The digital health space refers to the integration of technology and health care services to improve the overall quality of health care delivery. It encompasses a wide range of innovative and emerging technologies such as wearables, telehealth, artificial intelligence, mobile health, and electronic health records (EHRs). The digital health space offers numerous benefits such as improved patient outcomes, increased access to health care, reduced costs, and improved communication and collaboration between patients and health care providers. For example, patients can now monitor their vital signs such as blood pressure and glucose levels from home using wearable devices and share the data with their doctors in real-time. Telehealth technology allows patients to consult with their health care providers remotely without having to travel to the hospital, making health care more accessible, particularly in remote or rural areas. Artificial intelligence can be used to analyze vast amounts of patient data to identify patterns, predict outcomes, and provide personalized treatment recommendations. Overall, the digital health space is rapidly evolving, and the integration of technology in health
Showing posts with label cloud computing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cloud computing. Show all posts

Monday, August 8, 2016

CEO Spotlight: American Well's Roy Schoenberg on the U.S. coming out of a 10-year telehealth war zone |

During the past five years health information technology is going through a second wave of disruptive tecchnology. It has taken almost ten years to adopt electronic health records. Now telehealth and telemedicine has taken the lead in transition. This may be the greater of the two in terms of cost containment and increasing access to health care.

New technology places a greater regulatory challenge. Multiple regulatory agencies, such as licensing boards, and practice guidelines have long standing rules regarding patient care, including hands on examination for p hysical diagnosis.  In fact that requirement is in the legal medical record. There are certain medico-legal risks in regard to diagnosing and treating a patient without personal contact.  Telehealth is changing that model.

During the past two years change is occurring. Numerous state medical boards report reevaluating their rules about remote diagnosis.  The limitations were loosened in regard to rural and remote areas where health care is often unavailable.  Many of these networks are developed by a central health facilitty such as a hospital in a contiguous area and may be the only accessible source for health care.  These networks provide physicians supervision of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, or other certified health professionals such as emergency medical technicians.

After a long decade of struggle, the stars have aligned for telemedicine, according to Roy Schoenberg, MD,   And the understanding and acceptance of providers, payers and patients have united to the point where the electronic delivery of healthcare is poised to become part of the norm.

“First, medical authorities, policymakers, and healthcare’s movers and shakers have acknowledged that delivering healthcare through technology can be valuable and safe; that has been the war zone for the last 10 years of telehealth,” Schoenberg said. “Medical boards and medical associations were hesitant about embracing telehealth; physicians were concerned about diminishing the relationship they have with patients. But the experiences with telehealth during the last couple of years have been reassuring, and telehealth increasingly has become one of the ways physicians interact with patients.”
Second, insurance companies that while label American Well technology including Anthem, United Health Group and several of the big Blues have finally begun to take the stance that, like in any other industry, digital mechanisms are here to stay and will be a major part of the industry’s future; as a result, payers are getting on top of telehealth and discovering how to conduct such care safely, Schoenberg said.
And third, enough time has passed that telemedicine technology vendors have gained the experience – and learned lessons from mistakes – so that the vendors are completely capable of providing safe and comprehensive care via technology, Schoenberg said.
“Vendors have made corrections to the patient experience and physician usability, for example, and have learned how to foster intimacy in these kinds of healthcare encounters,” he explained. “Between the adoption of electronic delivery as a valid way of doing medicine, the payment structure, and all of the factors that affect the physician-patient experience, the stars have aligned to cause what we see today, which is a booming market.”
What’s more, telemedicine tools and practices are becoming more embedded into the routine delivery of care among providers that also white label American Well services such as Cleveland Clinic, Community Health System,  Intermountain, Miami Children’s Hospital, Providence Health System and others -- even employers are getting into the act, such as clients Oracle and Honeywell.
What are the next steps?
“From the patient standpoint, we will see very quickly the transition of telehealth from just the myopic quick urgent care example of finding a physician to prescribe antibiotics to something that envelops all of healthcare, especially patients who need serious longitudinal care and frequent interaction with physicians, which increasingly is tied into things like accountable care organizations,” Schoenberg said. “We will see telehealth serving as a part of the overall relationship with patients.”
No longer just the mother with a child in a stormy night who needs to see a physician kind of stuff,” he added. “Telehealth for ongoing clinical relationships will become the avalanche of this technology.”







CEO Spotlight: American Well's Roy Schoenberg on the U.S. coming out of a 10-year telehealth war zone | Healthcare IT News

Thursday, March 5, 2015

What Happens to your EHR records when a building or other infrastructure fail ?

A recent post on Healthcare IT news brings to the fore-front about trusting, but verifying what EHR vendors promise.

While electronic record keeping gives great advantage in operations; at the same time a small failure quickly expands to total systems outage.

A recent 'blackout' of a hospital's  medical records points out the inherent weaknesses of a 'systemic failure' of an offsite data source providing infrastructure for a medical or hospital practice.

A Northern California hospital has acknowledged that its electronic health record system went dark for about a week, which resulted in clinicians unable to access patient medical records and even having to postpone serious medical treatments. 

The two-hospital health system recently implemented the McKesson Paragon platform, but Chason emphasized that the EHR system was not at fault. Rather, HVAC units contained in an off-site data center were to blame after one burned out, and the other overheated soon after. Rideout Health officials did not respond to Healthcare IT News' inquiries for further details on the incident.

Who's at fault?                                   





Cloud Servers

Despite Chason assuring reporters patient medical care was notaffected by the outage, he did acknowledge it resulted in many patients having to postpone their radiation treatments. What's more, clinicians had no electronic access to portions of their patients' records. "We talked about whether to transport and transfer patients for a long period of time," Chason was quoted in the Appeal Democrat. "There were some records that were not accessible for a period of time, but we tried to get them as quickly as we knew about them."


A patient had a nuclear heart stress test at the health system when the computer outage occurred, and as a result the test didn't get to her cardiologist until two weeks later. After examining the test results, Ferreira said clinicians determined she potentially suffered a minor heart attack and would require additional cardiac intervention efforts. This EHR outage is far from an isolated incident.

Just in August 2013, the 24-hospital Sutter Health system in Northern California reported that its $1 billion Epic electronic health record crashed due to a software glitch in the system that manages user access to the EHR. The outage lasted an entire day, with nurses saying they were unable to access medication orders and patient allergies, among other things. 

Then there was the IT network failure at the three-hospital Martin Health System in Florida, which in January 2014 reported its $80 million Epic EHR also went dark, an outage that lasted nearly two days. Clinicians at the hospital had to resort to manual charting and documentation.


Setback for Sutter, $1B EHR goes black

‘Meds were not given for the entire day for many of the patients.’

The 24-hospital Sutter Health system in Northern California was the talk of the town late August after a software glitch rendered its $1 billion Epic electronic health record system inaccessible to nurses and clinical staff throughout all Sutter locations. 
On Aug. 26 at approximately 8 a.m., the Epic EHR system failed, at which time nurses, physicians and hospital staff had no access to patient information, including what medications patients were taking or required to take and all vital patient history data, according to reports from the California Nurses Association, part of National Nurses United, the largest nurses union in the U.S. 



"Many of the families became concerned because they noticed the patients were not getting their medications throughout the day,”