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In the next several days we will be publishing breaking news in the world of health information technology in California: Follow us on our RSS feed.

This year continues to see the advances and culmination of fine tuning of many HIT applications. End user adoption often is the final stage of making improvements for user functionality.

The addition of smartphones, tablets and their user friendly interface enhances usability without interfering with provider-patient engagement.

Patients often complain that their provider 'treats their PC screen' rather than looking at them during an encounter......This is anathema to engagement, patient centered medicine, and transferrence.

Look for these topics in the coming week(s)

ONC Releases Final Version of Five-Year Health IT Strategic Plan

ATA Fall Forum: Experts Discuss How To Overcome Barriers to Telehealth

Community Programs Awarded $1M in Grants To Support Data Sharing

Population Health: What is it ?

Mentioning population health to most clinicians will bring forth a 'glazed look' to their faces. Population health used to be called epidemiology.  Most clinicians facing an individual patient with their specific problems don't see any relationship between population health and the patient sitting before them.

However population health has become a new buzzword created in the noise of the Affordable Care Act, and proposed Accountable Care Organizations.

A Success Story for Igniting the Power of Analytics to Drive Population Health

Where does the data come from for  population health management ?

Partner's Health collaborated with  Health Catalyst to extract data from several of their systems to analyze their data in order to build a population health management system.

For most hospitals and startup Accountable Care Organizations this example could serve as a model.

Solving Medical Device Interoperability – Is Qualcomm Building that Platform? | EMR and HIPAA

Health Information Technology (HIT) tends to build upon itself.  Despite the insistence of EHR vendor certification to earn CMS and Medicaid credits the interoperability barriers remain.

Many  different vendors are developing their own interoperability capability, including home monitoring devices.

Will these silos of interoperability remain isolated ?  This is the unanticipated result of intense industry competition.   Yes, we may all have interoperative software, but who will be 'on the line'.

The lastest entry into the interoperable market is a company already well known and established in the internent and cell network, both as a device and a chip manufacturer.

If you’ve spent some time in the mHealth and mobile health space (which are basically the same thing), then you’ve likely run into Qualcomm. They’ve made a big investment in that space with their Qualcomm Life initiative together with their 2Net platform that helps home health devices connect and share data. 

In many ways it made a lot of sense for a wireless provider (mostly chips from my understanding) to get involved in this space since it was a way for them to sell more chips. It seems like every new medical device needs some wireless technology embedded in it. On the other hand it sometimes felt awkward since Qualcomm really doesn’t directly sell products to healthcare organizations or consumers.

Qualcomm's 2net technology

Solving Medical Device Interoperability – Is Qualcomm Building that Platform? | EMR and HIPAA




The 2net™ Platform* from Qualcomm Life is truly novel, offering a set of wireless health solutions that can elegantly and reliably capture and deliver medical device data to integrated portals or databases from nearly any customers’ or technology partners’ wireless medical device for storage in a system designed for security and interoperability. It’s a whole new way of connecting devices and liberating biometric data so that it becomes ubiquitous across the continuum of care.

The 2net Platform is a cloud-based system designed to be universally-interoperable with different medical devices and applications, enabling end-to-end wireless connectivity while allowing medical device users and their physicians or caregivers to easily access biometric data. With two-way connection capabilities and a broad spectrum of connectivity options, the 2net Platform will change the way you do business.

The 2net Platform supports secure socket layer (SSL) communication of data and is FDA listed as a Class I Medical Device Data System (MDDS) in the U.S., Class I MDD and CE registered in Europe, and Class I in Canada. As an MDDS, the 2net Platform is designed, developed and manufactured in accordance with a quality system compliant with ISO13485 standards, meaning it aligns with the quality requirements of U.S. and international regulatory agencies in the health care industry.

There are four gateways onto the 2net Platform’s data center:

1. A standalone FDA-listed external device – the 2net Hub*
2. An FDA-listed software module that connects mobile computing devices – 2net Mobile Core*
3. Medical devices with an embedded cellular component
4. Service platform integration between the FDA-listed 2net Platform to customer and technology partner service platforms using application programming interfaces (APIs)

We designed the cloud-based 2net Platform to provide a high degree of security, interoperability and reliability to seamlessly store and transfer data once it has been acquired from the medical device so it can be shared with the appropriate audiences, which could include designated health care service companies, providers, payers, pharmaceutical companies, and application and device technology partners. The biometric data is stored in the 2net Platform’s Payment Card Industry, or PCI-compliant, data center. The data is encrypted in motion and at rest, and transmitted to the manufacturers’ interface of choice for the end-user.

The 2net Platform enables a single place where near real-time data across a wide range of device types, makes and use cases can be accessed, enabling true device interoperability and unlocking the potential to improve health care delivery.

While the 2net Hub is well-suited for home–based solutions or stationary devices such as a weight scale or a blood pressure monitor, 2net Mobile can be paired with mobile disease management solutions and devices such as blood glucose meters, inhalers, diagnostic devices, and activity monitors. 2net Mobile enables the user to conveniently visualize and transmit their readings while they are on-the-go to health care professionals who can rapidly access, monitor and manage health status. This means that health care service providers, like health systems or accountable care organizations can incorporate mobile health monitoring devices with complex care solutions.

Salesforce unwraps platform for post-EHR world | Healthcare IT News

SAAS (software as a service) vendors who normally market to businesses have discovered the rich fertile soil of health care. Although many EHR systems afford some level of 'customer relation' they are not as comprehensive, and difficult to access.

Herein lies the unseeded ground for vendors such as Salesforce to provide a full service CRM program for medical offices and clinics, as well as hospitals.

In addition to the need for  EHR for clinical use, healthcare business have relationships with hospitals, device manufacturers, pharmaceutical representatives, payors, and government agencies.

Salesforce unwraps platform for post-EHR world | Healthcare IT News

Essentially confirming months of rumors about its intentions to plant a flag in the healthcare market, Salesforce.com has unveiled Health Cloud.

The software-as-a-service suite features what the company calls "patient relationship management" tools – which are technologically distinct from today's crop of electronic health record systems.

"We think we are among the pioneers in the post-EHR world," Salesforce chief medical officer Joshua Newman, MD, toldHealthcare IT News ahead of the launch. "We think about this as precision healthcare."

By releasing Health Cloud, Salesforce is joining the growing crop of platforms that offer more comprehensive views of patient data than electronic health records, though today's class of products doing that each take a different tack.

In addition to managing vendors and other contacts, Salesforce sees itself as expanding into mobile apps to manage patient care.

In our connected world, patients no longer have patience.

Healthcare consumers aren’t content with just office visits (or waiting). Now 71% of millennials want doctors to provide a mobile app to actively manage their health. And 63% are interested in passing on data from wearables to their doctor.

Salesforce Health Cloud takes you beyond records, to connect providers with patients anytime and anywhere. So you gain a more complete view of health data — and your patients become active partners in making informed health decisions.

Salesforce sees itself as the  number one 'go to' hub to:

Treat the whole patient with a single view.

Provide 1-to-1 care through a Patient Profile offering a complete view of information from multiple sources, including electronic medical records (EMRs), medical devices, and wearables. And you’ll get a clear view of a patient’s health progression with a Timeline and Patient Caregiver Map listing household relationships, providers, and specialists.

Deliver insightful care faster.

Make patient management easier by browsing tasks matched to each patient, with a Today screen that organizes those tasks based on priority. You can also segment patients, such as those with high blood pressure, and set reminders for check-ins — and checkups. Then securely connect and collaborate in real time across the full health system’s care network.

Treat the whole patient with a single view.

Provide 1-to-1 care through a Patient Profile offering a complete view of information from multiple sources, including electronic medical records (EMRs), medical devices, and wearables. And you’ll get a clear view of a patient’s health progression with a Timeline and Patient Caregiver Map listing household relationships, providers, and specialists.

Designed exclusively for healthcare providers, and built on the world’s #1 CRM platform, Health Cloud was developed in partnership with leading health and medical device companies. These include Accenture, Deloitte, MuleSoft, Persistent, Philips, and PwC.

Salesforce Health Cloud3 Core Advantages

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