The rapid escalation of COVID-19 patient cases has created new challenges for healthcare organizations to scale up testing and care services, while also reducing risk for non-critical patients or care workers. Healthcare IT professionals are being asked to digitally transform overnight, in supporting remote workers, telemedicine, outdoor triage tents, and a surge in patients and connected devices. Here are five key steps for healthcare IT departments to take in order to accommodate the new
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Health IT
COVID-19 Pandemic: Why Patients Need to Control Their Own Data
We’re in throes of a global pandemic. Healthcare providers must focus on fighting COVID-19, but we can’t afford to ignore the reason we’re going into this fight blind. Our best weapon is our own healthcare data. We are going to learn many things from this pandemic, not least of which is that the way we thought about data ownership over the previous decade needs to change.
Pandemics represent a system-wide attack on healthcare. Our best responses rely on social distancing, telemedicine, and
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What Health IT Thought Leaders Say HIMSS20 Would Have Focused On—If It Had Happened
What You Need to Know:
Health IT thought leaders share what HIMSS20 would have focused On—if It had happened.
- Hot topics include health IT to address COVID-19; artificial intelligence; EHR interoperability and usability; and more.
–Kuldeep Singh Rajput, CEO of Biofourmis, Boston, Mass., which provides digital therapeutics that power personalized predictive care
“Remote monitoring platforms and clinical-grade wearables combined with artificial intelligence [AI]-based
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Using Health IT to Preserve Antibiotics and Fight Drug-Resistance
In its latest report on antibiotic resistance, the CDC revealed that infection rates for many threat pathogens are stagnant or in a nominal decline. While this is promising news, there are still a startling 2.8 million cases of drug-resistant infections predicted this year, which will result in an estimated 35,000 deaths. What’s more, the speed at which some patients are developing resistance to last-resort antibiotics – those that are often reserved for special scenarios and designed
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Patient Data Liberation: HHS Releases Final Interoperability & Patient Access Rules
What You Need to Know:
- HHS finalizes interoperability rules that will implement interoperability and patient access provisions of the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) and support President Trump’s MyHealthEData initiative.
- The ONC Final Rule identifies and finalizes the reasonable and necessary activities that do not constitute information blocking while establishing new rules to prevent “information blocking” practices (e.g., anti-competitive behaviors) by
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Hospital Execs Believe Their EMRs Will Fail to Meet Their Future Needs, Report Finds
What You Need to Know:
- New Sage Growth Partners report reveals more than a quarter (27 percent) of respondents believe their EMR will fail to meet their future needs. COOs are the most pessimistic (67 percent) followed by CEOs (37 percent), and CFOs (34 percent).
- Hospital Technology Forecast 2020 market survey report reveals hospital leaders’ top health IT investment priorities, challenges, and opportunities.
- 35 percent of hospital executives say if they could go back in time,
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Chilmark Research: The Promise of AI & ML in Healthcare Report
What You Need to Know:
- New Chilmark Research report reveals artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technologies are capturing the imagination of investors and healthcare organizations—and are poised to expand healthcare frontiers.
- The latest report evaluates over 120 commercial AI/ML solutions in healthcare, explores future opportunities, and assesses obstacles to adoption at scale.
Interest and investment in healthcare AI/ML tools
is booming with approximately
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TeraRecon Acquired by SymphonyAI: What is the Impact for Medical Imaging Market?
On the 4th March 2020, TeraRecon announced it had signed an agreement to be acquired by the SymphonyAI Group. Here are the facts of the deal, followed by our take on the potential impact on the medical imaging market:
- The terms of the deal were not disclosed and TeraRecon will continue to operate business as usual. However, it will benefit from greater financial backing and the synergistic technologies from other companies in the Group’s portfolio.
- TeraRecon is an Advanced
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Amazon Alexa Devices Can Now Answer Medication-Related Questions
What You Need to Know:
- In a new collaboration between First Databank and Amazon, consumers will have access to a wide variety of FDB’s drug information through simple queries via Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based voice service.
- A subset of FDB’s drug information, trusted for more than 40 years by healthcare professionals, can now be accessed by consumers from any Alexa-enabled device.
- The Amazon Alexa integration provides custom content that allows consumers to ask about a drug’s
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Can EHRs Stand Up Marketplaces for Innovation?
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) continues to advocate for improved data exchange, with the interoperability and information blocking rules being the latest federal push.
One of the ONC’s goals with its latest guidance is to establish an ecosystem of innovation, with electronic health records (EHRs) serving as the foundation -- i.e., the platform enabling application development and user access.
But when it comes developing an EHR-based marketplace for
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