Founder and CEO, Robert Herzog of eCaring describes how tailoring programs for special patient populations will improve patient home care while reducing risks of hospital readmissions.
Real-time health monitoring including the patient's home continues to gain importance as pressures come from a variety of sources to reduce risks and costs of readmissions and hospitalizations. The Centers for the Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), enforcing the 2012 Medicare Readmission
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
JASON Report: The Great American Experiment
The distinguished JASON group of anonymous scientists and academics that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology, just published a sequel to the 2013 best seller, “A Robust Health Data Infrastructure”. The new report is titled “Data for Individual Health”, and it has two purposes. The first and foremost purpose is to backtrack on the searing criticism leveled at government efforts to promote health information technology, which evoked much
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Can Public APIs Unlock True Health IT Interoperability?
Do we finally have the spark?
Interoperability is the current health IT buzzword because it’s the essential ingredient in creating a system that benefits patients, doctors and hospitals. Almost everyone in healthcare is pressing for it and is frustrated, though probably not surprised, that Meaningful Use did not get us there.
The ONC says within three years we’ll have a roadmap for providing interoperability “across vendor platforms,” which should probably elicit a collective groan.
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EHR Usability for Ongoing Optimization
Dr. Stephen Beck, CMIO at Mercy Health (formerly Catholic Health Partners) discusses how his organization is approaching EHR usability to deliver improvements in efficiency, care quality and provider satisfaction.
Nearly every day I read a new article about physician dissatisfaction with EHRs. There seems to be many reasons for this attitude. Part of it is the need for better data collection tools to ensure ongoing optimization to keep pace with changing regulations. For example, an October
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6 Ways Digital Health Transformed Healthcare in 2014
Fard Johnmar, founder of Enspektos describes 6 major gifts digital health has granted doctors, patients, caregivers and others during 2014.
There's a lot of skepticism about the potential of digital health tools and technologies to transform health and medicine. A lot of it is warranted. We're still waiting for robust studies that help to prove that tools such as mobile applications and wearables can actually improve health and change behavior. The ones we have today are
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Google Glass in Healthcare Is Here to Stay
Kyle Samani of Pristine shares his insights on the state of Google Glass in healthcare and why its demise is an exaggeration.
In the past couple of weeks, a number of press outlets have announced what is amounting to the death of Google Glass (see here and here, for example). These reports cite lack of consumer adoption and the fact that consumer-facing software companies (i.e. Twitter) have dropped support for Glass. Following this logic, Glass must be just as dead for professionals
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EHRs Should Automate the Business of Medicine
EHRs should automate the business of medicine and eventually the science of medicine, while protecting the art of medicine. Margalit Gur-Arie shares her insights.
By the time the next decade rolls in there will be no paper charts. There will probably still be paper floating around in various capacities, but there will be no one charting on paper. The term “charting” itself may become obsolete, like yonder or popinjay. The term EHR, which is what replaces the paper chart, won’t
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Physicians: The Omnipotent Consumer of EHRs
According to the American Medical Association, there were approximately 685,000 physicians in patient care, post-residency, not employed by the federal government, in 2012. 60% of these physicians practiced in independent private practice, and 84% were working in small to medium size practices. Assuming that the trend to employment of doctors by health systems continued unabated to this day, over half of practicing physicians are still in private practice and the overwhelming majority
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Can Professional Failures Foster Digital Health Innovation?
Fard Johnmarr describes the vital role professional failures could play in fostering digital health innovation.
Let's face it. When it comes to tolerating and encouraging failure, there's a big disconnect between what people say and what they do.
In many organizations and businesses, failure and risk-taking is punished, even though both are vitally important -- especially in industries facing or undergoing significant digital-induced economic and human disruption.
Fard Johnmar,
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ICD-10 is the Pathway to Big Data in Healthcare
If big data in healthcare is the future for medicine, then ICD-10 is the way to get there.
Over the past year, most of the news surrounding the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) has been either bureaucratic or comical in nature. Last fall, another delay of the new coding system’s implementation deadline was met with a ton of mixed feelings. Most organizations truly weren’t ready. In fact, in a survey of 1300 healthcare professionals, 55% agreed with the
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