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Apps Open Up a New World of Health Value

Parents, do you remember the days before smart devices? The days before you could hand your kid a tablet or phone in exchange for at least 20 minutes of uninterrupted quiet? I hope I’m not alone in the personal love/hate relationship I have with smart devices. One minute I find myself using them as a virtual babysitter just to get through a conference call at home. The next, I find myself wishing I could program them to shut off after 20 minutes so that my kids (and my husband) don’t wind up looking like the “humans” in Wall*e. (I’ve heard the Kindle Fire has this option. Anyone know if an iPad can be made to do the same?)

Parental musings aside, I believe smart devices certainly do have their part to play when it comes to educating or even conditioning healthcare consumers, especially in the area of gamification. This point was driven home when I overheard my oldest say to my youngest as they played on the iPad, “Your health value isn’t high enough. You need to add more broccoli.”

smoothiemaster

“Smoothie Master” from TabTale was their game of choice. As the name implies, they were tasked with becoming masters of smoothie creation. I’m still not sure if this game is winnable in the traditional sense, but my seven year-old did explain to me that you could win points for adding healthy ingredients.

TabTale doesn’t seem particularly invested in promoting a healthy lifestyle, as it also has similar apps for mastering the art of making pizzas and hamburgers. But, their inclusion of a health value scoring system does make me wonder if this younger generation will grow up with an inherent sense of what behaviors will keep them healthy in real life. (The irony being that all the broccoli in the world won’t do them any good if they stay glued to the devices that are helping provide this type of education.)

Now, if I can just figure out a way to “gamify” the health value of the broccoli I fix at home so that my kids will eat it and think they have “won.” Let me know in the comments below if you’ve figured out a way to take virtual culinary successes offline and into the real world of kid-friendly cuisine.

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May 16, 2013 I Written By

As Social Marketing Director at Billian, Jennifer Dennard is responsible for the continuing development and implementation of the company’s social media strategies for its three key properties – Billian’s HealthDATA, Porter Research and HITR.com. She is a regular contributor to a number of healthcare blogs, and currently manages the Technology Association of Georgia Health Society’s social media channels. You can find her on Twitter @SmyrnaGirl.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  mHealth
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BYOD Deploying a Mobile Device Management Strategy

The following is a guest blog post by Marcus LaFountain.
Marcus LaFountain Headshot
LaFountain has worked in IT for the last 10 years as a PC Technician, Help Desk Analyst, and System Administrator. He is currently a Healthcare IT Consultant specializing in Cerner and HIM implementations.

A recent Ovum study showed that almost 60% of employees bring some type of mobile device into the workplace. There are a few names for this, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Bring Your Own PC (BYOPC), Bring Your Own Phone (BYOP), User Introduces Unsecure Device onto My Network and Then Loses My Secure Data (UIUDOMNTLMSD). Alright, so I made that last one up, but that is how most IT Managers feel when the discussion is started about BYOD. An end user bringing a device to work is both a gift and a curse for any sized company. We see an increase in productivity but also the increased threat of data being lost or stolen. Having a strong Mobile Device Management (MDM) strategy can help companies reap the benefits of BYOD while limiting the consequences.

Let’s start by going over some numbers. By 2014, the number of mobile devices (mostly mobile phones) in the workplace is expected to reach 350 million globally. A remarkable 57% of full time employees are already using mobile devices for work related tasks. Out of that 57%, about half is unmonitored, unmanaged BYOD activity. Another study shows that in 2011, 78% of companies did NOT have a BYOD policy and only about 20% of employees actually sign a BYOD policy.

There are many reasons to justify a BYOD policy:

Productivity:  An employee who uses their personal device for both work and play is on average likely to work an extra 240 hours per year than those who do not. They can answer emails on the go, answer phone calls while on the road (using a hands-free device of course!) and receive that last minute meeting update. . Most employees won’t want to bring a work laptop home just to check emails after dinner or during downtime at home. Letting them receive push emails may empower them to write a quick mail back to a client in a different time zone rather than having to wait until the morning.

Cost: There is also a cost justification. Not having to provide every employee with a business only device can save not only the cost of the device but the monthly service plan that goes along with it. The number of devices can be reduced as well. A mobile phone is a cheaper and sometimes more convenient alternative than a laptop with a 4G cell card. Employees can still stay connected when not physically at their desk.

User Experience: Tech Savvy employees tend to have strong preferences when it comes to the technology they choose to use. Forcing an Android user to use a BlackBerry device may not be an ideal situation. Giving employees the ability to choose their mobile operating system, screen size and other technical specs may make them more likely to use the device rather than it sitting in a desk drawer unused.

However, it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows in the world of BYOD. As the use of mobile devices increase in the work place, so do the number of malicious attacks. According to the Ponemon Institute, 6 out of 10 security breaches were traced back to mobile devices. Apple and Google are constantly removing mobile malware from their app stores. And as always, attackers are trying to pick the low hanging fruit of the mobile community first. Businesses must have policies and security measures in place to protect their data. In 2009, the US Government enacted the Health Information Technology for Clinical Health Act (HITECH) that requires healthcare companies to notify patients if they have had their health records compromised. Similar acts were also put in place in the financial industry.

Constructing a comprehensive Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy is imperative when users are allowed to bring and use their own devices. As with many policies, the contents may vary greatly by company. However, almost every company from small businesses to enterprises will need to focus on security and support.

Security:  A lost or stolen device is the most common type of security breach. A company must have measures in place to combat this. While an entire article can be written about mobile security, I will touch on some common features.  Both Android and Apple offer AES 256 – Bit encryption as a standard on their devices.  Lock screens, passwords and certificates all play a role in device management as well. Microsoft Active Sync and other software also allow administrators to perform a remote wipe of a compromised device. This is a necessary requirement when employees have company data on their mobile phones.  Samsung has developed an Enterprise suite called SAFE that allows the user to partition company data with personal data. It also gives administrators the ability to perform a complete or selective wipe, tracking of the device and local password enforcement.  Apple and other mobile providers are starting to or already have incorporated these features as well. If your company is using application virtualization, you may need to define new rules for allowing mobile devices. Users will also need a way to get a hold of someone 24/7 in the event of a lost or stolen device.

Support:  This may be a slippery slope for some. Most IT policies only allow for support of company devices. So who supports a personal device that is used for business? Depending on the size of your company, you may want to assign a dedicated resource from your IT Security team to manage your MDM policy. If you are an enterprise, you may need a small team to manage different aspects of the policy. Your Help Desk will need training on the various mobile operating systems and communication will need to be sent out to end users on how to stay on top of security. Documentation will need to be created on how to setup email, VPNs and passwords. Do you need to setup an approved device list or will you allow any manufacturer or mobile OS on the network? A pilot group (usually IT) will need to be put in place to test your new systems and policies as well. Audits should also be enabled to check for OS updates, application updates and security updates.

In a growing mobile market and the on demand nature of business today, IT Management will need to be one step ahead of its users by developing a MDM policy. When developing an MDM strategy, you must take into account your business needs as well as infrastructure requirements. Like any new implementation it is ideal to begin testing your technology and policies with a small subset of users and conducting a review process before rolling out corporate wide. Doing so may limit mistakes while in a beta phase instead of having them on a mass scale. Focusing on security and support will allow for a comprehensive strategy that will allow employees to operate efficiently and productively but most importantly safely.

Related Whitepaper:
How Technology Executives are Managing the Shift to BYOD
This white paper looks at the growing adoption of BYOD in healthcare and the possible benefits and hurdles of enabling employees to use their own consumer devices in the workplace.

Download Whitepaper or see More EMR and Health IT Whitepapers

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April 30, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: BYOD  EMR Technology  Healthcare IT  mHealth
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Pay-for-Play Interoperability, Texting in Healthcare, and Health IT Conferences – #HITsm Chat Highlights

Topic One: Is “pay-for-play” interoperability going to derail CommonWell’s goal of building an industry-wide, interoperable framework?

Topic Two: Will texting in health care become a main driver of #patientengagement? Are iOS iMessage texts HIPAA compliant?

Topic Three: Experts claim data breaches are inevitable for health systems. Agree? What can be done NOW to minimize #healthIT security risks?

Topic Four: What’s the next-best #healthIT event/conference you’re attending? Are there other health IT topics that deserve their own event?

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April 13, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  HIE  HIPAA  mHealth
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EMR Ready: The Smartphone Physical

Here’s the kind of thinking that makes me wish I was going to TEDMED 13 (John Lynn will be there if any other readers are attending.).  At this years’ show, a team of current and future medical professionals plan to do a complete “smartphone physical” for attendees, using a bunch of devices that appear to be compatible with an iPhone. Not only is the data immediately readable as the testing goes on, it’s EMR-ready, too, both pretty neat features.

Check out just how thorough the physical is going to be (courtesy of the TEDMED blog):

• Body analysis using an iHealth Scale.

• Blood pressure reading using a Withings BP Monitor.

• Oxygen saturation/pulse measured simultaneously with blood pressure, using an Masimo iSpO2 placed on the left ring finger.

• Visual acuity via an EyeNetra phone case.

• Optic disc visualization using a Welch Allyn iExaminer case attached to a PanOptic Ophthalmoscope.

• Ear drum visualization with a CellScope phone case.

• Lung function using a SpiroSmart Spirometer app to conduct a respirometer test.

•Heart electrophysiology using the AliveCor Heart Monitor.

•Body sounds: A digital stethoscope from ThinkLabs auscultates and amplifies the sounds of a patient’s lungs and heart.

• Carotid artery visualization using a Mobisante probe.

Participant Shiv Gagliani, a Johns Hopkins medical student, tells TEDMED that the smartphone physical can improve doctor-patient relationships, as the real-time, audible and visual results help connect patients to the tests and increase their understanding of their bodies.  Not only that, the patients can help gather the data themselves, increasing their engagement with their care.

And of course, the devices that make the smartphone checkup possible are also very portable, making it possible for doctors to take them wherever they go, be it down the street or across the globe.  What’s more, less-trained global health workers will be able to use these devices to gather baseline readings and via telemedical links, get instructions on how to treat patients. This device connectivity is part of what John suggested was needed for successful Telehealth.

To learn more about this project, visit http://www.smartphonephysical.org/. I’d definitely take a look; it seems to me that this type of mobile health technology is here to stay.

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April 9, 2013 I Written By

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare  Medical Devices  mHealth  Telemedicine
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Keys to Successful Telehealth

Rob Sobie wrote a nice post on the Point of Care Corner blog about the 4 Keys to a Successful Telemedicine Launch. These are the 4 keys he offers:

  • Reliability
  • Ease of Use
  • Mobility
  • Flexibility

Most of the ideas are pretty self explanatory, but check out the full post for his explanation of each item. I agree with each item, but I think there are a number of other things that are needed for successful telehealth as well.

Multiple Application Support – While we’d love to have the entire Telehealth experience on one application, it’s unlikely to ever happen. While doing a Telehealth visit, the doctor is going to need access to a number of other applications such as their EHR. This is where the dual monitor Telehealth setup is so beneficial. They can have the Telehealth visit up on one screen while they browse their EHR or other health application on the other screen.

Telehealth Reimbursement – I recently asked an insurance company executive about Telehealth and if they’re really start reimbursing for it. He said they were happy to reimburse a Telehealth visit, as long as they had a way to know that there was indeed a visit that justified payment. You can see where they’re afraid of Telehealth reimbursement fraud. His solution to that was reimbursing Telehealth systems that were their trusted partners. With this in mind, you want to make sure whatever Telehealth solution you use is trusted by the payers so that you get paid.

Device Connectivity – One of the challenges of Telehealth is the ability to get device information from a patient. There’s a new wave of Telehealth technologies that are incorporating medical devices into the Telehealth experience. Integrating Telehealth and devices really takes Telehealth to the next level and since the cost of devices is dropping dramatically we’re going to see more and more integrations. Just be careful because many Telehealth platforms won’t have the forethought to do this type of device integration.

I’m sure there are other keys to Telehealth success. I’d love to hear your additional ideas in the comments. Where are you seeing it implemented? What’s been most successful?

I believe the Telehealth market is set to grow like it’s never grown before. The technology and infastructure are in place for it to become a reality. Things like shared savings will drive adoption of Telehealth as a way to lower costs. The article linked above says that Telehealth is projected to be a $27.3 billion industry in 2016. I’m personally looking forward to the shift to Telehealth.

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April 4, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Medical Devices  mHealth  Telemedicine
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100% Interoperability, Quantified Self Data, and Data Liquidity – #HITsm Chat Highlights

Topic 1: Do you think the healthcare system WANTS 100% interoperability & data liquidity? Why/why not?

 

Topic 2: As consumer, what are YOUR fears about your health data being shared across providers/payers/government?

 

Topic 3: What do you think payers will do with #quantifiedself data if integrated into EHR? Actuarial/underwriting?

 

Topic 4: Could there be a correlation between your fear of data liquidity and your health?

 

Topic 5: What could assuage your fears? Education? Legislation? Regulation? Healthcare system withdrawal?

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March 30, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Technology  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  Hospitals  Meaningful Use  mHealth  Outcomes  Privacy
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@HealthcareWen (Dr. Wen Dombrowski) – #HITsm Spotlight

I thought it would be fun to get to know some of the various personalities in the #HITsm community. @HealthcareWen is one of the great ones. With HIMSS 2013 started today, I think it’s perfect timing to highlight Dr. Wen. There is no one better to follow than her if you want to learn what she’s learning at HIMSS.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF:

I love the intersection of technology, business, policy, healthcare & social services. I enjoy figuring out high-level policy and strategic business goals, and then translating them into operational processes and product designs. I’m always thinking about “what is the best way to leverage technology?” for each situation, but realize that technology alone is usually an insufficient solution.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON?

Lately I’ve been working on several small projects while completing a Global Executive MBA program at IE Business School — a program I highly recommend to others, by the way. I’m working with a hospice and homecare agency on EHR vendor selection and culture change to value decisions based on real-time data. I’m advising several medical software startups on product development—particularly on issues related to user experience, data structure, and strategy. I’m also helping several large nonprofit organizations that serve seniors and other underserved populations with understanding and adapting their strategy to the implications of healthcare reform, data availability, technology, and social media. And ever since Hurricane Sandy, I’ve been actively discussing how can technology and new media be leveraged to better prepare and respond to future emergencies with various community based organizations, government representatives, and medical providers.

Additionally, I see patients part-time by doing house calls. I love house calls because one can reach the sickest of patients – the patients who have the toughest time getting to their doctors’ offices. Seeing how patients live provides important clues about barriers to health and ways to personalize solutions. House calls and technology may seem like an odd combination of interests, but as Atul Gawande’s Hot Spotters article pointed out, the two complement each other in the goal to help the highest risk patients.

WHEN DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN SOCIAL MEDIA? WHAT GOT YOU STARTED WITH IT?

I’ve been on Facebook casually for years, mostly to share vacation and hobby photos with my family and to keep in touch with old friends.

I joined LinkedIn a couple years ago and it has been an invaluable tool to keep in touch with and find professional contacts. The search tool is especially useful when I am looking for people with specific expertise or geographic base. There are many interesting discussion Groups on LinkedIn, but I haven’t had time lately to read and interact with them.

Meetup has likewise been a useful site to find and create local affinity groups for in-person networking.

I didn’t consider myself “active” on social media until I started to actively use Twitter. I began using Twitter in 2011 to raise public awareness of the need for innovation in healthcare delivery, payment policy, patient engagement, and senior services. There seemed to be a lack of understanding about healthcare and aging, so I wanted to share some ideas as food for thought about tough topics.

WHAT BENEFITS HAVE YOU RECEIVED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA?

When I first started using Twitter, I really wasn’t expecting to get much out of it – I thought it would just be a chore to find and broadcast an article every once in a while. But then I realized it’s an incredibly powerful tool to find and engage other people that are likeminded or have different perspectives. It amazes me how Twitter brings together strangers and disparate stakeholders (such as patients, clinicians, technologists, and business executives) to dialogue about the evolving challenges of healthcare, technology, and society.

Personally, I have learned so much from the Twitter community – about topics that I was already passionate about – and introducing me to “new” concepts such as crowdsourcing, open data, and social enterprise. I love how Twitter enables serendipitous discovery of new gems, and appreciate the generosity of my Twitter friends who forward me interesting articles.

Beyond sharing articles and conversations, I’ve seen how Twitter and LinkedIn have been vital at connecting people with needs to relevant resources. For example, I remember the day after Hurricane Sandy I was volunteering in a shelter – the most needed item was dry socks, so I tweeted about it; I was stunned to learn an hour later someone anonymously dropped off a box of hundreds of brand new socks. This is just one small example of the larger potential that social media has to share info and resources.
socks
Twitter and LinkedIn have also led to the unexpected benefits of job offers, project collaborators, and speaking engagements. So Social Media has been indispensably valuable to me personally and professionally.

LOOKING AT THE WORLD OF HEALTHCARE IT, WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS HAPPENING TODAY?

Lack of true data interoperability among different EHR’s and other healthcare applications is a key problem hindering health innovation and creating wasteful spending. Also, managed care utilization data, user-generated sensor data, and genomic data haven’t been integrated with provider clinical data. I think real-time, user-friendly views that combine these data sources are needed to optimize day-to-day clinical decisions, long term business planning, and operationalizing new payment models such as ACO’s.

Besides data interoperability and integration, usability and workflow are super-important in health I.T. but often neglected by vendors. EHR’s, patient apps, and other software programs need to be designed with a user interface that is intuitive and convenient to use. Any software or technology implementation needs to consider the impact on workflow and redesign processes to avoid new bottlenecks.

AS A DOCTOR, WHAT’S YOUR VIEW ON THE IDEA OF “PRESCRIBING” MOBILE HEALTH APPS?

I think there is potential for some mobile health apps to be very useful to patients and physicians. However, most physicians and patients find it overwhelming to choose the “best” app for their patient’s situation. There are too many apps right now that do similar things, or only have a partial set of features, or only target one specific disease. If a patient has Crohn’s, diabetes, and headaches – what is the best app for him? App developers should think about how to make apps better than what already exists by including comprehensive features that are easy to use for patients, caregivers, and providers… this may mean partnering with and enhancing existing products instead of separately developing the 101st medication tracker app, pain tracker app, diet app, etc.

AS SOMEONE WHO FOCUSES ON THE AGING POPULATION, WHAT’S IT GOING TO TAKE TO BRING HEALTH IT TO THE OLDER GENERATION OF PATIENTS?

Contrary to popular misconception, age is not the biggest barrier to technology adoption: usability is. Software and physical products need to be intuitive, user-friendly, and make people’s lives easier by solving real problems. Technology needs to integrate into the “workflow” of people’s daily lives, or else it’s a nuisance to use. Some special considerations when designing for older adults is keeping in mind some may have trouble with limited vision, tactile sense, or physical range of motion. These don’t preclude older adults from using technology – if technology is designed with these users in mind. I think companies designing for seniors have a lot to learn from the field of developmental disabilities that has a long tradition of inventing assistive technology. The good news is that increasingly more companies are taking human centered design approaches more seriously.

IF YOU COULD WAKE UP TOMORROW AND HAVE ONE PART OF HEALTHCARE SOLVED, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

I would change the way that healthcare gets paid for so that good care gets rewarded. Instead of paying hospitals for how many tests and surgeries are done, payments should reflect smart clinical decision making and coordination of care.

I would also love to see different data sources integrated into one application that can display the data in ways that are meaningful to different users, e.g. data views for patients, clinicians, and administrative users.

ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?

I hope policymakers, administrators, and developers always keep in mind the end-users’ needs and perspective (whether that’s a patient, caregiver, clinician, or anyone else).

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March 4, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  mHealth
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HIMSS13 Healthcare IT Preview Video with HIMSS Execs

I decided to try out the new Google+ hangout option to record a video interview with a number of HIMSS Executives to talk about the upcoming HIMSS 2013 conference in New Orleans. The technology worked out pretty well and we had a really interesting discussion about HIMSS and many other healthcare IT topics. Check out the video interview embedded below.

Here’s the list of people who took part in the interview:
Rod Piechowski, HIMSS Senior Director, Health Information Systems
Mary P. Griskewicz, MS, FHIMSS, Senior Director, Health Information Systems
David Collins, Senior Director, mHIMSS

Next time I’m hoping to do the G+ Hangout live so you can participate in the event as well. In fact, I’ve already started discussions with a number of top healthcare IT people about doing more G+ hangouts. So, watch for more interviews like this in the future.

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March 1, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  mHealth
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Patient Accountability and Responsibility

I think you can add this post to my series of posts on the Physician Revolt that I talked about earlier. The following message is from a doctor who emailed me. Obviously, they didn’t realize it would be published, so ignore some of the grammar errors, but the message is a good one that we should be discussing.

The doctors are going to be graded on the health outcomes but yet patients are going to do whatever. Nowhere in the law it states that patient is responsible for anything.

So while the ACOs are going to offer coverage…… there is going to be no immediate access due to shortage of MDs and the current MDs whose slots are overfilled are going to be dinged with penalties for not taking care of their patients completely (ie. all time coverage for all patients all the time). which means the MD has to refund the already reduced reimbursements back to the government because patients will complain about this.

Of course, the patients themselves will not tighten their belt and become personally responsible for their health so that they take up less appointment slots……..

So the significant question is Where are the patients held accountable in all these free health care reforms?

This is an important question as we shift to an ACO model. I think the above narrative places a little too much blame on the patient for the higher healthcare costs. Certainly there are things that doctors and our health system can do to lower costs that are outside of the patient. A simple example is 2 doctors ordering duplicate tests. If they just transferred the data, they’d provide the same care for a much lower cost. Plus, I think there are ways that a doctor together with a clinical care team can improve the overall quality of care of a patient population regardless of the patient’s choices. Another example of this is the hospital to PCP hand off. Doing this right can lower healthcare costs by reducing hospital readmissions.

While much can be done by doctors and the healthcare system as a whole, the doctor does raise a good question about patient responsibility. In what ways could we incentivize patients to take some accountability and responsibility for their healthcare as well?

The first thing that popped in my head was the way car insurance companies are doing it. One of the insurance companies is tapping into your car’s computer to monitor safe driving and then they provide discounts to you for being a safe driver. Are we going to have the same models in healthcare? In some ways we do, since if you’re a non-smoker your health insurance costs a lot less. Will health insurance companies start lowering a patient’s health insurance costs based on data from a wearable device that monitors your activity?

I’m honestly not sure how it’s all going to play out, but I am sure that healthcare IT is going to play a role in the process. We’ll never totally solve the issue of patient responsibility and accountability. That’s a feature of life, but I think that technology can help to hold us all more accountable for our health choices. What technologies do you see helping this?

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February 22, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: ACO  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Medical Devices  mHealth
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Advanced Analytics, Big Data, and IBM Watson: #HITsm Chat Highlights

Topic One: @janicemccallum defines #BigData broadly as: “Advanced analytics for complex problem solving.” Do you agree?

 

Topic Two: Is the current base of evidence strong enough to support #BigData models? What additional data sources do we need?

Topic Three: IBM Watson was recently deployed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering for CDS. Will IBM dominate healthcare #BigData?

Topic Four: What will help advance & what will delay the use of #BigData models in healthcare?

Topic Five: Is the current hype surrounding #BigData good or bad for the future of evidence-based medicine?

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February 16, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  mHealth  Outcomes
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