Monday Morning Update 2/22/16

Top News

In England, Royal Berkshire Hospital cancels surgeries after its Windows XP pathology systems are taken down by malware delivered as an email attachment. Australia’s Royal Melbourne Hospital had a similar problem a few weeks ago as malware affected its Windows XP pathology servers.

Reader Comments

From Red Zone: “Re: Allscripts India. President Nitin Deshpande is leaving Allscripts to join Valence Health. He set up the India office of Eclipsys from scratch in 2007.” Unverified.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Job seekers would choose Epic’s offer first, followed by Athenahealth. Allscripts and McKesson are the least-favored hiring companies. New poll to your right or here: is IBM Watson Health real or just hype?

A reader asked this question that I agreed to run as a poll for provider organizations: to what degree do you allow creating test patients in production systems? Feel free to help the reader out by clicking “comments” to explain after voting.

This weekend’s Las Vegas weather will be nice: high 70s and sunny, around 50 at night. It should be good HIMSS conference weather.

I feel like I’m running my own “Just Say No” campaign in fending off people determined to selfishly waste my crazy, pre-HIMSS time:

• Can I bring a colleague HIStalkapalooza who didn’t sign up? No.
• Can you interview my CEO right now so it will run right before HIMSS? No.
• Can I pay you to run our article on your site? No.
• Will you run a list of our HIMSS booth and speaking activities in your news post? No.
• Can I schedule time to meet with you in our HIMSS booth? No.

I’m thinking this week will be slow as everybody saves their energy for next week’s conference.

Check out what HIStalk sponsors are doing at HIMSS with our online (and printable) guide. It lists everything from giveaways to educational presentations. For those sponsors who aren’t exhibiting, it includes their contact information for scheduling a meeting. Thanks for supporting the companies that support HIStalk.

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center’s decision to pay a hacker’s ransom to regain access to its malware-locked systems was probably a great business call by them – they had been without access for 10 days and were diverting patients as a result, so their $17,000 was well spent. Unfortunately for everybody else, their widely reported decision at will encourage ransomware hackers to step up their hospital attacks. The right thing for the hospital to do is to share what happened, how they detected it, how it affected their operation, and whether the FBI or other involved agencies advised them to pay up.

Mr. Ventura’s Nebraska school requires blurring student faces in photos, but he sent the one above showing a student using the green screen we provided in funding his DonorsChoose grant request. She is performing a Winter Concert reading as Apple’s iMovie projects behind her on the green screen, making it appear that she’s outdoors. They’re also using the green screen to allow students of the month to record their accomplishment. Next up is increasing the confidence of students by having them do Readers Theater projects on screen.

I will allow Mrs. Swope from Alabama to describe the listening center project we funded in her own words: “The air in my class was charged with excitement when my students and I received a ‘mystery box’ one day after lunch. As I opened the box, my students couldn’t help themselves. They gathered around and proceeded to help me open our special gift (this has never happened to me before). It was almost as exciting as Christmas morning! As I unpacked each component to our new listening center, the children marveled at the equipment. They were so overwhelmed. The looks on their faces were priceless. My students couldn’t wait to get their hands on our new listening center. EVERY child has felt empowered when they have used the listening station to read books.”

HIStalkapalooza

Reminders for those invited:

• You must RSVP the emailed Eventbrite order confirmation (click the “Attend Event” button). Once you’ve done that, you get a second email containing your actual PDF ticket. Once you get your ticket, you are set.
• Print your ticket out in advance or installed the Eventbrite app on your phone – you’ll be checked in by scanning the unique barcode on your ticket.
• We will close the check-in desk no later than 8:30, so arrive before then.
• Security will turn away anyone without a ticket, just like at a Taylor Swift concert.

Last Week’s Most Interesting News

• IBM announced plans to acquire Truven Health Analytics for $2.6 billion, rolling it into IBM Watson Health, the fourth such acquisition.
• Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (CA) pays hackers $17,000 to return access to its systems that were crippled for 10 days by ransomware.
• An investigative article warns consumers who might want to buy life, long-term, or disability insurance that any genetic testing results can legally be used to deny them coverage.
• Cerner announced results that beat expectations, but shares dropped on the company’s first bookings miss since 2008.
• Partners HealthCare’s $1.2 billion Epic project takes a hit on its operating profit.

Webinars

February 23 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Completing your EMR with a Medical Image Sharing Strategy.” Sponsored by LifeImage. Presenters: Don K. Dennison, consultant; Jim Forrester, director of imaging informatics, UR Medicine. Care coordination can suffer without an effective, cost-efficient way to share images across provider networks. Consolidating image management systems into a single platform such as VNA or PACS doesn’t address the need to exchange images with external organizations. This webinar will address incorporating the right image sharing methods into your health IT strategy.

February 24 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Is Big Data a Big Deal … or Not?” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, EVP of product development, Health Catalyst. Hadoop is the most powerful and popular technology platform for data analysis in the world, but healthcare adoption has been slow. This webinar will cover why healthcare leaders should care about Hadoop, why big data is a bigger deal outside of healthcare, whether we’re missing the IT boat yet again, and how the cloud reduces adoption barriers by commoditizing the skilled labor impact.

February 25 (Thursday) 1:00 ET. “Clinical Analytics for Population Health: Straddling Two Worlds.” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Brian Murphy, lead analyst, Chilmark Research; Jody Ranck, senior analyst, Chilmark Research. The Chilmark Research clinical analytics team will be sharing some of their key findings from the recently released “2016 Clinical Analytics for Population Health Market Trends” report. This will be followed by a Q&A session to make sure everyone goes to HIMSS16 well informed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Opternative raises $6 million in Series A funding to further develop its app that allows consumers aged 18-40 to conduct their own vision exam, then send the result electronically to an eye doctor to have a prescription written. I’m sure it’s fine for generating a convenient eyeglass or contact lens prescription, but an exam should cover checking retinal health and screening for glaucoma. It seems like one of those bad ideas in which consumers get what they want instead of what they need. As the company’s disclaimer describes, “Opternative’s service does not include any type of eye health exam … our doctors recommend that all patients between 18 and 40 years old receive an eye health exam at least once every two years from a local eye care professional … Opternative’s technology is only intended and suitable for use by licensed ophthalmologists to perform online refractive eye exams on patients between the ages of 18 and 40 and in good health.”

Francisco Partners increases its ownership of CPSI to nearly 2 million shares, 14.6 percent of the company. Above is the one-year share price chart of CPSI (blue, up 4.5 percent) vs. the Nasdaq (red, down 9.2 percent).

From the Allscripts earnings call:

• Recurring revenue made up 76 percent of 2015’s total.
• Q4 bookings exceeded the company’s 2011 record quarter.
• The company sells all products are being sold as subscriptions rather than upfront licenses.
• Service volumes are down as clients choose hosted options.
• The company expects growth in UK, Canada, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

Sales

Connecticut Children’s Medical Center (CT) chooses Fujifilm’s Synapse VNA version 6.0.

Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System (IL) chooses Cerner, which will replace Meditech.

Announcements and Implementations

Peer60 releases a new report called “The Big Mega HIT Purchasing Report.” The top purchasing plans for 2016 involve population health management and patient engagement. Epic continues to hold the top inpatient and outpatient EHR mindshare, although the outpatient figure really is hospital-based since only hospital employees were surveyed. Epic also holds the top mindshare for population health management and patient engagement, although that finding might call into question the interpretation of respondents. Cerner leads in enterprise analytics.

Other

Here’s another pretty funny Athenahealth commercial.

Weird News Andy says his proposed title of “Pharmacists > Crooks” is not a menu, but a mathematical representation. An Alabama pharmacist resolves situation in which a gunman took hostages and demanded drugs. She chose drugs that put the gunman to sleep, after which she took his gun and waved in police to arrest him. Or as WNA says, “Say ni-night, Mr. Robber. Hope you were not to surprised when you woke up in the Greybar Motel.”

Sponsor Updates

• The St. Louis Business Journal profiles TierPoint’s new $30 million data center in Oklahoma City.
• WeiserMazars donates books to the Ronald McDonald House New York as part of its #HookedOnBooks campaign.

Blog Posts

• T-System Recognizes Exceptional Employees with Annual CHART Award (T-System)
• The Quality of Patient Care (TeleTracking)
• Exploring New Quality and Payment Initiatives (Verisk Health)
• The company we keep. (Voalte)
• Can Machine Learning Prevent Death in the ICU? (Xerox)
• The Necessity of Maintenance (Zynx Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
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