News

Panelists from the U.K., Canada and the U.S. weighed in at a HIMSS21 Global Conference Digital session about best practices and lessons learned from the crisis so far.

The evolution of speech recognition will also help patients navigate the user interfaces of remote monitoring devices and personal health devices, said experts in a HIMSS21 Digital session. 

The major Texas health system uses data to inform a more proactive approach across the board, its chief medical officer says – with successful programs in colorectal screening, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and SDOH.

Johns Hopkins Medicine has developed a tool aimed at automatically identifying patients likely to need telehealth technical assistance. According to an editorial in the Harvard Business Review by four members of the Johns Hopkins team, the tool is embedded in the health system's Epic electronic health record.   "The tool can be used by either a central IT support team or by frontline clinical and front desk staff, so they can proactively reach out to patients in need of assistance," wrote the Johns Hopkins team.   WHY IT MATTERS   When telemedicine appointments skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Johns Hopkins team struggled to support patients who needed extra assistance.   Clinical and front desk staff usually called each patient before a telemedicine visit to help make the process more seamless, but they also said it was difficult to take on this extra work while still performing other job duties.   For that matter, some patients said they didn't need extra assistance and found the process disruptive and unnecessary.   In response, the Johns Hopkins team developed what they called an automated "video visit technical risk score" tool in their Epic EHR.   The score (which increases based on the risk a video visit will be unsuccessful) is based on patients' digital health interactions, such as the patient not having an active account in MyChart, not having completed the system's eCheck-in process in the previous seven days and not having had a video-visit appointment in the past three months. "The score is automatically calculated based on stored EHR data and displayed as a column that can be added to a provider’s or clinic staff member’s schedule views," read the Harvard Business Review article. A central IT support team or frontline clinical and front desk staff can use the tool to proactively reach out to patients in need of assistance.    Johns Hopkins is currently using the tool as part of a pilot project to improve patient support.   "Outside of this pilot program, most of our clinic sites have chosen to continue to rely on their clinical support and front desk staff to support telemedicine visits. From what we have learned anecdotally, using the risk score has improved the efficiency of these teams," wrote the team.   THE LARGER TREND   Even as telemedicine use has expanded, advocates have emphasized the importance of ensuring it does not widen the health gap.   In addition to broadband access, experts have pointed to digital health literacy as a social determinant of health, due to the increasing reliance on the Internet for services.   "There have been issues with who is able to use virtual health," said Brigham and Women's Hospital General internal medicine division chief Dr. David Bates during a WEDI Quest for Health Equity event in February.   ON THE RECORD "Harnessing EHR data to identify patients likely to experience difficulties in accessing video visits is another important step in tapping the potential of these systems to provide a more individualized approach and make the best use of health care systems’ resources," wrote the Johns Hopkins team in Harvard Business Review. Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News. Twitter: @kjercich Email: kjercich@himss.org Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

The study looked at the number of people who engaged two online cognitive behavioural therapy service providers.

The Indiana Department of Health said this week that it was notifying almost 750,000 Hoosiers after a company "improperly accessed" the data from the state's COVID-19 online contact tracing survey.   But the company in question, the cybersecurity vendor UpGuard, told the Associated Press' Rick Callahan that it had actually discovered the data was publicly accessible on the internet and had notified the health department about it.   "This is known as a data leak," UpGuard spokesperson Kelly Rethmeyer said in a statement sent to Callahan. "It was not unauthorized because the data was configured to allow access to anonymous users and we accessed it as an anonymous user."   UpGuard has deleted all the data in its possession, said Rethmeyer.   UpGuard and IDH did not respond to Healthcare IT News' requests for comment by press time.   WHY IT MATTERS   IDH said it learned on July 2 that a company had accessed the data from the state's online COVID-19 contact tracing survey. The data included names, addresses, dates of birth, emails, gender, ethnicity and race.    But UpGuard representatives told Callahan that it had not "improperly accessed" the data.   Rather, said Rethmeyer, the company "aided in securing the information, in turn ensuring that it would no longer be available to anyone with malicious intent."   Indiana officials said that UpGuard had signed a so-called certificate of destruction to confirm it had destroyed the data and not shared it with any other entity.    The records were returned on Aug. 4.   "We take the security and integrity of our data very seriously," said Tracy Barnes, chief information officer for the state, in a statement provided to local news site WTHR. "The company that accessed the data is one that intentionally looks for software vulnerabilities, then reaches out to seek business." "We have corrected the software configuration and will aggressively follow up to ensure no records were transferred," Barnes added.   THE LARGER TREND   Although the exact situation with IDH remains unclear, it wouldn't be the first time COVID-19-related data accidentally went public.    In May of this year, a Wyoming Department of Health employee mistakenly uploaded COVID-19, influenza and blood alcohol test results for more than a quarter of the state's population to a public-facing website.   Two months prior, a state of California employee improperly accessed more than 2,000 employee and patient records from Atascadero State Hospital that had been necessary for tracking COVID-19.   ON THE RECORD   Regarding the Indiana incident, "in this case, the data that was accessed appears to have been done so in a way that did not put it at risk of cyber criminals obtaining it," said Erich Kron, security awareness advocate at the training vendor KnowBe4, in a statement.    "Unfortunately, 'software configuration' errors such as this often lead to the data being accessed by bad actors, putting the users of the systems at risk," Kron said. Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News. Twitter: @kjercich Email: kjercich@himss.org Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

The multi-stakeholder initiative will target healthcare access, affordability, quality and equity by engaging with health information exchanges and health improvement collaboratives.

Meanwhile, Ohio-based Memorial Health System struggles to get back online after a ransomware attack.

From July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021, Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex experienced a 30% increase in clients served.

This marks the first implementation of the popular unified healthcare information system across the Medcare network of hospitals and health centres in the United Arab Emirates.