News 12/30/22

Top News

A study of 100,000 stroke patients in NHS hospitals finds that the rate of full recovery tripled to 48% when AI software from UK company Brainomax was used to make a quicker diagnosis.

The company was spun out of the University of Oxford.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Some healthcare IT websites find themselves with nothing to pontificate about in the slow holiday news weeks, so they pad space with the 2023 digital health predictions of whoever is willing to email a response. All those I’ve seen have been vague and obvious, usually covering overworked territory such as telehealth and wearables. The real problem is that a year is a short time window to snapshot a slow transition, so truly bold predictions would be ill-advised since the Internet doesn’t forget being publicly wrong. I don’t recall any of the 2021 pundits predicting that Oracle would acquire Cerner, that digital health company shares would implode with a special toasting of SPACs, and that widespread scammery in the online ADHD prescription mills would finally draw federal attention.

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Healthjump. The King of Prussia, PA-based company is driving data liquidity and interoperability efforts within the world of healthcare. Healthjump provides a cloud-hosted platform for the collection, standardization, and delivery of EHR data into applications, analytics, clinical research, quality measures reporting, and more without the complex set-up of traditional interface engines. The platform connects to any EHR/PM system to extract over 300 standardized data elements, with delivery options including API, web hooks, flat file, and HL7. The company’s webpage lists, for each EHR vendor, how it access its data, what data is available, and how it is delivered. Thanks to Healthjump for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Seven care homes in Wales win awards for their use of RITA, a touchscreen app that helps patients, particularly those with memory impairments, recall and share events from their past by listening to music and speeches, watching old news reports and movies, and playing games. RITA, which is sold by Cheshire-based My Improvement Network, stands for Reminescence / Rehabilitation and Interactive Therapy activities.

Former Allscripts CEO Paul Black invests in and joins the board of Community CareLink, a Kansas City, MO company that offers software for case management, crisis calls, agency reporting, and social determinants of health referrals.

A group of Apple Watch users sues the company, claiming that pulse oximeters are racially biased because they are less accurate when testing dark skin. The plaintiffs say that the problem is that the Watch’s sensors and algorithms measure blood oxygen at the wrist, unlike medical grade units that measure at the fingertip.

Sales

• Downtown Pediatrics (WY) will implement EClinicalWorks Cloud.

People

Carteret Health Care (NC) names CIO / VP of General Services Kyle Marek, MS as interim CEO with the retirement of Harvey Case. He has been at the health system since 1998, when he took a network engineer job there right out of college.

Privacy and Security

Scripps Health will pay $3.5 million to settle class action lawsuits over the 1.2 million patients whose information was compromised in a March 2021 ransomware attack. Each plaintiff will receive $100 in cash and credit monitoring services, while those who had their identities stolen will receive up to $7,500 to cover out-of-pocket costs.

Lake Charles Memorial Health System (LA) begins notifiying 270,000 patients that their personal and medical information was compromised in a ransomware attack that occurred in late October, two months before the first letters were mailed.

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children says it will take weeks to recover from a December 19 ransomware attack, during which time patients will continue to experience delays.

Other

In England, a surgery practice’s Christmas greeting broadcast text message for patients is mistakenly replaced with one advising the recipient that they had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Panicked patients couldn’t get through on the practice’s telephone, so several lined up at its front door. Said one patient, “If it’s one of their admins that’s sent out a mass text, I wouldn’t be trusting them to empty the bins.”

Contacts

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