Recent high-profile events have elevated the national discussion about mental illness and how best to circumvent potentially disastrous outcomes.Supply and demand of mental and behavioral health care services sit at the heart of the problem, and while various schools of thought exist as to the solution, most in the industry agree on one point: the behavioral health access crisis has reached a tipping point. From extreme shortages in psychiatric beds—numbering roughly 14 per every 100,000 people
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3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Improve Healthcare in 2019
In 2019, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools will continue to help physicians make more informed decisions, hospitals achieve better outcomes, and patients receive more timely and personalized care. According to Becker’s Healthcare, artificial intelligence (AI) tools will save the healthcare industry $52 billion by 2021. Here are three of the biggest ways that AI is poised to shape healthcare in 2019.1. AI Will Unlock the Power of Virtual Medicine Telemedicine is helping to
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Why Artificial Intelligence Should Augment Patient Care, Not Replace IT
Skeptics about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare are running out of reasons to be doubtful.AI, in fact, is already revolutionizing several areas of medicine. Researchers rely on AI to help them select candidates for clinical trials, algorithms are proving to be about as accurate as radiologists in diagnosing lung cancer, and experts from Oxford and Yale believe that all surgical work could be conducted by AI by the year 2053.Clearly, when it comes to clinical work, AI’s
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What’s Next for Healthcare Communications in 2019?
Healthcare workers are the embodiment of mobile. Tending to patients across hospitals, clinics, and shifts, they are always on the move. Coupled with the sheer size and diversity of the healthcare system, keeping employees informed is a constant challenge.When communications break down or employees are not engaged, the consequences can be disastrous — from administrative and operational missteps to poor decisions treating patients and lack of quality care. In fact, according to a study from HR
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Pay Attention to the FDA’s New Medical Device Cybersecurity Guidelines
The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) recently released Medical Device Cybersecurity Regional Incident Preparedness and Response Playbook is the agency’s latest step in an ongoing effort to enhance medical device cybersecurity. Though these are merely guidelines and not regulations, it’s imperative hospitals and other vendors dealing with medical devices take them to heart. The FDA’s primary focus is on patient safety related to medical device incidents, but these guidelines could very
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3 Trends Impacting Digital Health Strategy & Leadership Roles in 2019
As always, this year was full of interesting developments in healthcare. As the year comes to a close, we’ve rounded up three trends that we feel are going to significantly impact the landscape of health tech and digital health in 2019 and beyond. Trends are only interesting if we examine the impact, so let’s hone in on how each of these trends will affect company strategies and hence their leadership roles in digital health.Trend 1: Large-scale mergers and vertical integrationsSince 2015,
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How the Walgreens-VA Partnership Demonstrates the Benefits of EHRs
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), each year in the United States, adverse drug interactions cause more than a million visits to hospital emergency rooms. The CDC also found that 40 percent of negative interactions were preventable. One way to minimize these events is to give pharmacists electronic access to summaries of people’s medical histories so they can better predict how a new medication will affect each person’s health. Walgreens is taking a bold step in this direction
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Technology + Cash Pay Health Solutions = Meeting Hispanic Healthcare Needs
Hispanics represent the nation’s largest and fastest growing minority group and are poised to make up nearly 29 percent of the U.S. population by 2050. Nevertheless, more than one-fourth of Hispanic adults in the United States lack a primary healthcare provider, and a similar proportion report obtaining no healthcare information from medical personnel in the past year. The microcosm of Hispanics accessing healthcare in the United States serves as an example of how the system fails the
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Analysis: Population Health Management Market Growth Slows in 2018
2018 has proved to be another challenging year for the North American population health management (PHM) market, with growth limited to single digits for the second year running. There has been a growing sense of pessimism around PHM market development as a challenging 2017 market has continued into 2018. The market is now forecast to grow to $6.8B by 2022, at a CAGR of 9.6%.Highlights- North American Population Health Management (PHM) market estimated to reach $6.8B by 2022, growing at a CAGR
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Blockchain: Would You Trust an App to Protect Your Medical Records?
When it comes to medical records, privacy is paramount in the healthcare industry. It is for the very same reason that blockchain technology creates some amazing opportunities for innovation and disruption in the sector.Notorious as the technology powering up Bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions, blockchain is an encrypted ledger of digital transactions, distributed across multiple nodes through a peer-to-peer-type network that also leaves an auditable log trail of the events taking place. Every
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