Photo: HIMSS LAS VEGAS – HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf brought a message of guarded optimism to the HIMSS21 opening keynote on Monday night as he urged attendees to work together on addressing challenges prevalent throughout the healthcare industry. “Our call to action has never been louder or had a…
States push back on Trump admin's request for COVID-19 vaccine patient data
Some state governments have resisted requests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to sign data use agreements that would share information about individuals who had received the COVID-19 vaccine. Leaders from several states raised privacy concerns about the idea, with The New York Times reporting that New…
Not all EHR use measures are created equally, study finds
A paper published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that vendors vary in their development maturity of outpatient EHR use measures. Although Epic, Cerner and Allscripts have developed EHR use measures in client-available platforms, researchers found that athenahealth’s are still in development, and eClinicalWorks…
SPECIAL REPORT: Kuwait’s digital transformation journey
“At the moment the majority of healthcare services are provided by the public sector and Kuwait’s Vision 2035 is to diversify and also make the private sector a key player in providing health services to everybody,” explains Dr Dari Alhuwail, assistant professor at Kuwait University. Digital health transformation is a…
Value-based care profile: Equality Health’s actionable data platform
The goal in shifting from paying for volume to value-based care is simple: to align payers and healthcare providers around high-quality care that improves outcomes and lowers cost. Operationalizing that shift, however, has proven more difficult for providers and payers alike. Health systems are fragmented, and providers who participate in…
Big data analytics in healthcare: Opportunities and obstacles
Big data analytics are an essential business component deployed by modern healthcare organizations to collaborate and derive business value from disparate data. There are many clinical, financial and administrative opportunities to be had by provider organizations. But there are hurdles to getting there. Rob McDonald, executive vice president for platform at Virtru,…
Mount Sinai seeks citywide engagement with app to track COVID-19 spread in NYC
To help better understand transmission patterns and help coordinate its own response to the COVID-19 outbreak proliferating across New York City, Mount Sinai Health System has enlisted its own data scientists, engineers and clinicians to develop a new app aimed at halting the spread. WHY IT MATTERS Mount Sinai is…
White House asks all hospitals to report data on COVID-19 testing
The White House Coronavirus Task Force and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are asking all U.S. hospitals to report critical data about their COVID-19 response. WHY IT MATTERS As part of what it calls an “unprecedented” expansion of data sharing, the Trump Administration is requesting that providers submit…
GE Healthcare introduces Edison Developer Program to spur AI advancements
With its new Edison Developer Program, GE Healthcare hopes to speed the adoption and utility of artificial and machine learning applications and developer services for health systems, the company announced this week. WHY IT MATTERS GE’s Edison platform (named for the company’s founder) is designed to help providers gain easier…
Quantum computing could turbocharge healthcare analytics, AI
Google’s recent claim that it has achieved quantum computing supremacy – apart from being contested by rival tech giants such as IBM – is still quite a ways off in terms of real-world applications. The healthcare industry, for example, will still need to build a new set of applications to…
Business intelligence boosts in-network patient referrals at Indiana health system
Indianapolis-based Community Health Network had a difficult challenge: access to data that will guide staff throughout the planning, execution and measurement stages of the growth process. THE PROBLEM “The primary role of a physician liaison is to contribute to the strategic growth planning process, to play a key role in…