News 7/29/20

Top News

Withings raises $60 million in a Series B funding round led by Gilde Healthcare. The investment will go towards building out its Med Pro division, which offers remote patient monitoring devices to programs run by providers, payers, and employers.

The company pivoted largely from consumer wearables to medical-grade products when several of its original founders and investors re-acquired it from Nokia in 2018.

Webinars

August 19 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “A New Approach to Normalizing Data.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Rajiv Haravu, senior product manager, IMO; Denise Stoermer, product manager, IMO. Healthcare organizations manage an ever-increasing abundance of information from multiple systems, but problems with quality, accuracy, and completeness can make analysis unreliable for quality improvement and population health initiatives. The presenters will describe how IMO Precision Normalize improves clinical, quality, and financial decision-making by standardizing inconsistent diagnosis, procedure, medication, and lab data from diverse systems into common, clinically validated terminology.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Transformative raises $1.7 million to further develop and gain FDA clearance for software that can predict cardiac arrest in pediatric patients. The company plans to eventually launch similar capabilities for other life-threatening conditions.

Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and consulting firm Guidehouse will launch an RCM software and services company for pediatric healthcare facilities.

Sales

• Allegheny Health Network (PA) selects prescription-savings software from Medicom Health.
• Sana Behavioral Hospitals (AZ) will implement Medsphere’s CareVue EHR and RCM Cloud technologies.
• Cooper University Health Care (NJ) selects Nuance’s Dragon Ambient EXperience, which includes app-based virtual assistant and clinical documentation capabilities.

People

Tim Conroy (Refocus Data) will join Cary Medical Center (ME) as CIO.

Optimum Healthcare IT names Brenda Ashley, RN (Impact Advisors) VP of its Last Mile Training program.

Don Pettini (Change Healthcare) joins Trio Health as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

The University of California, Irvine Medical Center equips its new 16-bed unit with EHR-integrated digital whiteboards and interactive bedside technology from Sonifi Health.

In Chicago, the Midwest Institute for Minimally Invasive Therapies implements Saykara’s voice-enabled, mobile AI assistant for physician charting.

Summit Healthcare announces GA of All Access software to help providers better comply with CMS Conditions of Participation and access data during downtimes.

COVID-19

Texas health officials who approved the $295 million purchase of contact-tracing software from MTX Group say they are now running into technical difficulties that prevent its widespread use. Workers hired to help with the Texas Health Trace program have reportedly been left with little to do, citing confusing instructions and, presumably, poor training.

The New York Times paywalls what is presumably a profile of disgraced vascular surgeon Sapan Desai, MD, PhD one of three collaborators that put together an influential COVID-19 treatment study published and then retracted by The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine after fault was found with underlying data provided by Desai’s now-shuttered company Surgisphere.

Clinicians at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut share how they repurposed their Epic system’s antimicrobial stewardship module to care for a surge in COVID-19 patients.

XPrize launches a six-month Rapid Covid Testing competition that will award $5 million to teams that develop faster, cheaper, and easier to use COVID-19 testing methods.

Other

HIMSS is considering a new date for HIMSS21, currently scheduled to take place March 1-5 in Las Vegas. The society has promised more concrete details by the end of the week. Should the conference be pushed out to August, we’ll get to enjoy average daily temperatures of around 104°. UPDATE: a reader forwarded an email HIMSS reportedly sent to exhibitors confirming a new HIMSS21 date of August 9-13. I’ve asked HIMSS to confirm.

Sponsor Updates

• The Chartis Group promotes Mike D’Olio to director.
• Cumberland Consulting Group achieves HITRUST CSF certification to further mitigate risk in third-party privacy, security, and compliance.
• Dina wins the 2020 Transition of Care Challenge put on by Tulane Health System and the New Orleans Business Alliance.
• OptimizeRx makes its digital health information, including prescription savings and treatment information, available through Change Healthcare’s Intelligent Healthcare Network.
• Hillrom integrates its Voalte clinical communication platform with Aiva’s voice assistant technology.
• Health Catalyst makes available financial impact recovery applications to help providers manage elective backlogs and evaluate performance.

Blog Posts

• What Happens During an EHR Digital Learning Class? (314e)
• 6 Tech Tips to Quench the Burnout (AdvancedMD)
• Healthcare PowerChat podcast with Jason Knox on Enterprise Imaging (Agfa Healthcare)
• Denial Management: CarePort’s comprehensive solution (CarePort)
• Why Investing in EHR Solutions Featuring Speech Recognition is Beneficial for Providers (ChartLogic)
• How COVID-19 Has Impacted Substance Use Disorder Treatment (Collective Medical)
• Delayed Care Could Have Long-Term Impact on Patient Health (CoverMyMeds)
• Empathy in Healthcare: Why It’s Needed Now More Than Ever (Dimensional Insight)
• Pushing Boundaries, Reaching New Horizons (EClinicalWorks)
• After public health emergency extension, ESolutions supports home health providers in states resuming Review Choice Demonstration (ESolutions)
• Overview of Nordic’s Provider Experience Solution (Nordic)

Contacts

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