News

LAS VEGAS – ClearDATA unveiled Wednesday at HIMSS16 a cloud-based system designed to monitor HIPAA compliance levels throughout a healthcare organization’s IT environment. The ClearDATA Active Compliance and Security Monitoring Dashboard offers providers, pharmaceutical organizations, payers and their business associates transparency to quickly identify and remediate physical, technical and administrative safeguards that have drifted out of compliance in their IT settings, the vendor said. The dashboard is designed to provide healthcare organizations with a view into one of their most vulnerable environments for a data breach, their IT ecosystem, ClearDATA said. Using the dashboard, technology and security professionals can view their organizations’ compliance levels across configuration scanning, log-in and log monitoring, log retention, patch-level reporting and backup validation, with additional standard and custom checks added weekly, the vendor said. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] Each check is mapped to specific HIPAA security safeguards – should systems drift from compliance, the dashboard enables customers to view individual system details to best understand what steps are needed for remediation, the vendor said. In the wake of an actual breach, the first question organizations are asked is whether they can provide a full accounting of all their protected health information, including where it is stored and who has access to it, ClearDATA explained. The ClearDATA Active Compliance and Security Monitoring Dashboard gives insight into this data inventory, while also proving the extent to which measures are in place to protect it, the vendor said. “Healthcare IT and security professionals have never been so challenged as they are today with meeting HIPAA compliance standards and preventing a data breach at their organization,” said Darin Brannan, CEO of ClearDATA. “The dashboard offers these professionals a tool that rapidly pinpoints where security vulnerabilities exist, including in the context of a HIPAA compliance audit.” Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS -- A new survey from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in partnership with the Personal Connected Health Alliance claims 52 percent of hospitals currently use three or more connected health technologies while 47 percent are looking to expand the connected health technologies they use, citing tech that enables such services as telehealth, concierge, patient-generated health data and secure text messaging. The organizations announced the survey results Wednesday at the HIMSS16 Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas. The 2016 HIMSS Connected Health Survey, which polled 227 IT, informatics and clinical professionals in U.S. hospitals and health systems, evaluated the use of seven technologies that represent a broad range of clinically-oriented systems currently available in the marketplace. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] The technologies examined in the survey include: apps for patient education and/or engagement; mobile-optimized patient portals; patient-generated health data, collected from consumer devices used for remote monitoring; remote patient monitoring using clinical-grade medical devices; text messaging, and telehealth. Use of connected health solutions appears to be a widely accepted standard practice among hospitals in the United States, the survey found. Not only did 81 percent say their organization uses at least one of the mobile health technologies included in this research, but 67 percent reported deploying multiple systems across their organization. In addition, the adoption of mobile-optimized patient portals is most widespread among survey respondents, with 58 percent indicating this type of technology is in use in their hospital or health system. Further, 69 percent of respondents using a mobile-optimized patient portal indicated the technology extensively supports the hospital’s secure data exchange strategy. Remote monitoring tools were found to play a key role in the areas of provider satisfaction, facilitating treatment/care plans and population health management initiatives, the survey said. Mobile and wireless devices, often referred to as “connected health tools,” hold the promise of positively impacting the future delivery of patient care – these tools are projected to become increasingly important as healthcare organizations explore ways to provide quality care at a lower cost, while at the same time increasing satisfaction for both providers and patients, HIMSS said. These projections are especially true in the United States, where the healthcare system continues to realign itself toward optimized experiential and clinical outcomes delivered in a cost-conscious manner, HIMSS added. The potential impact of connected health tools for providers largely is in the area of “care coordination,” where the goal of coordinated care is to ensure patients get the right care at the right time while avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing medical errors, HIMSS said. As caregivers increasingly attempt to extend their care coordination efforts beyond traditional care settings such as hospitals and physician practices, the use of connected health tools will take on greater significance, HIMSS added. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – Signet Accel has launched Avec, a commercial federated data integration platform designed to offer interoperability to healthcare organizations, the company announced at HIMSS16. Avec enables analysis of complex, distributed healthcare data in a manner that is secure and protects the ownership and control of data at every site, Signet Accel said. It does not require changes in the process of collecting data, the manner in which data is stored, where data is stored or how data is structured, the vendor added. Signet Accel’s Avec platform was created at The Ohio State University in collaboration with investigators and technologists across the globe, the company said. The platform was developed with an investment of more than 13 years and $20 million, it added. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] “We’re connecting data as it is and where it is,” said John Raden, Signet Accel CEO. “Providing physicians and researchers the ability to view, analyze and experiment with aggregated data from entirely disparate sources, globally, is a reality we provide our clients. We believe technology plays a central role in how data is used to cure disease.” Some in the industry talk about interoperability as purely a technical problem, others as a policy or standards problem, and still others as a usability or user experience problem, said Philip Payne, MD, co-founder of Signet Accel and professor and chair of the department of biomedical informatics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. “True interoperability is when all three of these communities and their needs and approaches meet,” Payne said. “We’ve deliberately designed a platform that is useful to clinicians, researchers and decision makers—while also directly impacting patients, their families and their communities.” Avec links and harmonizes disparate databases across healthcare, enabling researchers to identify patterns and trends over a large patient population and offering comprehensive insights into both research and patient treatment, Payne added. Robust repositories of connected data are key to realizing the promise of precision medicine, a research effort aimed at improving health and treating disease by accounting for patients’ individual differences, he said. “We’re only just now seeing large systems partner to begin the long and arduous process of determining how to align, share and exchange data, but we want the industry to know that true interoperability is already here,” Raden said. “Avec connects data for our clients and enables them to safely share it, regardless of its starting point.” Signet Accel clients include The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Alliance of Dedicated Cancer Centers, the Hairy Cell Leukemia Foundation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs VINCI initiative in partnership with Hewlett-Packard, the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network, and a joint venture between Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. At HIMSS16, Signet Accel will be demonstrating Avec in both the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase and in booth 12550 of the main exhibit hall. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – IBM on Wednesday introduced the SleepHealth app designed for iPhone and Apple Watch and the SleepHealth Mobile Study to help identify connections between sleep habits and health outcomes. The SleepHealth study uses the open source ResearchKit designed by Apple to make it easier for participants to complete tasks and submit surveys from the app. SleepHealth is the first ResearchKit study to run on Watson Health Cloud. IBM announced the initiative at HIMSS16. It was close to a year ago when the computing giant launched Watson Health Cloud at HIMSS15. The SleepHealth app "One of our goals at IBM Watson Health is to eliminate silos that hinder collaboration between researchers, patients and clinicians, and create new opportunities for these communities to share and learn from one another," said Kyu Rhee, MD, chief health officer for Watson Health. As he sees it, sleep is an under-appreciated factor when it comes to staying well. “Now that data is in a digital format that can be leveraged and screened and analyzed, this is where tools in this era of cognitive technology, like Watson, can actually make sense of the data,” Kyu said. Watson, he said, can read 8 million pages a second.” “To have Watson at your side, is a powerful tool that can deliver what I would consider augmented intelligence,” Kyu added. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] The SleepHealth app taps into Apple Watch's heart rate monitor to detect when a subject falls asleep before gathering movement data with the onboard accelerometer and gyroscope, according to a report on Apple insider. For users running iOS 9.3 the app will make use of Apple's Night Shift feature, which shifts an iPhone or iPad's display color temperature toward the warm end of the spectrum to help ease physiological side effects of being exposed to cool blue light. Chronic insomnia affects more than 10 percent of Americans, and 25 million suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The SleepHealth study will explore the connections between sleep quality and daytime activities, alertness, productivity, general health and medical conditions. Data contributed by participants will be stored on the Watson Health Cloud, making it possible for researchers to conduct extensive analysis to uncover patterns and connections in the data, Once it has completed several years of data collection, the research team expects to develop personalized and public health interventions for a variety of sleep-related health issues. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare will deploy the Clinical Variation Management software from Ayasdi, a developer of machine intelligence applications for healthcare. Intermountain Healthcare believes the software can boost the insights the health system can gain from its mountain of health data. Ayasdi’s software leverages machine learning and topological data analysis to extract meaningful insights from billions of data points, the vendor explained. Consequently, Intermountain sees the software helping it to more rapidly gain data insights that can help lead to better health outcomes at more sustainable costs. “Intermountain has led the industry when it comes to understanding and managing clinical variation,” said Lee Pierce, Intermountain’s chief data officer. “It is one of the key principles we have applied in delivering value-based care to our patient population. We have been impressed by Ayasdi’s technology and are optimistic for the impact it could have on our mission of helping people live the healthiest lives possible.” [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] Ayasdi’s Clinical Variation Management software can accelerate the process of gaining insights from health data because it draws on clinical data directly from a provider organization’s integrated systems of record, Ayasdi said. “Understanding and managing clinical variation remains one of the great challenges facing healthcare today, and we are pleased Intermountain recognized Ayasdi’s ability to accelerate the pace at which Intermountain gains insights from its data,” said Mary Hardy, Ayasdi vice president of healthcare. Both Ayasdi and Intermountain Healthcare are exhibiting this week at HIMSS16, Ayasdi in kiosks 14042 and 14084 in the Clinical & Business Intelligence Knowledge Center, and Intermountain in booth 1632 in the main exhibit hall. Intermountain Healthcare is a not-for-profit health system of 22 hospitals, 185 clinics, a medical group with 1,300 employed physicians, a health plans division called SelectHealth, and other health services.  Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – In a co-presentation with National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, at HIMSS16 Tuesday evening, Acting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Andy Slavitt said physicians "want better technology." From both a policy and an innovation perspective, it's time to give it to them, he said. Before their dual appearance, Slavitt said, he and DeSalvo read each other's speeches; the audience laughed when he said she took issue with the tone of his prepared remarks. "I think your speech comes across as very negative," DeSalvo told him. "Why don't you re-read through that lens?" [Also: See photos from Day 1 of HIMSS16] It was a light moment, but Slavitt had a serious point to make: "She works with the technology community," he said, which is making tons of progress and, to judge from HIMSS16 so far, "generally pretty happy." On the other hand, "I've been spending last months with physicians trying to use technology," said Slavitt. "That may affect my mood just a bit." Indeed, health IT has made hugely impressive strides over the past five years, said DeSalvo. U.S. providers have tripled the adoption of EHRs, and the industry continues to build on those early incentives. On one hand, healthcare is getting better at spending smarter and having healthier patients. But there are challenges, she said, emphasizing that data needs to flow more freely. "On the supply side, we have built up an amazing amount of health information," said DeSalvo. "We have to set it free." HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell Monday evening announced that a who's-who of private-sector vendors, providers and health organizations have committed to more open sharing of data, which DeSalvo called a step in the right direction. "I couldn't be more thankful," said the ONC chief. [Also: EHR giants pledge to standardize health IT] But Slavitt – who said he and DeSalvo have "been working together for months" on some of these new policy initiatives, to the point where they can finish each other's sentences – said still more was needed. "I'm certainly not bashful about what we need to do better, and I'm not going to be bashful here, even in the face of some very good reasons for optimism, about ways we need to take our game up across the board – all of us," he said. The health IT industry has made a great start, said Slavitt. "But we're still at the stage where technology often hurts rather than helps physicians providing better care." CMS is committed to taking a user-centered approach to designing policy, he said.  "I'm asking you to do the same. Step back and look at what you don't think is working, and make it work better." Slavitt said CMS has recently undertaken its most concerted effort ever to listen to physician feedback, working with those on the front lines to understand their pain points. He read a number of physician quotes that should sound familiar to many: Meaningful use has become "too much of a burden," said one doc. "Most of what I'm doing during the day is entering data into the EHR," said another. One joked (or half-joked) that "to order aspirin takes eight clicks; to order full-strength aspirin takes 16." Physicians feel hampered and frustrated by lack of interoperability, said Slavitt. They think federal regulations in their current form slow them down and distract from care. They also find EHR technology hard to use and cumbersome. The good news, he said, is that doctors are "not describing problems we don't know how to solve. That makes Karen and me optimistic." CMS is "still a few months away from having details available on the proposed MACRA rule," said Slavitt. But he did share some principles of the agency's policy approach in the near future. "Job one is to bridge the gulf between our public policy work and what's actually happening with patient care," he said. "That has to become an integral part of how we do things." Second, he said CMS would hear physicians' requests to "stop measuring our clicks" and "give us more flexibility to suit our practice needs and, ultimately, more control." Third, providers wherever possible "favor a pull, versus a push for incentives" that lets "outcomes, rather than activities, drive the agenda," said Slavitt, indicating that CMS has received that message. Meanwhile, he said the agency would continue to use what levers it could to spread interoperability. "We're announcing funding to connect many of the remaining parts of the system that are not part of the EHR incentive programs but serve our neediest patients every day," said Slavitt. "Finally, we are going to wire up long-term care, behavioral health, and substance abuse providers." But in the private sector there are still too many barriers to interoperability, he said, from legal clauses to commercial impediments to intellectual property. That's not an excuse, said Slavitt. "The companies that live up to their commitments here will be recognized and applauded," he said. "And I strongly encourage you to recognize those that don't." Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS -- When Inova Health saw that Affordable Care Act initiatives for value-based care would cut 7 percent, or $220 million, out of the $3 billion health system’s successful fee-for-service revenues, the northern Virginia provider knew it needed to change, said President and COO Mark Stauder. “Thinking through our strategic plan, we are a fee-for-service community of chiefly independent private practicing physicians,” Stauder said during HIMSS16. “We were a great fee for service; we needed a new revenue source.” The result was a partnership with Aetna and the creation of a new health plan called Innovation Health. [Also: See photos from Day 1 of HIMSS16] From 2012 to 2014, the partnership has realized an 8-20 percent cost reduction per employer; 17 percent reduction in the number of unnecessary hospital days after surgery; 15 percent fewer hospital admissions; and 21 percent fewer hospital readmissions, Stauder said. Despite the success Stauder said he feels the health system is still in “Population Health 101.” “This is a difficult journey that’s going to take us another five years or more to get good at it,” Stauder said. The strategic plan through 2020 focuses on population health, individualized wellness and the aggressive pursuit of personalized medicine, Stauder said. In 2012, the health system had no risk. Today it’s 50 percent. There are 90,000 commercial risk patients and the system purchased a Medicaid health plan from Amerigroup of 60,000 members. “We wanted to build critical mass with covered lives and build a shared savings construct,” Stauder said. “We’re in a market with many commercial payers. We needed to broaden market share.” The goal by 2020 is to have a million covered lives. Aetna provides health plan administration; claims and customer service; analytics; technology and care management programs. Inova provides a nationally recognized healthcare system, and more member management at the primary care level of chronic conditions and lower unit costs. Innovation Health began in September 2013 and has grown to 180,000 members. The health system’s narrow network is supplemented by the national Aetna network, he said. “It’s about empowering the physician providers,” Stauder said, emphasizing the need to get their cooperation. Care coordinators steer members towards appropriate programs and there are alerts given if any members are in network hospitals, he said. For post-acute care, there are transitional programs; post-discharge community placement; and medical home for 30 days for high risk for readmission patients. The system is currently building out an advanced illness model to include home-based physician visits and EPIC community based visits. Analytics and IT tools include using, a fully integrated EMR through EPIC, a MyChart portable EMR patient engagement driver, telemedicine; analytics for risk stratification and predictive data analytics for clinical quality. The Aetna platform also interfaces with Epic. Twitter: @SusanJMorse This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – Rueben Devlin, CEO of Humber River Hospital in Toronto, sees full digitization as the future of physician efficiency and patient experience.  In seeking to fully digitize Humber River, the hospital focused on improving communications, bringing disparate technologies together into one streamlined package. Monitors on the outside of patient rooms are just the tip of the iceberg. “It tells people coming to that room what’s going on – if there are infection control problems, any special precautions that need to be made,” said Devlin. “If a nurse or physician is in the room, that will show up on the monitor as well.” [Also: See photos from Day 1 of HIMSS16] All nurses and physicians are also assigned “rugged PDAs,” smartphones that can take pictures, provide code call applications and scan bar codes. Devlin said the hospital recently implemented use of real-time locating systems. The RTLS devices are doled out to clinicians and patients alike, not only ensuring that nobody gets lost, but that hospital staff can more efficiently perform their jobs. “(Visitors) can track their family member in the waiting room on the screen,” said Devlin. “That solves their problem of constantly going back to the desk to check where they are.” Humber River Hospital in Toronto A patient portal at Humber further advances efficiencies in communication, he said. The patient portal “allows patients to access their own information (and) empowers physicians to access information off-site if they’re allowed to.” Devlin asserted that this has decreased registration load. Online billing is a component of the patient portal, and operates within a secure firewall. Since implementing full digitization in October 2015, the hospital has seen an increase in safety, with a higher focus on care, said Devlin. Communications aren’t the only ways in which technology has changed the landscape. Wireless addressable light switches, chromatic glass windows controlled by the patient, and 100 percent fresh air with temperature control has heralded a 40.8 percent decrease in energy usage. Automating the little things helps, too – as in the case of garbage. “Pneumatic garbage chutes … deliver the materials right to shipping and receiving,” said Devlin. “That goes on a truck. That’s quite helpful; none of the dirty material needs to be dragged through the hospital.” Devlin said part of the hospital’s success in innovation is due to gleaning a wide swath of ideas from different hospitals, and in keeping track of what non-health entities are doing to become more technologically current. “You need to look at other industries,” he said. “A big supporter of ours is someone who owns a lot of McDonald’s. … They’re very efficient. They only walk three to four steps to get to everything they need within their facility. We needed to look at other industries who were doing a good job.” The next steps for the hospital include creating a center of excellence, and implementing black box technology in operating rooms, similar to what’s found on an airplane – in case “something untoward happens.” Twitter: @JELagasse This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

At the Federal Health IT Solutions Pavilion, a solution to FHIR "ambiguities."

In a frank conversation with Healthcare IT News, the Epic CEO says her company gets a bad rap. But the numbers show it more than stacks up.