Technology

By Rod Reasen

A recent Gallup study showed that only 22% of employees are engaged and thriving. In addition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that employees who scored low on “life satisfaction” stayed home from work 1.25 more days per month than their happier counterparts, adding up to about 15 additional days off per year.  This begs the question: What are organizations losing as a result? 

When it comes to engaging employees, employers and managers might be quick to believe adding a ping pong table to the break room or a happy hour on Thursdays will boost morale. However, encouraging positive attitudes and a healthy lifestyle amongst the workplace doesn’t start with refreshments – it starts with Health Intelligence.

For too long, employers have been arbitrarily selecting wellness programs, unsure of their success. The availability of data combined with a powerful Health Intelligence platform changes this paradigm. Employers can now fully understand the health problems and actionable opportunities in their organization making way for proper decisions about the vendors they choose. By utilizing real-time data, machine learning and modern predictive methodologies, employers can make the right choice for their wellness programs, empowering them to improve their population’s health and effectively track impact.

[Read more…] about Three Ways Health Intelligence Can Direct Well-Being Decision Making

By Rhett W. Jackson

One reality in healthcare is that hospitals must continually find efficiencies and do more with less. This is certainly the case at Madison Memorial Hospital, where our 580 employees provide care to five counties in eastern Idaho. As a county-owned, nonprofit hospital, we strive to meet the needs of the region with an excellent maternity center, surgical centers, and more. In an effort to improve security for our patients and protect their sensitive health-related data, we recently adopted several new security innovations that, if implemented more broadly, can improve care models around the country. 

Our Information Systems team of just under 20 people manages all aspects of clinical & business systems, data reporting, biomedical, and the IT infrastructure, which includes overseeing all issues related to cybersecurity and compliance. As in many industries, our small IT team must address IT risks in a complex cybersecurity realm. That’s why we found it difficult to accelerate projects that could deliver better care and—at the same time—could improve our cybersecurity maturity and meet compliance obligations. 

[Read more…] about Try Managed Detection and Response to Boost Hospital Cybersecurity

By Chris Yager

The healthcare industry continues to evolve, driven in large part by the changing policy landscape, but also by the (fast) entrance of new technologies. What started as a means to improve hospital, health system, and health plan operations — both clinical and financial — has now become the facilitator for healthcare consumerism. Given all that it can do, and all that can’t be done without it, healthcare technology is now a requirement for all organizations hoping to make it in this tumultuous environment. 

Thankfully, this notion is widely recognized by stakeholders throughout the industry and most are doing all that they can to act before it is too late: before they lose out on incentive payments, before they are faced with a difficult merger or acquisition, and before any patients are lost to rival organizations. 

Just look at the influx in patient-centered technology over the years: patient portals, virtual care, patient billing, wearables, and more. All are meant to make the experience and business of healthcare easier for everyone, and they do just that. 

[Read more…] about The Blind Spot in Healthcare Technology

By Chris Morales

In our 2019 Spotlight Report on Healthcare, based on anonymized customer metadata, we identified a trend in internal user error.

Lapses in the proper implementation of a security plan or gaps in policies and procedures were a common problem, which could result in errors by staff members, leaving healthcare organizations exposed to theft or data loss.

Echoing what Vectra observed from its own healthcare customers, the Verizon 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report indicated that a key security risk for the healthcare industry is its susceptibility to internal errors and misuse. The report shows that the healthcare industry faces the highest risk from accidental or intentional insider threats than external threats.

[Read more…] about Comparing Vectra and Verizon Threat Research: Internal Errors in Healthcare is Very Real

By Dan Waldinger

Medical professionals do heroic work every day and the demand for their skills is only increasing, but at the same time, it’s been widely reported that the United States is facing an increasing shortage of physicians. So how do the remaining providers make up this shortfall?

The answer is twofold: first is clinical mobility, the use of devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops, and second, usage of mobile printers by doctors and nurses at the point of care to optimize workflow and revolutionize the health sector.

Another important innovation is telemedicine, or remote delivery of health services through video conferencing. With this efficient technology, patients can get almost immediate medical attention without going to a doctor’s office or hospital.

Each field is lucrative and growing fast: the healthcare mobility solutions market will be valued at $227 billion globally by 2025 and the world telemedicine market will be worth $113 billion in the same period. These tools are both clinically and economically responsible, so here’s what the industry needs to know.

[Read more…] about How Clinical Mobility and Telemedicine Solutions Help Save Lives

By Aimeé Bailey, MHA, MSN, RN-BC 

The final enrollment window for Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) Advanced is now open. Providers are thinking about how BPCI Advanced fits in the context of other alternative payment models (APMs), such as Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs) and other bundled payment programs. 

For some providers, the question is less about whether they specifically want to join BPCI Advanced, and more about planning for the addition of another risk-based program to their organization’s profile. 

[Read more…] about Balancing Multiple APMs Programs: BPCI Advanced, ACOs, and More

By  Mark Brown and Lucas Glass

The business of finding new therapies is fraught with risk. The process is slow and expensive. It takes an average of 10 years to get a product approved. Patients pay the price in the time lost getting much needed therapies to market. Enter big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. How we curate, synthesize, and apply data to our decision-making is a game-changer, and it is poised to fundamentally transform clinical development as we know it. However, to successfully change the healthcare space, we must keep our eye on the clinicians and medical experts and on how technology can support them.

Reducing risk and saving cost 

One of the most expensive elements of clinical development is the length of time it takes to find and enroll patients in studies — 80 percent of studies miss timelines. Under the traditional model, a panel of disease experts and clinical trial gurus convene and try to predict trial length. Based on data from IQVIA’s Study Optimizer software, sponsors of clinical trials predict study timelines with an average 55 percent error rate.   

There is a wide range of data and information that can support the estimation of enrollment rates. However, the human brain cannot analyze the vast amount of data available today. Machine learning techniques and augmented intelligence can significantly improve the prediction of study timelines. For example, we at IQVIA™ leveraged large nonidentified public and proprietary datasets and reduced the error in timeline prediction from 55 percent to less than 30 percent, and this is just a start. As the models continue to adapt, learn, and improve their accuracy, the goal is to achieve an error rate lower than 20 percent. 

[Read more…] about The ‘Art’ in Artificial Intelligence and Improving Patient Care