News 6/1/18

Top News

Athenahealth investor ClearBridge Investments jumps on the Elliott Management bandwagon, urging the health IT company to launch sale proceedings in light of a “litany of executive turnover, misexecution on several initiatives and persistent downward trajectory of a variety of financial measures.”

Reader Comments

From Only the Lonely: "Re: Allscripts. Getting ready to drop the bomb on vast swaths of employees. If you have a total of 60 years combining age and number of years with the company, you have been given notice to accept a early retirement package or else. Numbers said to be 500+." Unverified. I can say from past experience that the company won’t comment on personnel actions, so I didn’t bother to ask. The rumored effective date is July 1.

Webinars

June 5 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Increase Referrals and Patient Satisfaction with a Smarter ‘Find a Doctor’ Web Search.” Sponsors: Phynd Technologies, Healthwise. Presenters: Joseph H. Schneider, MD, MBA, FAAP, retired SVP/CHIO, Indiana University Health; Keith Belton, VP of marketing, Phynd. A recent survey found that 84 percent of patients check a hospital’s website before booking an appointment. However, ‘Find a Doctor’ search functions often frustrate them because their matching functionality is primitive and the provider’s information is incomplete or outdated. Referring physicians need similarly robust tools to find the right specialist and to send the patient to the right location. Attendees of this webinar will learn how taxonomy-driven Provider Information Management improves patient and referrer satisfaction by intelligently incorporating the provider’s location, insurance coverage, specialty and subspecialty, and services offered that can be searched via patient-friendly terms.

June 12 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Blockchain in Healthcare: Why It Matters.” Sponsor: Quest Diagnostics. Presenter: Lidia Fonseca, CIO, Quest Diagnostics. Blockchain technology is gaining traction in many industries, including healthcare. It’s not only a hot topic, but is also showing promise with real-world applications. This webinar will share how blockchain may play a key role in the future of healthcare IT by helping to solve some of the industry’s challenges, distinguishing the hype from reality by discussing how it works, how it can impact healthcare providers, and its future application in healthcare IT.

June 21 (Thursday) noon ET. “Operationalizing Data Science Models in Healthcare.” Sponsor: CitiusTech. Presenters: Yugal Sharma, PhD, VP of data science, CitiusTech; Vinil Menon, VP of enterprise applications proficiency, CitiusTech. As healthcare organizations are becoming more adept at developing models, building the skills required to manage, validate, and deploy these models efficiently remains a challenging task. We define operationalization as the process of managing, validating, and deploying models within an organization. Several industry best practices, along with frameworks and technology solutions, exist to address this challenge. An understanding of this space and current state of the art is crucial to ensure efficient use and consumption of these models for relevant stakeholders in the organization. This webinar will give an introduction and overview of these key areas, along with examples and case studies to demonstrate the value of various best practices in the healthcare industry.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Withings co-founder Eric Carreel plans to sell the Nokia Health (née Withings) products he re-acquired earlier this year, and to relaunch the Withings brand by the end of 2018. The company still employs 200 at its headquarters in France.

Omada Health becomes the largest Diabetes Prevention Program provider to achieve full recognition status from the CDC. Founded in 2011, the company has raised $126 million to develop and market a technology-based diabetes management program for employers and payers.

Ovulation-tracking wearable company Ava raises $30 million in a Series B round, bringing its total raised to just over $45 million.

Madison, WI-based Propeller Health secures $20 million in a funding round led by Aptar Pharma. With help from Aptar, Propeller Health plans to scale its digital therapeutics beyond its core chronic respiratory disease market.

People

Voalte hires Keith DeYoung (Wolters Kluwer Health) as VP of sales.

Alan Stein, MD (Hewlett-Packard) joins medication risk management technology vendor Tabula Rasa Healthcare as SVP of healthcare analytics.

Announcements and Implementations

After a successful pilot last year during Hurricane Harvey, UTHealth’s (TX) physician group will offer the Babyscripts prenatal remote monitoring app to all of its pregnant patients.

Premier launches a new collaborative to help health systems navigate physician practice acquisitions.

Robin Healthcare announces GA of an Alexa-like device for orthopedics and other specialties that uses machine learning and natural-language processing to capture physician notes and add them to the EHR.

Fitango Health develops care management and patient engagement software for oncologists.

Hyland debuts new enterprise imaging solutions including PACSgear Image Link Encounter Workflow and upgrades to its NilRead enterprise viewer.

Samsung will embed video visit and symptom checker capabilities from Babylon Health within its Health app on Galaxy devices sold in the UK. Babylon, which powers the NHS “GP at Hand” telemedicine service, hopes the deal will propel it beyond British borders should Samsung decide to expand the partnership beyond the UK.

Sales

• Capital Regional Medical Center (MO) selects Infor’s CloudSuite Healthcare and Cloverleaf Clinical Bridge software.

Privacy and Security

Several Aultman Hospital (OH) employees fall prey to an email phishing scam, resulting in a late-March data breach that potentially exposed patient medical record, driver’s license, and Social Security numbers.

Other

This article highlights the blind-like trust consumers put into Ancestry.com’s DNA testing services, despite the secretive nature of what the Utah-based company does with biological samples after it sends customers their ethnicity profiles. Ancestry has expanded its DNA database to include samples from over 5 million people, and won’t reveal where it stores the DNA or how long it will be kept. “Right now they see the benefit as being able to have cocktail-party conversation about their genetic makeup,” says former FDA commissioner Peter Pitts, who now heads up the nonprofit Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. “They aren’t thinking about the risks of giving up their personal information, and the long-term implications.”

A literature review of HIE studies finds that community HIEs do indeed reduce healthcare utilization and associated costs, especially in the areas of duplicate procedures and imaging. The finding contradicts a 2015 study that found few HIE benefits in similar areas.

Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, MD becomes the first active NFL player to graduate from medical school. The Kansas City Chiefs right guard hopes to add his new honorific to the back of his jersey.

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia using software from National Decision Support Co. finds that radiology trainees are more apt to select appropriate imaging studies when aided by clinical decision support technology from within an EHR. CDS utilization in turn helped to reduce unnecessary imaging and related costs.

A KLAS report on HIT assessment and strategic planning recognizes Nordic as the top overall performer.

Weird News Andy points out that high-profile donors don’t guarantee great outcomes: An elderly dementia patient is found dead in the stairwell of the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s power plant. The woman had gone missing from a nearby mental health facility 10 days before. The hospital experienced a similar tragedy in 2013, when a patient was found dead in a stairwell two days after being admitted.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems publishes a new infographic, “Phoenix Children’s By The Numbers: Enhancing Patient Care, Increasing Physician Productivity, and Saving Big with Medicomp’s Quippe.”
• A.T. Still University of Health Sciences will use Aprima’s EHR as part of its grant-funded falls risk assessment and prevention program for older adults.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at Digestive Disease Week 2018 June 2-5 in Washington, DC.
• FormFast will exhibit at the California Health Information Association Convention & Exhibit June 2-6 in San Diego.
• Healthwise will exhibit at the Cerner North Atlantic Regional User Group Meeting June 4-6 in Grantville, PA.
• Impact Advisors promotes Kevin Gately to principal advisor and Molly Ekelof to senior advisor.
• With help from Engage, Island Hospital (WA) wraps up initial implementation of Meditech Expanse.
• Gainsight recognizes Imprivata for customer success excellence.
• In New Zealand, MercyAscot selects the InterSystems TrakCare EHR.
• Mobile Heartbeat VP of Professional Services James Webb will speak at Cisco Live US 2018 on June 13 in Orlando.
• CTG consolidates several of its enterprise information management services into a single solution dubbed EIM Advantage.
• Salesforce invests in Virsys12, a healthcare-focused Salesforce implementation and consulting company.
• Datica celebrates its fifth anniversary as a cloud-based compliance and security company.
• The SSI Group achieves HHS Optimization Program Pilot of Administrative Simplification certification.

Blog Posts

• ADHD and Telemedicine: A Natural Fit (EClinicalWorks)
• Unlock the Code to a Better CDI Program (HCTec)
• Another Trip to the Hospital (Healthfinch)
• 3 Ways Content as a Service Helps You Win at Social Media (Healthwise)
• Don’t ignore encounter-based medical images (Hyland)
• The Walking Gallery – My Sepsis Story (Iatric Systems)
• 5 Secrets to Healthcare Content Marketing Success (Influence Health)
• Crossing the Payer/Provider Chasm – Getting to Shared Risk, Shared Data (InterSystems)
• Laying the Foundation for Enhanced Patient Access: The Importance of Analytics (Kyruus)
• The Real-Time Enterprise is Coming – Are You Ready? (CTG)
• Why corporate values fail to resonate (and how to make sure yours do) (Nordic)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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