News 8/17/18

Top News

Best Buy acquires GreatCall for $800 million.

GreatCall is perhaps best known for its senior-friendly mobile phones currently being hyped in TV ads by vice chairman and former “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh.

The San Diego-based company also offers medical alert wearables, emergency response services, and apps that offer medication reminders and connect a user’s GreatCall device with family members.

This is not the big box retailer’s first foray into healthcare. It launched its smart phone-based Assured Living service for seniors and their family members last fall and added health and wellness content and symptom checking capabilities from Mayo Clinic to the companion app in January.

Reader Comments

From I’ve Been Everywhere, Man: “Re: US News top 20 hospitals. You are correct (in a technicality) that all 20 use Epic. Mayo Phoenix was one of Epic’s first ambulatory sites in the early 1990s, then was forced off in a Mayo corporate decision to self-develop in hacking Phamis Lastword to try to work in ambulatory. Meanwhile, Mayo Rochester, WI, and MN are live on Epic and Mayo Phoenix will go back on Epic this fall.” 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The paucity of interesting news will confirm that we’re in the Summer Doldrums, when everybody is focused on getting the kids back in school and squeezing in those last summer vacations and family cookouts. That’s also the time when I get bored and offer new sponsors a special deal just so I don’t feel ignored as page views and reader interaction take one last break before Labor Day. Contact Lorre, get on board now, and spend that budget money on something useful before it evaporates.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient payments company AxiaMed raises $12.4 million.

The USPTO awards Zynx Health a patent related to using machine learning to analyze clinical decision support documents. The company will incorporate the technology into its Knowledge Analyzer clinical content management solution for EHRs.

People

Patient safety expert Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD has left his position as chief medical officer of UnitedHealthCare after three months on the job. He resigned after seven years at Johns Hopkins Medicine in February 2018 to become UHC’s SVP of clinical strategy, then became CMO in June.

Healthwise promotes Jay Reynolds to CTO.

Dan Speicher (Omnitracs) joins Medecision as CTO.

Fortified Health Security hires William Crank (Medhost) as COO.

Michael Cantor, MD, MA (Pfizer) joins Regeneron Pharmaceuticals as head of clinical informatics.

Sales

• Carteret Health Care (NC) and Ozarks Medical Center (MO) choose consulting services from Engage.
• HIEs HealtheLink, Quality Health Network, Health Current, Indiana Health Information Exchange, and ClinicalConnect select data normalization and cleansing applications from Diameter Health.

Announcements and Implementations

Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services implements 4medica’s master patient index.

MedStar Health implements several FormFast form management technologies across its facilities in Maryland and Washington, DC.

Privacy and Security

In an effort to cut through the “white noise” of data breach news, HGP publishes a concise review of cybersecurity incidents in healthcare since 2010. Items of interest include:

• Email has become a favored entry point for hackers; breaches of personal devices have decreased by 50 percent.
• Paper and film breaches continue to account for 20 percent of breaches.
• Business associate-related breaches have decreased by 10 percent, while payer breaches have increased by 5.
• Of the 23 cybersecurity companies listed, Armor, Imprivata, Olive, and FairWarning have secured the most funding over the past two years.

Other

A Black Book report on health IT consulting predicts firms will rake in $53 billion by the end of this year, with the bulk of that coming from software implementation, optimization, integration, and support. The top three consulting needs are for cloud technology adoption, increased digitalization, and to supplement a lack of internal resources. Top wish-list engagements include help with transitioning to value-based care, cloud infrastructure, compliance, and decision support and analytics. The Chartis Group, ECG Management Consultants, Huron, and Impact Advisors top the list of favorite consulting firms, according to survey-takers.

A new KLAS report on business intelligence finds that Epic leads the pack by far in deep adoption despite immature native functionality and a lack of cost effectiveness, while HBI Solutions and Health Catalyst have the highest overall score and Dimensional Insight is #1 in driving outcomes and delivering value. Health Catalyst’s combination of software and services places it high on the list, especially for those looking for help with readmissions, opioid use, length of stay, and sepsis. Cerner’s offering is “still immature” as most clients are just getting started, with users telling KLAS that it lacks a testing environment, it doesn’t bring in external data easily, and it doesn’t yet offer predictive analytics. IBM, Microsoft, and SAS declined to participate.

Google is developing an AI-powered wellness assistant for smart watches that will proactively encourage users to make healthy choices based on their appointments, recorded activities, reminders, and location.

Sponsor Updates

• Elsevier receives several Digital Health Awards from the Health Information Resource Center.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the NACHC Community Health Institute & Expo August 26-28 in Orlando.
• Spok announces that the 20 hospitals named to US News & World Report’s 2018-19 Best Hospitals Honor Roll and the 10 hospitals named to the Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll are its clinical communications customers.
• FormFast will exhibit at the 2018 GHIMA Annual Meeting & Exhibit August 19-20 in Pine Mountain, GA.
• Glytec publishes a new video, “Digital Diabetes Management from a Patient’s Perspective.”
• HBI Solutions will exhibit at the SHIEC 2018 Annual Conference August 19-22 in Atlanta.
• Gartner includes Imat Solutions as a sample vendor in its latest Hype Cycle report for US healthcare payers.
• Influence Health announces 43-percent bookings growth for its Consumer Experience Platform solutions, and a 131-percent increase for its multi-channel campaign managed marketing services.
• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at Aprima’s annual user conference August 17-19 in Grapevine, TX.
• PerfectServe will host the Hospital for Special Surgery Educational and Networking Open House September 21 in New York City.
• Meditech publishes a new case study, “Clatterbridge Delivers More Efficient Cancer Care to the UK with Meditech, and a video titled “How Do Doctorrs Want to Spend Their Free Time?”
• PMD successfully completes its first SOC 2 and HIPAA security audit.

Blog Posts

• Footstep Following: A Sure-Fire Route to Medical Device Compendia Success (FDB)
• From Simple Practices to Physician Conglomerates: The Burdensome Journey of the Practicing Physician (Hayes Management Consulting)
• 3 Things Healthcare Providers Should Be Using By 2020: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Automation (The HCI Group)
• Tablet-enabled Forms Hand-Off/Game Changer? (Access)
• Becoming Great: 5 Common Characteristics of the Best Hospitals (Spok)
• 4 Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Best Practices to Enhance End User Experience (Goliath Technologies)
• Don’t lose another patient referral (Hyland)
• Why an identity governance program is important in healthcare (Imprivata)
• Social Media is Going Local: Healthcare Marketers Should Pay Attention (Influence Health)
• Clinical Summit 2018: Fostering a Clinical Community (Kyruus)

Contacts

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