There will be a plethora of firms diving into the AI ocean of ‘solutions’ over the next three years. But…
News 3/22/24
Top News
Digital diabetes management solutions increase healthcare spending without delivering meaningful clinical benefits, according to a review of evidence by the Peterson Health Technology Institute.
The study found that the tools facilitate small, clinically unimportant and sometimes temporary reductions in HbA1c that have little impact on overall health.
The report concludes that the solutions “increase net healthcare spending for purchasers because the small, estimated savings are less than the cost of the solution.”
The authors also note that the solutions require patients to record their self-management activities, which may not happen regularly.
Their advice for providers: “Because these digital health solutions complement (rather than substitute for) usual care, they represent an additional cost. Furthermore, these solutions can be labor intensive for provider practices to set-up and document for reimbursement, and effort from the provider and patient is required for implementation. As a result, providers should be cautious when considering the patient benefits weighed against the spending impact of these programs”
Click to enlarge the above graphic for a list of products in the categories reviewed.
Teladoc Health probably didn’t need this reminder that paying $18.5 billion for Livongo the fall of 2020 was unwise, especially now that the entire TDOC business is valued at just $2.5 billion.
Reader Comments
From CPAhole: “Re: disruption. What do you see as the next disruption in the delivery of health IT?” This technology CEO wasn’t optimistic about technology-goosed disruption in the rest of his email to me and neither am I. I don’t think you can disrupt technology without disrupting the delivery of health services, and I see little to suggest that the powers that be, including the elected ones, have an appetite to kill the golden goose. People leave HIMSS every year buzzed on their annual Kool-Aid top-off that technology will improve our embarrassing standing among developed nations in health, cost, and lack of insurance coverage. I could have expressed optimism about AI like most uninspired pundits, but I don’t see how whiz-bang diagnoses and point-of-care research findings help people who can’t afford treatments or even get appointments. Those of us who spend our days in the carpeted parts of healthcare are jarred by reality when we, or our family members, become patients who have to deal with the infuriating system that we created and that lines our pockets. Still, technology can make some inefficient and ineffective parts a bit better – just don’t expect technology to fuel consumer-level disruption or to power big moves of our societal health needle. I am now successfully vented like a time-expired Instant Pot, thank you, so it’s your turn to tell me what you think. What technology could disrupt or at least markedly improve health services delivery?
From No Cap (IYKYK): “Re: the quotes sent to Existential Dreadlocks about attending conferences. They are aren’t wrong. Conferences are a boondoggle, spurred by the FOMO inertia of company brass, salespeople, and marketers who want to be at the cool kids’ party. Thinking that the next $MM deal is there for the taking.” I’m picturing a “Self-Importance Summit,” where those industry gadabouts who are known for public displays of self-affection sit in their own booths, where they interview each other for podcasts, present each other with fake awards, and “network”at a never-ending happy hour by energetically exchanging business cards like jousting medieval knights.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Today I learned that you can send documents to Amazon’s Kindle reader app. An author sent me a PDF proof of their book, which I wanted to read on my IPad. I Googled and found Amazon’s Send to Kindle webpage, where you can send PDF and DOC files to your Kindle library and then read them pretty much like a normal Kindle book. You can also send files directly to the Kindle app on IOS and Android, export them to Kindle from Word, or email them directly to your Kindle account’s email address (who knew that it had one?) Amazon also provides a Chrome extension that can send full webpages to a user’s Kindle library. TL;DR – you can read most kinds of documents on your Kindle app or device.
Webinars
March 27 (Wednesday) 3 ET. “Houston Methodist: Deploying clinical AI at scale for improved outcomes.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, chief of cardiovascular disease prevention and wellness, Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center; Brenda Campbell, RN, senior consultant, HM Health System Innovations; Nassib Chamoun, MS, founder and CEO, HDAI. The presenters will share how an interdisciplinary team collaborated to successfully use predictive models and a novel AI-driven approach to address post-discharge mortality. They will also describe how they expanded use of the platform to reduce clinician time spent digging through the EHR with a one-page risk profile, including codes extracted from notes using generative AI, and targeting their highest risk patients for extra attention. They will speak to how they overcame barriers to bringing AI at scale to support clinicians across the care continuum.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Pocket Health raises $33 million in Series B funding. The company offers a patient-centric, subscription-based image exchange platform that explains medical terms, detects follow-up recommendations, and suggests questions that the patient should ask their doctor.
CareCloud reports Q4 results: revenue down 13%, adjusted EPS $0.30 versus $0.25, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue. CCLD shares have lost 63% of their value in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 27% rise, valuing the company at $20 million. The company said in the earnings call that it will implement a cost savings program and will introduce an ambient listening solution for visit documentation. It took a $42 million goodwill impairment charge in Q4 as a result of suspending the payment of dividends, resulting in FY2023 loss of $49 million.
Process automation vendor Syllable acquires Actium Health, whose system reviews EHR data to identify patients who may need specific medical services.
People
Optimum Healthcare IT founders Gene Scheurer and Jason Mabry return as CEO and president, respectively, and the company promotes Brian Symonds, MBA to chief digital officer and head of digital transformation.
Announcements and Implementations
Artera adds a referral service to its Harmony platform that automates outreach, appointment management and self-scheduling, and pre-visit communications.
A study of Stanford Health Care’s use of AI to draft responses to patient message finds that clinician adoption was higher than expected and assessments of burden and burnout were improved, but EHR audit logs showed no time savings even though study participants perceived that the process was faster.
An Optum insider says that executives at its financially underperforming eastern division planned to order nurses to find old medical conditions in patient charts, whether they remained active or not, to support increased billing. The plan was for the nurse to add detail that would bring those issues back into the active problem list, and when the chart was next updated with a new visit, offshore coders would bill Medicare for the nurse-created codes without the physician’s knowledge.
Privacy and Security
A British privacy watchdog is investigating reports that at least one employee of the London Clinic tried to read the medical records of the Princess of Wales during her January stay for abdominal surgery.
New HHS guidance reiterates that covered entities can’t use web tracking technologies that might result in PHI disclosure, but clarifies that webpages that don’t require users to log in and that don’t have access to PHI don’t fall under HIPAA’s purview even if the user can be tied to an IP address.
Other
Someone used AI to generate this graphic that I saw on Linkedin. Which is most bizarre — the missing and deformed fingers, the oddly designed stethoscopes, the faceless watches, or the guy at the top who is either missing his right hand or using it to violate his female colleague?
Boston surgeons transplant a pig’s kidney into a patient. They didn’t mention how the pig is doing.
Sponsor Updates
- Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new case study, “Cooper University Hospital of New Jersey achieves USP compliance success with Simplifi+.”
- FinThrive releases a new Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Let’s Give Healthcare Consumers a Clean Slate!”
- Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Technology Planning for Future Growth.”
- InterSystems announces that, as part of the 2024 Best in KLAS Awards, its HealthShare Unified Care Record has been named the regional winner in the Shared Care Records/HIE category in Europe.
- Neuroflow releases a new podcast, “Neuroflow NLP Technology Surfaces Suicide Risk That Assessments Alone May Miss.”
Blog Posts
- Medical Billing Best Practices for Optimal Revenue in Urgent Care (Experity)
- Fixing Inefficient and Costly Prior Authorization: A Path to Modernization (FinThrive)
- How Cyber Attacks Impact Patient Trust (Fortified Health Security)
- Themes on the path to revolutionize clinical trials at SCOPE Summit 2024 (Inovalon)
- How EHRs Elevate Rural and Community Nurses (Medhost)
- Connection Fuels Interoperability at HIMSS24 (Meditech)
- Unlock New Telehealth and Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Opportunities in 2024 (Net Health)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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I’m a retired psychologist living with type 2 diabetes for over 20 years. I’m not surprised that digital diabetes management didn’t accomplish much. No one in the field seems to have any understanding of health behavior change theories, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying to do “lifestyle modification.”
I’ll argue the opposite regarding conferences in today’s world. Given that it is nearly impossible to get prospects to see or answer emails, no one answers their phone and text messaging is considered too invasive, I’m arguing internally that we need MORE conferences not less, for the simple reason that we need the opportunity for human interaction with health system clinicians and executives. Sales is still about people buying from people, and you’ve got systems whose resources are scattered all over or working hybrid or fully remote, and the opportunity for in-person meetings continues to struggle. That is why conferences are important.
Thank you for mentioning the infuriating system that we created. Recently I have discovered that my doctors clearly only have 15 minutes to do their thing. They aren’t really interested in listening and especially not interested in collaborating. “Here’s my plan. You will do this. Good-bye.” Is essentially what I got out of my last few visits. My PCP is still fairly good, but all of the specialists that i have seen lately could have been AI and I probably would have had a better experience.
The study regarding digital diabetes management solutions did not include the apps that are provided by CGM (continuous glucose monitoring) products, such as Dexcom. These apps display and analyze the data collected from the CGM devices, and present a comprehensive view of glucose management over time. They have predictive algorithms that estimate the patient’s Hgb A1C levels. It would have been interesting to determine whether these apps save time and reduce costs for patients and providers.
It depends on how you define health IT.
If you define health IT as enterprise software, the truth is that no enterprise software aims to be “disruptive.” Record keeping technologies like EHRs, ERPs, CRMs, etc. help customers increase their market power.
The only true innovation of the last five years is telehealth. The pre and peri pandemic telehealth focus was getting providers within health systems to deliver care via video conference. This is the most unimaginative, high cost use of technology and it is largely doomed as a software enterprise. The market for this will consolidate around EHR developed solutions and one independent vendor. The market and health systems are disillusioned about this form of telehealth except as a way of maintaining the brand of a mega health system.
COVID doubled or tripled the percentage of consumers who have used telehealth; I’d guess 80% of the nation used telehealth and would accept some form of healthcare via telehealth if the value was there. Patients are sometimes now forced to use telehealth; try to get a new therapist these days, and you will find virtual is the only option. Telehealth changed the therapy game. What other areas of healthcare could it change?
Maybe Novo Nordisk will make a shell company that runs an ad on TV saying “Get your Ozempic at TotallyNotNovoNordisk.com.” A startup will dump VC money into online ads to have an army of NPs living in low COL areas Tamiflu the nation. Primary care will spiral so far out of reach for High Deductible plans that people will be forced to use their insurance provided, virtual primary care/urgent care.
These are all areas where there is a combination of poor economics for current players, lack of access for many patients, and a way for highly capitalized players like VCs, pharma, or insurance companies to capture an outsized portion of the market. None of these outcomes are super great, but they are the consequence of what you’ve pointed out. The powers that be are content to let the system deteriorate for at least another decade. In the meantime, there’s money to be made.