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Medtronic and IBM applied cognitive analytics to 600 anonymous patient cases using data from Medtronic insulin pumps and glucose monitors.

Mary Beth Mitchell, RN, chief nursing informatics officer at Texas Health Resources, has won the 2015 HIMSS Nursing Informatics Leadership Award, honored for helping make THR a national leader in its use of health information technology. In charge of leading nurse utilization and optimization of electronic health records and other health IT at the sprawling Texas health system, Mitchell has helped spread knowledge about the power of nursing informatics through presentations, books and articles in professional journals. Under her leadership, THR has won both the HIMSS Stage 7 and Davies Awards. This past year at HIMSS15 in Chicago, Mitchell was honored with a 2015 Healthcare IT News H.I.T. Men and Women award. "Mary Beth is an extraordinary leader in the field of nursing informatics," said Joyce Sensmeier, RN, vice president, informatics, HIMSS North America, in a statement. [Also: 10 nurse execs at the top of their game] "As the chair of HIMSS nursing informatics committee, the former co-chair of the HIMSS Nursing Executive Engagement Workgroup, and a member of the Nursing Informatics Symposium Planning Committee, she is a respected thought leader in transforming healthcare and patient care through the use of technology." Mitchell will be honored at the HIMSS16 Awards Gala on, Thursday, March 3 at the 2016 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition. Learn more about HIMSS16 and the Nursing Informatics Symposium. Twitter: @mikemiliardHITN

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is already achieving big results with point-of-care apps, saving time and money for both doctors and patients. “Many mobile apps have been developed that provide quick access to vital information, and these apps include both provider-centered and patient-centered information that can be used at the point of care,” said Linda Hogan, director of faculty development at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “They are user-friendly, many are free, and some will save patients money on prescriptions.” But amid the onslaught of available apps, Hogan said that providers must be able to determine how a particular app will be used at the point of care, which means choosing software that is both effective for generating clinical recommendations and simple enough that physicians can demonstrate how patients can use it to improve their health. Hogan will facilitate a roundtable discussion about improving care delivery while saving time for providers and patients at HIMSS16 during a session titled “10 Essential Point-of-Care Applications for Health Providers.” Hogan added that such mobile apps should fit into the HIMSS STEPS value optimization framework for technology. STEPS stands for Satisfaction, Treatment, Electronic secure data, Patient engagement and population management, and Savings. “There should be satisfaction with point-of-care applications available on mobile devices; improved treatment outcomes with up-to-date, convenient reference information for clinical decision-making; and electronic data at the point of care for differential diagnosis and risk calculation,” Hogan said. “One of the apps I will share in this session is designed to save patients money on their prescriptions,” Hogan explained. “Most are designed to help healthcare providers and patients save either money or time or both.” “10 Essential Point-of-Care Applications for Health Providers” is slated for March 1 from 2:30-3:30 in Galileo 1004 at HIMSS16 in the Sands Expo Convention Center in Las Vegas.  Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT

With 900 care locations and a 1,200-member IT team, Carolinas HealthCare System is sprawling and complex. That’s just how Chief Information Officer Craig Richardville likes it. Complexity creates excitement, Richardville, who was recently named the 2015 CHIME-HIMSS John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year, tells Healthcare IT News. “It’s just so dynamic that it creates the energy.” CHIME and HIMSS give the CIO of the Year Award jointly each year. The groups selected Richardville for the 2015 honor, they said, for “pursuing an aggressive and effective approach to employing technology to help provide better care.” Q: What do you view as your primary mission as CIO? A: To best serve our patients by engaging the optimal use and investment of technology and information for our patients and providers to improve their health and enhance care. Q: What is your proudest achievement? A: First and foremost, my family – watching my three sons grow and develop into fine young men and assets to our community. Professionally, the team – the complete CHS Team coming together to address and develop new and exciting ways of improving our services and connecting to our patients. Q: What has been the biggest challenge you¹ve had to face as CIO? A: Change management – ensuring that we lead the transformation of healthcare delivery. Q: How has your work changed over the years, and what factor has most contributed to the change? A: The biggest change is the addition from an executor of a plan, in with the development of the strategy. There are many ideas in and outside of healthcare that are applicable for us to evaluate and appropriately implement, so being part of the discussion over the last several years has allowed an opening of all minds, mine-included, to what the future possibilities are. Q: How has meaningful use changed the way you work? A: Meaningful use accelerated our plan and provided a discount to automate the clinical record and processes and to build a foundational platform for many other key initiatives to be built upon it, such as interoperability, patient engagement, mobility, virtual care, care management, etc. In that way it was beneficial, but the requirements and timeline and maturity of the service offerings has led to some of the frustration. To ensure we communicate our success and future progress, MU needs to be clearly identified as service and outcome-oriented for ensuring our work clearly puts the patient first. Q: Looking ahead, what challenges do you see coming in health IT? A: Interoperability. True interoperability based upon secure standards is absolutely necessary if we are to achieve the vision all of us share regarding making sure patients have access to their health information, and it’s easily accessible to their providers. Unlocking the data in our systems to share with providers and patients is crucial to creating a seamless health information system. It requires that we agree upon standards and safe transport protocols. It’s absolutely vital though that in order to serve our patients, we provide them and their providers with the health data they need to lead full lives. Also, patient engagement. Providing solutions that are easy, accessible and integrated into people’s lives is a challenge. Healthcare is good at building and deploying very feature-rich and complex software systems. What’s harder though is to deliver that sophistication into solutions that are consumer-grade, easy to use and accessible to consumers. It should be as easy as hailing a car on Uber, ordering a pair of shoes from Zappos, downloading a movie from Amazon or making a dinner reservation on Open Table. These solutions have to be integrated into the lives of people in a way that is not obtrusive but still help them manage and improve their health status. Q: What challenges are unique to Carolinas HealthCare? A: Carolinas HealthCare System has a level of complexity that may be similar to some but different from others. We are a multi-state health system with a large portfolio of combined assets, but also, in various markets, we have regional relationships that are a mixture of managed services, leased services and shared services. This complexity has allowed us to be very similar to other communities in that we have in some cases, like EMR for example, where we have been able to build core competencies around the higher layer services, such as health information exchange, patient engagement, data warehouse and analytics that contain a multi-faceted number of systems, products and solutions as opposed to a single platform like many others. Q: What new technology developments on the horizon have you enthusiastic? A: Mobility – placing the patient to be accountable for their health and wellness by providing the apps and connectivity for them to do so. Virtual care and it’s continued quick advancement and acceptance as a delivery model holding us accountable to the existing standards, yet improving access and lowering cost. Interoperability. FHIR appears to be very promising and we’re looking at ways here at Carolinas HealthCare System to use it to better build and deploy solutions for our patients and providers. Q: Where will health IT be five or 10 years from now? A: I would expect that we will be leading many other industries and that those in financial services, retail, etc., will look at healthcare IT for advancing their companies and industries, similar to how we are modeling some of our services offerings in comparison to them. There is a tremendous amount of talent within healthcare. We have arguably evolved quicker in this transformation that any other industry. With the management of the tight budgets that we hold ourselves to, we will inevitably be the one to lead the industry pack as we continue to help the business develop and deploy solutions that make it easier for patients and clinicians at a competitive price point. One of the things we’ve learned over the last 20 years, particularly here at Carolinas HealthCare System, is we’ve gotten very good at deploying solutions that are on time, on budget and deliver great value. Our teammates have great insight into how things work. We listen to and continue to better understand our patients, and how we can best optimize solutions and deliver value. I am very fortunate to be with a health system with a visionary board, and feel blessed to be part a group of colleagues that thrive upon teamwork and successful execution of our plans. Healthcare IT is not only playing the support role that we always have, but also leading and being a key component of many of our strategic initiatives. Twitter: @HealthITNews

Mobile stroke units, device security and wireless sensors are among the key advances that will transform industry.

About 63 percent of those quoted in the American Journal of Critical Care said tele-ICU enables faster work performance.

By leveraging the historical data included in the records, healthcare providers can target patients, populations more than ever.

Healthcare practices used on the International Space Station are serving as model for caring for people in some of the most deprived and isolated parts of the world, according to an article published last month in the World Health Organization. Several of the systems used to ensure healthcare for astronauts working in cramped and isolated space station have been studied and implemented in undeveloped areas, Alfred Papali, MD, wrote in “Providing healthcare in rural and remote areas: lessons from the International Space Station.” Papali, with the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, shows how the space station astronauts ensure their health while circumnavigating the globe in space by employing three essential services — task-shifting, point-of-care ultrasound and telemedicine services. NASA has mitigated the risk of medical emergencies aboard the space station by training the crew medical officer and by using on-board ultrasound and an Earth-based telemedicine consultation. Space flight, though, presents several challenges, such as engineering and space constraints, limited bandwidth for data transmission, a lack of advanced diagnostic equipment and the absence of a physician. How space station crewmembers overcome these challenges may present a model to Earth-bound programs. For space flight task-shifting, a crew medical officer receives about 60 hours of preflight training, similar to the level of a paramedic in the United States. The WHO cited task-shifting as a key element in cost-effective access to antiretroviral medications, and  nurse practitioners and physician assistants are providing a wide variety of medical services where doctors are scarce, Papali wrote. Additionally, NASA-funded studies in remote locations around the world have had a direct impact on the development of the space station’s ultrasound program. Likewise, the space station’s extensive use of telemedicine is leading to advances of the technology on Earth. Medical data and ultrasound images are routinely transmitted to ground-based flight surgeons for diagnostic and training purposes. Data transmission is not continuous, however, and as in the developing world the connection can be very slow or completely absent. Judicious use of limited technological resources is necessary in any location, Papali wrote. To address this issue, just-in-time educational modules have enabled crewmembers to perform complex ultrasound examinations despite the time lag in communications between the space station and the ground. “These modules could be adapted to terrestrial environments with limited connectivity,” Papali explained. “In addition, NASA has tested virtual remote guidance (i.e. recorded instructional videos for use by crew members using wearable technology) as a means of overcoming connectivity barriers; this technique will soon be used in Haiti to study remote guidance of endotracheal intubation.” It is worth noting also that health services developed and used in space differ in important ways from those used on Earth. “The great challenge for emergency care on Earth will be whether such services can be developed across diverse and fragmented health systems in a coordinated fashion to optimize outcomes, reduce costs and minimize duplication,” Papali wrote. Nonetheless, the services developed for the spaced station can show the way from continued innovation in health services. Twitter: @HealthITNews

The move comes almost a year after Mayo first announced it would replace its existing electronic health record system with one from Epic.

While 66 of the 100 largest hospitals in the United States offer consumers mobile health apps, only 2 percent of patients are using them, according to a new report published on Wednesday by Accenture that also found that failure to focus apps on services consumers want most could cost each hospital more than $100 million a year in lost revenue. In its “Losing Patience: Why Healthcare Providers Need to Up Their Mobile Game” report, the consultancy found that 38 of those top U.S. hospitals have developed health apps in-house rather than by hiring a mobile app vendor.  By not aligning their functions and user experience with what patients expect, many of these mobile health apps are failing to win over more patients. For example, only 11 percent of the hospital apps offer at least one of the three most desired functions: access to medical records; the ability to book, change and cancel appointments; and the ability to request prescription refills, Accenture found. Significantly, about 7 percent of patients have switched healthcare providers because of a poor experience with online customer service, including mobile apps, Accenture said. Accenture suggested that as consumers bring their service expectations from other industries into healthcare, providers will likely see higher switching rates on par with the mobile phone industry (9 percent), cable TV providers (11 percent) or even retail (30 percent). “In many cases, we’re seeing hospitals only offering a subset of things in their mobile apps — view labs, look up some basic forms,” Brian Kalis, managing director of the health practice at Accenture, told Healthcare IT News. “A lot of what is offered is around core medical record pieces versus easy appointment scheduling and such. It’s just static information, not personalized or tailored to an individual.” When developing new mobile health apps, or when revamping existing mobile apps, hospitals must adopt a patient-centric approach, Kalis said. “Moving to a person-centered approach will help hospitals understand what the mobile experience should be in terms of how patients interact in mobile and what they want,” Kalis said. “From there, hospitals might work more closely with electronic medical records vendors, advocating for a better experience and more flexibility in tailoring that experience. And hospitals might choose a custom solution, more for the patient-facing piece, and work on building out a digital engagement platform on their own to provide more control over and flexibility of the experience.” Further, hospitals should engage with prominent digital and mobile health companies that offer unique solutions — such as ZocDoc and InstaMed Go — to understand areas of great interest to consumers and how they fit into the healthcare ecosystem, Kalis said. When it comes to the question of buy versus build, Kalis suggested with mobile health it’s not a matter of either/or. Instead, it should be both. “Hospitals can work with emerging digital health disruptors in the mobile space and Internet of Things space; this can be done parallel with building solutions in-house,” he said. “It’s about the pace and scale of change: As you work on putting together a better experience for people on your own, or in collaboration with an electronic medical records vendor, there will always be a new set of solutions out there that is evolving. Collaborating with companies behind such solutions will further inform solutions built up within the enterprise.” As the pace and scale of mobile health technology continues to grow faster and larger, hospitals must keep up. “Mobile engagement is becoming increasingly critical to the success of every hospital in the digital age,” Kalis said. “Consumers want ubiquitous access to products and services as part of their customer experience, and those who become disillusioned with a provider’s mobile services, or a lack thereof, could look elsewhere for services.”  Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT