Editor's Note: Ingrid Oakley-Girvan, Ph.D., M.P.H. is an epidemiologist trained at Stanford. She is the VP of Strategy at Medable, a Palo Alto-based health platform start-up.A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that many health apps may be sharing patients’ health data without their knowledge. Four-fifths of 211 diabetes apps examined did not have privacy policies. And in January 2016, Fitbit was slapped with a class-action lawsuit alleging that its
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Data Breaches: Moving Security Perimeter Back to Server Level
Editor's Note: Jon Senger is the CTO of Vertiscale . He writes frequently on the on the topic of HIPAA compliance and the role of MSPs in healthcare security.The leading cause of data breach incidents in healthcare facilities is lost or stolen end-user devices, including laptops and tablets. Such breaches have led to six figure fines for HIPAA violations in some cases, and with the stepped up enforcement coming in 2016 promised by the Department of Health and Human Services, we can expect to
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Can Middleware Replace HIEs and Solve EHR Interoperability?
Editor's Note: Dr. Donald Voltz is a board-certified anesthesiologist, researcher, medical educator, and entrepreneur. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is once again asking the health care community for its thoughts on establishing metrics to determine if or to the extent to which electronic health records are interoperable. The push to achieve interoperability is in response to last year’s mandate by Congress, contained in the Medicare Access and
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ACA Exchanges: 3 Keys to Sustainability
Editor’s Note: Chris Althoff and Larry Briski are partners at Invoyent, a healthcare IT company focused on software implementations for hospital systems and the insurance industry.ACA exchanges. Is sustainable business to be found in the new marketplace? With industry powerhouses like UnitedHealth and several Blues reporting major challenges, the long-term viability of the healthcare exchanges is in question.The U.S. government needs to take steps to improve market viability, like closing
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Healthcare Lessons from Facebook: Connecting Your Enterprise with Social Networking Tech
Editor's Note: Andy Aroditis is CEO and founder of NextGate, ranked No.1 in KLAS for enterprise master patient index (EMPI). Users of Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media applications are often amazed by how omniscient the technology seems to be. How do a bunch of algorithms know, out of billions of users, who you might consider a friend, or which videos you should consider watching just because you liked “The Dark Knight”?A big part of the answer is a core social media technology that
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Why We Cannot Dilute the Doctor in this New Era of Digital Health
Simply put, we cannot dilute the doctor over and over again, until there is no visible trace of human physicians in our digital health brew of healthcare. For decades and decades we have been counting the number of doctors in America. For decades and decades we have been coming up short compared to other developed nations, and some less developed ones as well. A poorly educated person may be tempted to suggest that we should “make” more doctors. After all, there is hardly a shortage of young
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Beware the EMR “Ripple Effect” on Revenue Cycle
Editor's Note: David Dyke is the Vice President of Product Management at RelayHealth Financial. EHR-EMR conversions can be complicated and disruptive. So don’t make them more problematic by making unnecessary changes to revenue cycle management systems.Like any major IT system implementation, an EMR conversion can be seriously disruptive to hospital operations–and finances. In addition to the many technical and clinical considerations of these projects, hospitals and health systems typically
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Newsflash: Healthcare Does Not Spend Enough on IT Data Security
Mathematically, the gap between $3.6 million and $17,000 is a chasm.This is something you know well if you’re Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, which paid the latter number to unlock patient data held hostage by malicious hackers using ransomware when the former number is what the hackers initially asked for.While the dramatic reduction in ransom may have caused Hollywood Presbyterian to breathe a sigh of relief, there is no reason they or you should feel comforted. Consider this an initial shot
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How Close Are We To AI-Automated Healthcare?
Editor's Note: Alex Meshkin is the CEO of Flow Health. Flow Health provides longitudinal care plan coordination and chronic care management services built on top of its platform, which is The Operating System for Value-Based CareSM. Follow him on Twitter at @AlexMeshkinWe have seen incredible progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) over the past few years, especially through the application of deep learning algorithms. AI systems will get even better as more data is
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Ensuring EHR Data Quality: What Comes Out Must Go In
Editor's Note: Karen Conway is the Executive Director of Industry Relations at GHX, a provider of healthcare-focused supply chain solutions. Much of the conversation at this year’s HIMSS conference was removing the barriers to the data that exists in electronic health records (EHRs). At least one session- the HIMSS Supply Chain Special Interest Group – focused on the overlooked need to first populate EHRs with quality data about the products used in healthcare. Otherwise, you know the old
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