Welcome to the inaugural 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
Walgreens has launched a clinical trial business; the company is focusing specifically on increasing racial and ethnic diversity in clinical trials, as nearly half of its 9,000 are in areas defined as “socially vulnerable.” The effort will be led by three service lines: Patient recruitment (driven the company’s foundation of pharmacy and patient-authorized clinical data), decentralized clinical trials (engaging patients at home, virtually or in-person), and real-world evidence (supporting trial sponsors’ drug development strategies as well as clinical trial design and execution).
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has some money for you. The latest Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) in Health IT funding opportunity will award grants to applicants working in two areas. The first is addressing health equity and SDOH using a combination of open-source technology and EHR systems. The second is demonstrating use cases for patient-generated health data to address equity in clinical care and research. Applications are due Monday, Aug. 15.
Sobering news from Australia: After spending 12 years and $2 billion, less than 12% of registered My Health Records used the service last year. Officials said use was largely driven by people accessing COVID-19 vaccination records and test results – in fact, less that 2% of patients who went to the emergency department had doctors or nurses look at their records.
Care coordination network CarePort released its 2021 growth numbers. The company added 2,500 post-acute providers and 13,000 home- and community-based services organizations to its network last year. In addition, the company’s CarePort Referral Management product enabled nearly 25 million referrals in 2021.
Partnerships
- California-based Centene subsidiary Health Net is now offering at-home COVID-9 vaccinations through a partnership with MedArrive to Medi-Cal (Medicaid) beneficiaries.
- HSBlox and HealthCorum are partnering to support the administration of value-based care programs.
- New York-based health information exchange network Hixny has partnered with Healthy Alliance to simplify the process of referring patients to community-based services.
- Imaging vendors Intelerad Medical Systems and DiA Imaging Analysis have come together to offer DiA’s LVivo Seamless AI-based cardiac ultrasound software as part of Intelerad’s cardiac imaging product known as IntelePACS.
Studies
A study from physical therapy platform Luna found that in-home physical therapy saves an average of $3,000 per post-surgical rehabilitation case. This amounts to savings of 55% to 70% for Medicare beneficiaries who are part of a knee or hip replacement bundled payment program.
Research from cardiology diagnostics company Cardiologs shows that AI can predict the occurrence of atrial fibrillation within 14 days with accuracy ranging from 69% to 79%. The technology proved better at predicting aFib that the traditional method of ambulatory electrocardiogram.
A paper from digital patient engagement company CipherHealth concluded that patients contacted within two days of an ED discharge were 25% less likely to return to the ED within one week. In addition, these patients were were more likely to follow up with a clinician, say they understood their health issues, and receive their discharge medications.
Sales
- Virtual care provider Biofourmis will be supporting the hospital at home program for Appalachian Regional Healthcare, which operates 14 hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia.
- Cloud software and infrastructure vendor Infor signed a deal with Kaleida Health, which serves more than 1 million patients annually in the Buffalo, N.Y. area.
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