Welcome to the weekly edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features. This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.
News
The Sequoia Project and AHIMA are co-sponsoring the Data Usability Taking Root initiative, which will aim to implement data usability guidance published by a Sequoia Project workgroup with input form more than 260 organizations. Supporting organizations include Epic, the HIMSS EHR Association and HCA Healthcare.
HCA was in the news for other reasons, too – hackers got their hands on HCA patient data and put it up for sale in an online forum. The data breach impacted about 11 million patients and included demographic and contact information, though the provider said no clinical, financial, or otherwise sensitive information was breached.
ONC has approved six standards as part of its annual annual Standards Version Advancement Process. The most notable approval is USCDI v3, and others include two implementation guides from CMS for Quality Reporting Document Architecture and three HL7 standards (for C-CDA, FHIR, and QRDA).
Studies
A report from Health Gorilla found that 95% of patients are concerned about the possibility of data breaches affecting their medical records, and 65% distrust “Big Tech” to store their data. When it comes to sharing data, patients are most comfortable doing it for reasons related to treatment (71%) as compared to payment (39%), operations (28%), or public health (23%).
A survey from The Harris Poll and ClearDATA found that 81% of Americans incorrectly assume that all protected health information collected by digital health apps is protected under HIPAA. Meanwhile, 58% have never considered where their PHI is shared when using those apps – in part because privacy is secondary to insurance coverage and convenience for most digital health users.
As healthcare organizations turn to edge computing to support the hospital at home and other types of remote care, most rely on outside help, according to the 2023 AT&T Cybersecurity Insights Report: Edge Computing. Among organizations surveyed, 64% rely on external expertise for project planning and 71% do so for production.
One in four patients have self-diagnosed themselves based on information they got from social media, according to research from Tebra. Of these patients, 43% followed up with a medical professional – and 82% had their self-diagnosis confirmed.
Partnerships
- CVS Caremark has integrated GoodRx prescription pricing into its Caremark Cost Saver product.
- Maternal health data platform eLovu Health is integrating with Brightside Health and Ruth Health, providers of telemental health and virtual maternity care, respectively.
- TeleMedik is integrating Mediktor AI technology into its Triage AI service.
Product and Company News
- Cotiviti is expanding its end-to-end Coordination of Benefits Validation solution to review claims after adjudication but before payment.
- H1 relaunched Faculty Opinions as H1 Connect and expanded the availability of clinical trial and medical research evaluations.
- Noyo released APIs to connect insurance carriers to its benefits software platforms.
- Virtual specialty care vendor Summus released Summus Peer-to-Peer to support specialty consults.
- CommonWell Health Alliance surpassed 200 million individuals in its nationwide network, representing roughly 62% of all Americans.
- Patient experience vendor Vital surpassed 1 million users across more than 100 hospital clients.
Sales
- National wound care center Healogics implemented Net Health’s Tissue Analytics solution.
- Illinois-based Primary Care Joliet implemented eClinicalWorks EHR and healow. In addition, Pediatric Cardiology Center of Oregon selected eClinicalWorks Cloud EHR and PRISMA.
- Georgia-based Jasper Memorial Hospital chose Accelecom to expand its high-speed internet and voice services.
- Northwell Health is implementing Prolucent Health to better manage its contingent labor workforce.
- University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville selected Paige AI for decision support in cancer diagnosis.
- West Virginia-based Vandalia Health is expanding its Oracle Health EHR implementation to all 12 hospitals in its network.
Awards and Certifications
- The Massachusetts AI and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC) funded five pilot programs at $250,000 each. Involved companies are DREEM, Electronic Caregiver, Impairment Science, Tellus, TraceBio, and CH2P.
- Health information network Availity was awarded Compliance Leader Verification by the Ethisphere Institute.
People
- Coding automation company Fathom named Enoch Shih as Chief Operating Officer.
- Data analytics company Arcadia appointed Dr. Kate Behan as Chief Medical Officer.
- Medicare ACO Vytalize Health added two board members: Dave Wichmann at Jory Capital and Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips at Press Ganey.
- The Coalition for Health AI named Dr. Christine Swisher as an advisor; she’s the Chief Science Officer of clinical decision support vendor Ronin.
If you have news that you’d like us to consider for a future edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features, please submit them on this page. Please include any relevant links and let us know if news is under embargo. Note that submissions received after the close of business on Thursday may not be included in Bonus Features until the following week.
