News 1/24/24
Top News
Top researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, including its CEO and COO, are accused of falsifying published research articles by Photoshopping scientific graphics.
Research integrity experts identified 57 studies that appear to have been manipulated, with the organization acknowledging 37 of them and moving to retract six of those studies.
Some journals are using AI tools that can identify image tampering, which is apparently common among researchers.
Reader Comments
From Summa Cum Lotta: “Re: Summa. I am surprised how loss-making hospitals with high debt are still making huge investments in technology. How long would it have taken money-losing Summa to break even on an $850 million implementation of Epic? Executives making such decisions should be let go.” The cost seemed high to me, even though I got that number directly from Summa’s website in a transcript of an interview with the CIO and CMIO. Replaying the audio, CIO Elbridge Locklear, MBA actually said “eight fifty million dollars,” which sounds more like a verbal stumble rather than an odd way of intentionally saying “$850 million,” so I’m sure he misspoke. I went through Summa’s federal tax filings, which say they spent $50 million overall on the project. They paid Epic $12 million in 2022 versus paying their Epic host Mercy Health $13 million the year before, when they also paid Cerner $5 million. I’m surprised that Summa hasn’t corrected their own podcast transcription.
From GR_Buckeye: “Re: Epic. Has publicly published their Clarity data dictionary. Do you know why? They closely guard their IP and I can only assume that this was done as the result of some type of legal matter.” Epic published its EHI expert schema on its Open Epic interoperability information website. It was crawled by Internet Archive in February 2023, so it has apparently been there for some time.
From Watching Wins: “Re: learning from videos. You concluded that it shouldn’t be an either-or option between text and video since each have their audience. Why not use AI to create an HIStalk video of daily or weekly health tech news summary that you are already posting as text?” I could certainly do that pretty easily since I’ve researched available tools, but would anyone really watch or listen to a daily or weekly talking (AI) head video news digest?
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
A reminder to HIStalk sponsors: complete my information form for ViVE and/or HIMSS if you are participating and I’ll include you in my online guide
Dear everyone: please stop expressing your work history as “over” X years of experience. If you say “over eight,” then we know it’s not nine, and every person’s tenure is “over” the exact number, even if just by minutes. Trust me that nobody cares about your fractional years, but if your vanity requires, simply round up after the six-month mark to nine years. Related to that is expressing numbers in general — instead of “over 400 hospitals,” either give the actual number or just go with 400 since the distinction is not important.
Webinars
January 24 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Medication Management Redefined.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Caleb Dunn, PharmD, MS, senior product manager, DrFirst. Clinical workflow experts will paint a reimagined vision for e-prescribing that offers enhanced patient adherence, customizable clinical support, intelligent pharmacy logic, and data integrity and safety. Join this first chapter of an ongoing conversation about what medication management should be, how to deliver greater benefits today, and how to prepare for the future. Elevating your solution and customer benefits isn’t as hard, scary, or economically challenging as you may think.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Healthcare pricing transparency company Turquoise Health raises $30 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $55 million since launching in 2021.
The annual health IT market review of Healthcare Growth Partners finds that:
- M&A and buyout deal volume returned to pre-COVID levels in 2023 from their low in Q4 2022.
- Although valuations did not catch up, EBITDA-based valuations have held steady throughout
- Investment activity continued to fall through 2023, dropping to $9 billion from its all-time high of $29 billion in 2021.
- HGP’s HIT Index gained 3% last year versus 25% for the S&P 500 and 45% for the Nasdaq.
- HIT Index stocks whose returns were worse than negative 60% for the year include Streamline Health, Invitae, Pear Therapeutics, GeneDx Holding, NantHealth, Bright Health Group, Cue Health, and UpHealth.
In Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley, HSHS Sacred Heart, St. Joseph’s, and Prevea clinics will close, with HSHS blaming “a mismatch in the supply of and demand for local healthcare services” and its failure to find a partner.
Sales
- The CDC will use de-identified EHR data from health system collective Truveta for respiratory virus surveillance and research projects involving maternal and pediatric healthcare.
- South Carolina-based specialty pharmacy Palmetto Pharm selects Inovalon’s ScriptMed Specialty pharmacy management software.
- Innovaccer incorporates Wolters Kluwer Health’s Health Language terminology software into its data-based offerings.
People
Ryan Royal (Interviewstream) joins Upfront Healthcare as CTO.
Definitive Healthcare names founder, former CEO, and current Executive Chairman Jason Krantz, MBA as interim CEO upon the departure of Robert Musselwhite.
AMC Health names Zebadiah Kimmel, MD, MBA (Medically Home) chief product officer and promotes Jon Shankman, MBA, MPH to chief analytics officer.
Anatomy IT names Patrik Vagenius (Flywire) chief commercial officer.
Mount Sinai Health System (NY) names Bruce Darrow, MD, PhD interim chief digital and information officer upon the departure of Kristin Myers, MPH, who has joined Northwell Health (NY) as chief digital officer.
1upHealth hires Andrea Kowalski, MBA (Tebra) as chief product officer.
Kyruus hires Harshit Shah, MS (Spring Health) as CTO.
Announcements and Implementations
Amazon reportedly offers One Medical providers access to virtual consults with Amazon Pharmacy pharmacists as part of a pilot project geared towards improving outcomes for high-risk patients, particularly seniors.
The Liver Cancer Collaborative in Australia uses Aridhia’s Digital Research Environment technology to help researchers share data and collaborate on projects.
UCSD Health researchers find that a real-time alert that is powered by the Composer deep learning training library accurately predicted patient sepsis in the ED and reduced mortality significantly. The nursing alert was presented as an Epic Best Practice Advisory, but the authors note that the Epic’s own Sepsis Score has not demonstrated comparable results.
A new KLAS report finds that physician and nurse burnout has stabilized, but remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. Both groups suggest improving staffing and getting executives to listen to the concerns of clinicians and patients. Coming in at #3 for doctors is improving EHR efficiency, while for nurses, it is increasing pay.
Government and Politics
A federal appeals court upholds Martin Shkreli’s lifetime ban from the drug industry and a requirement that he pay $65 million in restitution. His company bought a decades-old drug for treating a rare condition, immediately raised the price 4,000%, and prevented other companies from obtaining samples of the drug that would have allowed them to sell generics. His lawyer had argued that while the “pharma bro” has since served prison time for financial crimes, those weren’t related to the drug industry, suggesting that the courts “should encourage real geniuses like Mr. Shkreli to work in the industry.” Shrekli responded via X that he is the only person in the US to ever be sued as a monopolist, says he followed the same playbook as AbbVie and many other drug manufacturers, and warned every executive that they can be held jointly and severally liable for antitrust actions that are levied against their companies.
Other
CMS reports that telehealth usage by Medicare users has dropped nearly back to pre-pandemic levels through mid-2023.
In Bangladesh, a private hospital director is arrested after demanding that parents of a newborn pay their $365 bill, and upon hearing that they didn’t have the money, sold the baby.
Sponsor Updates
- Pinnacle Family Care (NC) improves efficiency using the EClinicalWorks AI assistant for Prisma.
- Censinet releases a new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast, “Future-Forward Healthcare with Sherri Douville, CEO & Board, Medigram.”
- CloudWave will sponsor the MUSE Social (Southern California) Community Peer Group Event February 1 in Covina.
Blog Posts
- Understanding Prospective, Concurrent, and Retrospective Reviews (AGS Health)
- Data-driven tools and strategies for self-service healthcare analytics (Arcadia)
- Building a Greener Healthcare System with Data Analytics (Dimensional Insight)
- Bridging Healthcare Data Gaps with Clinical-Grade AI (DrFirst)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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I was part of the Pfizer COVID vaccine clinical trial in 2020. There was an app for recording some simple…