Technology

What we're reading, October 28, 2015: Ben Carson plans to replace the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and Medicare; a homeless shelter utilizes telemedicine to alleviate emergency department visits; and researchers uncover gender gap in post-heart attack treatment.

Getting health information technology (IT) to work in one provider system can be difficult enough, but in ACOs, they have multiple systems on different platforms, explained Joseph Gifford, MD, chief executive officer of the Providence-Swedish Health Alliance.

A new health insurance start-up aiming to aid companies with their employer-sponsored insurance raised $81 million in a new round of financing. The new funding will allow the company to expand its services beyond California in 2016.

A presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology underscored the importance of patient-centered care and the benefit of incorporating the patient voice in advanced oncology care.

A panel discussion during the 2nd PMC/BIO Solutions Summit identified barriers and discussed the path forward to improve clinical integration of precision medicine.

Managed care will become rapidly refined and driven toward more patient-reported outcomes in the future, said Christine K. Cassel, MD, president and chief executive officer of National Quality Forum.

A new study published in the journal BMJ Innovations that surveyed doctors and nurses in the United Kingdom has found routine breach of patient privacy through the use of digital devices.

The announcement covered a final rule on interoperability for creators of Health IT, and a proposal to simplify current rules for providers. Both look ahead to implementation of the new Medicare and CHIP reimbursement models.

During the early years of the "meaningful use" program, surveys found decreases in both optimism and concerns about electronic health records.

The use of telemedicine could be an alternative to visits at respiratory outpatient clinics for patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a study published in the International Journal of COPD.

Researchers in China and the United States have developed a predictive model capable of forecasting which patients will account for either small or large proportions of healthcare resource utilization in the next 6 months.

Addiction is a national scourge. Cognitive Technologies are needed to deal with this very expensive illness.

Telehealth follow up consultations after a surgical operation have become preferred compared to in-person visits, according to 2 recent studies.

Complex interventions from hospital settings mapped to Omaha System terms commonly used in community care; demonstrating its potential as a tool for interoperability across settings.

Electronic databases promote a safe environment for healthcare professionals by facilitating retrospective analysis of errors; however, providers should make significant changes to how they handle patient information.

The federal government intends to modernize the US health information technology (IT) infrastructure so patients, providers, and communities can achieve health and wellness goals.

AstraZeneca hopes to harness the open source platform of the DREAM challenge, releasing preclinical data to discover synergistic cancer drug combinations.

The next 20 years will bring greater use of big data and health information technology in managed care, but the challenge is using that technology to place patients in charge of their own healthcare, said Rajesh Balkrishnan, PhD, associate director for research and education at the University of Michigan Center for Global Health.

Meaningful use stage 3 is not scheduled to start until 2017, but 41 medical societies are calling to delay the start of stage 3, especially given recent changes to Medicare.

The path to President Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative has been paved as is evident from a report released by a Working Group convened by the National Institutes of Health.

Given how much technology will evolve over the next 20 years, predicting the future of healthcare is almost impossible, but Margaret O'Kane, MHA, president of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, expects big things from telemedicine and predicts new investigations in motivating patients to take control of their own wellness.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology has urged Congress to recognize the impact of barriers to interoperability of electronic health records on patient outcomes.

There are a couple of health information technology challenges facing new accountable care organizations that are bringing together different entities with disparate systems that need to learn to work together, explained Scott Berkowitz, MD, MBA.

Research has shown that telehealth has the potential for better care at lower costs and with increased convenience, but the issue of paying for this service has yet to be addressed.

A study evaluating EHRs has identified ways to make them more efficient for physicians, with the goal of improving patient care.

In 1 month, the US healthcare system will transition to International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, whether or not physicians are ready to implement the new coding system.

A large majority of healthcare organizations have been compromised by a cyberattack during the last 2 years and only half believe they are adequately prepared for preventing these attacks.

Although hospital consolidation has not shown the benefits proponents had touted, it is inevitable that there will be consolidation in healthcare, because the environment is too challenging for smaller hospitals and many physician practices, explained Paul Ginsburg, PhD.

A trigger built in patient EHRs can avoid follow-up delays in those at risk for developing certain types of cancers, a JCO study shows.

While health information technology can be a solution for primary medication nonadherence, it can also be burdensome, according to Lauren Harner, JD, senior manager of policy at PhRMA.