Over the last few years, hundreds of putative class actions have been filed under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which governs the collection, use, and storage of biometric information belonging to Illinois residents. Among the biggest targets of recent BIPA lawsuits are healthcare providers, including hospitals, long-term care facilities, and nursing homes.
Biometric data is no longer just a figment of science fiction writers’ imaginations. In recent times, private
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
A Matter of Trust: 3 Tips for Outsourcing Out-of-Pocket Support
The cost of family health coverage topped $20,000 this year—as much as an economy car. As consumers shoulder higher out-of-pocket costs than ever, health systems are bracing for the impact.
A recent survey found that while 81 percent of healthcare leaders say rising consumer responsibility will affect revenue, leaders of larger organizations are even more concerned about the toll on finances:
- 33 percent of health system executives believe increased consumer responsibility will have a
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3 Ways IoT Sensors Can Improve Care for Aging Populations
- As the aging population grows, IoT-sensors and enabled devices can fill in the gaps where families lack visibility and nurses lack time or resources.
Healthcare has arrived at a critical inflection point. Baby boomers, the largest living generation of 72 million people, are reaching the age where they require more care. This surge in seniors coincides with other care-related variables, including Baby Boomers’ evolving lifestyle expectations and the current nursing shortage. Providers,
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Wearables Could Transform Insurance from Reactive to Proactive
Insurance policies have existed for thousands of years and were initially invented to protect goods being shipped long distances. Today, the options available to us have expanded tremendously, and it’s even possible for soccer players like David Beckam to insure their legs.
Despite this, the business of insurance and how it’s managed hasn’t evolved as rapidly. And this is understandable, as it’s a highly regulated industry, so reliability and dependability are hugely important.
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Why Government-Supported Health Plans Must Make Encounter Submissions A Top Priority in 2020
Encounter data such as diagnosed clinical conditions and services, or items delivered to healthcare consumers to treat these conditions is the key to success for all healthcare organizations participating within the government space. Whether doctors or hospitals are submitting data for medical services rendered under Medicare Advantage, the Affordable Care Act’s state exchanges or Medicaid, encounter data is used for payment reimbursement and reconciliation between the health plan and the
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Are EHRs A Guard Against Human Nature?
Because we have big brains and have been to the moon and have invented remarkably complex stuff, the idea persists that human beings are inherently rational. This idea is both untrue and ironic, but not in a black-fly-in-the-chardonnay way.
Rational beings, by definition, would make decisions based on proven, reliable data and learned the reason. Most of the time, human beings use impulses, moods, emotions and urges to make decisions, all the while believing they are the reincarnation of
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AI Will Continue to Improve Healthcare, But Only If We Can Trust It
While the public perceives artificial intelligence as futuristic, AI is already intertwined with healthcare today. As a PwC report observed, AI is transforming numerous aspects of healthcare, from medical training and research to wellness and treatment. But while AI is already supercharging our capabilities (it’s 30 times faster and 99 percent accurate when reviewing mammograms, reducing the need for unnecessary biopsies, for example), AI is also supercharging the disparities that are baked into
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Beyond Healthcare Data; Shifting the Focus to Non-Healthcare Data
The recently proposed information blocking rule from the ONC and CMS has thrust interoperability into the spotlight like nothing has in recent years, making it a hot topic for media fodder, and a major concern for organizations — necessitating renewed attention to data-sharing practices.
The conversation surrounding this new rule has implied that information blocking is the result of healthcare organizations intentionally withholding data. However, more often than not, information blocking is a
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Do We Know When Medical Devices Fail?
Since 2015, the FDA and the US Department of Homeland Security have been releasing warnings about products that due to their vulnerabilities threaten patient safety. This includes MRI machines and drug infusion pumps that supply patients with a wide diversity of drugs, including insulin, antibiotics, chemotherapy drugs, and pain relievers. The interconnectivity of smart devices with medical clinical systems leaves them vulnerable to security breaches just like any other networked computing
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Leveraging AI and Machine Learning to Advance Interoperability in Healthcare
(Left- Wilson To, Head of Worldwide Healthcare BD, Amazon Web Services (AWS) & Patrick Combes, Worldwide Technical Leader - Healthcare and Life Sciences at Amazon Web Services (AWS)- Right)Navigating the healthcare system is often a complex journey involving multiple physicians from hospitals, clinics, and general practices. At each junction, healthcare providers collect data that serve as pieces in a patient’s medical puzzle. When all of that data can be shared at each point, the puzzle is
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