Key Highlights - Part one of our new in-depth series on Apple, Google, and Amazon's latest healthcare efforts since our last report in April 2019. - A look at Apple's recent healthcare developments, as well as an analysis of what goes beyond the news. Over the last few decades the “digital age” has enabled many garage-based startups to transform into sustained successes by targeting problems that begged to be solved digitally. Sometimes their leaders identified and resolved
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How Can IT Support Stay Personal as Healthcare Moves Into A Digital Era?
The widely anticipated expansion of digital healthcare over the next decade is very exciting for many healthcare executives, physicians, IT vendors, and consumers. Potentially transformational IT technologies are already being explored by many hospitals, including new devices and applications designed to streamline healthcare operations, lower costs and enhance the quality of care. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, blockchain, telemedicine, voice search, virtual reality, wearables,
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The Health IT Staffing Shortage Is a Problem Morphing Into a Crisis
Staffing shortages have plagued the healthcare industry for years, and this year hospital IT departments are feeling more pain than ever. The shortfall in physicians and nurses understandably gets the most press attention, but two phenomenons are pushing scarcity of specialized IT workers into the stratosphere: computer and IT jobs across all industries are projected to grow 12% from 2018 to 2028, and healthcare is projected to add 3.5 million jobs during the period, about one-third of all new
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5G in Healthcare: 7 Advantages & Disadvantages for Providers to Know
It’s a fact. The more bandwidth-intensive connected medical devices and mobile devices our hospitals deploy, the more we are straining our health IT infrastructures. Something has to give. Many communications leaders see 5G technology’s real-time high bandwidth and lower latency access as powerful new technology features that are needed to expand healthcare applications’ capabilities and the functioning of medical devices, robotics, and mobile devices. Some say 5G will be transformative. Others
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Why We Are at the Crossroads of the Next Healthcare Disruption
At a moment when consumer technology giants Apple, Amazon and Google are poised to put heavy footprints on the healthcare technology environment, new reports of patient dissatisfaction with current hospital EHR solutions seem to be paving the way. This confluence of developments may be the perfect setting for the next major disruption in our industry, a scenario that many hospital leaders, physicians and health tech vendors won’t relish. But many consumers will, especially those under 40. Here’s
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What Functionalities Should Patient Portal Tools Have To Succeed?
It’s no surprise that the HIMSS17 conference dwelled on high profile topics around population health, data analytics, more affordable EHRs and security. What IS surprising is that patient engagement is now being reported right up there as an HIT priority. Why?Most hospitals are still experiencing dismal usage of patient portals, especially in community and rural hospitals. But this is a problem plaguing even our large health systems. As a result, the many anticipated benefits to patients and to
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5 Basic Steps for Hospitals to Improve Their Data Security
If you’re a small healthcare IT operation, a simple spreadsheet might do the trick. If you’re larger, a not-so-simple spreadsheet might be in order.Regardless of how you do it, hospitals, clinics and other healthcare organizations must identify and monitor every single instance of computer network access. They’re called endpoints, says Larry Ponemon, founder of the security consulting firm the Ponemon Institute, and for you they exist as vulnerabilities.Your job is to eliminate them through a
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EHR Optimization: Necessary Because EHRs Are Never “Done”
Regardless of how well or poorly your EHR was installed, EHR optimization ensures that your healthcare organization's EHR is changing with it.Why, if over 95 percent of hospitals have implemented EHRs, are so many planning to invest in improvements or replacements this year? A new Healthcare IT News survey of hospital executives showed that 24 percent are conducting a major EHR system upgrade, and 21 percent are replacing their EHR at one or more sites. KPMG’s survey of CHIME members last month
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5 Ways Effective Healthcare IT Can Reduce Hospital Costs
The focus of federal efforts to incentivize healthcare IT adoption has primarily been on electronic health records (EHRs), which are oriented around hospitals and physician offices. Moving forward, EHRs will remain the anchor technology as data from other devices and applications flows in and becomes both available and comparable.It’s become readily apparent that healthcare IT is much broader than EHRs alone. Increasingly, healthcare IT is a web of interconnected devices and applications that
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