News 11/29/23

Top News

Ardent Health Services works to recover from a November 23 ransomware attack that forced it to take its computer systems offline across its six-state network of 36 facilities.

The health system specifically mentions in its latest data security update that it is working to restore access to Epic.

Numerous of its providers resorted to ED diversions and postponing surgeries and appointments.

Reader Comments

From Drupal: “Re: community hospitals that offer oncology and don’t use Epic or Cerner. I am looking to speak to a hospital contact who understands the market opportunity for chemotherapy ordering, medication preparation, and patient-reported outcomes. Can you offer advice or contacts?” I’ll ask readers who have ideas to contact me and I’ll connect you.

From Reese Peace: “Re: AI. It seems that use cases have polarized to the complex and theoretical on one end and and the rather dull effectiveness boosters on the other.” I expect initial AI successes to focus on that latter category, where solutions could be developed that are inexpensive, non-threatening to clinicians, free of FDA oversight, and non-intrusive to patients. Examples:

• Journal article search, although that will be limited by the paywalls of for-profit journals that will expect to be paid for allow their content – which was provided free by authors, many of them working under taxpayer grants – to be used for AI training and then for user access.
• EHR search, including PDFs and free text. This is simple and already being done to unknown extent.
• Creating patient-facing documents, including those specifically create clinician dictation and then formatted and optimized for patient-level reading.
• Pre-visit triage and summarization. In-person visits could be prefaced, as with telehealth, by a pre-visit chatbot interview or data collection to avoid wasting encounter time.
• Encounter transcription and data extraction, as with ambient clinical documentation.
• Continuous monitoring of data from wearables and remote patient monitoring.
• Streamline insurer prior authorization and initial claim validation.
• Monitoring during surgery with visual and audio alerts or responses to questions.
• AI-powered robotics for manual tasks.
• Improving and personalizing available clinical decision support.
• Inbox management, which is clearly the frontrunner for AI value in healthcare.
• Guide non-physicians through patient encounters via protocols and guidance under some level of supervision.
• Predict workload, staffing needs, patients who are likely to miss appointments, and scheduling preferences.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I added a previously unnoticed sort-by-date option to the HIStalk search function, which is powered by Google Site Search and is listed as a link at the top of the page. I’ll definitely use this.

Bitdefender offered me a one-year renewal for my soon-expiring five-device Total Security for $50, after which a quick Google search led me to find a two-year renewal on Best Buy for $31. You can buy a renewal at any time, and paste the key code into Bitdefender Central, where it tacks the additional years onto your expiration date.

Reader Mark once again celebrated the holidays with a generous donation to my Donors Choose teacher grant project, which I then boosted with GivingTuesday matching funds as well as those from my Anonymous Vendor Executive to fully and anonymously fund these STEM-related projects:

• Noise-cancelling headphones for Ms. D’s middle school science academy class in Youngstown, OH.
• Math games for Ms. O’s elementary school class in Rosharon, TX.
• Math manipulatives for Ms. R’s elementary school class in Redford, MI.
• Hydroponic gardening kits for Mr. K’s high school class in Burton, MI.
• STEM manipulatives for Ms. I’s elementary school class in Far Rockaway, NY.
• Gardening kits for Mr. H’s elementary school class in Paterson, NJ.
• STEM activity kits for Ms. A’s elementary school class in Savannah, GA.
• Math puzzles for Mx. R’s middle school class in Saint Cloud, MN.
• Geometry review books for Mr. H’s high school class in Bronx, NY.
• A laptop speaker for Ms. G’s elementary school class in San Lorenzo, CA.
• Math manipulatives for Ms. R’s elementary school class in Magna, UT

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

India-based Tata Consultancy Services, which was just assessed with $140 million in punitive damages for stealing Epic’s intellectual property by having its employees pretend to be hospital consultants, is hit with a similar $210 million judgment involving insurance software. The lawsuit alleges that a TCS employee copied a competing firm’s source code and documentation and sent it to colleagues who were struggling to figure out how to perform an insurance calculation.

Bloomberg says that Amazon has failed to disrupt healthcare while over-promising and under-delivering. Current and former employees say the company is overconfident that it can beat healthcare incumbents without hiring healthcare expertise or listening to experts, adding that its recently announced One Medical discount for Prime members isn’t much of a development.

Sales

• Baptist Memorial Health Care (TN) chooses Optimum Healthcare IT to lead its EHR implementation on Amazon Web Services.

People

PointClickCare Technologies promotes Travis Palmquist to SVP/GM of emerging markets.

Sondra Hornsey, MS (Stanford Health Care) joins Vanderbilt University Medical Center (TN) as chief privacy officer.

Hearst promotes Carolyn Simpkins, MD, PhD to president of its Zynx Health business.

Shally Pannikode, MBA (Liberty Mutual) joins Zelis Health as CTO.

Erica Drazen, MS, ScD — who retired in 2013 after a 40+ year health IT career that included roles at Arthur D. Little, First Consulting Group, and CSC — died November 25. She was 77. 

Announcements and Implementations

Klickitat Valley Health (WA) launches virtual consult technology from Eagle Telemedicine to support its ED, hospitalists, and nurses.

Nym makes its autonomous medical coding technology available to inpatient facilities.

Glacial Ridge Health System will go live on Meditech Expanse this week.

Amazon Web Services announces Amazon Q, a generative AI assistant for businesses.

Other

A technology conference is exposed for using AI to create fictitious female speakers to create the illusion of gender diversity and attract presenters who decline events with all-male lineups. The for-profit DevTernity conference brags that it selects speakers using the “Hollywood Principle” in which it replaces calls for papers with “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” The conference organizer says it was too hard to get women speakers for the $870 online conference and the phony bios were just a placeholder. The conference was cancelled after speakers and sponsors pulled out. The conference organizer is also suspected of creating a fake female tech Instagram influencer who mostly showed skin as she pitched the conference.

A South Dakota hunting lodge operator is gored by a bison and is evaluated and treated in the ambulance from an ED doctor who was 140 miles away. Jim Lutter, 67, was picked by a ambulance squad volunteer, who left his hardware store job to respond to the 911 call and used the state-funded ambulance telehealth system to get ED physician instructions and then alert the hospital that they were coming.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Transforming Care with RPM Seamless Integration.”
• Sydney Adventist Hospital in Australia enhances its MRI appointment utilization and patient care through Foxo and Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise imaging platform.
• Dimensional Insight announces that it has been recognized as the top outsourced analytics solution in Black Book Market Research’s annual outsourcing services survey.
• Trillium Health Partners in Canada adds AI-as-a-Service capabilities from Sectra to its Sectra enterprise imaging technology.
• SouthLake Regional Health Centre clinicians in Ontario reduce time spent on medication reconciliation by 64% using DrFirst’s MedHx powered by SmartSuite technology, according to the results of a recent pilot study.

Blog Posts

• The Evolution of Patient Access: A Look at the Modern Landscape (Vyne Medical)
• Future-forward healthcare: Data platform considerations (Arcadia)
• Trusted Data Sharing and Collaboration for Health and Biomedical Research – Pick your acronym (Aridhia)
• Cameras and Computer Vision: Accurately Capturing Human Movement with Injury Prevention Tech (Bardavon)
• Beyond the Media Buy: Opening the Pandora’s Box of Point-of-Care Program Measurement (ConnectiveRx)
• Why Healthcare Organizations Should Pursue a Multi-Cloud Strategy (CloudWave)
• The Role of Data in Healthcare Performance Improvement (Dimensional Insight)
• The Evolution of Healthcare Technology Roles: A Guide for Hiring Managers (Direct Recruiters)
• AI, Analytics, and Burnout: CHIME 2023 Fall Forum Insights (Divurgent)
• Optimizing Medication Management Workflows in Your EHR (DrFirst)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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