CMS: Data API could cut costs in the long-term

With help from Arthur Allen (@arthurallen202) and Darius Tahir (@dariustahir)

DISPATCHES FROM #BBDC: CMS hosted its first developer conference at the White House Monday, inviting coders, venture capitalists and government officials to discuss new ways of crunching claims data. The event focused on Blue Button 2.0, an API that directs Medicare claims data into outside apps or research programs. Blue Button 2.0 builds on the original Blue Button, which lets Medicare beneficiaries download their own data.

The primary goal of Monday’s conference — billed as #BBDC, after Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (or WWDC) — was to tap into a network of developers who can build out products for patients, payers and providers, a senior White House official told POLITICO in advance of the event.

Your author dropped by for the part of the conference open to press. Here are a few takeaways:

—CMS says data API could cut costs in the long-term: Blue Button 2.0 was one of the first outputs from MyHealtheData, the collaboration led by CMS administrator Seema Verma and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner aimed at increasing patients’ access to health information.

In the short term, apps built on the Blue Button 2.0 API could directly improve beneficiaries’ health by flagging harmful medication interactions or reminding patients to seek preventive care before conditions escalate, for instance, Verma said Monday.

The data could also help payers and providers cut costs. Clinicians could see if a beneficiary has already received certain tests before ordering new ones; in the longer term, researchers and pharmaceutical companies could use the data to develop personalized treatments. “You have that data to let us know what’s going to work best, what’s going to be the most cost-effective treatment for that particular person,” Verma said.

CMS and the White House appear to want industry to do the bulk of the innovating.

“Right now, it’s just gobbledygook claims data,” Verma said. “App developers are taking the data and making it more meaningful for patients.”

Several hundred entities are stepping up to do just that and have registered with CMS to use the API, including Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Alphabet’s life sciences unit Verily, Humetrix, Anthem, MIT, Medware, and 23 and Me. About 150 people were signed up for Monday’s conference.

The White House event also invited venture capitalists such as John Doerr, partly to connect developers with potential funding sources, the White House official told POLITICO.

Verma said the administration will likely remain agnostic instead of pushing developers to build specific applications. Its primary role, she added, is presenting more patient and quality data in API form, as long as it’s secure and maintains beneficiaries’ privacy.

—Tech titans promise to cooperate on interoperability: Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce, all of whom participated in the event, took a pledge Monday promising to break down barriers to “frictionless data exchange.”

Though there are no specific deliverables or timelines associated with the pledge, the companies said they shared a “common quest to unlock the potential in healthcare data, to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.”

The pledge also acknowledges the importance of “[o]pen standards, open specifications, and open source tools” and efforts such as FHIR and the Argonaut Project.

The six companies are also members of the Information Technology Industry Council, a tech-focused lobbying group. The pledge could be a “catalyst to creating better health outcomes for patients at a lower cost,” ITI president and CEO Dean Garfield said in a news release.

—App challenge seeks to harness patient-reported data: Also at BBDC, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announced a competition seeking apps that collect data directly from patients instead of through clinicians. That information is especially tricky to incorporate into the provider workflow because there isn’t a standard way to collect it, AHRQ said.

The three-phase “Step Up App Challenge” first seeks five-page business proposals, then apps capable of collecting patient-reported data and then more mature prototypes that could be tested in MedStar Health practices. The challenge has a total prize pool of $250,000 that will be divvied up amongst various winners in each phase.

ONC is heading up efforts to come up with technical specifications for the challenge. The application deadline is Sept. 24.

eHealth Tweetof the day: Ben Miller @miller7 Dear physician friends, doing your medical notes in the middle seat on an airplane is not necessarily a smart idea no matter how cool it is your EHR is available by WiFi. I know you are busy, but please be sensitive to patient info.

It’s TUESDAY at Morning eHealth. Your author is intrigued by the proliferation of beet- and charcoal-infused lattes but has so far been too chicken to order one. Extol the health benefits of taproots and carbon to [email protected]. Reach the rest of the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

DEEPMIND AI DETECTS EYE DISEASE: Google’s artificial intelligence-focused property DeepMind is developing technology that can interpret eye scans and recommend referrals and treatment for eye disease just as accurately as doctors, according to new research published in Nature Medicine.

“In the long term, we hope this will help doctors quickly prioritise patients who need urgent treatment,” DeepMind’s co-founder Mustafa Suleyman wrote in a blog post.

The technology was trained on thousands of eye scans but is still in the initial research phase and will require clinical trials and regulatory approval before it can be used in practice, Suleyman wrote. DeepMind, headquartered in London, has partnered with U.K.-based Moorfields Eye Hospital. According to the post, Moorfield clinicians could use the technology for free across 30 hospital and community clinics, as long as it’s validated for general use in clinical trials.

NAACOS URGES CMS TO ADOPT NEW DATA STANDARDS: In response to a request for information from the House Health Care Innovation Caucus about the impact of interoperability on value-based payment, the National Association of ACOs is pushing CMS to encourage more data sharing.

“The ACO model is only successful if providers are able to share patient health information in ways that can allow practitioners to better coordinate the care provided to its patients,” the response reads.

CMS should require that hospitals release certain data, including notifications when patients show up in the emergency room, when they’re discharged, and when they’re transferred to another facility, according to NAACOS. The agency should also require hospitals to make some of that data available to patients within 24 hours.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON:

—ICYMI: WSJ’s take on IBM’s struggles with Watson in health care

—A Forbes feature on a doctor who says his genetic test can flag people at risk of heart attack