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October 18, 2018 News No Comments

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The FDA updates draft guidance on managing cybersecurity issues for the premarket submission of medical devices. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD says the document, initially penned in 2014, offers “recommendations for manufacturers on how they can better protect their products against different cybersecurity risks, from ransomware to a catastrophic attack on a health system.”


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I don’t pay much attention to the “Like” button at the bottom of each HIStalk post, but did happen to notice that Alexander Scarlat’s first Readers Write installment on machine learning had already garnered several dozen clicks. It hasn’t quite gained the notoriety of the most popular post in recent memory, which deals with remedying poor clinician engagement with health IT. Both tap into several pieces of advice I give those interested in submitting editorial:

1. Readers will give your content more credence if you write from a place of experience. Both authors of the aforementioned posts have MDs, and other in-the-trenches educational and professional experience to back up their right to editorialize. Vendor authors – unless they too have immense clinical chops – will never quite escape the subconscious bias of readers who see a company name in the byline and immediately worry their time is being wasted by someone trying to sell them something.

2. Of-the-moment topics written for an audience with significant experience working in the health IT trenches are key to a good read, and will often sustain relevance for some time. Submissions that offer a 1,000-foot view rather than diving into the nitty gritty will attract critics who aren’t afraid to lambast authors. (Granted, I try to filter those out, but some slip through.)

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3. Pop culture and humor are always good bets, provided they are in good taste. (I’m still shaking my head at the submission sent over with a curse word in the headline.) I often point interested parties to the “All I Needed to Know to Disrupt Healthcare I Learned from ‘Seinfeld’” series penned in 2015 by Bruce Bandes as a great example of original, humorous content that speaks to a timely topic.


Webinars

October 30 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “How One Pediatric CIN Aligned Culture, Technology and the Community to Transform Care.” Presenters: Lisa Henderson, executive director, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Shehzad Saeed, MD, associate chief medical officer, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Mason Beard, solutions strategy leader, Philips PHM; Gabe Orthous, value-based care consultant, Himformatics. Sponsor: Philips PHM. Dayton Children’s Health Partners, a pediatric clinically integrated network, will describe how it aligned its internal culture, technology partners, and the community around its goal of streamlining care delivery and improving outcomes. Presenters will describe how it recruited network members, negotiated value-based contracts, and implemented a data-driven care management process.

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Gauss Surgical raises $20 million in a Series C funding round led by Northwell Health (NY) and SoftBank Ventures Korea, with help from seven other health systems. Funding thus far comes to $52 million. The company has developed tablet-based software that uses machine learning and digital imaging to monitor maternal surgical blood loss in real time.

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Digital prescription savings company OptimizeRx acquires interactive patient messaging vendor CareSpeak Communications for an undisclosed amount.

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Muscular dystrophy nonprofit CureDuchenne invests in ZappRx, and will help the vendor optimize its e-prescribing and electronic prior authorization software for Duchenne patients.

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23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki tells Rock Health conference attendees that she hopes to soon roll out a test that will help consumers better understand how their bodies react to certain antidepressants. Price points for similar services offered by Color Genomics and Albertsons grocery store pharmacists range from $250 to $750. The FDA shut down 23andMe’s first attempt at such a test in 2013 based on the fear that consumers could misinterpret the results as medical advice.


People

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Patrick Flavin (Outcome Health) joins Arches Technology as president.

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HCTec names Salome Isbell (MedHOK) CFO, Victor Ayers (Infor) VP of professional services, and Heather Espino (Centura Health) VP of clinical solutions.


Announcements and Implementations

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Bassett Medical Center (NY) adopts Masimo’s Patient SafetyNet and Root with Vital Signs Check across its 54-bed med-surg unit.

Massachusetts EHealth Collaborative and Cognizant will provide technical and financial consulting services to the MassHealth Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment technical assistance program’s ACOs and community partners.

Partners Connected Health adds a mobile app to its PGHDConnect program, giving users the ability to securely share health data with their providers from 250 devices.


Government and Politics

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The FDA and Department of Homeland Security announce they will work together to share information on cybersecurity vulnerabilities in medical devices so that threats to patient safety can be addressed more quickly.


Privacy and Security

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Following a similar GDPR-induced move in Europe, Apple gives US users the ability to view, edit, and delete data it has collected on them using a new tool on its privacy website. The tool does not apply to data collected by and stored on Apple devices, including biometric data like fingerprints and heart rates.


Other

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The Sequoia Project creates the Interoperability Matters Advisory Group and solicits nominations for workgroup members who will provide feedback and recommendations on interoperability endeavors. I was not aware that Sequoia relinquished Carequality earlier this month to operate as a standalone entity.

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In Dublin, St. James’s Hospital goes live on expanded Cerner functionality, making it the largest EHR implementation in Ireland’s history. The three-year project was dubbed “Project Oak” as an homage to the paper the Millenium conversion will save.

Vermont Information Technology Leaders struggles to pare down the number of duplicate patient records in the state’s HIE. An audit last year found 1.7 million unique records for 624,000 residents and patients from out of town. VITL staff have deemed at least 35 percent of those to be duplicates, and hope to have that number down to 21 percent by the end of the year. The struggle for a unique patient identifier in the Green Mountain State is real.


Sponsor Updates

  • EClinicalWorks will exhibit at CHCANYS18 Annual Conference and Clinical Forum October 21-23 in Tarrytown, NY.
  • FormFast will host virtual user group meetings October 23 and 24.
  • Healthwise will exhibit at the 2018 PNEG Conference October 19-21 in Fort Wayne, IN.
  • Foundations Health Solutions wins an Excellence in Technology Award from McKnight’s for its use of Hyland OnBase.
  • Formativ Health adds Conversa Health’s AI-powered chatbot messaging tool to its line of patient engagement services.
  • Imprivata completes the Zebra Technologies Validated Program for its Mobile Device Access.
  • Casenet becomes a founding member of the private-sector Da Vinci project, which aims to leverage FHIR to improve data-sharing in value-based care arrangements.
  • ZeOmega adds MCG Health’s Cite AutoAuth prior authorization software to its Jiva population health management technology.
  • HCTec publishes a new case study featuring Montefiore Health System.
  • NHS approves Elsevier as a supplier for its NHS England Health Systems Support Framework.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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