If I told you to picture a gamer, what comes to mind? Likely a teenager or young adult sitting at a desk in their game room, which is outfitted with a multitude of monitors, gaming consoles, and other gadgets. The last image that would probably come to mind is that of a 70-year-old woman wearing a virtual reality headset and playing an interactive game. But you'd be surprised to learn that this is just as much of an accurate depiction of a "gamer" as the first example.
Fifteen percent of
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
The State of Digital Health Investment and What It Means for Health Organizations
Over the last several years there’s been significant investment in digital healthcare startups and growth-stage organizations, particularly those showing technical innovation that delivers improved health outcomes and more efficient care delivery models. Digital health organizations that translate investment dollars into quality outcomes will emerge as leaders by focusing on core challenges faced by major players across the healthcare industry. Recent trends shaping the digital health space will
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Biomaterial Technology Breakthrough: Addressing Immune Response Complications in Orthopedics
The last time we saw any meaningful advance in the development of biomaterial technology used in orthopedic implants, particularly in spinal implantation, was before Bill Clinton’s presidency. Since the 1990s, this field has remained relatively stagnant, with titanium and PEEK (polyetheretherketone) being the basis for virtually all spinal implants. However, both of these biomaterials have important limitations.
Engineering historically has focused on the biomechanical aspects of spinal
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AI Empowers Healthcare: Streamlined Data, Supported Workers, Enhanced Patient Experiences
The healthcare industry is known for holding on to data – and for good reason. With valuable insights and patterns to be derived from patient information, more is more. Where healthcare IT departments run into issues is when this data becomes unmanageable: disorganized and siloed and partially stored in dusty offices with the rest sitting exposed on outdated legacy systems. My point? With more than 30 percent of the world’s data generated by healthcare systems, it’s growing impossible for
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Resisting M&As: 5 Steps to Retain Ownership for Mid-Size Healthcare Organizations
The healthcare landscape is continually evolving, and for mid-sized healthcare organizations, this evolution presents both challenges and opportunities. While larger healthcare systems may have more resources to tackle growth, smaller entities like medical groups, community hospitals, and rural hospitals often find it difficult to develop and implement growth strategies that can make a significant impact.
For that reason, headlines are replete with news of medical group buyouts, acquisitions,
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Better Data for Better Health Among Medicaid Recipients
During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, over 10 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid – nearly a 14% increase from the beginning of 2020. A month before the public health emergency ended on May 11, 2023, 87 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid. The increase was driven by multiple factors, including the pause of all periodic eligibility reviews during the public health emergency. Now, all Medicaid enrollees face the return of the redetermination process by state agencies – the process
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What it Will Take To Trust Healthcare AI Models?
As ChatGPT and similar Large Language Model (LLM) tools gather and organize data in responses, it’s important to understand how the data they use has been curated. Medical science is constantly evolving, with previously accepted conclusions and standards being supplanted by newer information. Yet the outdated and sometimes disproven body of literature is often still quite large.
For example, external carotid to internal carotid (EC/IC) bypass for cerebral ischemia due to cerebrovascular
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How AI Can Help with Patient Self-Scheduling
As every patient knows, scheduling a doctor’s appointment can be a real nightmare. Patients are exasperated with irritating phone menus, endless wait times, and cumbersome scheduling procedures. Meanwhile, healthcare staff are drowning in relentless scheduling calls and laborious booking procedures that leave them exhausted and burnt out.
Clearly, the current system isn’t working for anybody. Healthcare facilities are aware of the problem, but many struggle to do anything about it.
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Creating Accessible Digital Signage in Healthcare
I have heard the word “Inclusion” quite a bit lately, and I’ve noticed that people seem to be throwing the word around as though everyone knows what it means. Many organizations claim to be inclusive while doing little to actually prove it. This occurs in all industries, but the problem is particularly consequential in health care, where there’s a lot more on the line: patient outcomes and recovery rates.
Inclusivity ties into the idea of health equity, the principle of fairness and justice
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3 Ways Developers & Clinicians Can Unite to Drive Innovation
While contemporary healthcare is slowly but surely embracing novel technologies, front-line nurses are still a much under-used resource in bridging the gap between innovation and patient well-being. Digitalization in the healthcare sector has perhaps the most significant impact potential as the technology with the transformative power to change the way nursing is practiced. Effective adoption of these technologies comes with measurable benefits in
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