News 4/15/22

Top News

A CB Insights Q1 digital health report finds that:

• Digital health funding dropped 36% over Q4, a much larger decrease that the financial and retail tech sectors. Funding was down across all global regions.
• Mental health tech funding dropped 60%, while telehealth was down 32%.
• Mega-round funding dropped in contributing to the overall funding decrease.
• Just one company launched an IPO in Q1 versus 23 in the previous quarters, and zero SPAC deals occurred, likely because of poor IPO returns in 2021. IPO activity was the lowest in years.
• Six new companies attained billion-dollar “unicorn” valuation in Q1, less than half of the previous quarter’s number.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I apologize that several companies sent urgent phone and email messages to Lorre on Tuesday after I mentioned that my top-of-page ad banner is available for the first time in years. I didn’t expect that much interest in committing immediately. The fairest way we could think of was to go with the earliest timestamp.

I had plans to offset my slacking off at HIMSS22 by watching some recorded education sessions online, but I’m finding that my indifference has transformed from in-person to virtual. I haven’t looked at anything related to the conference since I left Orlando and most likely won’t. Beyond official education sessions being recorded, it seemed like half of the conference attendees were bantering with the other half for their dopey podcasts and video interviews, so I doubt the limited interest in consuming them is increasing as weeks go by.

Speaking of HIMSS, I checked to see if anything was happening on Accelerate (not much that I saw), but I was surprised to see a newly posted pitch for a paid networking group by HITLAB that costs from $99 to $1,999 per year. I’m not sure the industry needs another option “for individuals in healthcare looking to amplify their brand impact” or how that business might compete with that of HIMSS, and if so, why it is being promoted on a HIMSS platform. I don’t know anything about HITLAB except they used to run an innovation contest with AARP.

Webinars

April 22 (Friday) 1 ET. “CMIO 3.0: What’s Next for the CMIO?” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Becket Mahnke, MD, CMIO and pediatric cardiologist, Confluence Health; Dale Sanders, chief strategy officer, IMO. The relatively short history of the CMIO role includes Version 1.0 (EHR implementation, Meaningful Use, and regulatory compliance) and Version 2.0 (quality and efficiency). Version 3.0 is at the forefront of predictive analytics, population health initiatives, and optimization of data-driven tools. The presenters will discuss the digital revolution’s impact on CMIO responsibilities; the connection between clinical informatics, analytics, population health and the CMIO; and how CMIO 3.0 will be involved in the adoption of advanced technologies.

April 28 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Undercoded and Underpaid: Making It Easier to Document to Optimize Reimbursement.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, senior director of informatics, IMO; Nicole Douglas, sales engineer, IMO. The presenters will discuss how to simplify precise documentation for clinicians; the effects of imprecise coding on reimbursement; why accurate code capture at the point of care can have positive downstream impact on population health initiatives; and how third-party solutions integrated with the EHR can reduce documentation burdens.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Biofourmis will reportedly receive an investment from General Atlantic that will value the company at over $1 billion.

Healthcare compliance and learning platform vendor MedTrainer raises $43 million in a Series B funding round.

Virtual mental health company Iris Telehealth raises $40 million in Series B funding.

Virtual diabetes clinic 9am.health raises $16 million in a Series A funding round.

Drugmaker Pfizer offers $74 million to acquire Brisbane, Australia-based ResApp, whose smartphone app analyzes coughing sounds to diagnose COVID-19 with 92% accuracy. The app is already being used to diagnose asthma and pneumonia during telehealth visits.

Sales

• Fraser Health will upgrade its Meditech Client/Server system to Expanse.
• North York General Hospital chooses Sectra’s radiology and breast imaging modules and VNA.
• Howard Brown Health selects Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company, to provide project management, resourcing, and advisory services for its OCHIN Epic implementation.
• Senior care technology support vendor UpStream Healthcare chooses Innovaccer’s Health Cloud, Data Activation Platform, and application suite.

People

Kevin Dias, MS (TransUnion Healthcare) joins Myndshft as chief customer officer.

Laurance Stuntz (Massachusetts EHealth Institute) joins Xealth as SVP of customer success.

Announcements and Implementations

Northwell Health and startup studio Aegis Ventures launch Ascertain, which will develop and commercialize healthcare AI companies. The company will use $100 million in seed funding to develop product ideas, commercialize scientific developments, and partner with foreign companies to bring their offerings to the US.

A large KLAS Arch Collaborative clinician survey looks at turnover and the EHR experience:

• Nurses are the clinicians who are most likely to leave at more than 20%.
• Burnout, the factor most strongly correlated with planned departures, is most often fueled by chaotic work environment, time required to complete bureaucratic tasks, lack of teamwork, no personal control over workload, and lack of shared values with leadership.
• One-third of clinicians who think their organizations perform poorly on EHR implementation training, and support say they are likely to leave within the next two years.
• Suggested EHR actions include reducing after-hours charting, optimizing nurse workflows to reduce duplicative charting, and offering workflow-specific EHR training,

Government and Politics

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, JD asks ONC to review possible bias in healthcare AI algorithms and its impact on health equity. 

Other

Mayo Clinic launches an observational study to determine if Apple Watch ECG and symptom reporting, as sent to an Epic dashboard, are good enough to support AI-powered diagnosis of cardiovascular problems.

ED doctors diagnose a 20-year-old man with breathing problems and chest pain with a lung air leak problem that is usually caused by violent coughing or strenuous exertion. His etiology was the latter, with an asterisk – he admitted that he was stricken during a vigorous session of self-gratification. He went home four days later, having learned unknown lessons.

Sponsor Updates

• Aleris-Hamlet in Demark implements Agfa HealthCare’s digital radiography technology.
• EVisit becomes a top-level member of the American Telemedicine Association.
• Conversational AI vendor Hyro will offer its healthcare customers provider search, match, and scheduling functionality from Kyruus.
• Wolters Kluwer Health’s Ovid medical research platform now offers access to the Astute Doctor Communicate Program, a collection of interactive and evidence-based online courses.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions publishes a new customer success story, “Delivering ROI with De-Identified Medical Claims Data.”

Blog Posts

• A Different Point of View: Healthcare IT’s History of Magical Thinking (Medicomp Systems)
• Training Your Practice with Telehealth (EVisit)
• Why patient experience matters to your revenue cycle (Experian Health)
• News Headlines Suggest Heightened Cybersecurity Awareness, IT Practitioners Know the Reality (Fortified Health Security)
• Digital as a Tool, not a Strategy: A Conversation with Christopher Longhurst (The HCI Group)
• Autism Awareness: A Personal Perspective (Healthwise)
• Four Warning Signs You’ve Outgrown Your HCM System (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• We’re expanding the Imprivata family: Welcome, SecureLink! (Imprivata)
• Data quality is the key to semantic interoperability (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Redefining Patient Intake for the Digital Era: 3 Reasons to Care (Lumeon)
• Memos from the Medhost CISO: Preparing for Potential Cyberwarfare (Medhost)
• Supporting assault survivors and nurse examiners with electronic assessments (Meditech)
• 5 Crucial Components Your PT EMR Needs (MWTherapy)
• Happy 25th Birthday, Dragon! (Nuance)
• Modern love: Why modernizing the enterprise beats an innovation-only focus (Nordic)

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