Only weeks ago, American doctors’ waiting rooms were bustling with patients of all ages. This was no surprise as it is estimated that in an average year the U.S. healthcare system provided an estimated 278 office-based physician visits per 100 persons, for a total of approximately 883 million visits per year. Chronic conditions were the major reason for 37% of all office-based physician visits, and visits for chronic conditions were predictably higher among adults than children.
In the
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Healthcare Data Infrastructure Security Cannot Be Ignored During a Pandemic
The rapid advancement of technology has inspired hope in the healthcare industry, promising to employ artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based data platforms in life-altering ways. Surgery assisting robots and miraculously accurate AI-based cancer diagnosis methods are a few preliminary examples of what the industry can expect. With all these great technological strides being taken, however, compliance can easily be left in the dust. And with COVID-19 pushing the limits of healthcare systems
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Analysis: Applying AI in the Fight Against The Coronavirus
Drug discovery is a notoriously long, complex and expensive process requiring the concerted efforts of the world’s brightest minds. The complexity in understanding human physiology and molecular mechanisms is increasing with every new research paper published and for every new compound tested. As the world is facing a new challenge in trying to both adapt to and defend itself against the coronavirus, artificial intelligence is offering new hope that a cure might be developed faster than ever
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COVID-19 Pandemic: Prevent the Oncoming Medical Information Crisis
“You only know who is naked when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett famously said of the nation’s businesses when markets tank. For the nation’s information systems, the opposite is true. You see their weaknesses when they are inundated by a tidal wave of data.
A case in point is the information infrastructure of the American healthcare system, which will play a critical role in understanding and battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as the capacity of some national health systems have been
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6 Benefits of Telemedicine in Managing the Diabetes Epidemic
The American Diabetes Association reveals that 9.4% of the American population has diabetes, and with numbers that high nearly all Americans have a friend or family member with the disease. However, many Americans are not aware that telehealth can enable diabetic patients to manage their condition—treatment that would have otherwise been difficult to come by for rural patients with limited access to care.
With such a high prevalence among the population, providing care regardless of proximity
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COVID-19: Why Africa Urgently Needs an Ubuntu Plan
One virus has disrupted the whole world in a manner never seen before in history.
Africa urgently needs a globally coordinated Ubuntu Plan in response to COVID-19, a fiscal stimulus that recognizes our shared and connected humanity, as we find ourselves in the midst of an unprecedented crisis.
The world's largest cities are eerily silent. One virus has disrupted the whole world in a manner never seen before in history.
COVID-19, a term that did not exist in our vocabulary a couple of
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COVID-19: 5 Steps for Health IT Teams to Accommodate New Demands
The rapid escalation of COVID-19 patient cases has created new challenges for healthcare organizations to scale up testing and care services, while also reducing risk for non-critical patients or care workers. Healthcare IT professionals are being asked to digitally transform overnight, in supporting remote workers, telemedicine, outdoor triage tents, and a surge in patients and connected devices. Here are five key steps for healthcare IT departments to take in order to accommodate the new
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COVID-19 Pandemic: Why Patients Need to Control Their Own Data
We’re in throes of a global pandemic. Healthcare providers must focus on fighting COVID-19, but we can’t afford to ignore the reason we’re going into this fight blind. Our best weapon is our own healthcare data. We are going to learn many things from this pandemic, not least of which is that the way we thought about data ownership over the previous decade needs to change.
Pandemics represent a system-wide attack on healthcare. Our best responses rely on social distancing, telemedicine, and
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3 Ways to Build a Back-to-Basics Approach to Revenue Cycle Management
Sixty-nine percent of healthcare revenue cycle leaders say they will put more money toward technologies that boost revenue integrity, eliminate human error and unlock greater efficiency in the year ahead, an HFMA/Navigant analysis found. But for many organizations, the biggest untapped opportunity to improve performance comes down to a single word: data.
For all the buzz at about the ways in which digital innovation and automation could transform revenue cycle management, healthcare
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COVID-19’s Impact on Telehealth & HIPAA Regulations
The declaration of COVID19 as a pandemic and the United States declaring a national emergency to help contain and enhance treatment access have resulted in a number of changes to ease potential regulatory burdens or barriers in healthcare. Like so much happening as a result of the pandemic, the changes have the potential to fundamentally change the healthcare industry not just during the time of the emergency declaration.
Of particular note are coordinated announcements from various agencies
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