Using artificial intelligence, speech recognition to optimize note taking

The battle to free physicians from the shackles of the electronic health record rages on, and AI-powered speech recognition is another front in the fight.

Since the implementation of EHRs, physicians have pushed back against the amount of time they must spend in front of a keyboard, arguing that they are not data entry workers and the new requirements of documentation take away from their time with the patient. Speech recognition-based EHR optimization has been shown in a variety of clinical settings to help reduce the amount of data entry required as well as improve physician performance.

The full article from Healthcare IT News can be viewed at this link.  

How This Startup Is Applying Machine Learning To Disease Diagnosis

With populations growing, health systems are quickly becoming overburdened, under-resourced and not equipped for the challenges they face in today's fast-paced world.

In the U.K., 24% of emergency admissions can be avoided through effective community care and case management solutions. And 58% of these are respiratory conditions alone, costing up to £165 billion. Delayed diagnosis can be both life-threatening and life-changing, but how can this be solved?

U.K.-based technology startup Feebris thinks it’s found the answer. The firm is using artificial intelligence algorithms for the precision detection of complex respiratory conditions in the field. It connects to existing medical sensors and can be used by non-doctor users to identify respiratory issues early, avoiding complications and hospitalizations.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.  

New gene tests for germs quickly reveal source of infections

To identify bacteria, labs still rely on century-old techniques from Louis Pasteur — putting a few drops of blood or other sample in a lab dish and waiting days or sometimes weeks to see what germs grow. To test for a virus, a doctor usually has to guess what the patient is sick with. Testing for a fungus or some other things can take a long time.

Several companies and university labs now offer gene-based tests on blood or spinal fluid. Once fragments of foreign DNA or other genetic material are found, their code is analyzed, or sequenced, to identify bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites causing sepsis, meningitis, encephalitis and other deadly illnesses.

“The key advantage of sequencing is it can look for everything at once” rather than doing separate tests for each virus or other microbe that’s suspected, said Dr. Charles Chiu, a microbiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

The full AP article can be viewed at this link.  

Transforming healthcare experiences: Exploring the impact of digital health technology on healthcare professionals and patients

The 2019 Future Health Index is based on primary research conducted across 15 countries. The research explores the experiences of healthcare professionals and individuals – which includes both current and previous patients – in their health systems through two pillars of the Quadruple Aim: improved patient experience and improved staff experience.

Evolution and developments in digital health technology, such as digital health records (DHRs), telehealth and artificial intelligence (AI), offer benefits that could lead to better health outcomes and reduced costs, paving the way toward achieving the Quadruple Aim.

This year’s research sets out to understand knowledge and appetite for using digital health technologies and how they affect experiences of healthcare. DHRs, telehealth and AI were selected due to their growing levels of adoption, as well as their potential to transform healthcare experiences.

The full 2019 Future Health Index from Philips can be downloaded below.  

An Overview of Mobile Cloud Computing for Pervasive Healthcare

Mobile devices, along with wearable sensors, allow patients to access healthcare services from anywhere at any time. The longstanding constraints of computational capability and storage space on mobile devices can be alleviated by outsourcing computation- or data-intensive tasks to remote cloud centers. Thus, mobile cloud computing (MCC) has been recognized as a promising approach to provide pervasive healthcare services to people in their daily life. As the development and adoption of MCC techniques in healthcare, new optimization strategies have been explored and studied to help mobile cloud healthcare services to be deployed in a more effective and efficient manner. In this survey, we demonstrate how MCC techniques have been extensively deployed in various healthcare applications and, specifically, describe the general architecture and design considerations one should take into account while designing an MCC for healthcare scenarios. Given a large number of factors that may affect the performance of the MCC and even result in catastrophic consequences in healthcare, this paper presents the state-of-the-art optimization methods on the MCC for meeting the diverse priorities and achieving the optimal tradeoff among multiple objectives. Finally, the security and privacy issues of the MCC in healthcare are also discussed.

The full article can be downloaded below.  

Rising Health Care Charges: A Red Herring in a Value-Based Health Care World?

Certainly, the current hospital charge situation in the United States is economically inefficient in terms of the distortions among charges and costs and reimbursement as it is inequitable in its negative financial effects on specific segments of American society. However, these problems will likely diminish in importance with the continued evolution of value-based health care forces and extended health care coverage, with providers increasingly assuming the total cost-of-care financial risk.  Changing reimbursements and a focus on improving short- and long-term health care outcomes, as well as patient safety, under increased financial accountability, will frame the real value equation for health care delivery across the United States.

The full article can be downloaded below.  

The Effect of Zero Copayments on Medication Adherence in a Community Pharmacy Setting

Prescription medication copayments can be a financial burden to many patients. When patients cannot afford their medications, they may become nonadherent, and as a result, this can lead to an increase in chronic disease complications and healthcare costs.

The objective of this study was to determine if zero copayments have an effect on medication adherence in a community pharmacy.

This retrospective cohort study examined the prescription refill records of patients who filled specific generic medications for hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in 2016 at the NSU Clinic Pharmacy. The adherence rates of patients with zero copayments were compared to the adherence rates of patients with copayments greater than $0. Adherence was determined by calculating the proportion of days covered (PDC). Patients were considered adherent if their PDC was greater than or equal to 80%. GERD patients with no copayments had average PDC ratios of 87.4% and were statistically significantly more adherent than GERD patients with copayments, who had average PDC ratios of 76.7% (P = 0.042). Hyperlipidemia and hypertension patients with no copayments had average PDC ratios of 89.3% and 90.3%, respectively, and those with copayments had PDC ratios of 85.3% (P = 0.314) and 87.9% (P = 0.534).

Overall, patients with $0 copayments had higher adherence rates than patients with copayments greater than $0. GERD patients with no copayments were significantly more adherent than GERD patients with copayments. However, no statistically significant difference was found between patients with or without copayments in the hyperlipidemia and hypertension cohorts. Further studies are recommended to analyze additional factors that may influence medication adherence.

The full article can be downloaded below.  

Telehealth, Children, and Pediatrics: Should the Doctor Make House Calls Again, Digitally?

This Article explores the different challenges that arise in incorporating telehealth into pediatrics, especially for entrepreneurs. First, this Article explains how telehealth has been applied, specifically in pediatrics. Next, the Article explores the various legal barriers involving telehealth with particular attention to these issues as they relate to pediatric care, including: Physician-patient relationship, standard of care, informed consent, liability/liability insurance, equipment, and security. This Article then examines the benefits and disadvantages that have been raised in the use of telehealth in relation to pediatric care. Finally, this Article concludes by offering recommendations to those entrepreneurs who hope to have an influence on the future development of telehealth in pediatrics.

The full article can be downloaded below.  

Unlocking the Potential of EHRs: Let's Start from Scratch

Electronic health records (EHRs) have helped healthcare organizations move on from paper-based record keeping and reduced errors while enhancing compliance, but there has been no real transformation of this technology since the 1970s.

To fully leverage the potential of EHRs, we must fundamentally rethink their purpose and create the dynamic, patient-facing tool that the current healthcare landscape calls for.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.  

Why It Matters: Prescribers Can Now Access Accurate Medication History Data for Virtually Every American

Surescripts processed 17.7 billion secure health data transactions last year. More than 2.5 billion of those were requests for patient medication history data to be delivered from pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) directly into care providers’ EHR software.

Continued network expansion and rapid provider adoption of powerful technologies like electronic medication history are a good thing. But what real benefit does high quality medication history data offer? How is this technology helping doctors, nurses and other clinicians deliver safe, efficient and cost-effective healthcare?

I met with Stacy Ward-Charlerie, Manager of Product Innovation, to gain a deeper understanding of the critical role that accurate and complete medication history plays for patients and providers at the point of care.

The full Surescripts article can be read at this link.