From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 4/20/23

Wednesday opened with me feeling a little draggy, which wasn’t surprising since my trusty Garmin watch revealed that I had walked more than 13 miles the day before. Looking through my past HIMSS activity histories, that’s about par for an opening day and it wasn’t anything a couple of ibuprofen couldn’t resolve.

A change in the weather and my meeting plans led me to take the shuttle from the hotel to McCormick Place. It was a quick trip down Michigan Avenue, but a long and winding trip around the underbelly of the convention center as the bus reached its unloading area at Gate 20-something. I ignored the signage and just picked a random escalator that popped me up in the middle of the exhibit hall, which was much better than the “up down and all around” journey from yesterday.

I started the day with some casual meetings, both with former colleagues who are in various places in the industry, but whose spheres overlap my current one. Topics were far ranging and included rural health, clinical terminology, regulatory issues, and suggestions for good books to read. We’re all doing our best to keep up with what’s going on in healthcare and how it applies to our individual IT roles, but it’s daunting.

Still, it was good to catch up and get some advice from seasoned professionals that I trust. I’m also helping with some matchmaking magic, trying to introduce clinical informatics friends looking for work to vendor friends who might benefit from their knowledge.

From there, it was on to the exhibit hall, where the Ellkay team wins the “friendliest” title for the day by having people actually say good morning to those walking past.

I found the Puppy Park in the North exhibit hall. It was populated by some energetic doggos. The people playing with them all seemed to be having a good time.

Less exciting was the grime next to one of the pillars in the South exhibit hall, which was quite visible due to the lack of carpet. I was also annoyed by the large blue open-topped bins in the hall that were marked “recycle” but had no specialized drop slots for cans, paper, etc. which led to them being used as all-purpose trash cans. The only designated recycling bins that I could find that were being used as designed were in the lobbies by the escalators or over in the West building.

I was amazed to capture the bright shoes and even brighter suit all in one photo.

I had lunch at the CXO experience lounge in the West building, meeting some new CIO friends and learning about the projects their organizations are working on. The lounge was hopping and seating was at a premium – they definitely could have a larger area next year and still fill it. Top themes include chronic disease management, avoiding ransomware attacks, trying to meet behavioral health needs, and updating their telehealth strategies pending the end of the public health emergency declaration.

From there it was off to my annual booth crawl with Nordic Consulting’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Craig Joseph. We checked out the art at the Epic booth then started combing the aisles for things that were interesting or at least eye-catching. We noted only two multi-story booths this year. Nuance’s double-decker featured a theater complete with people waiting in line to get in. Pure Storage also had a two-level booth, but we missed their bourbon tasting.

From there, we headed to the Edifecs booth to check on the progress of their #WhatIRun message wall. It was filling up with messages of what attendees run at home and in their work lives. I give full credit to the person running their son’s den meetings. As someone who has spent a bit of time in the scouting world, I know how much work that can be. Mentions of the #WhatIRun hashtag trigger donations to BrightPink.org which is an advocacy organization for breast and ovarian cancer.

When hanging out with Craig Joseph, you never know where the conversation might go. Topics included adventures in specialty pharmacy, patient education solutions (triggered by a stop by the Healthwise booth to look at their new Healthwise Advise offering), the Mastodon social network, and more. We definitely went down the social media rabbit hole, and I introduced him to networking resources for the physician mom interested in casual (or not so casual) doomsday prepping – talk about your niche audience. We decided that in the event of a zombie apocalypse we would barter our physician skills for survival, so perhaps it’s time to practice our laceration repair and minor surgery skills.

After dropping him off at his booth, I needed a little rest and found a mysteriously large area in the South exhibit hall that had grass-colored carpeting and park benches. It seemed like an odd use of real estate in a high-traffic part of an exhibit hall that otherwise had inadequate seating areas. It made me wonder if a vendor had backed out and they were trying to fill the space, but I was grateful for a place to sit for a few minutes and find the last remaining ibuprofen at the bottom of my conference bag.

Matthew Holt and the team at First Databank sent their submission for best shoes.

Unfortunately for them, however, IMO dominated again with this submission, earning the company the “best all-around footwear of HIMSS23” championship title. I’m glad so many people have joined the challenge to find the best HIMSS shoes and receiving your pictures definitely puts a smile on my face. After two full days of exhibit hall adventures plus miles of walking on Monday, I’m ready to put my feet up, then pack my suitcase and get ready to head home.

If you’re at HIMSS, what has your favorite part of the conference been? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

From HIMSS 4/20/23

Tell me without telling me that today is the last exhibit hall day of HIMSS23.

Today is also when all of the previously defended booth swag is dumped out on the table for anyone to take (even other vendors) to avoid dragging it back home, which is how I ended up with socks from document management vendor Vasion, whose booth person urged me to take one small step to reduce his two suitcases full of them to a manageable number. I also had a nice conversation with folks from Amazon S3 data recovery vendor Clumio, who wanted to hand off one of their bags that I now realize is actually quite nice.

Of course I had to scan the QR code on the HIMSS bus window. It went to a website that described how to get out in an emergency. I think I would find a way out more quickly, approved or my own, than reading a website or watching a video.

It wouldn’t be a HIMSS conference without the always-entertaining Magic Boy in the booth of Hyland, although I don’t think he was involved with the company’s pre-conference magic trick of making 1,000 employees disappear.

I don’t know how many takers Jeron Electronic Systems got for its factory tours, but I thought the offer was smart. The family-run business makes nurse call and other healthcare communications systems right here in the Chicago area, with no supply chain product delays.

I went by the Ellkay booth many times and not only were employees paying heads-up attention, I was greeted every time. I didn’t eat anything but booth snacks all day until late afternoon all this week, so I got through Day 1 purely on their honey-caramel popcorn.

Hybrid infrastructure vendor Element Critical provided a great “Live Lucky” hat and fun conversation. 

Today was goodbye group photo day, or video in the case of Clearsense. They had a sharp-looking booth. The quick video, which popped up on LinkedIn, is a super idea.

This observation is supportive even though it might sound critical, but for folks in the startup area’s mini-booths, HIMSS23 could have been your best chance of the year to find prospects, partners, investors, and employees. I know it’s hard to remain alert, make eye contact, and initiate friendly conversation versus staring at your phone or conversing with your co-worker, but to be here otherwise doesn’t accomplish much. If your space holds two people, one of them should be someone who can confidently and energetically draw people in. I walked through the startup area several times and nobody seemed all that interested in initiating a conversation. If you’re going to be there anyway, take advantage of the foot traffic just to shoot the breeze with whoever walks by if nothing else.

These guys from Rocket.chat didn’t get a great booth location as a first-time exhibitor, but they were friendly and positive. The company’s HIPAA-ready messaging app supports communication with patients, colleagues, and vendors. They offer a free self-hosted team collaboration version.

The reps from digital transformation services vendor Cardinal Integrated earned our “Tiny Booth but Great People” award, as the person on the left admirably worked the perimeter to cheerfully engage passersby and her colleagues were quick to join in.

The rep at first-time exhibitor Solid, which offers public safety communications technology, was outgoing, informative, and energetic despite light foot traffic and reps in neighboring booths being lost in phoneland. The company offers a guide to improving poor cell service to support BYOD and bandwidth for IoT and 5G.

The friendly, sequined folks at Raleigh, NC-based Bandwidth were happy to describe the company’s messaging, voice, and emergency telecom platform.

Doximity provided today’s lunch. Their cupcake bites are like finger-scooping cake batter from the bowl, then repeating with the icing before shoving it home.

Avadin, which sells solutions for senior care agencies, uses AI – and now, apparently, ChatGPT – to listen for “help me” requests, monitor for falls, assess mood, and allow remote check-in.

I was initially a bit put off by HIMSS turning its tweeting over to someone who is actually good at it instead of old-school stuffy, but I’ve grown to like it.

Where have all the vendor puffer vests gone? Gone to Goodwill, all but one.

Conversations Overheard

According to one executive, the respective CEOs of CHIME and HIMSS never got along all that well after Hal Wolf took over at HIMSS, but it was the refusal of HIMSS to cancel the 2020 conference until the last minute that sent CHIME off to form the competing ViVE conference with HLTH.

I overhead high-level executives of two significant companies saying that HIMSS23 has been a good conference for them, but also expressing delighted surprise at how much business they expect to generate from the ViVE conference. Both reported that in both conferences, their booths were packed, their scheduled events were waitlisted, and even casual booth-lookers ended up being significant decision-influencers who will likely result in new business. Both said that the secret is in booking meetings long before the conference starts, guaranteeing that the booth will generate ROI no matter what.

Someone commented that unlike HIMSS, ViVE provided water bottles and food freely to all attendees. However, those water bottles reportedly cost ViVE $500,000.

I overheard from two different executives that unlike HIMSS, repping the company at ViVE didn’t seem like actually working.

Someone described how the HIMSS conference has changed in the last 20 years by citing similarly sized gaudy booths back in the day, but with provocatively clad booth staff, jugglers, and booths that were turned into near restaurants with endless trays of deli food. It was also recalled how once upon a time HIMSS closed the exhibit hall during education sessions. I overheard one person lamenting the demise of HIStalkapalooza, which reminded me that I’m staying near the best place that we ever had it at the House of Blues Chicago. That also reminds me that I have recaps of all HIMSS conferences and HIStalkapaloozas starting at 2008 on the site, and although the earlier ones disappeared with a platform change in 2007, it’s a pretty engrossing memory lane of trends, companies, and people that in some cases are no longer with us.

A rep eating lunch was telling someone how surprised he was that Microsoft has suddenly starting dominating healthcare with Azure, its Nuance acquisition, and now its work with generative AI.

A vendor executive said they personally pledged to remain visible in their booth any time the exhibit hall is open instead of retreating to conference rooms or off-campus lunches.

Folks were speculating whether HIMSS will admit that the “no-carpet HIMSS23” was an mistake that will be corrected next year. I heard more people speculating that HIMSS didn’t want to pay overtime for carpet installation and decided to skip it with an unrelated excuse. One vendor said they were happy to have had their booth setup finished before the weekend, when overtime rates became exorbitant.

News

HCA Healthcare is piloting Augmedix’s ambient medical documentation system and has invested in the company in a $12 million funding round. AUGX shares jumped 90% on the news, valuing the company at $128 million. It went public in a SPAC-like reverse merger in 2020, with shares down 15% since their first day of trading.

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 4/19/23

Tuesday was a strong first day for the exhibit hall at HIMSS, and for the first time in a couple of years, I found myself wishing I had more time planned for the exhibit hall.

Today I had quite a few sessions and meetings on my dance card, with very little time to visit vendors. That means I have to cram it all in tomorrow since I’m leaving on Thursday. Even going back to pre-pandemic HIMSS meetings, the exhibit hall had been feeling a little lackluster, and then last year it felt like the conference was struggling to recover from COVID. I have some key things I need to get home for, so I decided to just do two days at HIMSS, but now I’m having some buyer’s remorse.

On the other hand, now that I think things through, it’s likely my first-day enthusiasm talking. By Thursday, it’s likely that the exhibit hall will have lost a lot of its energy, so we’ll have to see how tomorrow shapes up. I’ve got a couple of booth crawls planned for tomorrow that I’m really looking forward to.

Today was a strong day for shoe sightings, with Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO) bringing its absolute A game. Do note their contrast against the bare concrete floor, which was a prominent feature of the exhibit hall this year. Only the main aisles were carpeted, with the smaller aisles being left bare. That created not only tired feet, but trip hazards with the transition to the carpeting in the booths and with exposed service panels in the floors. One of my companions tripped over a taped-down wire that would have otherwise been under carpet and had to get ice for her ankle.

Stories on the reasoning behind the lack of carpet ranged from “wanting the exhibit hall to be more green” to “not wanting to pay the setup crews overtime.” Regardless, it created not only an aesthetically unpleasing environment, but also a dangerous one in places. I hope HIMSS rethinks its flooring decisions prior to the next iteration of the conference. I spent some time looking at the IMO Studio offering, and in particular their value set authoring tool, and I’m looking forward to being able to use some of the tools.

Edifecs brought back their #WhatIRun theme, but this year added some Dolly Parton to the mix. I wholly endorse their message. Life’s too short to be walking down the wrong road, for sure. From there I caught up with some friends at First Databank and then swung over to the Epic booth, which feels a little smaller than in past years, but it was still packed. Even dropping by later in the day it remained full, so I’ll try to say hi to my friends there tomorrow.

I attended a HIMSS corporate focus group today. Although I really enjoyed the discussion, the setup of the room was less than ideal, with rows of seats behind the main U-shaped table that led to awkward turning around by those who were seated in front of the extra rows. There were plenty of open seats at the table, so I wish the facilitator had asked those in the seats to move up with the rest of us, but it was a missed opportunity. There was also a loud conversation going on in the service corridor behind the focus group room and it was quite distracting.

The focus group included a box lunch with a salad option, which was much appreciated since finding decent food choices at HIMSS is often a challenge. I’ve been to a number of HIMSS focus groups over the years and this one was located deep within the bowels of the convention center, in an area of Level 1 that I could only find by going up two escalators, across the building, and back down to Level 1. Little did I know that I’d have to make that trek again at the end of the day when I decided the bus was a better option back to my hotel than my tired feet.

A cooler full of free beer in the middle of the morning is always an attention getter.

My favorite women’s shoes of the day were cute and springy yet comfortable. I think they were described as “like walking on clouds,” which is always appreciated on a day when you might be walking more than a couple of miles.

The “Most Engaging Booth Staff” award of the day goes to Relatient, whose staff was not only friendly, but quickly figured out which of their solutions might be useful to a CMIO and doubled down on it to gather my interest. Kudos to the rep who explained the complexities of orthopedic surgery scheduling decision trees like a pro. I also liked the texture of their mossy green backdrop, which was a nice counterpoint to the previously mentioned bare concrete throughout the exhibit hall.

After a brief nap on the bus back to my hotel, I put my feet up for a few minutes then was off to a regional dinner at a legendary steakhouse. The bone-in pork chop did not disappoint, and I met some new friends and had great conversations, which is what HIMSS is really all about. I’m looking forward to a big day tomorrow, starting with a walking meeting in Grant Park. The weather is looking promising, and I plan to meet up with a couple of my vendors, so it should be a good day.

Email Dr. Jayne.

From HIMSS 4/19/23

This is how the main aisles look in the exhibit hall, which I’m mentioning again since I heard a lot of complaints today. This is apparently a live electrical line that ends up in a booth, but starts somewhere underground in a McCormick Place tunnel. I’m not saying that I don’t buy Hal Wolf’s “save the environment” excuse for ditching aisle carpet while still requiring exhibitors to rent it for their own areas, but a 10-year-old article I found says that conference supplier Freeman doesn’t automatically trash carpet after a single use even though it is cut to specifications – they “re-seam” it back into a single roll and rent it all over again, up to 4-5 times until it’s too far gone.

I’ll also say that the exhibit hall wasn’t 100% ready for its opening on Tuesday. Freeman people were dodging attendees during show hours as they delivered equipment throughout the hall, and I saw several booths with shipping boxes, electrical gear, and luggage piled up near the main aisle.

I don’t know what a Digital Health Technology Partner is, but I’m sure it involves writing a check.

The puppies were in their play area today, helping raise money for the Anti-Cruelty Society.

Pure Storage and Veritas are offering “HIMSS 2023 Bottoms Up!” each afternoon.

The coat check rooms were stacked high with suitcases on Wednesday, which suggests that quite a few folks are heading home today. Exhibitors are required to staff booths for the shortened exhibit hours Thursday, but it will probably be dead in the hall (and suitcases will be piled up there, too).

NFL player Damar Hamlin, the HIMSS23 Friday morning keynote speaker who nearly died on national TV after suffering cardiac arrest from an on-field collision with another player, is cleared to play and says he will return to the game.

I got bored and bailed early today, enjoying a late lunch / early dinner at Il Porcellino, mostly because it was a short walk from the hotel. It was actually pretty amazing – the grilled calamari in arrabbiata was excellent and the lasagna is the best I’ve had anywhere. It was way too much to finish, but the price was entirely reasonable, especially for the neighborhood. The server said they have seen a bump in business from the HIMSS conference.

News

JTG Consulting Group hires Susan Mize, MBA (Bridgeway Benefit Technologies) as chief services officer.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles promotes interim CIO Conrad Band to SVP/CIO.

Morning Headlines 4/20/23

Electrical failure causes electronic medical record system Sunrise to be offline at South Australian hospitals

SA Health reverts to downtime procedures after a structural fire in the South Australian government’s data center causes service disruptions to several systems, including the health system’s Sunrise EHR.

Third Way Health Raises $1.55M in Pre-Seed Funding for End-to-End Medical Practice Front Office Solution

Front-office practice management startup Third Way Health raises $1.55 million in pre-seed funding, which it will use to launch US operations via pilots with practices in California and New York.

Settlement reached with telehealth company Visibly over accusations of deceptive business practices

Online eye exam company Visibly will pay $500,000 to the FDA to settle allegations that it misrepresented customer satisfaction rates and satisfaction guarantees, marketed its tests without required clearance or approval, and claimed that its tests were as accurate as in-person exams.

Healthcare AI News 4/19/23

News

OSF HealthCare (IL) selects AI-powered Cortex utilization management technology from Xsolis.

UPMC CTO Chris Carmody says the health system plans to use AI to connect patients with clinical trials based on EHR data analysis, develop digital twins for improved treatment planning, enhance telemedicine offerings, and create automated visit summaries using technology from UPMC Enterprises spinoff Abridge. I interviewed Abridge founder and CEO Shiv Rao, MD earlier this month.

Amazon announces new tools for building with generative AI on AWS. Amazon Bedrock offers foundation models from Amazon and other companies that address use cases such as text generation, chatbots, search, text summarization, image generation, and personalization.

EClinicalWorks will integrate its EHR/PM solutions with ChatGPT, cognitive services, and machine learning models from Azure OpenAI Service.

Microsoft and Epic announce that they will work together to bring generative AI into Epic’s applications via Azure OpenAI Service. UC San Diego Health, UW Health, and Stanford Health Care are already using an initial solution that automatically drafts message responses. Another solution will add natural language queries and interactive data analysis to Epic’s SlicerDicer self-service reporting tool.

A recent Stanford computer science graduate creates HealthGPT, a test case for connecting generative AI to Apple Health data to support answering user questions, such as, “How should I train for a half marathon?”

Research

University of Florida Health researchers are working with Nuance and its Precision Imaging Network to create and fine-tune AI solutions for radiologists, specifically in the areas of interpretation reporting and ensuring that algorithms perform effectively.

Carnegie Mellon researchers develop an Internet-connected OpenAI tool that correctly developed a plan to synthesize ibuprofen, aspirin, and aspartame and to control the lab technology required to manufacture them. They also had the system develop a new cancer drug that was not tested. The authors warn that such a system is promising, but could be used to create illegal drugs or bioweapons. Not surprisingly, they also credit ChatGPT for creating the first draft of the article.

A survey of 1,039 adults finds that 20% have experienced healthcare enhanced by AI, with younger patients making up the bulk of that group. Nearly half believe the use of AI in healthcare to be somewhat or very trustworthy.

Opinion

Headspace Health Chief Product and Design Officer Leslie Witt says AI won’t replace its mental health professionals any time soon, though the company is working to incorporate more AI-powered features into its meditation and mindfulness app. Headspace acquired Sayana, an AI-based competitor, last year.

Other

OpenAI launches a bug bounty program that will pay users between $200 and $20,000 to report vulnerabilities, bugs, or security flaws found in ChatGPT. Users have so far reported 31 vulnerabilities with an average pay out of $650.

Starting July 5, New York City will begin enforcing a law that requires employers to disclose the use of automated employment decision tools to job candidates during the hiring process. Companies that wish to use such AI-based tools must first have them audited for bias by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

Elon Musk creates X.AI Corp., a company rumored to be an eventual competitor with OpenAI, which Musk co-founded in 2015 and left three years later to avoid conflicts of interest with Tesla.

Contacts

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Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

From HIMSS 4/18/23

Tell me anything interesting you’ve seen or heard since I need to plan my Wednesday and possibly Thursday if I don’t skip out.

I was standing outside in the cold barely after sunrise this morning, wondering where the HIMSS shuttle would be stopping since it wasn’t marked on the street. The HIMSS app wasn’t updating the bus status, and when it finally did, it showed a 15-minute wait on top of the 10-15 minutes I had already waited, so the planned 15-minute intervals didn’t actually happen even in light traffic.

I got my badge quickly, took a stroll around (my IPhone says I took 22,000 steps Tuesday by mid-afternoon), and then waited around for the exhibit hall to open at 10 a.m. I realized afterward the apparent extinction of the ball cap girls who used to forcefully thrust the show daily from Healthcare IT News at every passerby, almost defying you not to take a copy that you didn’t really want.

I also noted that the Starbucks line stretched endlessly and never died out completely, even in the late afternoon when I can’t imagine wanting coffee of any temperature.

My first action was to hike what seemed like miles to get a look at the lake and skyline. It was a beautiful, spring-like day that quickly erased memories of yesterday’s snowy gray.

Tell me without telling me that the HIMSS conference is in Chicago this year.

I saw this guy outside the exhibit hall. I saw a couple of other dogs in or near booths and HIMSS had a puppy play area that was being used to solicit donations for The Anti-Cruelty Society, although I disappointingly didn’t time it right to seem them playing in their fenced-in yard.

This is either (a) HIMSS23 attendees right before the exhibit hall doors opened, or (b) runners awaiting the starter’s pistol in the Fairly Well Dressed 5K. I have zero fashion sense or interest, but bright brown shoes and tight suits or blazers over jeans are current looks that look better than the baggy, three-piece charcoal gray suits and mirror-polished black shoes of yesteryear.

This is the first HIMSS conference that felt normal by 2019 standards. People were everywhere, almost nobody wore masks, booths were laid out with slightly wider aisles but normal spacing otherwise, and I didn’t see a single elbow bump in lieu of a handshake. Most of the hygiene theater of the dark ages of 2020 and 2021, which was of questionable scientific merit even then, has since been proven pointless and was quickly abandoned.

HIMSS says attendance is already up hugely over 2021 and nearing 2019 levels, but then again, why wouldn’t they say that when we “trust, but verify” types can’t investigate whatever number they throw out there? Regardless, the increase feels directionally correct. The exhibitor list shows 1,215, although some of those companies bought only meeting rooms rather than booths.

I started out with a packed ClosedLoop.ai session in the north hall. The anchor booths were in the south hall, but a few bigger vendors got the north hall, including Google Health.

Nice color coordination, Orion Health. I like it.

I attended a Sodexho presentation on having hospital staff initiate conversations with patients and then report back through the company’s Experiencia tool, which gives executives a real-time dashboard and alerts of patient issues while they can still be fixed. They said that nobody likes filling out a survey, especially if it’s likely nothing will happen anyway, so they use in-room conversations and text messaging to let staff either resolve or explain a problem, freeing up clinical staff who would otherwise be dealing with the hotel side of being hospitalized.

The exhibit hall was full of bare floors, weird dead ends, and unattractive HIMSS ghost town spaces. Tegria got a terrible location that was nearly impossible to find even when following the hastily erected directional sign, and Ellkay had a “this way” sign several aisles over like a highway exit. That reminded me of a HIMSS conference years ago in Las Vegas, where the downstairs Hall G was drawing so few people that HIMSS was shamed into adding extra signs and offering lunch discounts for enticing visitors to head downstairs into what resembled a poor student’s basement rumpus room.

The Microsoft-Nuance booth was busy.

I overheard several folks lamenting, as was I, the apparent end of an era, as Oracle has apparently expunged the Cerner and Oracle Cerner names in favor of Oracle Health.

I went to a session about the CoMET AI-based patient monitoring solution by Nihon Kohden by the doctor who developed it. He mentioned an interesting fact from a study – training a sepsis model on a hospital’s surgical ICU data had zero predictive value for the same hospital’s medical ICU, and vice versa. Models don’t work if they were trained on data from multiple hospitals or even multiple areas of the same hospital. I’m curious why that would be, so I’ll have to dig up the paper.

I think ChatGPT’s straight vertical growth and endless publicity have HIMSS23 vendors too little time to feature generative AI in their booth materials, other than EClinicalWorks anyway.

Giveaways were interesting this year. I forgot my battery-powered phone charger that I got at a HIMSS conference years ago, but nobody was handing them out. Chapstick and stress balls were in limited supply. I did score some Garrett’s popcorn, however.

Someone asked me, “Do you want a beer” from a booth at barely past noon, which I answered in wondering if the question was rhetorical given the hour. The person at the Silex booth assured me, “You wouldn’t be the first person to say yes,” so I took one from the ice chest to sip as I watched another vendor’s presentation. I’m sure the price they pay the concessionaire for each beer is astronomical, so I made sure to enjoy it.

You pay thousands of dollars to attend a conference, another $20 for a prison-grade lunch, and this as your seating choice if you want to eat, charge your phone, or allow your introversion to be soothed. I really don’t understand why we as attendees tolerate this. It isn’t like Las Vegas, where everything revolves around keeping you in the casinos, so putting out more tables and chairs surely wouldn’t upset the business model. I’m sure McCormick Place has buildings full of unused furniture.

The going-home Red shuttle line was pretty poorly marked in the convention center halls, so I finally found the bus after a few wrong turns and near-constant doubt that I was in the right place.

A Chicago reader agreed with my assessment that deep-dish pizza is awful (not my style, as El Presidente would say) and suggested tavern style instead, a Midwest-only specialty that I unfortunately haven’t found in River North that seems to favor Neapolitan style at steep prices. However, that person also urged me to go to Al’s or Portillo’s for Italian beef, so I left the convention center early, walked over to Al’s Italian Beef on N. Wells, and had a wet beef with sweet peppers and a large side of perfect hand-cut fries. I heard people talking all day about the sumptuous dinners their employers would be underwriting Tuesday evening, making me even happier with my self-paid $15 one that I consumed with gusto away from other badge-wearers. All that was missing was a working man’s ice-cold draft PBR or Heileman’s Old Style.

Conversations Overheard

A lady said she decided not to renew her membership in women’s group Chief because it was going to cost $9,000, which she was paying out of her own pocket, and she felt that the two women who started the organization made an unexpected fortune but didn’t deliver much afterward. She told someone that the organization had done nothing that benefited her in one year of membership.

Someone said that a few CIOs told they they were going to stop attending the HIMSS conference in favor of ViVE, saying that HIMSS didn’t recognize the threat of having its CIO track at HIMSS turned into CHIME’s own conference. The person said that the HIMSS conference would become an event for provider managers and directors who might then report what they learned about vendors and products to the decision-maker back home, to which I responded was often the HIMSS model anyway since CIOs often don’t roam the floor and instead dispatch underlings as scouts.

Most of the common hallways of the exhibit hall were uncarpeted, exposing spray-painted labels, hazard tape covering wires, and metal plates in the floor. Apparently Hal Wolf said in the opening session that it was an environmental decision based on the need to otherwise manufacture, install, and dispose of carpet. Sort of the same argument that hotels use in trying to convince you that re-using your room towels is for the environment’s benefit, not their own.

A top vendor executive emailed me today to say, “I hope you will be writing about the absolutely pathetic bare floors across the halls here at HIMSS. Vendors are required to pay for flooring in our booths (carpet, vinyl, wood, etc.) but HIMSS felt they didn’t have to do it? Ridiculous. We have never exhibited at an event where the exhibit hall felt incomplete until HIMSS23.“ I agree, and the environmental excuse seems iffy given the carbon footprint of endless flights for an in-person event compared to every other conference that somehow manages to lay down carpet. It’s beginning to seem like this was a “recover financially from HIMSS20” year for HIMSS in staying home in Chicago for making the exhibit hall look like a underfunded indoor flea market. I’m curious if anyone has seen other examples of apparent belt-tightening.

A long-time reader checks in: “Judy Faulkner recommended HIStalk to 30 of us in a conference room when she taught us about the ‘Epic culture’ in 2003. I have read every week, nearly 20 years! Thank you for writing.” Thank you for reading. My insistence on remaining anonymous and avoiding self-promotional activities means that HIStalk to me is an empty screen in an empty room, and writing it feels like scrawling in a diary that I don’t intend for anyone else to read. I like it that way, but I appreciate those few times each year when someone shares what their side of my screen looks like since I have no idea.

Someone asked if anyone was hearing anything about HIMSS Accelerate. Negative.

News

The VA’s Oracle Cerner system goes down for five hours on Monday, apparently joined by the same downtime for the DoD’s instance of Oracle Cerner.

Memora Health gets a $30 million investment from investors that include General Catalyst and two big health systems.

A recent Stanford computer science graduate creates HealthGPT, a test case for connecting generative AI to Apple Health data to support answering user questions, such as, “How should I train for a half marathon?”

Morning Headlines 4/19/23

Memora Health Announces $30M Investment To Scale Intelligent Care Enablement Platform With New Health System Partners

Automated care management software vendor Memora Health raises $30 million, bringing its total funding to $80.5 million.

VA electronic health record system hit with five-hour incident

Oracle Cerner-powered EHR systems used by the VA and DoD experience a five-hour service disruption marked by latency issues and freezing within certain workflows.

Scan.com, which gives patients direct access to private medical imaging services, raises $12M

Shortly after launching in the US, London-based medical imaging referral startup Scan.com raises $12 million in a Series A investment round.

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 4/18/23

It was a slow start at HIMSS on Monday. I attended a couple of conference calls for my day job and got a little work done in the morning. I waited by my designated shuttle stop and never saw a bus, so decided to take the multi-mile walk from my hotel to the convention center.

Although it was a little breezy, it was definitely good to be out and moving. I had planned ahead and had a headband to control my hair and keep my ears warm, so that was a plus. Not to mention that I know I’ll be well off script this week with my eating habits, so getting ahead with some exercise was likely a good plan. The sidewalks were dry and the snow flurries were actually kind of pretty. Had I taken the shuttle, I would have missed this interesting art installation with headless forms that was on the north side of Michigan Avenue.

With my early afternoon arrival, there was virtually no line at the badge pickup station I found. Apparently, there are several throughout the complex, and it felt like every time I turned around, I was running into one. The conference bag was standard issue, blue this year, but I took a pass since I brought my usual trusty tote. The only other giveaway was a pen.

I scored a notebook at the Slack “scan your badge and win a prize” kiosk that was also dispensing PopSockets and other trinkets. It was nearly empty by the time I stopped by. Hopefully, they will restock it for future arrivals. Being at McCormick Place felt strange and unfamiliar. I was struggling to remember the last HIMSS conference I attended here. It feels like there’s been a bit of construction since the last one, or maybe my post-pandemic memory just isn’t what it once was.

I had an unexpected encounter with an old friend that led to a long discussion of hobbies and life outside of work, which was refreshing indeed. I clued him into a niche business that I’m working with that has quite a backstory and which provides an interesting case study for entrepreneurs being in the right place at the right time. Following that, I had a pre-scheduled meeting and used the CXO Networking Lounge in the West building. It was nice to have a space where I could plan a meeting and know that there would be chairs rather than wandering in search of seats like I’ve had to do at other conferences. The Lounge was nearly empty, but I suspect it will be hopping later in the week.

My plan for the week includes attending multiple sessions, chatting with a number of vendors and organizations that I’d like to do business with, and looking for new solutions that will inspire or delight me while also bringing value to the patients I serve. Normally I try to attend a number of social events, but this year, I’m opting for quality over quantity, planning some deep catch-ups with colleagues and some regional HIMSS events.

The opening reception actually kicked off a little early, which was good given the crowds massing outside the doors. The entryway featured a garden theme with women whose heads were obscured by large balls of flowers. Once you made it past that, a woman was riding some kind of “wine cycle” that had glasses in the umbrella area and had an automated pouring mechanism that tipped the bottle. It was gimmicky, and I’m not sure how it fit into the theme or if it was meant to just be attention-grabbing. It also featured an apparatus on the back that looked like a gramophone trumpet full of flowers, so I’m still trying to figure it all out. I ran into half a dozen old friends who also couldn’t quite sort it out, so if you know more about the wine cycle, please let us know.

My time at the reception was truncated by an urgent phone call, but not before I spotted my first pair of pink socks for the event and also some sparkly sneakers. Once I had everything squared away with the call, it was time to head out for my dinner reservation at Girl and the Goat. One of my local BFFs had scored us a reservation there on short notice, which turned out to be a chef’s table type experience as we were seated right in front of the pastry station, just adjacent to the wood-fired oven. The meal was amazing. The pretzel pull-apart bread taught me that I needed more caramelized onion mustard jam in my life, and the chickpea fritters did not disappoint. The sauteed green beans were divine and the staff surprised us with a complimentary order of goat empanadas. Being able to sit right at the pass was amazing and it was clear that the staff took pride in their work and enjoyed interacting with customers.

From there it was a quick Uber back to my hotel to rest up for what tomorrow brings including keynotes, meetings, panels, and of course the exhibit hall.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 4/18/23

Best Buy lays off hundreds of store employees as shopping trends shift

Best Buy will lay off hundreds of store workers, citing a shift in consumer shopping habits and a desire to prioritize its health business and Totaltech membership program.

Global Healthcare Exchange Announces Plan to Acquire Prodigo Solutions

GHX will acquire UPMC-backed supply chain and data enablement technology company Prodigo Solutions.

Microsoft and Epic expand strategic collaboration with integration of Azure OpenAI Service

Epic integrates Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service with its EHR, offering end users ChatGPT-enhanced workflows in the initial areas of drafting message responses and self-service reporting.

HHS Launches New Cybersecurity Awareness Resources

HHS develops new resources for cybersecurity best practices to help healthcare organizations secure their digital networks.

From HIMSS 4/17/23

I arrived in Chicago in mid-afternoon Monday to lingering snow flurries, whipping wind, temperature in the high 30s, and near chaos in the O’Hare rideshare pickup area that made me glad to have a coat for the wait (unlike several guys wearing shorts and tee shirts featuring understandable but definitely undesirable nipplage). The warm-up starts Tuesday, however, with Thursday topping out in the low 70s, which is likely where weather comparisons to RSNA’s post-Thanksgiving weekend diverge. The view outside looked like six weeks ago in warmer Southern climes, with budding and flowering trees that are surely confused given that Chicago hit a record high of 82 just a couple of days ago.

Many folks on my flight were also headed to HIMSS23, and unlike me, were bubbly and loud in talking shop with their fellow conference travelers. They were all exhibitor people, so maybe they were getting warmed up for glad-handing. I’m staying in a quite nice, and nicely located, River North hotel at excellent HIMSS rates. Dinner was my first time having chicken Vesuvio, which was so fantastic despite its simplicity that I’ll try making it at home. I’m indifferent to Chicago hot dogs compared to Southern chili dogs, I’m not a fan of the underbaked dough lasagna called deep dish pizza, and I’ve yet to try Italian beef although I suspect I would like it a lot. I enjoy Garrett’s and Nuts on Clark popcorn, but not enough to pay the asking price. I also like the Walnut Room and Frango mints from the former Marshall Fields before Macy’s dragged them down a bit, at least from past visits, but I doubt I’ll head down to State Street this time around.

I haven’t even looked at the agenda, but my HIMSS23 plan for the week is simple: get my badge early Tuesday in hoping for shorter lines than last year, wander about the exhibit hall Tuesday and Wednesday, and try to overhear conversations that aren’t intended for me since those are more interesting. I’ll decide Wednesday evening whether it’s worth going again Thursday and then just walk around Chicago if not, heading home Friday.

I need eyes and ears out there because of my slothfulness while all the eager beavers are racing madly from one spot to another and stacking up social events with higher confidence levels than mine that something interesting awaits, so let me know if you hear or see anything important. I’ve been to enough HIMSS conferences to know that other than a few pre-timed announcements early in the week, nothing all that newsworthy happens there, and sites that try to cover it like real news usually end up trying to make lame press releases sound relevant.

I can’t decide: is the HIMSS23 slogan of “Health that Connects + Tech that Cares” calculatedly clever or does it try a bit too hard to deny being a boat show and fall short?

News

Microsoft and Epic announce that they will work together to bring generative AI into Epic’s applications via Azure OpenAI Service. UC San Diego Health, UW Health, and Stanford Health Care are already using an initial solution that automatically drafts message responses. Another solution will add natural language queries and interactive data analysis to Epic’s SlicerDicer self-service reporting tool.

In Japan, investigation of a hospital ransomware attack finds that NEC used the same username and password for thousands of user devices and EHR servers, assuming that front-ending the login process with a user’s smart card would secure the system by hiding the password in what it incorrectly thought was a system that wasn’t connected to the outside world. More than half of the 280 hospitals that are users of that EHR were found to have the same username and password.

Announcements

Medhost announces a Rural Emergency Hospital package.

Intelligent Medical Objects announces IMO Studio, a cloud-based platform for clinical terminologies, code sets, and data quality whose rollout will start with in July Epic customers.

EClinicalWorks will integrate its EHR/PM solutions with ChatGPT, cognitive services, and machine learning models from Azure OpenAI Service.

People

Ellkay promotes Ajay Kapare, MBA to president and chief strategy officer. He replaces co-founder Lior Hod, who will transition to chief culture officer.

Health Data Movers hires Darin Ryder (Continuum Health IT) as VP of client services.

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 4/17/23

I’m on my way to HIMSS after an eventful weekend. Saturday evening was to be a gala in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the program where I completed my residency training. The planning committee has been working for months to make it a bit of a reunion, a bit of a commemoration, and a celebration, not only of the past, but of what is yet to come. It was time to dust off the little black dress, slip into some heels that were a little more comfortable than what I wore when I was a young resident, and dance the night away.

Unfortunately, the weather was less than cooperative, with severe thunderstorm warnings giving way to a tornado watch and finally a tornado warning. We were in the middle of cocktail hour in the special events annex of a local museum when the sirens went off and they asked everyone to move to the designated storm shelter areas. Being asked to choose between the kitchen area and the ladies’ room, I opted for the latter since I knew it would be less hot and humid than the kitchen.

It was a time to experience a whole new level of networking, as we leaned on the cool porcelain tile and talked about how we were affiliated with the residency program. Several attendees were current program staffers and enjoyed hearing the stories my date and I told about our time as residents. Back in the day, the hospital had on-campus housing ,which created an environment that was significantly different than programs where everyone lived away from the hospital. The more recent graduates were interested to learn what it was like before work hours limits and mandatory vacation days.

Our “shelter in place” time also led to my spotting the best shoes of the night, which were a pair of glittering Tretorn sneakers. Knowing I was headed for HIMSS in the morning, they made me seriously question my footwear choices. I hadn’t packed anything quite as memorable as those, so I’m definitely going to have to start upping my game.

After nearly an hour, the weather was downgraded to a severe thunderstorm, and we were allowed to finally make our way to the cocktails and appetizers. We ended up at a table with two members of the class of 1985, who had even wilder campus housing stories than we did, including an episode where one of them rented a hot tub and had it delivered to the hospital’s parking lot for an evening of debauchery. One of them is in a private practice locally and the other is at an academic medical center on the West Coast, but they were both eager to learn about clinical informatics.

After dinner, it was time for some speeches and recognition. My class was recognized due to its distinction as the first all-woman class in the program’s history, which has not been repeated until recently when the class of 2025 entered training. We learned that the 300-plus graduates of our program are actively practicing in more than half the states in the US, and that since its inception, our residency program clinic has treated over one million patients. It was a good night to see old friends and to remind ourselves that we’re part of a legacy of people who went into medicine for all the right reasons, and to recommit ourselves to doing the best for our patients each and every day.

By the time the dancing wound down, and a couple of younger physicians learned from us “seasoned’ ladies that it’s perfectly acceptable to bring your dancing slippers in a tote bag for the later parts of the evening, the rain had stopped. The organizers had thoughtfully commandeered some golf carts to take us back to the parking lot, so we were able to avoid the puddles. I headed home, eager to get a good night’s rest before heading to chilly Chicago. The weather for this week’s HIMSS conference certainly isn’t the lovely Chicago spring that many of us had expected, and I swapped out my cute spring jacket for the more practical ski-ready puffer.

My flight was a bit of a roller coaster, so I was glad to make it to the city in one piece. It was followed by a baggage jam at Midway that led to an hour’s delay in getting my luggage. Normally I wouldn’t check a bag, but I had a special situation this time which required it. Delays always leave me questioning my life choices, but everyone in the baggage area was friendly and there was a sense of camaraderie since we truly were all in it together.

My taxi driver spent most of the trip cautioning me about my personal safety given some recent violence that occurred downtown. While I appreciated his caution, I didn’t appreciate his bait-and-switch at the end of my trip by trying to have me swipe my credit card through his personal Square reader.

Upon arriving at my hotel, I discovered that it still has limited food service and no room service options, so knowing that I have some back-to-back calls in the morning, I made a quick Target run. It’s always entertaining to see people who have never seen a store that has a cart escalator. They are amazed watching the shopping carts go up and down. Fully stocked with Diet Dr. Pepper and snacks, it was back to the room to do some work before an evening out with friends.

The weather in the morning is supposed to be dicey and I haven’t figured out the HIMSS shuttle schedule yet, so it should be an adventure. At check-in, my hotel didn’t seem to recognize that my reservation was part of the HIMSS block, and the agent said they didn’t have any information on the shuttle schedule. I was able to find one on the HIMSS website, but it looks like it was part of a welcome packet from January, so who knows. My original plan was to walk to McCormick place since the mileage to and from my hotel is similar to what I walk at home on a daily basis, but the forecast has changed that. We’ll just have to see what things look like in the morning. HIMSS has been characteristically quiet on the forecast attendee counts, so there’s no way to know what the morning migration will look like.

Are you at HIMSS, and if so, are you looking forward to it? What’s your goal for the meeting? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 4/17/23

VA Pauses Rollout of $16 Billion Health Record System

The VA pauses its $16 billion roll out of Oracle’s Cerner EHR software as it renegotiates its contract with Oracle.

Weight-Loss Telehealth Startup Calibrate Health Cuts 18% of Jobs

Calibrate Health lays off 18% of its workforce as it pivots from a direct-to-consumer online obesity drug prescriber to a telemedicine company that offers its weight-loss services to employers.

Froedtert, ThedaCare plan to merge, hope to launch combined health system by end of 2023

Wisconsin’s Froedtert and ThedaCare, both Epic customers, will merge by the end of 2023 to create an 18-hospital system with $4 billion in revenue.

Monday Morning Update 4/17/23

Top News

Arcadia raises $125 million in financing to accelerate its work in aggregating and analyzing healthcare data.  

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents, whether attending HIMSS23 or not, expect to be working harder this week.

I expect to be working harder this week because I will be unexpectedly lugging some kind of coat around airports thanks to HIMSS choosing to stay home in Chicago (Monday: gale warning, snow, high of 39) in abandoning the usual rotation of Las Vegas (sunny and 81) or Orlando (sunny and 82). The conference is in Orlando next year, then two consecutive years in Las Vegas afterward. Some conference folks put Las Vegas, Orlando, and Chicago as within the top five US conference locations, with former HIMSS cities San Diego (sunny and 64) and Atlanta (sunny and 70) rounding out the list.

New poll to your right or here: Are you using ChatGPT or other AI tools at least daily for work-related tasks?

Ramadan and its month of fasting will end Thursday evening as HIMSS23 is winding down. Muslims aren’t allowed to take anything by mouth – food, water, or medicine – from dawn to sunset, so they usually have a significant pre-dawn breakfast (with lots of water since none is allowed for the following 13 hours) and late-evening meal. It must be challenging to travel to a conference during Ramadan in accommodating prayer times and finding halal food, but at least attendees will be home for Eid al-Fitr.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Wisconsin’s Froedtert and ThedaCare will merge by the end of 2023 to create an 18-hospital system with $4 billion in revenue.

Tenet reports that EVP/CIO Paola Arbour’s total compensation in 2022 was $1.7 million, a big drop from the $2.9 million she was paid in 2021.

Sales

• Alaska’s Department of Health awards a new contract to HealthConnect Alaska, the state HIE, to expand its services.

People

Taylor Bockweg (MuleSoft) joins CarePayment as VP of national accounts.

Announcements and Implementations

Amazon announces new tools for building with generative AI on AWS. Amazon Bedrock offers foundation models from Amazon and other companies that address use cases such as text generation, chatbots, search, text summarization, image generation, and personalization.

Other

Industry long-timer Stuart Miller (Craneware) has had his HIMSS23 plans waylaid by an emergency double lung transplant two weeks ago. HIs daughter, Bethany Miller-Urroz (Rhapsody), invites everyone to visit Rhapsody’s Booth 7110 at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday to send their encouragement via a group photo.

Also missing a planned trip to HIMSS23 will be Chilmark Research founder and CEO John Moore, who wrote his moving “Bidding Adieu” from hospice care. 

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart will exhibit at NATCon23 May 1-3 in Los Angeles.
• Cone Health exceeds quality goals for its sepsis initiative using Premier’s Pinc AI quality enterprise.
• Redox releases a new podcast, “Navigating rapid cardiology practice acquisition with US Heart and Vascular’s Cheryl Rodenfels.”
• Sectra publishes a new case study, “Digital pathology transforms collaboration among pathologists in Greater Manchester.”

Blog Posts

• Doctor, do you mind the interruption? (Nordic)
• This Mission is Possible: Achieving Better Data in Healthcare (ReMedi Health Solutions)
• Unlock the Potential of Your Answering Service: Realizing Enterprise Value (PerfectServe)
• Breaking Down Silos: 4 Ways Premier is Working to Build a Unified Continuum of Care (Premier)
• Conversational AI: What is it and how is it transforming in 2023? (Talkdesk)
• PHE Expiration Implications for PTs, OTs, and SLPs (WebPT)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 4/14/23

Arcadia Raises $125 Million in New Financing from Vista Credit Partners

Health data analytics firm Arcadia announces $125 million in financing from Vista Credit Partners.

Verisma and ScanSTAT Announce Merger, Providing the Strength and Know-How that HIM Departments Need for the Path Ahead

Release of information vendor Verisma acquires competitor ScanStat.

Celebrating a New Season at Spring Health

Digital mental healthcare company Spring Health, which markets its platform to employers and payers, raises $71 million, bringing its total funding to $366.5 million.

News 4/14/23

Top News

Carlyle Group abandons its interest in acquiring a 50% stake in payments integrity technology vendor Cotiviti from Veritas Capital.

Veritas reportedly rejected Carlyle’s offer that had been lowered due to market conditions.

Reuters reported in February that Carlyle was interested in acquiring part of Cotiviti at a $15 billion valuation.

Veritas took Cotiviti private in 2018 for around $5 billion and merged it into its Verscend Technologies payer analytics business.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIMSS23 weather goes from near-record high in the upper 70s through Saturday – which only early-arriving exhibitor personnel will get to see – with a big cool-off with 50-ish highs and the possibility of snow showers on Monday.

I’ve noticed that Oracle seems to be retiring the Oracle Cerner name that was used interchangeably with Oracle Health following the acquisition. Press releases after mid-February don’t include the Cerner name other than one reference to Cerner Millennium.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Interoperability platform vendor 1upHealth raises $40 million in a Series C funding round, increasing its total to $76 million. The company says it will use the proceeds to develop products to support CMS regulations, enhance its data cloud infrastructure, and expand its customer and services teams.

Release of information vendor Verisma acquires competitor ScanStat.

Verato’s identity management solutions will be offered with the interoperability products of Redox to provide a 360-degree view of patients, members, providers, and communities.

Sales

• Saint Joseph’s Medical Center will extend its deployment of Oracle Health’s EHR and RevElate patient accounting solution to all locations.
• The Princess Alexandra NHS Trust will implement Oracle Health’s EHR.

People

Ashish Sant, MTech (Bracco) joins Merative as general manager of its Merge imaging solutions.

Aspirion hires Amy Amick, MBA (SPH Analytics) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Google will offer limited access to its Med-PaLM 2 medical large language model to a select group of Google Cloud customers for testing and use case development.

Carnegie Mellon researchers develop an Internet-connected OpenAI tool that correctly developed a plan to synthesize ibuprofen, aspirin, and aspartame and to control the lab technology required to manufacture them. They also had the system develop a new cancer drug that was not tested. The authors warn that such a system is promising, but could be used to create illegal drugs or bioweapons. Not surprisingly, they also credit ChatGPT for creating the first draft of the article. 

Google Cloud announces an AI-enabled Claims Acceleration Suite for prior authorization review and claims processing. One module is Claims Data Activator, which allows searching patient records to create FHIR-formatted structured data to speed decision-making. The company is also recommended solutions from Myndshft (real-time prior authorization and benefits) and Pega (expedited manual review of prior authorization requests) that run on Google Cloud.

Walgreens expands its year-old clinical trials business by recruiting participants for an Alzheimer’s drug trial. Walgreens launched the business in June 2022, saying that its nationwide footprint and enterprise-wide data capabilities allow it to make clinical trials more accessible, convenient, and equitable, particularly in the nearly half of its locations that are in socially vulnerable areas.

Remote diagnostics and telehealth vendor Medaica will provide free, FDA-cleared digital stethoscopes for in-home use by rural and underserved patients who are undergoing telehealth exams.

Glooko, which offers a home diabetes management system, will integrate Hedia’s bolus insulin dosing advice that can integrate with connected insulin pens.

Microsoft lists new Teams healthcare capabilities and other products that it will demonstrate at HIMSS23:

• Launch Teams virtual visits directly from Epic and Cerner via its EHR connector, which also supports joint and group visits.
• The ability to schedule, brand, and send patient reminders for virtual visits.
• Track virtual visit no-shows, appointment durations, wait times, and number of appointments.
• Integration of Teams with Teladoc Health Solo.
• A new pre-configured home experience for frontline care workers.
• A Walkie Talkie Teams app.
• Support for shared use of Android phones.
• A unified member view and care journey template for payers.
• Previews of new Azure AI Services for Health that include SDoH and ethnicity support from unstructured data, clinical trials matching, and Health Bot integration.

Roche announces Navify Algorithm Suite, which allows clinicians to order certified algorithms from Roche and other companies from within their EHR and laboratory systems.

A Deloitte survey of 30 US health system leaders looks at digital health tools:

• Three-fourths of respondents say their organizations are rethinking their business models from delivering treatments to maintaining health, with most of them supporting the change with digital technologies but conceding that much work remains.
• Health systems are successfully meeting consumer and care needs within their four walls, but fall short in preventive and continuing care. Adoption remains low for integrating wearables data, care plans, and clinician messaging.
• The executives say that integrating digital technologies also requires addressing revenue, fragmented ownership of digital projects, changing workflows. and lack of skilled workers.
• One interviewee noted that technology could help bridge the gap between what consumers do for their own health and wellness versus the entirely separate activities that they do for healthcare

Government and Politics

HHS OCR issues a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would extend HIPAA to prohibit the use of disclosure of PHI for identifying, investigating, suing, or prosecuting someone for seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating lawful reproductive healthcare. The unpublished document is here.

Other

Bay Area Hospital (OR) is threatened with closure after losing $61 million in its most recent fiscal year, which auditors blame on several problems that include a problematic implementation of Epic that resulted in $18 million of lost billings. Auditors also noted that the hospital spent $15 million more in contract labor in 2022 than in 2021, some of that due to Epic go-live support needs, and also spent $3.6 million to help local medical practices with their Epic installation.

The University of Virginia newspaper profiles 2016 graduate Aajash Shah, who with his ENT surgeon cousin started home allergy treatment company Wyndly in 2021. The company sells a $249 home finger-stick allergy test whose results are reviewed by a doctor to prescribe under-the-tongue tablets as an alternative to allergy shots. The service, which includes unlimited doctor time and treatments, costs $99 per month.

KFF Health News profiles Horizon Therapeutics, which is about to be acquired by Amgen for $27.8 billion even though it has never developed a drug that has reached the market. The Shkreli-like company buys old drugs, raises their prices, markets them aggressively to physicians who sometimes are paid honoraria, offers concierge-like services to patients to whom it markets directly, and makes sure that insurers rather than patients bear the financial burden via its patient assistance programs. It spent $120 million to acquire a last-resort gout drug that has many cheap alternatives, then marketed it aggressively to drive sales to $1 billion annually after increasing its price tenfold. The company, which saved a fortune in US taxes by moving its headquarters to Ireland, paid $93.4 million in 2015 to its CEO, who will reap a reported $135 million from the acquisition.

In India, authorities raid an unlicensed hospital that was being run by a high school dropout who was posing as a doctor, following reports that the illegal 16-bed Mediversal Hospital included a lab, ICU, emergency room, and surgery suite.

Sponsor Updates

• Women’s Health Associates realizes a 40% increase in revenue cycle payment processing with Healow Payment Services from EClinicalWorks.
• Surescripts launches the second season of its There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology Podcast.
• BayCare Health System expands its use of Oracle Health technologies to include its RevElate patient accounting software.
• Vyne Medical will sponsor and present at NAHAM’s annual conference May 2-5 in Orlando.
• Fortified Health Security names Matthew Prater service desk technician.
• Health Data Movers publishes a new case study, “Data Conversion for a Growing Health System.)
• Net Health publishes a new e-book, “10 Practical Tips for Taking Your Physical Therapy Clinic Management to the Next Level.”

Blog Posts

• How Predictive Data Improves Outcomes, Cuts Costs (Enlace Health)
• Five9 Knows Healthcare: Improving Patient Care in Times of Calm and Crisis (Five9)
• Increase Margins and Eliminate Access Barriers with Meaningful Automation (Impact Advisors)
• How Well Do You Track Your Provider ‘Inventory?’ (InterSystems)
• Clearsense at HIMSS 2023 (Clearsense)
• How to buy back your clinical informaticists’ time (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Marble’s Data Connections – Kaiser Permanente (Marble)
• Everything You Need to Know About Rural Emergency Hospitals (REH) (Medhost)
• ViVE: The Trending Health Conference for Healthcare Tech Professionals (Healthjump)
• Seizing the moment at Meditech’s 2023 Home Care Symposium (Meditech)
• Quick Wins: 5 Service Lines that Make the Most Sense for Prior Authorization Software (Myndshft)
• How Brightside Health Supports At-Risk Populations Who Would Otherwise Fall Through the Cracks (NeuroFlow)
• The impact of technological advancements in healthcare (Nuance)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 4/13/23

From the “it’s always good to double check your work” file. A general practitioner’s practice in the UK mistakenly sends text messages related to a diagnosis of aggressive metastatic lung cancer instead of the planned holiday greeting. The practice, or “surgery” in NHS terms, has 8,000 patients who may have received the message. A corrective message was sent about an hour later, but there’s no way to know how much agony the original message caused. As expected, the practice was then slammed with phone calls and patients were unable to get through. In a past life, I was responsible for putting together population health campaigns that were broadcast to large segments of our health system’s population, and you can bet we had a “two sets of eyes” policy on everything that went out to large cohorts of patients.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend a presentation given by colleagues at the local academic medical center. Unfortunately, the presentation was marred by blatant sexism. It was a panel discussion, and the moderator habitually referred to the male members of the panel as “Dr. Surname” while referring to the female member of the panel by her first name. All three of the panelists were fully introduced, including their credentials as medical doctors and professors at the institution, so it’s not like there was any confusion about her status as a physician.

Even if she had asked to be called by her first name, which she assured me she didn’t, the thing that made it worse was that neither of the male panelists tried to rectify the situation. When referring to their colleague, it would have been easy for them to refer to her as Dr. Jones to make it clear to the moderator that his address was not appropriate, but instead they joined in. There are numerous published studies about the fact that women physicians are more likely to be addressed by their first names rather than being addressed as Doctor. It was sad to see this at what was supposed to be a progressive institution. Had there been a continuing education evaluation form, I would have commented, but unfortunately there wasn’t.

From a travel standpoint, except for the impacts of COVID, I’ve been a road warrior for more than a decade. This week I had one of the worst travel-related days in recent memory, and none of it had anything to do with the airlines, flight delays, or weather. The first issue involved a parent who insisted on lifting her stroller (including the accompanying strapped-in toddler) onto the parking shuttle rather than folding the stroller and carrying on the toddler. She was snapping at the shuttle attendant  — who in my opinion shouldn’t be responsible for loading a human — and demanding help while not even using two hands to load her child because her other hand was tied up with not only her phone, but also a Starbucks cup. She also snapped at other customers who tried to help, so it wasn’t a good opportunity to fulfill the slogan to do a good turn daily. I know that for some people coffee is life, but it felt like there may have been some misplaced priorities. Ultimately the driver was frazzled, which is never good.

Once I made it through the blissfully quick security checkpoint and arrived at the gate, I ended up in the boarding line in front of a woman who was facilitating a video-enabled conference call on her phone. Other passengers were trying to talk to her to figure out boarding positions and she was ignoring them. Of course, when it came time for her to scan her boarding pass, she was still on the call, and plenty of fumbling ensued. Props to the gate agent who sidelined her and let others through while she tried to get her act together. That’s always preferred to letting one person hold up the whole line.

We also had issues on the plane with passengers failing to follow crew member instructions, with infractions ranging to baggage issues to one gent sitting in the exit row who insisted on trying to lay out his jacket in the overhead bin on a full flight, refused to close his laptop, refused to properly stow it, and then became sassy when asked to fasten his seat belt. I was across the aisle from him just hoping it wasn’t going to turn into an incident where they would have to call security onboard to forcibly deplane him. Eventually he got with the program, but not without causing delays. The flight crew did a good job with service recovery, however, and I enjoyed my complimentary premium beverage, but it was just so unnecessary for him to act that way.

Due to an availability issue, I wasn’t able to use my usual rental car agency and ended up going through Costco Travel to book with Budget, so I wasn’t familiar with the processes at my destination. After waiting in line at the rental counter as instructed by the email I received, I was told, “You have Fastbreak and you’re in the wrong place” and was redirected outside. I was assisted there by a lovely agent who was in training, only to have her supervisor stop her in the middle of processing my rental and tell her to give me a different car from Avis, which is also owned by Avis Budget Group. When I got to the Avis lot, the neighboring vehicle was parked so close that I couldn’t get into it, and neither could the rep when I went back to the counter for help. They had to move two cars to liberate my assigned vehicle. Note to the folks parking cars – if it’s so tight that you have to fold the mirrors in so the cars don’t hit, it’s probably too close for a person to get in the car.

The next annoyance was a badly striped and signed parking lot, where following the exit sign and arrows led me to a dead end and a multi-point turn to get back on track. I mentioned it to the agent at the exit gate, who admitted, “Yeah, we changed that a while ago, we should probably change those signs.” Yes, indeed. He then asked me to show my license for the fourth time in 10 minutes, and finally I was on my way. The rest of the trip included wild drivers, erratic speeds, and the usual highway fun.

I finally made it to my hotel, where I was greeted with a digital key that didn’t work. I went to the desk and got a new key, which was handed over just by saying my room number and without providing ID, which is a safety concern. From there, I went back up to my room, only to find someone in it with the door propped open. It turned out to be the housekeeper, who just let me walk in without unlocking the door or proving it was actually my room. Not the safest feeling, but by this point I was in full “it is what it is” mode and just wanted to get settled so I could attend some conference calls. That’s what multiple layers of security locks are for, I guess.

They say travel is broadening, and I generally enjoy it. Still, let’s hope for less eventful transit next week as I head to Chicago for HIMSS.

What are your wildest stories from recent travel? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.