Here’s a sneak peek at some of the impressive logistics behind the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, the biggest healthcare information and technology show of the year.

The health and wellness data group lead at The MITRE Corporation offers a sneak preview of her HIMSS20 session on the topic. Opportunities are growing for individuals to access and aggregate their health data using health apps and patient portals. Most of these services require individuals to enter into agreements with terms that typically do not favor the individual or give the individual agency over their data.

A model patient data use agreement with terms that empower individuals can provide people with the opportunity to truly manage and control their aggregated health data. Personal agency over data may also increase patient engagement and activation, improve self-management and outcomes, and improve the breadth and depth of data available for shared decision-making, care management and research.

“The problem is that people lack access to and agency, or power, over their complete health data for managing their own health and engaging in their care,” said Katherine Mikk, health and wellness data group lead at The MITRE Corporation, who will be presenting on the subject at HIMSS20.

The interface of this new proprietary model will enable the collection of data from the full range of a patient’s healthcare experiences and provide a complete view of that patient for a care team, the company says.

The arrival of 5G has the potential to transform healthcare delivery by boosting speed and capacity while reducing latency. Although still in its infancy, this powerful network has big potential for healthcare.

Among the possibilities: transmitting large medical images, facilitating telehealth initiatives and supporting remote patient monitoring tools — as well as enabling more complex uses of artificial intelligence and augmented and virtual reality.

5G also will facilitate faster downloads and communication on mobile devices and tablets used in healthcare settings, and it’s likely to be a fitting complement to Wi-Fi 6.

“We need an underlying network that can power the speed of connection with the breadth of data,” Robin Braun, Global Storage CIO for Healthcare at Dell EMC, recently told HealthTech. “5G promises to provide that infrastructure and push smart devices and decisions from the core to the edge, creating secure, smarter data streams and enabling greater personalization.”

These were among the findings of a survey of more than 100 health system professionals by UPMC’s Center for Connected Medicine, which also found only a third of respondents believe their organization is providing a top-quality consumer experience with the digital health tools they provide.

The report findings also suggest traditional organizations may be left behind by others who have created a stronger digital experience, with fewer than one in three respondents believing their organization is providing a best-in-class digital experience for patients.

Just four in 10 respondents reported digital tools being successfully integrated into the overall patient experience, and those that are offer mostly basic functions.

“Tools need to be used by patients, integrated with the health system’s existing technology infrastructure such as electronic health records, and provide a robust and user-friendly experience,” the report noted.

The survey results indicated the cost to build, buy and maintain digital tools, along with integration difficulties and operational challenges, were among the most common obstacles facing healthcare providers.

Dr Priit Tohver is on a mission to make health data more usable.

The man overseeing the digital transformation and innovation of health and welfare systems in Estonia, became inspired as a medical student when he tried to use electronic health records (EHRs) for a study on ocular melanoma.

“That showed me how unsuitable the current health data is for any kind of analytics,” he explains. “To this day it drives me to make the health data we gather more structured and useful, not only to researchers and innovators but to physicians themselves, so that it can feed back into the healthcare system and we can learn as we go.”

At the HIMSS20 conference, Tohver will talk about a subject close to his heart – social determinants of health.

Since 2018, the Ministry of Social Affairs has been undertaking a project to identify disadvantaged youths aged 16-26 that are at danger of falling through the cracks of society.

Malicious actors are using the outbreak of the Wuhan novel coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV, as an opportunity to launch emailed-based cyber attacks, according to security specialist Proofpoint.

WHY IT MATTERS The company uncovered a continuing expansion of cyber attacks themed around the Coronavirus, including a new campaign promoting conspiracy theory-based fears around “unreleased cures,” and dupes multiple users into accepting malware by abusing perceived legitimate sources of health information.

While the attacks initially targeted people in the United States and Japan, Proofpoint noted recent examples are targeted at Australia and Italy, where Italian-language lures are being used.

A company blog post by Sherrod DeGrippo, Proofpoint’s senior director of threat research and detection, noted attackers have expanded the malware used in their Coronavirus attacks to include not just Emotet and the AZORult information stealer, but also the AgentTesla Keylogger and the NanoCore RAT, all of which can steal personal information, including financial information.

In one campaign example, recipients of an email designed to stoke fears of an available cure that is being withheld – a conspiracy theory – urges the recipient to receive further information on the “cure” by clicking on the link provided in the email.

Health and care are going through a very accelerated phase of change. There are various drivers causing these changes and these are starting to demonstrably exert their influence as well as start to act synergistically. Among these changes:

Aging and accompanying multimorbidity, both of which drive increases in activity in existing health and care systems as they strive to manage noncommunicable diseases. This increase in activity puts further financial pressures on these systems which are already “over- trading” and further encourages the adoption of value-based solutions where prevention of disease becomes at least as important as treatment of existing conditions. The explosion of availability of data and the deployment of processes that allow for interoperability. This drives the potential to develop more customized treatment plans for people. This availability of data is likely to be further enhanced once 5G networks are employed and the internet of things enabled. The availability of genomic information around individuals which is becoming more commonplace and enables people to better assess their likelihood of developing disease and thus better target their efforts towards risk mitigation in situations where we understand the pathophysiology of disease and the behaviors we need to adopt to lessen the likelihood of developing these. The potential for us to be able to measure the epigenetic biomarkers that act as “switches” amplifying or turning off the effect of our genes and the increasing affordability of access to these biomarkers. At present these are mainly concentrated around the cardiovascular space, but no doubt the range will widen as science advances. Also the fact that the cardiovascular contribution to cardio-metabolic disorders is now understood to have an even more ubiquitous role is an added factor to take into consideration

As part of the merger of five independent orthopedic practices to form Virginia’s largest provider of orthopedic and therapy care, OrthoVirginia, a large investment was made implementing a new electronic health record system. A survey gauging physician satisfaction with the system, however, showed an overall poor experience, which led the CIO and CMIO to work together to implement and show measurable improvements across a range of areas, including more efficient usage of the technology.

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General on Friday released findings of an audit it conducted at the request of the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services that looked into how a mail order pharmacy and other healthcare providers were misusing a type of electronic transaction meant to verify Medicare beneficiaries’ eligibility for certain coverage benefits.

HHS OIG confirmed to Information Security Media Group that the findings from that smaller scale audit prompted the launch of a more expansive nationwide investigation into whether Medicare beneficiary information is being inappropriately obtained through these electronic Eligibility Verification Transactions, also known as or E1 transactions, violating patients’ privacy.

“The report that came out today was more narrow in scope, [but] the nationwide audit to be announced next week will aim to determine how widespread the inappropriate use of these transactions is,” an HHS OIG spokeswoman tells ISMG.

Hundreds of pediatric healthcare providers in Massachusetts were still unable to access their electronic health records systems Thursday after a malware attack earlier this week targeted a large physician network affiliated with Boston Children’s Hospital.

The system outage affecting Brookline, Mass.-based Pediatric Physicians Organization at Children’s started on Tuesday; the malware attack was discovered on Monday afternoon.

As of Thursday, the records system outage continued at the physician network, which includes more than 100 pediatric practices who serve more than 350,000 throughout the state.

The pediatrics organization and its various practices affected by the attack referred all inquiries to Boston Children’s Hospital. A hospital spokeswoman tells Information Security Media Group that the malware attack did not involve ransomware and it did not affect the

The 2020 HIMSS Global Health Conference is set for March 9-13 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. As the conference approaches, HIMSS is offering weekly updates on how it is handling the ongoing coronavirus situation. “HIMSS20 is proceeding as scheduled,” said HIMSS officials in the most recent update. “The health, safety and well-being of our community remains our highest priority.”

The director of solutions architecture at a cloud vendor says the top threat is an insufficient protection of sensitive data both where physical and logical safeguards are implemented.

Health systems can develop patient flow analytics, which can result in faster, more comprehensive care and a quicker release from the hospital. In this era of value-based care, it is imperative that hospitals excel at patient flow. This entails serving appropriate patients rapidly, effectively, and efficiently as they move through different facilities, departments, and stages of care.

At University of California, Irvine Medical Center, there has been a drive to improve the health system’s ability to provide the right patients with the right care in the right setting.

Suicide Risk Among Nurses Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Health, Department of Nursing, have conducted a national longitudinal study and found that the rate of suicide among nurses is higher than that of the general population (Davidson et al. 2020a).

An analysis of data from the 2005–2016 National Violent Death Reporting System dataset showed that female nurses have been at greater risk since 2005 and males since 2011. Lead author Judy Davidson notes that “the data does not reflect a rise in suicide, but rather that nurse suicide has been unaddressed for years.”

Over the analysed period, female nurse suicide rates were significantly higher than the general female population, 10 vs 7 per 100,000 respectively. For male nurses and the general male population the figures are 33 vs 27 per 100,000 respectively.

The preferred methods of suicide among females were opioids and benzodiazepines, while firearms was the most common choice for male nurses.

The authors point out the necessity to implement suicide prevention programmes. One such programme, successfully tested by UC San Diego, is Healer Education Assessment and Referral (HEAR) programme. It provides education about risk factors and proactive screening focussed on identifying, supporting and referring clinicians for untreated depression and/or suicide risk. The sustainability of HEAR is explored in another study by Davidson and colleagues (2020b) claiming that it proved to be feasible and well‐received and proactively identifies nurses with reported suicidality and facilitates referral for care.

For the first time, an AI-made drug has reached the clinical trials stage.

Called DSP-1181, the pharmaceutical drug created by AI technology to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, is in phase 1 trials in Japan.

When healthcare IT professional Laura Jantos became the patient, she gained a new perspective on what is lacking in consumer-facing technologies.

Laura Jantos, who is retired as a partner in a management consulting firm leading its HCIT practice, will share her experience during HIMSS20.

From ensuring quality care and educating providers to managing organizational culture, chief medical officers have no shortage of responsibilities.

But as electronic health records, value-based reimbursement, changing consumer preferences, data-driven wearables and artificial intelligence grow in scope and necessity, CMOs find many new challenges on their plate. That, in turn, is broadening the role, requiring leaders to be tech-savvy, financially focused and highly collaborative with vendors and business teams.

HealthTech recently spoke to Dr. Kent Bishop about the balance. Bishop, an obstetrician/gynecologist, is CMO at ProMedica Physicians and Acute Care in Toledo, Ohio, and president of women’s services and chief experience officer at ProMedica.

As cases of the COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus) continue to spread across China and beyond, the Chinese government has released a new app intended to help citizens check whether they came into contact with the virus.

App users are asked to register a phone number, name and ID number in or to see if they were in contact with someone infected, according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua, which first reported the story.

Users are able to get the app by scanning a QR code through platforms like WeChat, Alipay and QQ. The app will then give them information on whether they came into “close contact” with the disease, which the government defines as being in a close distance to someone with no protection who has a confirmed case or a suspected case.

The tool will act as a way of collecting data as well as to educate citizens on what to do if they have been in close contact with the virus — which is to stay at home and get advice from health authorities.

The countdown is on for medical device manufacturers to prepare for the EU Regulation on Medical Devices (MDR), which will fully apply in member states from May this year.

But in a recently published paper, trade association MedTech Europe raised concerns that the new regulatory system is not ready to support the transition of technology from the old regime.

The new EU MDR came into force on May 5, 2017, replacing two existing directives, and applies after a transitional period of three years, which falls on May 26, 2020.

Under the MDR, manufacturers have clearer obligations to monitor the quality, performance and safety of devices.

Also, existing devices which have been CE marked under the current EU Medical Device Directive (MDD) must be recertified to abide by the new MDR.

MedTech Europe says that manufacturers may not be able to keep existing devices on the market, because of challenges such as a lack of notified body (NB) capacity, lack of EU guidance on certain aspects of the regulation, and lack of expert panels.

On 11 February, the World Health Organization (WHO) named the novel coronavirus, previously referred to as 2019-nCoV, COVID-19, which stands for ‘coronavirus disease 2019.’

The organisation underlined that it was careful to find a name without stigma, ie one that “did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, or an individual or group of people.” It followed best practices for naming of new human infectious diseases developed in consultation and collaboration with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The vendor aims to transform healthcare interoperability with faster onboarding, easier maintenance, higher availability and lower costs, a company VP contends. InterSystems at HIMSS20 will highlight its new offering, HealthShare Managed Connections. The interoperability technology is designed to dramatically reduce the time and cost of connecting healthcare organizations.

Today, most cross-organization connections are one-to-one, even though they include numerous interfaces to the same electronic health records and multiple connections to the same organizations.

The UK and the EU should ‘work as one’ to further the deployment of AI in healthcare, writes Dr Layla McCay, director of international relations at the NHS Confederation. My colleagues at NHSX are starting to uncover the significant opportunities offered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for keeping people healthy, improving care and saving lives. In the field of diagnostics alone, we are seeing capabilities develop in areas such as rapid image recognition, symptom checking and risk stratification. AI could help, for example, to personalise health screening and treatments for cancer, eye disease and a range of other conditions. Furthermore, it’s not just patients who can benefit, but also clinicians, enabling them to make the best use of their expertise, informing their decisions and saving time.

The UK is not alone, Europe is also looking closely at how this fast-developing area can change people’s lives, particularly in the field of healthcare.

A new study, conducted by Korean academic hospitals and Lunit, a medical AI company specializing in developing AI solutions for radiology and oncology, demonstrated the benefits of AI-aided breast cancer detection from mammography images. The study was published online on 6 February 2020, in Lancet Digital Health and features large-scale data of over 170,000 mammogram examinations from five institutions across South Korea, USA, and the UK, consisting of Asian and Caucasian female breast images. A new study, conducted by Korean academic hospitals and Lunit, a medical AI company specializing in developing AI solutions for radiology and oncology, demonstrated the benefits of AI-aided breast cancer detection from mammography images. The study was published online on 6 February 2020, in Lancet Digital Health and features large-scale data of over 170,000 mammogram examinations from five institutions across South Korea, USA, and the UK, consisting of Asian and Caucasian female breast images.

The 2020 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, which takes place March 9-13 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, is fast approaching. Be sure to check here regularly at Healthcare IT News for our previews, onsite coverage and recaps of the big show. From now into the spring, our editors, reporters and videographers will bring you all the must-know information about new technologies, healthcare trends, policy changes and other innovations, insights and interviews with top thought leaders across this fast-evolving industry.