People in the UK will begin receiving the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday, after the prime minister expressed hope that the pace could be ramped up to protect tens of millions of people from Covid-19 within the next few months.

In England the first doses would be administered in a small number of hospitals for surveillance purposes, said the NHS: in Oxford, where the vaccine was invented, London, Sussex, Lancashire and Warwickshire.

Yes, it’s THAT time of the year and it’s always good to look back at the year – even to this one. For it’s easy to say 2020 was disastrous, but there were many aspects that bring hope for the future (we dedicated an entire article to these here). We also hope that you personally could also find highlights and elevating moments in your life in 2020.

Besides personal developments The Medical Futurist community realised, COVID-19 has provided us with massive challenges on the team level as well. Our way of working has changed, my speeches were cancelled, we were quarantined – but we came out strong. So did digital health solutions, from a massive rise in investments and at-home lab tests to telemedicine platforms.

I hope you have become stronger as well. For if 2020 was good for something, is that it provided us with a perspective on what is and what isn’t important in our lives. We were challenged and we had nowhere to go – we had no one, but ourselves and our closest relatives. We learned how to support each other in hard times, and we had to learn how to cope with mental and physical challenges alike. Hopefully you who are reading this now, came out stronger yourself.

Like ‘em or hate ‘em, electronic health records are here to stay. Now it’s just a matter of making them work to the best of their ability for patients and clinicians.

Some recent efforts are afoot to rethink the approach to these glorified billing systems from the bottom up. Others are focused on refining and streamlining their user experience to combat the scourge of burdensome charting and alleviate burnout.

In the meantime, with more than 18 million COVID-19 cases and counting so far in the U.S., it’s never been clearer that interoperable, ideally telehealth-connected digital records are essential for quality care and public health going forward.

Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, DrChrono, Epic, Greenway Health, Meditech and NextGen offer an up-to-the-minute look at how they’re enabling complex immunization recordkeeping for their health system customers. Never in the history of electronic health records has there been a more important public health recordkeeping task than the one that is at hand at this very moment in the nation’s history: tracking COVID-19 vaccinations.

As a result of this all-important development, EHR vendors from across the industry have been preparing their products and their healthcare provider organization users to make sure that when a patient receives this critical vaccination, it is recorded correctly, pushed to the necessary parties, and is accessible now and in the future by all the appropriate caregivers.

The interest in the public health branch of government has dramatically increased in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. With public health officials helping governments curb the spread of the virus, doctors, hospitals, researchers, and medical professionals have become some of the most trusted people in the U.S. But with many non-essential medical services—including fertility treatments and elective surgeries—cancelled during the early months of the pandemic, will public trust waiver as services reopen?

Of course, this isn’t news to health systems. Hand hygiene has always been a foundational element of a sound infection prevention (IP) program. But, seven-plus months later, it’s important to ask ourselves: How are we doing in our efforts to protect patients and staff? Has COVID driven a meaningful increase in hand hygiene compliance levels inside hospitals?

According to a study by The American Journal of Infection Control, hand hygiene compliance in the health care setting peaked at just above 60%, four weeks after the onset of the pandemic, before declining again. That’s quite a significant gap, considering the motivation for collective compliance has arguably never been higher.

Let’s face it: Compliance has long been a challenge in the industry. Various observational studies over the years show that when staff members are rushed and focused on imminent patient care needs, hand hygiene compliance can slip. We found this to be true in our 353-bed hospital and Level 1 trauma center, as well. Nobody intentionally skips washing their hands, but distraction and emergent speed of care are common realities.

Google in collaboration with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is launching a pilot project aimed at helping citizens to plan their doctor’s appointments.

In a blog post, Dave Greenwood, Product Manager at Google Health, notes the advantages of planned visits, such as higher quality of a visit or better patient outcomes. The new tool focusses on common evidence-based questions people might have about their care, and complements Google’s search results for a doctor’s office or a hospital.

Users are offered a ready-made list of questions, such as “What are my treatment options?”, but are able to add their own as well. When the list is completed, it can be printed or emailed so that a patient has it with them during the visit and is able to remember all the questions they would like to be answered. The embedded questions have been developed by AHRQ and are intended “to get people thinking about their goals and priorities for the visit”.

In healthcare, artificial intelligence (AI) has shown promise in both clinical and administrative applications. Increasing use of AI algorithms and tools, therefore, could provide a wide range of benefits particularly in improving patient care, reducing burden on providers and increasing resource efficiency at hospitals, says a new report.

Moreover, healthcare AI technology is also poised to help augment patient care outside traditional clinical settings. AI-enabled tools can also be deployed for health monitoring, intervention and promoting overall well-being beyond the walls of the hospital and clinic (i.e. the home), according to the report Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Benefits and Challenges of Technologies to Augment Patient Care issued jointly by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Clinical applications of AI that could enhance delivery of care include predicting health trajectories, recommending treatments, guiding surgical care, monitoring patients and supporting population health management. The report cites sepsis prediction tools as a good example, adding that AI-enabled surgical robots are already in the early stages of development.

Hybrid closed-loop (HCL) systems are designed to improve glycaemic control in diabetes patients. HCL settings need to be optimised to achieve the desired glycaemic outcomes, but doing so means patients must be able to interpret glucose and insulin metrics. However, interpreting HCL data is not easy since HCL systems currently do not have a standardised method of reporting.

An in-depth look at twelve recently released COVID-19 vaccine management solutions as COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed nationwide.

1. Microsoft

Microsoft launches a COVID-19 vaccine management platform with partners Accenture and Avanade, EY, and Mazik Global to help government and healthcare customers provide fair and equitable vaccine distribution, administration, and monitoring of vaccine delivery.

Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) has deployed over 230 emergency COVID-19 response missions globally since the pandemic began in March, including recent engagements to ensure the equitable, secure, and efficient distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Technology today makes it possible for consumers to approach nearly every part of their lives with an instant gratification mentality. With fast-paced and personalized experiences revolutionizing the consumer journey, patients have naturally grown to expect the same level of self-directed convenience throughout their healthcare journey. This includes searching for information about providers and health conditions and scheduling their appointments anytime, day or night.

While adapting healthcare operations to facilitate a personalized virtual and digital experience can be challenging, the onset of COVID-19 has only accelerated the demand for these options. In specialty pharmacy, where pharmacists dispense medications to patients with complex and often chronic conditions, new self-service tools are empowering patients to play a more active role in managing their care.

The COVID-19 pandemic is placing immense pressure across the healthcare system and has highlighted the importance of interoperability and streamlined data exchange between stakeholders. In the current healthcare environment, securely communicating data promptly is more important than ever as the nation continues to manage these unprecedented times.

In recent years, the healthcare industry has seen a significant shift to electronic communication technologies, however many healthcare organizations are still relying on obsolete technologies, such as the fax machine, as the primary method of exchanging health information. As organizations continue to respond to the global pandemic, which is forcing them to adapt at a rapid pace, they can no longer afford to lag in adopting electronic communication solutions by relying on inefficient, fax-heavy processes.

Organizations should look to embrace agile solutions, such as secure messaging – a mechanism for secure health information exchange within a trusted network – which can be implemented across organizations of varying sizes and infrastructures in a timely and cost-effective manner. Dr. James Grue, Director of Analytics, Healthcare Registries, LLC states, “Technology, such as direct secure messaging, is enabling secure, accurate and safe health data exchange while facilitating greater collaboration across the care continuum.”

Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics continue to make transformational changes throughout the business world. While healthcare IT is seeing some impacts from AI and machine learning, it lags behind other industry sectors in fully adopting this emerging technology. However, necessity is sometimes the mother of invention, as evidenced by the Coronavirus pandemic still ravaging the planet.

A pair of studies aims to examine just how much time American clinicians spend in the electronic health record – and how it impacts their relationship with patients. A pair of studies recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Medical Care aims to use electronic health record data to analyze how clinicians spend their time.

The JAMA study, which compared metadata of clinicians in the United States with those in Canada, Northern Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East and Oceania, found that U.S. clinicians spent an average of 90 minutes a day actively using the EHR – compared with non-U.S. clinicians, who spent about an hour a day in their EHRs.

Meanwhile, the Medical Care study analyzed primary care exam lengths using EHR time stamps, finding that the average exam time lasted 1.2 minutes longer than scheduled.

Evan Dumas, Regional Director, Southeast Asia, Check Point Software Technologies shares his insights on the opportunities and threats of IoT in healthcare, as well tips on preventing ransomware attacks.

A recent report by Vodafone titled Better Health, Connected Health: How 5G and IoT Technology can Transform Health and Social Care found overwhelming support for the introduction and increase of digital technologies in the NHS, including 5G and IoT, as a way of streamlining healthcare and making it more affordable.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is described as a network of physical devices that uses connectivity to enable the exchange of data. In the context of healthcare, IoT, powered by the new and emerging 5G networks, can have potential benefits. These include clinicians using data-intensive augmented reality or virtual reality visualizations to help patients better understand a diagnosis or treatment and technologies that can help a specialist better analyze a patient’s condition.

– Artificial intelligence algorithms can predict outcomes of COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms in emergency rooms, according to recent research findings published in Radiology: Artificial Intelligence journal.

– Researchers trained the algorithm from data on 338 positive COVID-19 patients between the ages of 21 and 50 by using diverse patient data from emergency departments within Mount Sinai Health System hospitals (The Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, Mount Sinai Queens, and Mount Sinai Brooklyn) between March 10 and March 26.

– CybelAngel tools scanned approximately 4.3 billion IP addresses and detected more than 45 million unique medical images left exposed on over 2,140 unprotected servers across 67 countries including the US, UK, and Germany.

– The report highlights the security risks of publicly accessible images containing highly personal information including ransomware and blackmail.

The COVID-19 pandemic has stifled many activities and elements in our daily lives. Technology, on the other hand, has rapidly adapted and evolved to fill many of the gaps created by social distancing and the increased need for healthcare access.

The unprecedented events of this year have particularly elevated the role of chat and voice solutions in the healthcare context. These solutions are designed to enhance communication and deliver more control and knowledge directly into the hands of patients. As healthcare providers grapple with overwhelming hospitalization rates and a high volume of patient questions and concerns, chat and voice solutions are positioned to reduce administrative burdens and assist in remote patient monitoring.

To say that 2020 has been a clunker is, well, the understatement of the year. Collectively speaking, most people around the world are more than happy to see the year overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic in their rearview mirror. For that reason, perhaps no new year in recent history has been as longingly anticipated as is 2021.

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that patient access to virtual healthcare is no longer a “nice to have” innovation for the future but rather a paramount necessity of the present. The worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus in March 2020 demanded that virtual health technologies like telehealth be repositioned at the forefront. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of telehealth visits during the first quarter of 2020 increased by 50 percent compared with the same period in 2019. Similarly, during a single week in March 2020, the CDC reported a 154 percent increase in telehealth visits.

For that reason, virtual care is at the dawn of a new era in patient care and communication. The technology gives patients and providers a likable pairing: the agility to prioritize one-on-one interactions and the flexibility to support health when and where it’s most convenient—for both parties. As evidence of how prevalent virtual care will become, a Deloitte survey found that one-third of health organization executives believe that at least 25 percent of all inpatient care will be delivered virtually by 2040. Given what’s happened in 2020, that date has moved forward quite a bit.

Mobile technology has proven invaluable as hospitals strive to cut down on the number of non-critical appointments and in-person visits. Offering virtual health care as a way to schedule routine checkups can help reduce unnecessary exposure as well as preserve resources, such as personal protective equipment (PPE), for more critical visits. Virtual health care is also more inclusive of a remote workforce.

In some instances, hospitals are even mounting a rugged tablet on an IV pole to allow specialists to interact with patients remotely via video. This novel use of technology makes it easier for all clinicians involved in a patient’s care to participate in rounds and often results in faster care because specialists can conduct multiple consults without traveling between rooms and hospitals.

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions have been emerging within the market for several years, and several studies evaluated and found RPM to improve treatment and access to ongoing care, patient satisfaction, and healthcare costs. Despite the success and proven effectiveness, providers in the past have been slow to adapt to RPM. The changing landscape and challenges of the pandemic have drastically increased the urgency to adopt RPM solutions. Companies specializing in remote medical wearable solutions have seen a significant increase in demand for remote monitoring solutions from providers and pharmaceutical companies. Many experts expect the RPM market to double in approximately five years.

As COVID-19 wreaked havoc at health systems worldwide, hackers and bad actors were all too happy to take advantage of the confusion and expanded attack surface – in a new “cyberpandemic” that shows no sign of abating. As we write this on Wednesday, the massive SolarWinds cyberattack, purportedly perpetrated by Russian intelligence and impacting some 18,000 government agencies and private sector businesses, is just starting to come into focus. So far, the healthcare dimensions of the hack include the apparent targeting of the National Institutes of Health.

It appears to be the kind of state-sponsored effort that Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, spoke about during the HIMSS Healthcare Security Forum just this past week – when he shared some of the health-sector implications of the recent bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which seeks to shore up some of the shortcomings of America’s cyber preparedness.

“Part of the failure of our strategy thus far has been a lack of a real deterrent, a lack of something that our adversaries feel is something they have to worry about,” said King. “Historically, there hasn’t been much of a cost paid by our adversaries.”

At Geisinger in Pennsylvania, a pilot program to bring care to the homes of older patients with complex healthcare needs has shown a 35% reduction in visits to the emergency department visits, a 40% drop in hospital admissions and an average annual savings of nearly $8,000 per patient. The future will see chronic disease being managed more from homes and physicians’ offices than in a hospital setting. Chronically ill patients may not always require visiting the hospital frequently if their follow-ups and routine checkups can be managed remotely. At Geisinger in Pennsylvania, a pilot program to bring care to the homes of older patients with complex healthcare needs has shown a 35% reduction in visits to the emergency department visits, a 40% drop in hospital admissions and an average annual savings of nearly $8,000 per patient. The future will see chronic disease being managed more from homes and physicians’ offices than in a hospital setting.

Chronically ill patients may not always require visiting the hospital frequently if their follow-ups and routine checkups can be managed remotely. Especially in times of a pandemic, they are better off staying at home.

However, that should not affect their care. Given today’s technological advancement in healthcare, most follow-ups can be well managed remotely. While nothing can beat an in-person experience, physicians can check in on them digitally, through remote patient monitoring tools or video consults.

Will a health system battered by the pandemic emerge stronger in the year ahead? The annual report predicts challenges such as profitably merging virtual and in-person care, capitalizing on new consumer- and clinician-facing digital health tools – and enabling pharma to find its footing in this changing ecosystem. The healthcare industry has six big challenges ahead in 2021: rightsizing after the telehealth explosion; adjusting to changing clinical trials; encouraging digital relationships that ease physician burdens; forecasting for an uncertain 2021; reshaping health portfolios for growth; and building a resilient and responsive supply chain for long-term health.

This is according to a new annual report from research and consulting giant PwC entitled “Top health industry issues of 2021: Will a shocked system emerge stronger?”

We strongly believe that only digital health can bring healthcare into the 21st century and make patients the point-of-care. Being a nurse is a highly demanding but genuinely fulfilling job with the chance to touch many people’s lives. This hasn’t been highlighted better than during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the whole world is stricken by fear and uncertainty, with many under lockdown 2.0, nurses are actively in the front line assisting patients and physicians. As the nursing profession requires the core of what makes us human – paying attention, being empathetic and caring -, it will never be replaced by technology.

However, technological innovations can relieve nurses of the burden of many monotonous and repetitive tasks; especially in a pandemic where time is of essence. These tools can further become commonplace in the daily work life of nurses in the near future.