It’s no secret that healthcare has long lagged other industries when it comes to the adoption of digital technology. Large, complex organizations like health systems are notoriously slow to change, but healthcare industry trends – particularly the rise of consumerism – are driving a clear urgency around digital competence. In fact, 64% of hospital and health system leaders in the latest Kaufman Hall consumerism survey identified the need to use digital tools to engage consumers as a high
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Why Hospitals Are the Ideal “Garage” for MedTech Startups
In 1796, when smallpox was truly a world epidemic, Dr. Edward Jenner inoculated his gardener’s son with a vaccine derived from another patient’s cowpox blister. At the time, the disease was killing 10 percent of the population. While other treatments for smallpox existed, it was Jenner’s that could be easily replicated around the world. And in hindsight, we know that a key factor in Jenner’s development of the vaccine was his access to patients, his scientific knowledge and his passion to heal.
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Want to Improve Public Health Outcomes? Start with Housing
A well-worn axiom says that “hope is not a plan.” Indeed, hope alone is such a hands-up abdication of planning that editor Thomas Mowle was inspired to use the phrase as the title of his 2007 book of essays on the war in Iraq, which says something.Still, if we play with syntax and add a few words, we can say that every successful plan should offer a measure of hope—hope for success, an improved reality, greater opportunity.With the twin American scourges of homelessness and addiction, hope
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How Marin General Hospital Adopts “Virtual Presence” to Transform the Patient Experience
Mark Zielazinski, CTO at Marin General Hospital shares how their organization is integrating "virtual presence" in the in-hospital setting - allowing patients, providers, and caregivers to clearly communicate and improve clinical outcomes.Telemedicine has resulted in money-saving efficiencies to hospital operations, improved patient safety, and given more people access to healthcare service among other benefits. In use for a number of years, it’s here to stay as a vital tool in patient care.At
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3 Major Misconceptions About Managed Print Services in Healthcare
Managed Print Services (MPS) is a concept that has been around for a long time and has many different definitions and even more approaches. At its very core, Managed Print Services is about controlling costs, providing transparency to utilization, and supporting the technical print environment. With that said there are many misconceptions when it comes to Managed Print Services overall and especially within healthcare.The healthcare environment is quite unique and provides challenges to many of
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Today’s Behavioral Health Providers are Failing: Why Data Analytics is the Solution
Today, behavioral health is more important than ever. Major news outlets, from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, constantly cover the mental health epidemics wracking the nation, be it widespread opioid abuse or the steady, upward creep of suicide and self-harm.Spurred on by the scope and severity of these societal problems (as well as new legislation passed to address them), the behavioral health sector has grown exponentially. Yet this field is not without its problems: despite
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[Un]hyping AI In Healthcare: Why Marketing Hype is Dangerous
![[un]hyping AI In Healthcare](https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/allisonlowery-225x194.png)
Artificial intelligence has been one of the most important — and perhaps most jarring — technological advances of the 21st century. Lines of code have been trained to drive cars, detect faces, and decode complex radiological images, and the recent explosion of AI utilizations has created a jagged divide in societal perception. On the one hand, there are those who fear the robot apocalypse, with entrepreneur Elon Musk himself claiming that “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of
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Opioid Legislation: Initial Salvo or Mission Accomplished?
Of course, the goal promoted before, during and since President Trump’s legislation signing ceremony in the White House last Wednesday is to reduce opioid addiction and attendant deaths.“Together, we are going to end the scourge of drug addiction in America,” said the president, before hedging his bet by adding, "We are going to end it or we are going to at least make an extremely big dent in this terrible, terrible problem."One can hope he’s right about the impact of the SUPPORT for Patients
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Redefining the Fax Machine for the Modern Era in Healthcare
Government regulations require specific industries, such as healthcare and financial services, comply with data privacy regulations. These compliance requirements serve to protect private, confidential, and sensitive information from unwanted intruders that could attempt to intercept files in transit. Though organizations can take measures to ensure that their email solutions are agreeable to these demands, an email message will typically pass through multiple servers before it reaches the final
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Changing the Future of Healthcare Data with Blockchain
The blockchain is getting a lot of attention these days. Much of the attention is misguided—pitching blockchain as if it will magically solve all security and privacy issues—and makes it challenging to understand what blockchain is and the value it can provide. When you cut through the blockchain technology marketing hype, however, blockchain does offer a variety of potential benefits when it comes to maintaining the integrity of data and transactions. And one arena in which blockchain could
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