News 3/13/24

Top News

Oracle reports Q3 results: revenue up 7%, adjusted EPS $1.41 versus $1.22, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings and meeting revenue expectations. ORCL shares rose sharply to a 52-week high on the news as investors reacted to the company’s cloud and AI prospects. From the earnings call:

• CEO Safra Catz once again recited the need to “drive Cerner profitability to Oracle standards,” as the growth in that business lagged the company’s overall growth.
• Catz said that the Cerner business ”is a significant headwind this year,“ but she expects it to return to growth next year.
• Board chair and CTO Larry Ellison says that the company is using its Apex application generator and autonomous database to develop new healthcare applications. He says that an ambulatory clinic system that includes a Clinical Digital Assistant voice interface will be released in Q4.
• The Clinical Digital Assistant will include ambient encounter documentation and will create prescriptions, orders, and notes that automatically update the EHR.
• Ellison predicts that Oracle’s AI-centric healthcare cloud applications will allow customers to rapidly modernize their systems and transform Oracle Health into a high-growth business.
• Ellison says that running Cerner on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is less expensive than using a Cerner-dedicated data center in Kansas City; is more secure against cyberattacks; and allows automatic updates every three months.

Oracle also announced enhancements to Oracle Health Data Intelligence, formerly Cerner HealthIntent, that include a generative AI service that summarizes patient histories for care managers.

Reader Comments

From Mike: “Re: HIMSS24. Rocking my HIStalk 2014 pin for the 10-year anniversary. My awesome HIStalk mug has finally faded out, so sad. And I miss the HIStalkapalooza days — HIMSS just isn’t the same.” My ideas are often financially unsound, such as lugging boxes of pins and mugs to HIMSS14 and then trashing most of them afterward as attendees were too overwhelmed with booth swag to want more. Ditto HIStalkapalooza, which was was a financial nail-biter every year and would have wiped me out in 2020 had I not ended it with the 10th edition in 2017. Still, like many things in life, the good memories outlive the not-so-good ones. The flamingo with a stethoscope design was reasonably clever.

From Booth Crawler: “Re: HIMSS24. Twitter is lit up with ‘influencers’ who are charging vendors to promote their talks, moderate their panels, or pitch their booth presence.” I’ve noticed a lot of that this year. I started HIStalk forever ago because so-called news sites mostly ran paid vendor promos in which no discouraging word was ever heard. I’m glad that’s still the case since it gives me a reason to keep doing it my way. Everybody has to choose what works for them.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Attending HIMSS24? I’m anxious to hear your thoughts about the buzz, trends, surprises. Did you attend any HIMSS-owned educational sessions versus the Informa-owned exhibit hall? That also reminds me that SxSW’s healthcare track ended Tuesday and I haven’t heard a peep out of it even though it and CES at one time looked like potential HIMSS competitors.

Webinars

March 27 (Wednesday) 3 ET. “Houston Methodist: Deploying clinical AI at scale for improved outcomes.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, chief of cardiovascular disease prevention and wellness, Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center; Brenda Campbell, RN, senior consultant, HM Health System Innovations; Nassib Chamoun, MS, founder and CEO, HDAI. The presenters  will share how an interdisciplinary team collaborated to successfully use predictive models and a novel AI-driven approach to address post-discharge mortality. They will also describe how they expanded use of the platform to reduce clinician time spent digging through the EHR with a one-page risk profile, including codes extracted from notes using generative AI, and targeting their highest risk patients for extra attention. They will speak to how they overcame barriers to bringing AI at scale to support clinicians across the care continuum.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cognitive assessment software vendor Linus Health acquires clinical-grade speech analytics company Aural Analytics.

Access Information Management acquires Triyam, which specializes in healthcare data conversion, migration, and archiving.

Investment firm Frazier Healthcare Partners acquires patient engagement and payments technology firm RevSpring from its private equity owner.

Trey Lauderdale, who founded and led Voalte and then sold it to Hill-Rom for $180 million in 2019, brings his new, healthcare-unrelated company Atomic Canyon out of stealth as founder and CEO. The company’s AI platform scans federal databases to help nuclear power plant operators obtain regulatory approvals

AI-enabled precision medicine technology vendor Tempus hires Morgan Stanley to take the company public.

Sales

• Ferrell Hospital (IL) selects remote patient monitoring technology from CareSimple.
• Foothold Technology will integrate Findhelp’s social services referral management software with its human services EHR and care coordination technology.
• Children’s Wisconsin will implement Locus Health’s remote patient monitoring software.
• University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust in England selects Epic.
• Sentara Healthcare (VA) opts for virtual rheumatology care services from Remission Medical.
• Halifax Health (FL) will implement Epic.

People

Walmart Health names consultant and former ChristianaCare executive Ken Silverstein, MD, MBA as VP of clinical operations.

Divurgent names Mike Nash, MBA (RPM Advisors) SVP of its new Divurgent Canada division.

Cone Health (NC) promotes Jason Wright, MA to VP of enterprise business platforms and digital solutions.

Former Cherokee Nation Health CIO Donnie Parish joins General Dynamics Information Technology as VP of strategic operations.

Clinithink names former consultant Mark Johnston as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

CommonSpirit Health (UT) goes live on Epic across 45 outpatient departments.

Crook County Medical Services District (WY) implements Oracle Health.

Wolters Kluwer Health announces the availability of UpToDate Enterprise and UpToDate Pro digital clinical decision support solutions under the UpToDate brand.

Symplr announces the GA of SymplrAI, a virtual workforce assistant designed to help streamline hospital operations.

Sonifi Health debuts cloud-based smart room technology featuring patient engagement tools at the bedside.

Stanford Health Care (CA) deploys Nuance’s DAX Copilot automated clinical documentation software.

Altera Digital Health announces Paragon Denali, an Azure-based EHR for rural, critical access, and community hospitals.

Clearwater announces an addition to its IRM|Pro platform that allows organizations to gauge their cybersecurity program performance against NIST’s framework.

Several Meditech sites are deploying ambient listening technology with its Expanse EHR using multiple voice assistant vendors.

InterSystems enhances the patient matching functionality of its HealthShare Patient Index by incorporating LexisNexis LexID.

ECRI publishes its Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns 2024, which includes these technology-related items:

• Workarounds with barcode medication administration systems, such as administering meds whose barcodes won’t scan and charting after the fact.
• Unintended consequences of technology adoption, such as clinician burnout, and the potential of making bad clinical decisions because of unreliable or poorly trained AI.

Apple touts the development of health and wellness apps for Apple Vision Pro, noting currently available apps for visual surgical planning, medical equipment training, and Epic Spatial Computing Concept, which allows clinicians to interact with Epic to complete charting, review results, conduct secure chats, and complete in-basket workflows.

Other

UnitedHealthcare asks Oregon regulators for emergency approval of its acquisition of The Corvallis Clinic, which it says is in imminent danger of closing because of financial challenges. It didn’t mention that those challenges were caused by the weeks-long claims and payment outage of Change Healthcare, which is owned by UnitedHealthcare. The excellent report by The American Prospect concludes that UHG-owned Optum, which is the largest employer of physicians in the US, “can add to its stable by securing purchases of companies put into a terrible position by its own ransomware hack.” The article also notes that UnitedHealth pays $662 million in medical claims each day, so it is piling up cash as its own systems prevent it from sending out the money it owes to providers.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Why EHR Optimization is Worth the Effort and Budget.”
• Agfa HealthCare accelerates growth in enterprise imaging cloud business amidst strong market momentum.
• Black Book’s latest user survey ranks Innovaccer’s Data Activation Platform as the top end-to-end population health solution.
• CHIME’s Leader to Leader Podcast features Divurgent Chief of US Operations Joe Grinstead, “The Science of Organizational Change Management.”
• FinThrive announces enhancements to its Analyze, Authorization Manager, and Real-Time Insurance Discover and Active Insurance Discover revenue cycle solutions.
• First Databank adds CDS Hooks integration to its Targeted Medication Warnings solution.
• Surescripts publishes its 2023 national progress report, “Tracking the Impact of Health Intelligence Sharing Across the United States.”
• Linus Health adds Hearing Screener and Digital Trail Making Test Part B assessments to its comprehensive, AI-enhanced brain health platform.
• TruBridge partners with the newly-created Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network, which aims to operationalize responsible AI principles to improve the quality, safety, and trustworthiness of AI in healthcare.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces key milestones for AI Labs, its Clinical Generative AI beta launched last year and powered by its UpToDate CDS solution.
• EClinicalWorks offers a new customer success story, “Empowering Population Health & Revenue Growth.”

Blog Posts

• Unlocking the Full Potential of Your EHR: Why Optimization Pays Off (CereCore)
• Patient identification and safety: The truth can be scary (Altera Digital Health)
• What to Know about the 2024 Physician Fee Schedule (AGS Health)
• 5 ways data analytics drives impact and ROI in healthcare (Arcadia)
• Natural History and Real-World Data in Rare Diseases: Applications, Limitations, and Future Perspectives (Aridhia Informatics)
• Expedite the Path to Modern Patient Experiences with Patient Communication Conversation Packs (Artera)
• A Guide to the Successful Implementation of AI in Healthcare (Availity)
• Hardening your work-from-home network and devices to weather today’s cyber storm (Clearwater)
• Leading the Way: A Guide for Hiring Managers on Cultivating Effective Leadership (Direct Recruiters)
• The Vibe From ViVE: The Buzz About AI, Interoperability, and Beyond (DrFirst)
• Telehealth in care deserts: Helping to overcome barriers created by location, costs, or social stigma (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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