Here are a few
I came across last week.
Note: Each
link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on
the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links
may require site registration or subscription payment
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2022/11/breaking-down-language-barriers-with-digital-health/
Breaking down language barriers with digital health
Jayshree
Velani, dispensary manager at Ealing Hospital pharmacy explains how a web-based
bilingual labelling solution has helped adherence and reduced healthcare inequalities.
DHI News
Team. 3 Nov 2022
Medication
non-adherence is a major barrier to delivery of healthcare and being able to
communicate effectively with patients is essential.
NICE
estimates that between a third and half of patients on long-term treatment
do not take their medicines correctly, contributing to the personal and
economic burden of chronic illness.
It’s
important that pharmacists can support and encourage their patients to take
their medicines safely and effectively. However, language can prove an
additional obstacle, particularly in ethnically diverse areas for whom
non-adherence rates increase to over 70%. Many ethnic minority groups are up to
six times more likely to get chronic conditions, due to their genetic
predisposition, and at a much younger age.
London North
West University Healthcare NHS Trust is one of the largest and most
multicultural trusts in London, with almost 75% of the demographic it serves
ethnic minorities, and almost 35% speak English as a second language. We see a
lot of different types of language barriers. Some people live with someone or
have friends to help them with translation, whereas others live alone and don’t
have anyone to support them.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2022/11/special-report-medicines-management-5/
Special Report: Medicines Management
Getting
the right medicine to the right patient at the right time has long been
considered an area in which digital solutions can be a valuable aid.
Traditionally, the focus has been at an organisational level. But with
integrated care systems having become statutory bodies, what does effective
medicines management now look like? Claire Read reports.
3 Nov, 2022
As
a senior policy advisor at the NHS Confederation, Edward Jones has a mission
which is far from straightforward – to help healthcare leaders navigate the
many strategic challenges currently facing the service. Fundamentally that
means uncovering ways to meet the needs of patients and citizens more
efficiently. And that in turn means, he says, that medicines management is a
natural area of focus for him and his colleagues.
“We
know medicines are really important to healthcare,” says Jones. “They’re the
most common healthcare intervention in the world, they’re the second highest
cause of avoidable harm, and they are the second largest of spend in the NHS
after workforce.”
In
September 2021, he co-authored a report on medicines and integrated care
systems (ICSs), the partnerships of health and care services in a local area
which became statutory earlier this year.
Entitled
“Why medicines optimisation is a priority for integrated care systems and how
it can be improved”, the paper argues that proper use of medicines goes right
to the very heart of ICSs’ activities.
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https://hitconsultant.net/2022/11/09/healthcare-it-leaders-implementing-ai-in-their-operations/
3 Questions Healthcare IT Leaders Should Ask Before Implementing AI in
Their Operations
by Varun
Ganapathi, Ph.D., CTO and co-founder at AKASA 11/09/2022
Artificial
intelligence (AI) and automation are no longer nice-to-have technologies for
healthcare providers. They are mission-critical tools for addressing
significant challenges many health systems and hospitals face today — from
volatile patient volumes to ballooning labor costs and staffing shortages to
low operating margins. Many of these challenges are macro-level economic trends
that will continue to prevail for the foreseeable future.
According
to research from Kaufman
Hall, 2022 has been the worst financial year for hospitals since the
pandemic, with national operating margins at -0.98% through July, marking the
seventh negative month in a row.
It’s,
therefore, no surprise many healthcare financial leaders are looking to
technology to help reduce costs and boost revenue. Many health systems and
hospitals have turned to automation and AI to provide scalable solutions for
these complex and multi-layered operational challenges. In fact, 78%
of health systems are currently using or are in the process of implementing
automation within the revenue cycle.
Rather
than rely on time-consuming, manual workflows for tasks such as obtaining prior
authorization and responding to denials, healthcare organizations are now
automating these functions. This allows providers to lower operating expenses
and increase revenue while alleviating the burden on their workforce —
elevating them to work on more challenging and revenue-generating projects that
need a human touch.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/researchers-suggest-changes-to-fda-oversight-of-ai-breast-cancer-screening
Researchers Suggest Changes to FDA Oversight of AI Breast Cancer Screening
New
commentary highlights questions around the accuracy, appropriate use, and
clinical utility of AI for breast cancer screening and suggests ways to improve
current regulatory approaches.
By Shania Kennedy
November 10,
2022 - In a special
communication published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, Yale
researchers explore the current regulatory processes for artificial
intelligence (AI)-based breast cancer screening tools, sharing the limitations,
advantages, and potential recommendations for improvement in US Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) regulatory approaches.
The
researchers began by describing the current FDA regulatory process for AI
tools, which is centered around the Software
as a Medical Device (SaMD) standard. SaMD is defined as "software
intended to be used for one or more medical purposes that perform these
purposes without being part of a hardware medical device."
Products
classified as SaMD are currently reviewed through three FDA medical device
pathways: 510(k), De
Novo, and Premarket
Approval (PMA). The pathway chosen for a review depends on the risk
associated with a device and whether there is a similar FDA-approved or-cleared
device that already exists.
The FDA has
also proposed a voluntary program, the Software
Pre-Cert Pilot Program (Pre-Cert program), designed to address the
challenges of regulating SaMD, including AI-specific challenges like adaptive
algorithms.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2022/11/11/what-duplicate-patient-notes-reveal-about-health-care-and-its-records/
What Duplicate Patient Notes Reveal About Health Care and Its Records
November 11, 2022
Andy Oram
Bloat
in patient notes has been alarming doctors for some time. The American Medical
Informatics Association began a project to reduce patient documentation to
25% of its current volume by 2025. This task won’t be solved by any single
organizer or sector; the AMIA calls on providers and health systems, Health IT
vendors, and policy and advocacy groups to join the effort.
A
recent study in a JAMA publication, “Prevalence
and Sources of Duplicate Information in the Electronic Medical Record,”
helps drive discussion of bloat forward by focusing on one manifestation: the
duplication of text from one patient note to another. Fully half of all notes,
the authors find, consist of text copied from previous notes. (Side
Note: Check out this video
interview on Physician Burnout with one of the authors.)
To
establish what’s a duplicate, the authors checked for 10-word sequences that
were exactly the same in different notes for the same patient. This seems to me
a reasonable way to identify duplicates, although one can question what happens
when an EHR automatically generates text. We’ll return to that issue later.
The
authors of the study couldn’t tell why clinicians write duplicate notes. That
question would call for yet another study, which would interview the nurses and
doctors themselves.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/post-roe-patient-privacy-requires-focus-on-health-data-sharing
Post-Roe Patient Privacy Requires Focus on Health Data Sharing
Organizations
could offer ‘in house’ services and revise health data sharing approaches to
protect patient privacy in a post-Roe world.
By Hannah Nelson
November 10,
2022 - Healthcare organizations should revise their data sharing
strategies to protect patient privacy with the Supreme Court’s recent decision
to end constitutional protections for abortion, according to a study
published in JAMIA.
Healthcare
organizations may share data about patients’ pregnancy and abortion care with
other institutions in ways that could expose providers and patients to social
stigma and potential legal jeopardy in states with severe abortion restrictions.
“Patients’
pregnancy and abortion care are more exposed than ever before,” the study
authors wrote. “Even if institutions protect pregnancy and abortion data,
through existing and expanding interoperability the associated information
footprint will quickly expand to labs, pharmacies, payers, and patient-managed
apps.”
The
researchers suggested several ways healthcare organizations can protect
patient reproductive data.
Reduce the
specificity of pregnancy and abortion documentation
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/with-improved-standards-telehealth-could-significantly-enhance-senior-care
With Improved Standards, Telehealth Could Significantly Enhance Senior
Care
In a new
editorial, researchers argue that telehealth can lead to improved care among
seniors, provided they adhere to standards that ensure the most effective
delivery of virtual care.
By Mark Melchionna
November 10,
2022 - Published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, new
commentary from researchers at West Health discusses
the potential of telehealth in providing seniors with improved care, along with
recommendations and a framework for future use.
Throughout
the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that telehealth provided a wide range of
benefits for both patients and providers. These benefits included improved
access to care and better outcomes while providing more options.
Researchers
at West Health, a group of nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations that centers
its efforts around improving healthcare for senior citizens, collaborated with
researchers from the University of North Carolina and the University of
Pittsburgh to provide commentary on a study showing that people 65 and older
want to continue using telehealth but have experienced technical challenges and
other hurdles to access.
“The COVID-19
pandemic brought to light the immense value of telemedicine to remotely connect
patients and doctors for a wide range of healthcare needs,” says Liane Wardlow,
PhD, senior director of Clinical Research and Telehealth at West Health, in a press release.
“But when treating older patients, we see that telemedicine falls short in many
important ways. The problem is that remote healthcare delivery simply wasn’t
designed with the needs of older people in mind.”
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https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/aha-verilys-onduo-virtual-care-app-improves-glucose-cholesterol-type-2-diabetes-patients
AHA: Verily's Onduo virtual care app improves glucose, cholesterol in Type
2 diabetes patients
By Andrea Park
Nov 7, 2022
10:30am
These
days, employer-sponsored wellness programs are a dime a dozen—but Verily may
have hit the jackpot with its Onduo virtual care platform.
Alphabet’s
life sciences arm unveiled the app in 2016 with an initial focus on diabetes
and Sanofi as its partner in the $500 million venture. In the years since,
Sanofi has exited the diabetes space—and therefore the Onduo project—and Verily
has expanded the platform into other
chronic conditions, but a new set of study results shows it can still be a
major help to that original user group.
The
study, which was presented
at the American Heart Association’s annual scientific sessions Sunday, compared
Onduo to other employer-sponsored health programs in improving glucose and
cholesterol levels for people with Type 2 diabetes. After about nine months of
use, Verily’s offering outdid the others across a handful of factors.
With
the Onduo smartphone app, users can track their food and exercise, access
healthy recipes and other wellness tips, and meet with either a health coach or
telehealth doctor to assess their progress and set new health goals. They can
also link other connected devices to the platform to further flesh out the
app’s insights.
The
study focused on nearly 600 people with Type 2 diabetes who used the Onduo app
between December 2020 and September 2021—and who had previously participated in
another wellness program in 2020.
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https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2022/11/qa-lcmc-healths-tanya-townsend-industry-change-and-workforce-retention
Q&A: LCMC Health’s Tanya Townsend on Industry Change and Workforce
Retention
Tanya
Townsend, LCMC Health’s first CIO, looks back on her career in healthcare IT so
far and sets priorities for the years ahead.
by Teta Alim
Teta
Alim is the managing editor of HealthTech. Teta previously worked as a digital
journalist in Washington, D.C.
Though
women make up 66 percent of entry-level healthcare staff, the percentage
shrinks when the focus turns to more senior roles, where women make up only 30
percent of C-suite positions, according to McKinsey research.
Tanya
Townsend, senior vice president and CIO of New Orleans-based LCMC Health, can
certainly remember when she was the only woman at an industry event or in an
organizational space, but she’s happy to see more women in healthcare
leadership roles.
Townsend,
who also sits on advisory boards for healthcare technology companies, is the 2022 CHIME
board chair — the third female board chair in 30 years. “I’m hoping to
share our stories so we can encourage those future women in healthcare and let
them know they can pave their own way,” she says.
Townsend
chatted with HealthTech
about her career so far, how she’s focusing on workforce retention and how
lessons on agility can move organizations forward.
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https://www.news-medical.net/news/20221109/New-program-leverages-digital-solutions-to-improve-patients-blood-pressure-and-cholesterol-levels.aspx
New program leverages digital solutions to improve patients' blood
pressure and cholesterol levels
Reviewed by Emily
Henderson, B.Sc.Nov 9 2022
Heart
disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and around the
world. Lowering high blood pressure and cholesterol could help to reduce
morbidity and mortality, but frequent in-person visits to measure and manage
these readouts can be a burden for patients. A team from Mass General Brigham
implemented a remote healthcare program aimed at managing patients' blood
pressure and cholesterol levels. The new program leveraged digital solutions to
help break down barriers to care, especially among traditionally underserved
patient populations. In a research study that included more than 10,000
participants from the Mass General Brigham system, investigators found that the
program lowered blood pressure and LDL-cholesterol significantly. Results are published
in JAMA
Cardiology.
Coming
into a brick-and-mortar office can present a high burden for patients who have
chronic conditions or for people who live far away. We began this remote care
delivery program before the pandemic began. And when the pandemic started, we
saw a significant increase in our enrollment and a greater interest in the
advantages of remote care. Patients want innovative solutions to more easily
engage with the health system. Our program provides strong evidence that remote
care can work and can make a difference in patients' lives."
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https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/telehealth-earned-a-place-in-standard-healthcare-delivery-approaches
Telehealth Earned a Place in Standard Healthcare Delivery Approaches
New
research indicated the emergence of telehealth adoption along with the spot it
now has in the new normal of healthcare delivery approaches.
By Mark Melchionna
November 09,
2022 - Following an analysis of demographic, geographic, and clinical
trends, a study from the Chartis Group found
that telehealth grew in popularity between 2020 and 2022, ultimately gaining
the reputation of being considered a lasting option for healthcare delivery
approaches.
Throughout
the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth
use increased sharply. Although this heavy uptake had initial intentions of
being temporary, many patients and providers are currently sustaining
engagement regularly.
New research
found conclusions related to this when comparing statistics of 2020 and 2022.
In the analysis, conducted by Chartis and Kythera Labs, researchers reviewed
millions of claims from between 2020 and 2022. With this data, they focused
their efforts on reviewing demographic trends, which mainly focused on age and
language preferences, geographic trends, which reviewed individual state
statistics, and clinical trends, which reviewed types of visits.
As a leading
healthcare advisory services firm, The Chartis Group mainly serves healthcare
providers, payers, service organizations, and investors by supplying strategy,
performance transformation, and technology.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/patient-engagement-technologies-add-to-streamlined-patient-experience
Patient Engagement Technologies Add to Streamlined Patient Experience
Research
indicates patient engagement technologies are viewed as a part of a streamlined
patient experience, not an add-on.
By Sara Heath
November 09,
2022 - Patient engagement technologies, like patient portals, contribute
to an overall better patient experience because they enable patient data access
and digital patient-provider communication, according to research out of the
University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) and Samford University.
These
findings open the door for future research into how health IT influences the
patient experience of care, the researchers concluded.
Health IT has
revolutionized the way patients and providers alike approach medicine. The EHR,
for example, has improved efficiency, although has also introduced some usability
issues that have caused some healthcare worker burnout. The EHR has also
been credited with opening up care access opportunities and, from the patient
perspective, driving care coordination and a better experience.
This latest
data, published in the Patient Experience Journal, showed that health IT that
is patient-facing—referred to by researchers as P-Tech—can also drive
enhancements in the patient experience. Particularly, the researchers focused
on the patient-facing aspects of the EHR, like patient data access and secure
messaging.
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https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/articles/documentation-burdens-misaligned-values-challenge-female-providers?id=131719
Documentation burdens, misaligned values challenge female providers
Clinical
inequalities between the sexes point to needed changes in healthcare IT and
service models, or burnout is inevitable.
Nov 08 2022
Katie
Brooks
Contributing
Editor
Workloads for
clinicians are undeniably heavy, but an under-appreciated fact is that many
female physicians are carrying a larger burden in patient care, increasing the
propensity for burnout and disillusionment.
Studies have
found that female physicians are more likely than male physicians to receive
patient messages on portals and from internal staff, said Eve Bloomgarden, MD,
COO and co-founder of Women in
Medicine. She noted that female physicians are also more likely to be asked
questions about patients’ psychological issues, and they’re also more likely to
ask patients questions during appointments.
In a
presentation from the HDM
KLASroom, Bloomgarden, Subha Lakshmi Airan-Javia, MD, CEO of CareAlign, and
Shane Danaher, chief operating officer at Divurgent, examined clinical
inequalities for women and how these issues exemplify overarching problems in
healthcare.
Male/female
disparities
The
presenters noted three specific and cumulative disparities between male and
female clinicians. Women spend more time on documentation tasks, find it harder
to decompress after work and disagree more often with their organization leaders’
values, they contend.
“And it’s not
just about doing documentation—it's also about reading documentation,”
Airan-Javia adds. “The average patient chart has over 15,000 words. To give you
a comparison, Shakespeare’s longest work, which is Hamlet, has 30,000 words.”
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https://itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/facebook-parent-meta-announces-it-will-sack-11,000-employees.html
Thursday, 10 November 2022 08:45
Facebook parent Meta announces it will sack 11,000 employees
By Sam Varghese
Meta,
the parent organisation of social media behemoth Facebook, has announced it
will sack more than 11,000 employees, about 13% of the total workforce.
In
a blog post on Thursday AEDT, Meta chief executive
Mark Zuckerberg said the company was also adopting a number of measures
"to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary
spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1".
The
company had 87,314 employees at the end of September and this is the first time
it has resorted to mass layoffs in its 18 years of operation.
Zuckerberg
said the emergence of COVID-19 had seen a move towards more online work and a
big revenue spike for Meta due to the spike in e-commerce.
"Many
people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue
even after the pandemic ended," he admitted.
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https://medcitynews.com/2022/11/hospitals-should-be-wary-of-using-meta-pixel-other-third-party-analytics-tools/
Hospitals Should Be Wary of Using Meta Pixel & Other Third-Party
Analytics Tools
ECRI recently issued an alert warning hospitals about the cybersecurity
risks associated with the use of third-party analytics tools, such as Meta
Pixel, Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics. When providers install these tools
on their websites and patient portals, they may be exposing patient data —
which tech companies can use to target medical-related ads to consumers as they
browse the Internet.
By Katie Adams
Nov 8, 2022
at 4:19 PM
ECRI, a patient safety-focused
nonprofit, recently issued an alert
warning hospitals about the cybersecurity risks associated with the use of
third-party analytics tools. When providers install this software on their
websites and patient portals, they may be exposing patient data, ECRI warned.
This
exposed patient data may be misused to tailor advertisements based on
consumers’ medical conditions. These inappropriately targeted advertisements
could push unproven treatments and lead patients away from seeking appropriate
care, according to the alert.
Exposing
patients’ sensitive information could also result in fines, legal action and
patient distrust of providers, the alert pointed out.
Hospitals
are not very cognizant of the dangers associated with the use of third-party
web analytic tools, Chad Waters, senior cybersecurity engineer for ECRI’s
device evaluation group, told MedCity News. He said that most provider
websites have multiple web analytic and tracking tools installed.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/pros-and-cons-buy-versus-build
The pros and cons of buy versus build
An expert
offers his perspective on an age-old question for health system CIOs.
By Bill Siwicki
November 09,
2022 10:19 AM
Some
health IT leaders at provider organizations favor developing software in-house,
believing that buying technology from an external vendor is not cost-effective
and will only result in longer timelines. Meanwhile, many vendor executives, of
course, believe their software products offer robust and refined capabilities
that a homegrown build likely can't.
Research
published in Harvard Business Review shows that in a sample of
1,471 IT projects, there was a cost overrun of 200%, as well as a schedule
overrun of nearly 70%. These numbers indicate that one in six projects spiral
out of control and further contribute to the organization seeing higher risk
and less ROI. Additionally, others warn against the "DIY software trap," arguing that in-house builds often
lack longevity.
Ashish
Kachru is CEO of DataLink, a technology and services vendor of real-time data
aggregation, EHR connectivity, and dynamic dashboards and reporting. We
interviewed him to discuss the pros and cons of using external vendors for
organizational software, including how vendors are equipped to allow growth and
functionality in the rapidly changing healthcare industry.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2022/11/09/meta-faces-legal-firestorm-as-hospitals-cite-its-pixel-tool-in-health-data-breaches/
Meta Faces Legal Firestorm As Hospitals Cite Its Pixel Tool In Health Data
Breaches
November 9, 2022
Anne Zieger
Two
health systems have become the latest healthcare organizations to name a web
tracking tool created by Meta (formerly Facebook) as responsible for their data
breach. This comes as the social media giant faces a growing number of
lawsuits alleging that the tool improperly collects and sells sensitive patient
health information.
Both
of the recent incidents, which were announced in mid-October, involved a Meta
tracking tool known as Meta Pixel. Meta Pixel is a snippet of JavaScript code
that allows companies to track visitor activity on their website. It works by
loading a small library of functions that companies can use whenever a site
visitor takes an action. What makes the tool questionable is that in addition
to tracking web activity, it sends some of the data it gathers to Meta.
According
to research
by The
Markup, Meta Pixel is currently in wide use. To get a sense
of how widespread use of the tool is within hospitals, the site tested websites
for Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. The researchers found that 33 of
the sites had Meta Pixel in place, and that seven major health systems were
using the tool within patient portals.
However,
Meta is facing a backlash related to the data Meta Pixel sends home, as well as
how it uses the data.
One
hospital chain which blames Meta Pixel for a data breach is Advocate Aurora Health,
which operates 26 hospitals across Wisconsin and Illinois. AAH just informed
its patients that due to an incorrectly configured version of Pixel, the health
system exposed personal data on 3 million patients.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/directtrust-announces-q3-dip-in-care-orgs-exchanging-direct-secure-messages
DirectTrust Announces Q3 Dip in Care Orgs Exchanging Direct Secure
Messages
While
DirectTrust facilitated more direct secure messages in Q3 2022 compared to Q3
2021, the number of consumers sending direct secure messages dipped by 4
percent.
By Hannah Nelson
November 08,
2022 - DirectTrust facilitated
more than 208 million direct secure messages during the third quarter of 2022,
an increase of 9 percent compared to the same period last year.
However, the
number of healthcare organizations served by DirectTrust health information
service providers (HISPs) and engaged in direct secure messaging decreased by 3
percent.
The number of
consumers using direct secure messaging also dipped by 4 percent to more than
685,000 compared with the same time last year.
Additionally,
the number of trusted DirectTrust addresses able to share protected health
information (PHI) decreased by 8.3 percent compared with Q3 2021.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/censinet-aha-klas-partner-on-healthcare-cybersecurity-benchmarking-study
Censinet, AHA, KLAS Partner On Healthcare Cybersecurity Benchmarking Study
The study
is currently enrolling hospital and health system participants and aims to
establish healthcare cybersecurity benchmarks for the sector.
By Jill McKeon
November 08,
2022 - Healthcare risk management solutions company Censinet, along with
the American Hospital Association (AHA) and KLAS Research, announced
plans to conduct “The Healthcare Cybersecurity Benchmarking Study.”
The study is
currently enrolling hospital and health system participants and aims to assess
key operational cyber metrics, cyber maturity, and coverage of the NIST
Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF), and Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices
(HICP).
The
anonymized, aggregated datasets will ideally provide participating healthcare
organizations with much-needed benchmarking data and insight into key
cybersecurity metrics across the sector.
“With cyber
risk now representing significant enterprise risk to hospitals and health
systems, the time has never been more critical to elevate our industry’s cyber
strength, maturity, and resilience,” John Riggi, national advisor for
cybersecurity and risk, at the AHA stated in the announcement.
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https://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=imc&pag=dis&ItemID=138474
'Choosing Wisely' could mitigate burnout
By Amerigo
Allegretto, AuntMinnie.com staff writer
November 4, 2022 -- Applying the American Board of
Internal Medicine Foundation's "Choosing Wisely" framework could
mitigate physician burnout -- including among radiologists, according to a
report published November 4 in JAMA Health Forum.
Implementing
a strategy that identifies unnecessary healthcare services can drive positive
workforce change in a healthcare system, wrote a research group led by
Dr. Eve Kerr from the University of Michigan.
"Prospective
evaluation of new practices prior to widespread implementation may prevent
burdensome and low-value practices from being established in the first
place," the team noted.
Burnout
is characterized as a long-term stress reaction that presents as emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization, and a lack of sense of personal accomplishment, and it
continues to be a persistent challenge among radiologists. In fact, it was
voted as the biggest threat to the field in the 2022
Minnies. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, burnout presented as a
troubling problem, with radiologists being asked to do more with less
resources. Previous research has suggested that burnout leads to clinicians
leaving healthcare, as well as more patient
safety incidents.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/johnson-johnson-acquire-abiomed
Johnson & Johnson to acquire Abiomed
The upfront
payment for all shares of the company, which specializes in technologies for
heart recovery, is valued at $16.6B.
By Andrea Fox
November 08,
2022 02:30 PM
Johnson
& Johnson on Tuesday announced its plans to acquire Abiomed, which develops
technologies for heart, lung and kidney support, in a deal worth more than $16
billion.
WHY IT
MATTERS
The
purchase will help to advance the standard of care in heart failure and
recovery worldwide, according to Johnson & Johnson.
Abiomed
will operate as a standalone business within Johnson & Johnson MedTech,
becoming one of the company's dozen "priority platforms," defined by
annual sales of at least $1 billion.
With
all forms of cardiovascular disease – the number one cause of death – leading
to heart failure and extended hospitalizations, the addition of breakthrough
treatments like Abiomed's positions Johnson & Johnson to drive solutions
for one of healthcare’s largest unmet needs.
The
Danvers, Massachusetts-based company's Impella heart pumps have received the
only U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals for patients with severe coronary artery
disease requiring high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (stents),
treatment of those with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) in
cardiogenic shock or right heart failure.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2022/11/08/digital-transformation-how-ai-could-spell-a-new-era-of-smart-care/
Digital Transformation: How AI Could Spell a New Era of ‘Smart Care’
November 8, 2022
The
following is a guest article by Faramarz Farhoodi, Founder and CEO at AI Nexus Healthcare.
The
term digital transformation can be interpreted in many different ways. Rather
than transforming healthcare practices, I like to view it as transforming the
way healthcare is practiced.
Artificial
Intelligence (AI) has the unique ability to process vast amounts of data and
make sense of what they represent. If this is combined with the ability to
reason with this data, then this unlocks a whole new sphere of potential —
where technology and traditional healthcare intersect in a state of mutual
benefit.
But
what is required of AI and how do we digitally transform our overstretched
healthcare system?
From
‘Sick Care’ to ‘Smart Care’
‘Smart
care’ is a term we like to use that essentially means healthcare that embodies
the ability of AI to not only spot concerning anomalies in data, but to do so
at an early enough stage that serious medical intervention can be
limited.
-----
https://patientengagementhit.com/news/personal-health-record-phr-use-ups-cancer-follow-up-rate-to-86
Personal Health Record (PHR) Use Ups Cancer Follow-Up Rate to 86%
Results
about personal health record (PHR) use for colorectal cancer follow-up access
might be replicable across different cancer types with some tailoring,
researchers said.
By Sara Heath
November 07,
2022 - Personal health record (PHR) use is key to driving patient
engagement, with recent JMIR Cancer data showing PHR use among
colorectal cancer survivors increasing access to follow-up care and screening
by more than 30 percentage points.
Additionally,
PHR use increased the proportion of survivors who believed access to certain
follow-up cancer screenings was important to their health and well-being,
according to researchers from the Regenstrief Institute, the VA, and Indiana
University’s schools of medicine and nursing.
PHRs are
different from EHRs in that they are patient-facing and give users insights
into their own health information. Most PHRs, particularly PHRs “tethered” to
the EHR, come with some secure messaging and patient notification systems,
giving the technologies even more patient engagement power.
“PHRs have
the potential to engage patients with cancer and cancer survivors to play a
more active role in their surveillance care and to increase self-efficacy and
knowledge about surveillance,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Providing
patients access to their own health information, management strategies,
web-based resources, and communication tools with providers can increase
self-management and the quality of patient-provider communication, which lead
to better patient outcomes.”
-----
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm4920
Presyndromic surveillance for improved detection of emerging public health
threats
Mallory Nobles
Ramona
LallRobert
W. Mathesand Daniel B. Neill
Science
Advances
4 Nov 2022
Vol 8, Issue 44
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm4920
Abstract
Existing
public health surveillance systems that rely on predefined symptom categories,
or syndromes, are effective at monitoring known illnesses, but there is a
critical need for innovation in “presyndromic” surveillance that detects
biothreats with rare or previously unseen symptomology. We introduce a
data-driven, automated machine learning approach for presyndromic surveillance
that learns newly emerging syndromes from free-text emergency department chief
complaints, identifies localized case clusters among subpopulations, and
incorporates practitioner feedback to automatically distinguish between
relevant and irrelevant clusters, thus providing personalized, actionable
decision support. Blinded evaluations by New York City’s Department of Health
and Mental Hygiene demonstrate that our approach identifies more events of
public health interest and achieves a lower false-positive rate compared to a
state-of-the-art baseline.
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https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/founders-natalist-uber-health-launch-startup-build-new-model-egg-donation
Founders of Natalist, Uber Health launch startup to make fertility
treatments more accessible and affordable
By Heather Landi
Nov 7, 2022
09:45am
Infertility
affects an estimated 1 in 8 couples in the U.S., and, while there have been
major strides in developing effective fertility treatments, it's often a
difficult journey for people trying to build a family.
There’s
a fundamental lack of accessible, standardized proactive education and
resources, exclusionary costs for egg freezing, a broad lack of support for
LGBTQ+ couples and antiquated egg donation and surrogacy programs,
according to Lauren Makler, founder of Uber Health.
"If
you talk to women who have experienced infertility or LGBTQ+ parents, more
often than not, they’ll say they’ve felt failed by the process," she said
in an interview.
After
leaving Uber Health in 2021, Makler wanted to start a new company in the
reproductive health space and connected with Halle Tecco, the founder of
reproductive health company Natalist and Rock Health. Makler and Tecco saw an
opportunity to create a new model for egg donation and make egg freezing more
accessible. They brought on Arielle Spiegel as a co-founder and chief
marketing officer and launched Cofertility to rewrite the egg freezing and
egg donation experience, Makler said.
-----
https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/asn/101604
Mixed Results With Alerts for AKI-Related Medications in Hospital
— EHR pings improved outcomes in those on PPIs, but lacked general
clinical impact
by Kristen Monaco,
Staff Writer, MedPage Today November 6, 2022
While
medication-targeted acute kidney injury (AKI) alerts led to certain
kidney-affecting medications being stopped, the overall clinical impact was
limited, a researcher reported.
The
open-label, randomized trial included over 5,000 patients hospitalized for AKI
with an active order for one of the medication of interest (MOIs) classes that
were selected as being possibly nephrotoxic -- non-steroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs (NSAID), renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibitors (RAASi), or
proton pump inhibitors (PPI) -- explained F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE, of Yale
School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.
Although
NSAIDs are frequently discontinued in AKI, RAAS inhibitors are only sometimes
stopped, while PPIs are rarely discontinued, Wilson explained during a
presentation at the American Society of
Nephrology Kidney Week.
Half
of these patients had automated alerts pop-up with a medication order entry,
flagging these medications for potential cessation. These alerts were
effective, increasing the relative risk of MOI discontinuation by 9% within 24
hours of randomization versus patients who didn't have these automatic alerts
pop up (RR 1.09, 95% CI 1.04-1.14). MOIs were discontinued in 61.1% of the
alert group versus 55.9% of the usual care group.
-----
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/where-will-advances-remote-cardiac-and-kidney-monitoring-lead
Where will advances in remote cardiac and kidney monitoring lead?
The CEO of
Biotricity, which recently secured National Institutes of Health funding to
prove out some of its remote patient monitoring tech, offers a deep dive into
RPM for kidney and heart illnesses.
By Bill Siwicki
November 07,
2022 10:46 AM
Photo:
Biotricity
Remote
biometric monitoring technology company Biotricity recently announced securing
National Institutes of Health funding from the National Heart, Blood and Lung
Institute with plans to launch a study of its Bioflux-AI technology.
Bioflux-AI
combines an FDA-approved, high-precision, small mobile cardiac telemetry device
with AI-driven algorithms specifically trained for the prediction of stroke in
stage 4 and stage 5 chronic kidney disease patients.
The
vendor continues to deliver remote patient monitoring technologies to physicians and
cardiac patients with a suite of wearable, real-time active cardiac monitoring
devices. In recent 1Q23 financial results, the company noted expansion of
coverage across the U.S. with 2,000 physicians across 29 states integrating the
company's remote patient monitoring devices in their practice.
Healthcare
IT News sat down with CEO Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq to better understand
stroke prediction in CKD patients and advances in remote cardiac monitoring.
-----
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20221106/MHRA-launches-global-campaign-to-improve-medical-product-safety-for-all.aspx
MHRA launches global campaign to improve medical product safety for all
Reviewed by Emily
Henderson, B.Sc.Nov 6 2022
Launched
today by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (the MHRA),
the seventh annual #MedSafetyWeek is running until 13 November to encourage
widespread public engagement and improve patient safety by reporting suspected
side effects associated with medicines and adverse incidents involving medical
devices.
This
year's campaign is a truly global effort and involves healthcare product
regulators from no fewer than 82 countries. It focuses on the vital role played
by every healthcare professional, patient, and carer who reports a suspected
side effect or adverse incident, which in turn supports the safe use of medicines
and medical devices.
All
medicines may cause side effects and adverse incidents may occur during the use
of medical devices, so it is important to have robust measures in place to
continuously monitor their safety after they are taken into clinical use. The
purpose of safety monitoring is to gain more information about known side
effects and adverse incidents, to find out about new ones, and, most
importantly, to make use of medicines and medical devices as safe as possible.
Regulators operate systems to detect and analyse those side effects and adverse
incidents and prevent harm to future patients.
It
is important that everyone makes a report as soon as they suspect side effects
and adverse incidents. This ensures that regulatory assessments are genuinely
representative and can improve safety for as many people as possible.
-----
https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/articles/sizing-up-the-impact-of-remote-patient-monitoring?id=131640
Sizing up the impact of remote patient monitoring
RPM programs
in tandem with a broader array of telehealth services can build new outpatient
revenue streams and reduce hospital utilization.
Oct 31 2022
Bryan
Schnepf
Vice
president of marketing, Caregility
The growth of
remote patient monitoring technology and telehealth over the past two years is
transforming the way hospitals, health systems and clinics deliver healthcare.
Remote patient monitoring technology in particular is set to explode. But with
so much change happening so fast, even the terms themselves are the subject of
some confusion.
So, what is
remote patient monitoring, exactly, and how does it differ from telehealth?
Because the market for these technologies is expected to explode in the next five years, it’s
important to define our terms.
Telehealth is an umbrella term
Simply put,
telehealth is an umbrella term describing the use of technology to deliver
healthcare remotely.
Several
organizations have published their own definitions of telehealth, although
healthcare providers are usually most concerned with definitions released by
the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. In a resource on telemedicine
published for healthcare providers, CMS defines telehealth as “the use of telecommunications
and information technology to provide access to health assessment, diagnosis,
intervention, consultation, supervision and information across distance.”
Thus,
telehealth refers to a suite of services for delivering remote care, both in
and out of traditional care settings. One subset of those services is remote
patient monitoring.
-----
https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/articles/can-digital-health-technologies-improve-access-to-care?id=131686
Can digital health technologies improve access to care?
The Digital
Health for Equitable Health Alliance and other initiatives aim to support care
delivery for minorities and achieve health equity.
Nov 04 2022
Mike
Davis
Analyst, KLAS
Research
Healthcare
availability, access and delivery have been compromised for low-income,
minority and underserved populations for far too long.
In many
metropolitan areas, citizens exist in healthcare deserts that make it difficult
for people to seek healthcare when they need it or from conveniently
maintaining healthcare therapies. This results in populations of patients that
are high risk for receiving needed healthcare services, thus discouraging
healthcare providers from extending care to these citizens.
The COVID-19
pandemic exacerbated the chasm between the haves and have nots. Many minority groups
experienced higher rates of sickness and death from COVID-19. Key factors driving
healthcare inequity include economic stability, neighborhood and physical
environment, education level, food availability, community/safety/social context,
and community healthcare systems.
An Altarum report identifies
a potential economic gain of $135 billion per year if racial disparities in
health are eliminated, including $93 billion in excess medical care costs and
$42 billion in untapped productivity. People of color are projected to
represent 50 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, so that is a significant
driver in the push to reduce healthcare costs and improve care quality and
treatment outcomes for all citizens by the federal government.
-----
Enjoy!
David.
