Penn Medicine Launches Self-Service Machine Learning System

The Penn Medicine Institute for Biomedical Informatics has released a free, open-source automated machine learning system for data analysis.

The team developed the system so that anyone can use it, from high school students to biomedical researchers, on any computer or laptop. The first widely available tool of its kind, PennAI aims to eliminate barriers for entry into artificial intelligence. Users can bring in their own datasets or use the several hundred available for download within the system.

PennAI is also designed to learn as it goes, eventually making analysis suggestions based on the experience it gains through use. Because PennAI is an automated machine learning system, the artificial intelligence engine behind it can work through different analyses with different variables and methods on its own, without human input.

The full Health IT Analytics article can be viewed at this link.  

On May 16, 2019, eHI released the results of our annual HIE survey. We gathered a panel of experts for a webinar to review the results and weigh in on what they mean for the industry going forward.

Webinar participants got a first look at key trends and heard in depth discussion on important questions such as:

• What's driving HIEs' work in the next two years?
• Which types of data are HIEs struggling to exchange?
• What is the expected impact of TEFCA on interoperability?
• How is value-based care influencing HIEs' decisions to adopt technology and meet payers' requests for more clinical data?
• Which services are likely to be offered in the next two years?
• What are the biggest challenges in adopting new technology?
• What is the status of HIEs in integrating clinical and claims data?

Presenters and Panelists: 

• Kayli Davis, Manager, Programs & Research, eHealth Initiative
• Chris Hobson, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer, Orion Health
• Joe O'Hara, MBA, Director of Clinical Innovation, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey
• Katie Sendze, MBA, Director, Client Operations and Programs, HealthInfoNet (HIE)
• Mike Sims, CFO, Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN)

Where the Board Room Meets the Exam Room: Bringing Business & Tech Leaders to Healthcare's Frontline

To be successful, entrepreneurs have to envision health care from a much broader perspective that takes into consideration the experiences of the care providers who interact and learn from their patients every day. Indeed, the key to innovation in health care lies in imparting caregivers’ human-centered attitudes, values and experiences to technologists and business leaders. But short of sending half of Silicon Valley to medical school, how do we do that? I recently encountered a few educational models that point the way.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link. 

How To Successfully Implement An EHR System: Best Practices

In today’s information age, as our lives are getting increasingly digitized, health data is valuable. Health data is required for maintaining our health records, for helping physicians and health care professionals review patient information and collaborate on providing health care services and for driving health-related decision making, whether for an individual patient or for broader analysis such as determining the efficacy of health procedures or medication or monitoring emergency medical situations.

Hospitals and health care facilities should consider EHR implementation as more of a process engineering project than a technology project — one that adapts their organization and health care staff to modernized health care processes that make use of a technology system. This focus on medical processes allows you to use the EHR system as a tool to make work more efficient, rather than letting the technology dictate the work of your staff. Use the following best practices and tips to make your EHR implementation more successful.

Best Practices

• Assess your needs - Take a process engineering approach and focus on understanding the medical processes at the hospital and how these need to be changed and adapted to use an electronic system. Form a joint team with the EHR system implementation vendor and key hospital staff members and shadow the medical processes at the facility to understand and document them and visualize how they will adapt to the electronic system.
• Choose a flexible platform - The EHR system should provide flexible APIs and bidirectional data integration for supporting interoperability. 
• Check your contract - Your contract should have provisions to give you flexible access to the data along with ownership so you can do reporting and analysis as required and integrate the EHR with other products and devices for future growth and advancement.
• Make sure support is available - Ensure you have enhanced support for the first three to six months of operation. You should expect to find gaps and areas for improvement when you first put the system live. You should have the flexibility to make updates and adjustments accordingly until your system stabilizes for long-term use.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.  

Based on results from eHI’s 2019 Survey on HIE Technology Priorities, this report examines HIE perspectives on:

• Adoption of new technology
• Integrating clinical and claims data
• Types of data being exchanged
• Business drivers and priorities
• Challenges associated with the aforementioned

For almost two decades, eHealth Initiative and Foundation (eHI) has monitored the state of health information exchanges. Healthcare is experiencing rapid evolution with the emergence of new technologies and payment models. In response, both the public and private sectors are seeking ways to improve the quality and safety of care, resulting in a growing momentum to improve interoperability. Organizations like health information exchanges (HIEs) and health information networks (HINs) act as a source of valuable information and services, making the continued evaluation of their challenges, opportunities, and priorities important.

Background on Health Information Exchanges

As the name implies, HIEs provide technology and services to help their stakeholders exchange electronic health information. HIEs do not provide healthcare services. Instead, they impact the quality and cost of care, and ultimately outcomes, by sharing patient health data across organizations within a region, community, or hospital system.

Numerous trends that will drive the adoption of new technologies, the ability to exchange various data types, and the direction of HIE priorities are already evident in 2019. The healthcare industry is in the process of adopting performance-based funding models in place of more traditional reimbursement-based models. Industry is also facing an influx of value-based care initiatives; growing support for application programming interface (API) based interoperability standards, such as HL7®’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®); complex laws for sharing non-traditional types of data; and the push for nationwide exchange of electronic health information across disparate HINs. As new payment models emerge, healthcare stakeholders are increasingly seeking out new types of data that will give a wider perspective of a patient’s health and social experiences.

An HIE’s ability to integrate data enables and supports value-based care. Stakeholders can monitor their quality and cost of care, leading to improvements in care quality and care coordination, and eventually, cost savings. However, not all HIEs have the ability to integrate the many types of data necessary to enable and support value-based care and cost-lowering activities. HIE capabilities may be limited for a variety of reasons, including technical functions, costs, competing priorities, and issues around ownership and control of the data by stakeholder organizations participating in the HIE.

Join us for a May 16, 2019 webinar reviewing the results.

Addressing Medication Costs During Primary Care Visits: A Before–After Study of Team-Based Training

A single team training to screen and address patients' medication cost concerns improved cost-of-medication (COM) discussions over the short term. Further research is needed to assess sustained effects and impact on patient costs and medication adherence and to determine whether more intensive, scalable interventions are needed.

The full article can be downloaded below.  

How Conversational AI Could Remake Health Care

One of the most pressing problems the United States faces is a shortage of access to health care. Some California politicians are trying to fix this with legislation that would improve access. While many are looking to policy to fix the problem, they should not overlook the role that emerging technologies can play in both managing health care and treating common conditions and diseases.

One of the places this is happening is the personal health care market, which includes family physicians and urgent care clinics, among other facilities. The adoption of "conversational artificial intelligence (AI)" by health care providers is part of a larger overall trend that will see the AI health care market rapidly expand in the coming years. Accenture predicts these changes could save the health care industry $150 billion a year by 2026.

Conversational AI offers a natural and intuitive method of communicating with customers. Traditional voice recognition systems are static. Customers need to navigate multiple menus and options and usually end up pressing zero for an agent. A conversational AI system starts with a question and then routes the customer to the right answer or solution, eliminating the wait and frustration. It's almost no different than talking to an empathetic person.

From faster claims to better management of chronic conditions, conversational AI could reinvent the global standard of health care. It could also help the industry save money and resources by ensuring that visits to emergency departments are only for severe or life-threatening conditions. 

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.  

Digital assistant uses AI to ease medical documentation at Sutter

Sutter Health is pilot testing a voice-enabled digital assistant that makes use of artificial intelligence to see if it increases clinician efficiency.

The Sacramento, Calif.-based delivery system is testing the device with a group of doctors in Northern California. The device uses a combination of voice commands from physicians and the context in which they are operating to create a clinically accurate note that is pushed to an electronic health record.

The full Health Data Management article can be viewed at this link.  

AI In Health Care Is Not About Replacing Humans

When a disruptive technology makes its presence felt in a discrete domain like health care, it’s bound to attract attention. The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and its application through machine learning (ML) algorithms is already evident in health care. Funding for companies that provide AI-based health care solutions has especially witnessed a significant rise, surpassing $400 million in 2017 and breaking investment records. AI and machine learning are set to expand, and health care is poised to witness an unprecedented explosion of AI use cases.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.  

Nuclear Medicine or Nuclear Weapons: The Digital Determinants of Health

It is increasingly possible for the aggregators of our data to record and analyse the way we; vote, shop, eat, move, communicate, and even the way we breath. Moreover, it is increasingly possible for the aggregators of our data to use it, and the digital communication channels they have into our senses to influence the way we vote, shop, eat, move, communicate and the way we receive healthcare. Artificial intelligence promises a step change in the speed at which such automation can happen.

As every element of our lives is increasingly digitised and digitisation increasingly influences every element of ours lives, the net impact of ‘digital’ on human health and the things that drive it, the digital determinants of health, are almost impossible to elucidate. But given their omnipotence, that shouldn't stop us trying. It is perhaps one of the most important considerations for the health and wellbeing of current and future generations.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.