Babylon has acquired DayToDay Health, a care management platform that supports patients preparing for and recovering from surgeries, bolstering the health tech unicorn’s remote care portfolio. Babylon will integrate DayToDay’s offerings into its digital platform, powering its strategy of reducing burdens on patients and healthcare systems through proactive care. “We’re excited to welcome the DayToDay team into Babylon, as both companies work toward the same goal of leveraging technology to enhance the patient experience,” said Ali Parsa, founder and CEO of Babylon, in a statement. RELATED: Babylon Health acquires health kiosk company Higi Health in latest effort to scale in US market Babylon started the year by acquiring health kiosk company Higi Health, which offers self-screening health stations within five miles of 73% of the U.S. population, as well as at-home connected devices.

This widespread scarcity of healthcare workers is forcing providers to cope by having practitioners handle tasks like data entry along with their normal patient care duties. Workflow automation removes manual steps that chip away from healthcare professionals’ time and helps eliminate the need for human intervention in certain areas of work. As a result, providers can avoid human error, and employees can spend less time on mundane tasks — all while maintaining HIPAA compliance. With most physicians seeing more than 20 patients per day, mundane data entry consumes valuable time providers should use on billable services or patient care instead. Statistics show that 73% of IT leaders believe that automation helps their employees save up to 50% of their time on manual tasks. Automating work lets providers spend more time caring for patients and logging billable hours. Workflow automation can help build better work experiences by automating the manual tasks that would otherwise burden healthcare professionals. Healthcare organizations should consider adopting workflow automation to reduce manual toil, mitigate human error, increase security and improve talent acquisition.

When you combine this with the rising volume of inquiries or medical inquiries and patient expectations for a real-time response to every question, it becomes a perfect storm – one where life science firms opt to augment human experts in the medical information workflow with automated AI-enabled agents to breeze through the storm of data and inquiries. Conversational AI technology allows firms to streamline systems and lessen the burden on human agents of answering repeat questions, which allows them to quickly move on to more complex concerns while providing the support and service expected in a 24 x 7 x 365 environment. However, when researching the conversational AI option, many life science companies uncover numerous burning questions they must answer to ensure the solution will provide the right medical information and high-quality customer service. These answers are programmed into the algorithm for AI-enabled agents to draw upon, ensuring accuracy and compliance. Yes, there may be times that the AI-enabled agent cannot answer a question as it does not have a programmed response, or the query is posed in a complex manner. “It sounds like you are asking for XX, is this correct?” Additionally, life sciences companies may program the AI-enabled agent to ask if the customer received the information they needed or if they would prefer to speak directly with a member of the medical information team for greater detail. The AI-enabled agents are programmed to address questions in a specific way depending on how they are asked. These conversations require more guidance from the AI-enabled agent in the form of additional questions. Off-label questions by a patient will not be handled by an AI-enabled agent and they will be directed to their HCP.

The researchers sought to calculate what they called objective interoperability scores using data from 68 real-world EHR implementations. In order to assess interoperability, the scientists measured the likelihood that an unmodified record transmitted from one site to another can be understood – meaning, as they wrote, "the specific text string used to define the meaning of the data ele- ment was used in the recipient site."   "Institutional EHR implementations were interoperable to the extent that they could meaningfully exchange data element pairs," they added. Tackling interoperability has been a project decades in the making, with several EHR vendors developing their own products to help contribute to more seamless data sharing.

In 2018, Maimonides' leadership established digital health as a strategic priority for the medical center. "I was asked to lead this new department, charged with crafting and executing a digital health strategy that would be dynamic, responsive and enable Maimonides patients and consumers to engage with our providers easily and effectively," said Rob Cimino, vice president, digital health strategy and implementation, at Maimonides Medical Center.

The first step in a ransomware recovery strategy is ensuring that the frequency of backups increases on all data. However, the value advantage of HDDs is only realized if the backup storage target can properly support high-density (16TB, 18TB, 20TB) hard drives without forcing the healthcare organization to suffer through a week-long recovery from media failure (RAID rebuild) times. Maintaining this balance requires using high-density flash drives and extracting maximum performance from those drives, allowing the solution to rapidly ingest hundreds of BLI backups, maintaining them on the flash-tier for weeks, and automatically moving them to a cost-effective hard disk tier as the backup data ages. Backup-server software is doing an excellent job of detecting ransomware, but backup storage must protect backup data from an attack. Object storage is not known for high performance, so it won’t keep pace with the high-performance ingest requirement above, forcing the organization to potentially require two backup storage targets for their ransomware recovery strategy.

In early 2021, Spanish lawmakers legalised euthanasia and assisted death for patients suffering from unbearable and/or incurable conditions, making Spain the sixth country in the world to do so.

Dr. Andrew McGee, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the Queensland University of Technology, describes “assisted dying” (or “assisted death”) where a medication that speeds up the process of dying is ultimately taken by the patient. On the other hand, “assisted suicide” also involves people without terminal disease but getting assistance to commit suicide.
 

– The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and its Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE), The Sequoia Project, published the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), creating the baseline legal and technical requirements that will enable secure, nationwide information sharing across different health care entities, completing a critical 21st Century Cures Act requirement. Entities will soon be able to apply to be designated as QHINs. These QHINs will connect to one another and enable their participants (i.e., health care providers, payers, public health agencies) to engage in health information exchange across the country. This flexible structure allows stakeholders—such as health information networks, ambulatory practices, hospitals, health centers, federal government agencies, public health agencies, and payers—to benefit from TEFCA through improved access to health information. Individuals will also be able to benefit from TEFCA and seek access to their health information through entities that offer individual access services. “Operationalizing TEFCA within the Biden Administration’s first year was a top priority for ONC and is critical to realizing the 21st Century Cures Act’s goal of a secure, nationwide health information exchange infrastructure,” said Micky Tripathi, Ph.D., national coordinator for health information technology.

Today, Sema4 (Nasdaq: SMFR), a health intelligence company, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire GeneDx, a leader in genomic testing and analysis, at a purchase price representing approximately $623 million, strengthening its market-leading health intelligence and genomic screening offerings. In connection with the acquisition, Sema4 has also entered into definitive agreements for a private placement financing to sell $200 million in Class A common stock at a price of $4.00 per share from a syndicate of institutional investors, including Pfizer. The companies expect to complete the acquisition in the second quarter of 2022, positioning Sema4 to grow and scale its genomic offerings and further transform the standard of care in health systems and for patients throughout their lives. Dr. Schadt will continue to serve Sema4 as co-CEO and as a member of the Board of Directors focusing on leading R&D and the IT platform components of Sema4, the strategic development of Sema4’s health intelligence capabilities, and partnerships with health systems and biopharma companies.

In his March HIMSS22 session entitled " Using Explainable AI to Mitigate SDOH Contributors to Risk," Dr. Jim Walton, president and CEO of Genesis Physicians Group, will describe how his organization, along with Medical Home Network, avoided potential pitfalls of applying AI in underrepresented populations and trained machine learning models on the population and data sources to fairly and efficiently identify high-risk members. A. Recently, population-health-management strategies have begun to incorporate evaluations for patients' social needs connected to SDOH, as well as interventions addressing these needs. Care managers and social workers, working within accountable care organizations, and physician provider networks now incorporate a short series of SDOH interview questions with patients identified as high-risk for poor healthcare outcomes or unnecessary future healthcare expenditures. The care-management team members work to connect patients and their families to community-based organizations that offer solutions for many of the social needs identified. Now, we see the evolution of care-management services that are more agile, where interventional staff are just as likely to identify and respond to the social needs that many patients express as they are the clinical disease management.

Plus, digital therapeutics could help mitigate a shortage of clinicians like physicians, nurses and mental health professionals, said Chris Wasden, head of HappifyDTx at Happify Health. Patients can use digital therapeutics to advance their care on their own, adding hours of therapeutic time that clinicians don’t have to directly provide. Clinicians don’t want to act as tech support for managing digital therapeutics, and they need to be easy to explain to patients. They’re also concerned about the amount of data that could come from digital therapeutic products, said Wasden. It’s also important for digital therapeutics to work with the technology architecture that providers and health systems are using

Avel eCARE, a telehealth network and virtual hospital, helped develop the federally funded initiative known as the National Emergency Tele-Critical Care Network  and is now expanding its work with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense to provide critical care expertise to hospitals and municipalities struggling with COVID-19 surges in the South. EMS workers administered the treatment, then Avel eCARE clinicians provided remote monitoring to ensure the patients received 60 minutes of observation, enabling EMS workers to respond to others in need and distribute care faster on the ground. As part of the government-funded program, Avel eCARE also provided critical care consulting to a small community hospital that was inundated with COVID-19 patients. Avel eCARE was able to provide remote support to help staff through by providing critical care consulting to clinicians on-site. It was developed in direct response to the pandemic, and its purpose was to support the rapid development, deployment and testing of a mobile solution for tele-critical care services to respond to emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, medical trauma, natural disasters – or disaster events including war. NETCCN is now an evolving network of clinical care teams that provide expert medical advice, particularly related to managing critical illness from severe COVID-19 infection to any individual who needs it using mobile device applications.

With healthcare increasingly placing bets on artificial intelligence, Microsoft has formed a coalition with some of the nation’s top health and life sciences organizations to build and track new AI innovations. Optum Microsoft also rolled out a five-year program called AI for Health in January 2020, dedicating $40 million to support collaborations in using artificial intelligence for medical research and discoveries.

Healthcare institutions' motivations for innovation are to improve patient experience, stay relevant and support the changing care model (i.e., remote care and monitoring). Generally, they are slower to innovate as they need to decide which services to digitalise, but they have the innate ability to offer more in-depth healthcare services. They are quicker to innovate and deploy telehealth solutions but their continued growth involves offering more services through partnering or by acquisitions. A global trend gaining traction is telcos in health seeking to be the enabler to bridge the different ecosystem proponents such as consumers, healthcare service providers and the payors through high-speed networks (e.g., 5G) and differentiated connectivity services.

Kaiser Permanente is now the fourth organizing member of Graphite Health, which aims to enable a secure and open digital health tool marketplace through the establishment of an interoperable data platform. "By joining Graphite Health now, we are excited to help shape the future of digital health transformation, and to improve patient and member experience at Kaiser Permanente and beyond," Adams added. "That's why we are thrilled to add Kaiser Permanente to Graphite Health's growing list of member systems."   "As Kaiser Permanente is nationally known for their innovative approach, we look forward to working closely with them to digitally transform and improve health care, and ultimately, to help patients and members across the country live better, healthier lives," said Graphite's Robinson.

Virtual primary care embedded in a virtual-first health plan also offers a novel alternative for employers and health plans to curb rising.

In fact, internal Teladoc Health data has shown that 80% of members do not have a strong relationship with a primary care provider (PCP). – Expanding access, enabling more members to engage with primary care Virtual primary care embedded in a virtual-first health plan also offers a novel alternative for employers and health plans to curb rising healthcare costs, while improving outcomes and driving member engagement and satisfaction.

Insurtech companies came out on top in this half's funding roundup with Devoted Health raking in $1.15 billion in funding and Bright Health scoring $750 million.

– iSpecimen, the developer of an online marketplace that connects human biospecimen with researchers, announced that is has expanded its supplier capabilities in support of COVID-19 researchers. – Through a new partnership with a reference lab in New York, researchers looking to validate their own COVID variant identification assays can obtain sequenced and unsequenced COVID-19 positive and negative swabs in a variety of media types through iSpecimen.

The network uses FHIR and distributed ledger technology for payer-to-payer interoperability, prior authorization and more.

On Thursday, Avaneer Health announced new backing from several blue-chip healthcare organizations, who are committing $50 million in seed funding to the health network. The new funding comes from founding network participants including Aetna, Anthem, Cleveland Clinic, Health Care Service Corporation, PNC Financial and Sentara Healthcare, according to Avaneer Health. The network, founded by those participants and others this past year, is built using blockchain technology and uses HL7's FHIR specification to expand data access across healthcare organizations, with a focus on with payer-to-payer data exchange, eligibility and prior authorization. "Together, we're changing the paradigm of healthcare data flows with a secure network empowered by blockchain, FHIR and other leading technologies," said Skeen in a statement announcing the new funding for Avaneer.

But beyond $69.3 million-worth NFT art and relying on technology that consumes as much energy as a whole country, NFTs represent a unique potential in the digital health age: that of patients, rather than companies, owning their own digital healthcare data. Crowning it as the Word of the Year for 2021, dictionary publisher Collins defines a non-fungible token as “a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible.” Creating or “mining” NFT transactions leverage blockchain technology, akin to what cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are based on.

Clinical Evidence Manager aims to streamline the entire research process, and ultimately shorten the cycle between the identification of clinical problems and the implementation of clinical solutions based on the latest medical evidence. The expert solution streamlines the literature review and evidence appraisal process with artificial intelligence (AI), increases communication and collaboration among departments and facilitates decisions on implementation. “Evidence-based research initiatives at health systems hold the key to better patient outcomes and financial performance, but these programs are time-intensive making it difficult to efficiently surface and implement new evidence into clinical practice,” said Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Medicine Segment, Health Learning, Research & Practice business at Wolters Kluwer.

But inadequacies in current payer/provider communication often disrupt the flow of timely care and lead to unnecessary hospital readmissions and poor outcomes. With real-time admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) notifications, payers can help steer members to better care options while reducing costs through such actions as eliminating redundant tests before the expense occurs. Automatic electronic ADT notifications recast payers and providers as natural allies to improve care outcomes and reduce spending. This can mean lining up an in-network acute care facility or ensuring the member complies with a follow-up appointment with a primary care physician or specialist post-hospital discharge since payers have already negotiated favorable rates with in-network providers. When the payer can offer care management to members and direct them to the most appropriate providers, this leads to better health outcomes, a reduction in redundant care, and an improved experience for the member. However, real-time ADT notifications that provide input on each step of a member’s care journey can improve visibility into that journey to boost both care outcomes and the payer’s bottom line. Electronic real-time ADT notifications connect providers and care teams wherever patients receive care. Payers can coordinate and eliminate gaps in care while managing member health at the point of care; and patients can receive faster treatment based on real-time data, which results in improved health outcomes.

Striking the right balance between complex passwords, security and workflow efficiency is a big challenge for healthcare CISOs and CIOs. The rising number of publicly reported breaches shows the need to balance all three. Healthcare IT News interviewed Wes Wright, CTO at Imprivata, a digital identity company, to dig into eliminating security friction, integrating compliance and security steps into end-user workflows, augmenting complex password policies with multifactor authentication (MFA), and making security "invisible" to the end user. If you talk to any healthcare organization, you will most likely find this "security friction" where cybersecurity measures are viewed as obstacles to patient care. A. Implementing a digital-identity framework that caters to the uniqueness of the healthcare industry is critical to integrating compliance and security into end-user workflows. Any security and compliance steps that will be used by end users need to be specific to the healthcare industry, show intrinsic value and balance efficiency. That's why it's important to pair the password-management functions of SSO with MFA to give healthcare organizations an extra layer of security as end users access the system. Ultimately, MFA is part of what provides that secure, auditable chain of trust wherever, whenever and however users interact with systems, such as EHRs, that involve patient records within the healthcare organization. How can healthcare organizations make security "invisible" to the end user? While CISOs and CIOs need to protect their organizations, they also need to make sure security measures don't frustrate clinicians.

"At the start of 2019, we were on the search to replace our Indian Health Service (IHS) electronic health record system, Resource and Patient Management System (RPMS), with a better HER," said Skye McGinty, executive director at All Nations Health Center.

"We believe treating the individual means treating the family, which means treating the community, which means treating the population," he said in a recent interview with Healthcare IT News. By focusing on five key components – medical education, clinical care, research, community outreach, and venture opportunities – the MIL aims to drive transformative healthcare innovation. With that in mind, he said, the MIL is also focused on connecting the fruit of such creativity with the wider community. "We want to ensure that any startup or any company who wants to deploy innovative solutions in the community [knows] that we are the first people that they must come to – so that we can test it efficaciously and effectively [and] so that we can determine what we call ecological validity," he said. By contrast, he said, "If we share with the individual that if we know what your environment is like – your health, your air quality – we will be able to create a treatment that would reduce risk for respiratory conditions like asthma and COPD, not just for you, but your granddaughter, or your next door neighbor.