Monday Morning Update 12/16/24

Top News

The American Telemedicine Association launches the ATA Center of Digital Excellence, whose big-name health system members will work to advance the integration of digital care pathways.

Reader Comments

From Sparky: “Re: Payer EDI systems. I hear they are having major volume and congestion issues, particularly eligibility.” Readers, what say you?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s 2:1 IPhones to Android phones among poll respondents.

New poll to your right or here: Which health activities have you performed on a mobile device in the past year? (multiple answers OK)

Friday will mark the most universal, logical, and non-contentious winter holiday of Yalda, an ancient celebration of the longest night of the year (although not the earliest sunset, which was December 7 for astronomically complicated reasons). Here’s the definition I run every year:

Yalda celebrants, most of them in Iran and nearby countries, observe the winter solstice, the last day of autumn and the longest night of the year, after which hours of daylight start increasing again. People stay up all night, eat watermelon and pomegranates (their glowing colors symbolize dawn and life), read poetry, and dance and play drums when the sun rises in a triumph of light over dark. Yalda means “birth.” I like it even beyond my personal obsession with changing hours of daylight — nobody is excluded or favored since the same sun shines down on us all, although I suppose folks in the Southern Hemisphere would need to buy their Yalda pomegranates in June.

Long-time reader Bill made a generous donation to Donors Choose, which after applying some nice matching money from various sources that include my Anonymous Vendor Executive, fully funded these teacher grant requests:

• Math flashcards and formula reference sheets for the Honors Algebra and Geometry middle school classes of Ms. W in Oklahoma City, OK (she sent the above note within a few minutes of the project’s funding Sunday afternoon).
• Whiteboard markers and erasers for Ms. B’s middle school class in Tarboro, NC.
• Math posters and learning games for first-year teacher Mr. P’s bilingual middle school classes in Chicago, IL.
• Headphones for Dr. H’s high school class in New Orleans, LA.
• Cell models for Ms. A’s middle school class in Dallas, TX.
• A document camera for Ms. H’s middle school class in Yonkers, NY.
• Microscopes, human body models, and STEM building kits for Ms. P’s elementary school class in Dallas, TX.

Meanwhile, here’s a photo from Ms. J in San Diego that shows her students using the reader-funded Ozobot coding tools in her elementary school class. She also sent a note: “The students have loved our new Ozobot coding center which has come to life thanks to this project. Thanks to the child friendly way that Ozobot is able to operate, I was able to quickly explain how the Ozobots work with the color code magnets, then leave the students to create pathways and code by themselves. My students are enamored with creating their own instructions for the Ozobots, and then watching the Ozobots go around their custom made paths. I wish I was able to send video through Donors Choose, because the way they interact with each other while building their own paths is heartwarming.”

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Sales

• Bamboo Health will provide the State of Hawaii with enhanced prescription drug monitoring that is integrated with EHR and pharmacy management system workflows.

People

David Grandy (Kaiser Permanente) joins Risant Health as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

A Black Book survey of 820 UK clinicians, IT staff, and administrators finds that nearly all believe that NHS needs to replace its antiquated system to reduce productivity losses. They also recommend expanding training and engaging clinicians in EHR procurement decisions. The IT leaders identified the need for vendor-neutral, standards-based platforms to foster data sharing.

Orlando Health and the Florida Department of Health go live on CDC-funded Detor, which allows sharing lab test orders and results among providers and public health laboratories. The initial use case is to allow health system clinicians to see the results of newborn screening, which is mostly performed by public health labs. The organizations are Detor’s first users. The system is built on AIMS, the cloud-based healthcare messaging service that was developed by the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

Five-hospital Independence Health System (PA) launches a joint venture with Mitsui & Co. to form healthcare analytics firm AveHealth USA.

Government and Politics

A GAO report notes that the VA’s implementation of Oracle Health was preceded by three EHR modernization projects, all of which were abandoned: HealtheVet, IEHR, and VistA Evolution. GAO made 10 recommendations to the VA in May 2023 to address change management, user satisfaction, trouble ticket resolution, and independent assessments, with the VA concurring with all 10 but having implemented none so far. GAO made several other recommendations related to the VA’s IT governance, software licenses, and cloud computing, none of which have been implemented. The VA has requested $894 million for the Oracle Health project for FY2025 and $6.2 billion for the total budget of its Office of Information and Technology. 

NASA posts an RFI for a possible replacement of its decades-old EHR, which is primarily used at Johnson Space Center. I’m not clear on how that differs from a similar one from March 2024.

The government of Slovakia warns 3,300 hospital physicians who have resigned effective January 1 over poor working conditions that they will be jailed if they don’t keep working. A similar dispute with the medical trade union in 2011 required the government to bring in military doctors from Czechia. Doctors also staged a work protest that year in writing sick notes for each other, which has been banned in the new decree.

Other

Eric Topol, MD summarizes a new journal article that calls for developing personalized lab result reference values instead of the current “one size fits all” population-based ones. He suggests using AI to study an individual’s “setpoints” from the results of multiple CBCs to call out subtle changes that could identify high-risk people.

In China, a pregnant woman is forced to walk to catch a cab ride to a hospital to deliver her baby after her EV car fails to start because it was in the middle of a 51-minute software update that her husband inadvertently approved. Her husband called Li Auto, the car’s manufacturer, and was told that the update could not be stopped. The woman’s unplanned brisk walk elevated the fetal heart rate, requiring an emergency C-section once she reached the hospital, She summarizes, “I have a car, but I had to walk through the agony of a dilated cervix just to hail a taxi. Every step is excruciating.”

Sponsor Updates

• Rhapsody Health offers a new customer story, “From data ingestion to production in less than 30 days: How Zephyr AI uses Rhapsody Semantic to create precise AI models at scale.”

Blog Posts

• Empowering Leadership in the IDD Community: 4 Lessons from Precious Myers-Brown’s Inspiring Keynote (Netsmart)
• Breaking the rules to save lives: Why healthcare needs a policy to override policies (Nordic)
• CHIME’s Fall Forum: Shaping the Future of Healthcare with AI and Data Modernization (Prominence Advisors)
• What to Look for in a Healthcare Staffing Partner: Your Ultimate Guide to Building a Better Workforce (SnapCare)
• 2025 Predictions: Going Places Together—with a Shared Purpose (Surescripts)
• Succeeding in Value-Based Care: Part 3 (Tegria)
• Year in review: 6 key milestones that advanced Waystar’s mission in 2024 (Waystar)

Contacts

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