:49 AM
At New Orleans-based Ochsner Health, patients are priority No. 1, and they serve as a compass for what staff does. Ochsner's digital health programs began as solutions for the health system itself and for its communities. However, the health system quickly expanded the programs to consumers, employers and payers with the goal of applying innovation to healthcare gaps in access to care and specialty expertise.
Telehealth at Ochsner began more than a decade ago with a pediatric echocardiogram program to help bridge a gap of geographic and specialty disparity across the state of Louisiana. There simply were not enough pediatric cardiologists to treat the rural population.
Over the next 10 years, hospital-based programs in telehealth for stroke, psychiatry and ICU were developed with partnerships across several states. And Ochsner has made significant investments over the last four years in building out direct-to-consumer telemedicine care delivery.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/01/12/how-to-think-about-healthcare-chatbots/
How to Think About Healthcare Chatbots
January 12, 2021
One of the most exciting areas of healthcare IT is the automation of so many of the mundane tasks that exist in healthcare. In many cases, our first efforts in this regard were to outsource these mundane tasks, but now healthcare AI and other things like robotic process automation (RPA) have come along to help healthcare organizations make so many mundane processes more efficient and effective using technology.
The healthcare chatbot is a big portion of this effort and we’re starting to see chatbots spring up all over healthcare. Everything from checking someone in for a COVID vaccine to symptom checkers to remote patient monitoring chatbots that collect health information. Needless to say, many processes in healthcare will be automated using a healthcare chatbot.
We recently had a chance to talk with Greg Johnsen, CEO of LifeLink, to learn about their work with chatbots in healthcare. We ask Johnsen if patients are scared of chatbots and if they trust a chatbot or not. Plus, we ask him to share where healthcare organizations are using a chatbot to automate processes.
In our discussion, Johnsen aptly points out that there are a wide variety of chatbots and so it’s not fair to group them all together. For example, a chatbot that ensures a patient is properly prepared for a surgery is largely going by a pre-defined flow that was defined by the clinic and has very clear outcomes and pathways. That’s a very different chatbot than say a symptom checker that could be asked anything and everything and needs to reply. Both have their place in healthcare, but ensuring a great patient experience is much easier when it’s a largely predefined path than the open ended chat bot.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/key-healthcare-financial-technology-trends-2021
Key Healthcare Financial Technology Trends for 2021
Analysis | By Jack O'Brien | January 12, 2021
More than 80% of survey respondents stated that they have confidence in their organization's ability to "rapidly adjust their plans and strategies."
Healthcare finance leaders are more optimistic about the ability to adjust to a changing business environment and utilize quality data in the decision-making process, according to the 2021 Healthcare Financial Trends Survey report released by Syntellis Performance Solutions Monday morning.
More than 80% of survey respondents stated that they have confidence in their organization's ability to "rapidly adjust their plans and strategies." This metric is up from 24% of respondents who expressed confidence in 2019.
Nearly 90% of respondents stated that clinical quality data and insights are "important or very important" to performance reporting initiatives.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/machine-learning-facebook-data-offer-insight-into-schizophrenia
Machine Learning, Facebook Data Offer Insight into Schizophrenia
Using data from patients’ Facebook pages, a machine learning algorithm accurately predicted which individuals would go on to develop schizophrenia and mood disorders.
By Jessica Kent
January 07, 2021 - Data from sites like Facebook and Twitter can reveal a lot about someone’s behavioral health. Past studies have shown that social media activity can predict a person’s demographic characteristics, substance use, and religious and political views.
Now, researchers have applied machine learning tools to individuals’ Facebook pages in order to determine who would eventually develop schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) and mood disorders – more than a year before the patient’s first hospitalization and official diagnosis.
In a new study published in Nature Partner Journals Schizophrenia, the team noted that psychiatric symptoms often emerge during adolescence or early adulthood and can interfere with the establishment of healthy social and educational foundations.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/artificial-intelligence-diagnoses-adverse-childhood-experiences
Artificial Intelligence Diagnoses Adverse Childhood Experiences
Using real-time data and explainable artificial intelligence, researchers developed a system that could aid clinicians in diagnosing and treating adverse childhood experiences.
By Jessica Kent
January 06, 2021 - An explainable artificial intelligence platform that analyzes data captured during in-person consultations may enhance diagnosis and treatment of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), according to a study published in JMIR – Medical Informatics.
ACEs are negative events and processes that an individual might encounter during childhood or adolescence. These events have been proven to be linked to increased risk of a range of negative health outcomes and conditions in adulthood.
Because the social determinants of health have a similarly profound impact on physical well-being, researchers noted that many studies have focused on studying the links between social determinants of health, ACEs, and health outcomes.
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High-quality data and health informatics are increasingly central to addressing complex women’s health issues
High-quality data and health informatics are increasingly central to addressing complex women’s health issues. Business professors Min Chen and Cynthia LeRouge recently shared several high impact examples with members of Think Tank for Women in Business & Technology.
The international group hosted a panel discussion—“Women’s Health: What Technologies Should We Invest In?” held virtually in December—not only to address existing medical challenges, but also the need to increase women’s presence in the technology sector.
Where is technology delivering health results?
Chen, associate professor of information systems and business analytics, explained that maintaining and sharing electronic health records can help match pregnant women with the treatment they need, allowing for fewer unnecessary C-sections in low-risk deliveries.
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AdventHealth meets CMS quality metrics, saves money with digital health platform
A pilot saw a 57% reduction in readmissions for high-risk patients, taking their readmissions from 19% to 8%, ultimately saving the health system $183,000 in care costs.
By Bill Siwicki
January 08, 2021 01:30 PM
Altamonte Springs, Florida-based AdventHealth is a nonprofit health system with more than 80,000 care team members across hospitals, physician practices, outpatient clinics, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies and hospice centers across nine states.
THE PROBLEM
With the CMS Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, hospitals can lose up to 3% of their Medicare payments annually due to penalties. But reducing readmissions poses challenges – especially when working with vulnerable populations like Medicare.
AdventHealth is driven by a mission to deliver compassionate care for body, mind and spirit. This includes caring for Medicare populations, who often face unique challenges when it comes to managing their chronic conditions, leading to higher levels of hospitalization and high HRRP penalties for the organization.
Wanting to improve outcomes for these members, AdventHealth needed a way to increase disease control – reducing the need for expensive acute care and readmissions.
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Brigham and Women's and Biofourmis codevelop home hospital technology
Now that CMS will pay for home hospital care, Brigham and Women's and other pioneering providers are pushing forward with this care in part to help with the crush of COVID-19 patients.
By Bill Siwicki
January 11, 2021 12:23 PM
In November, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took several new steps to help U.S. hospitals manage the crush of new patients as the COVID-19 crisis worsens. Among them were new allowances for telehealth and remote monitoring, for what CMS is calling the Acute Hospital Care at Home program.
Additionally, the agency expanded its Hospitals Without Walls initiative, with even more regulatory flexibility for ambulatory surgery centers to provide care as a "relief valve" to help overburdened hospitals.
Keeping patients at home
Simply put, home hospital involves delivering hospital-level care at home instead of in the hospital, said Dr. David Levine, assistant professor of medicine and medical director of strategy and innovation for Brigham Health Home Hospital at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"So, it's a sick person who shows up at the emergency department, and instead of staying at the hospital and getting admitted and receiving all that hospital care, that person actually turns right around and goes home with a specialized home hospital team that delivers all the same care that they would have received in the hospital, but they get it at home," Levine explained.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/how-cms-has-made-progress-healthcare-interoperability
How CMS has made progress on healthcare interoperability
"As we look forward, we are confident that we have laid a solid foundation for interoperability on which future administrations can continue to build."
By Seema Verma
January 11, 2021 11:01 AM
Seema Verma is administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
This article was coauthored with Alexandra Mugge, deputy chief health informatics officer at CMS, and Shannon Sartin, chief technology officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
In 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the White House Office of American Innovation, publicly announced our commitment to ensuring that patients would have access to their healthcare data wherever and whenever they need it, and we commenced on a journey to break down the barriers that keep critical patient health information locked in digital silos.
For decades, the path to healthcare interoperability has been a relay spanning multiple administrations, one in which each administration has passed the baton to the next, moving the healthcare industry closer to the goal, but always falling short of seamless interoperability of health data.
At the finish line lies a more coordinated, seamless system of care in which patients have electronic access to their health information and providers are offering competitive quality and patient care, providing more evidence-based care with less duplication of testing and errors. We have taken the race further by revising old policies to better achieve their intended goals, finalizing new policies to engage all stakeholders across the healthcare industry and laying a foundation for the future of interoperability.
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Withings, Redox Partner To Create EHR-Accessible Remote Monitoring Device
January 11, 2021
Remote monitoring device-maker Withings has partnered with EHR integration software developer Redox to create a wearable which connects with a wide variety of EHR platform. The two are working together using Withings’ MED-PRO CARE, the company’s remote patient monitoring solution.
In addition to wearables, the Withings connected health line includes smart scales, hybrid smartwatches offering not only vitals but also consumer-friendly data such as steps, distance walked and calories lost. MED-PRO is also planning to launch a smart blood pressure monitor and sleep management device. Withings is planning several product launches this year, so it’s notable that it led with a wearable device.
Because Redox offers a single API capable of integrating with a variety of environments, the updated device can share data with the bulk of hospital and physician EHRs, the companies said. This is certainly a standout feature in a world of largely me-too wearables data options.
The data gathered by MED-PRO CARE doesn’t seem to be particularly remarkable, offering such standard information as daily blood pressure levels, weight, sleep patterns, heart rate data and other indices.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/covid-19-ignites-digital-health-investment-activity
COVID-19 Ignites Digital Health Investment Activity
Analysis | By Mandy Roth | January 11, 2021
2020 is a record year for VC funding; companies raise a record $1.8 billion; telemedicine was leading target.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Venture funding for the digital health sector increased by 66% over 2019.
· Telemedicine raised $4.3 billion in venture capital.
· Six digital health companies issued IPOs, raising a total of $6.2 billion.
2020 was a good year for digital health. Venture funding for the sector shot up 66% over 2019, with a record $14.8 billion raised globally in 637 deals, according to Mercom Capital Group, a global communications and research firm. Telemedicine was the leading investment target, receiving $4.3 billion in venture capital funding during 2020.
The same phenomenon responsible for creating worldwide havoc is the driving force behind these trends.
“COVID-19 supercharged funding activity in digital health in 2020," said Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group in a news release. "Ten digital health categories had their best year with record funding amounts. It was also the biggest year for IPOs with six digital health companies raising over $6 billion."
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https://histalk2.com/2021/01/08/weekender-1-8-21/
Weekly News Recap
- Optum announces its intention to acquire Change Healthcare.
- Harris acquires Obix.
- TigerConnect acquires Critical Alert.
- Intraprise Health acquires HIPAA One.
- Cedar Gate acquires Enli.
- Haven announces its shutdown.
- ONC publishes Cures Act developer resources.
- Hospitals begin publishing their negotiated rates and prices for shoppable services.
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Enjoy!
David.
