Mike Miliard
Technology challenges carry some blame for the sorry state of health data exchange in the U.S., but it's also a matter of simple dollars and cents.
It was, as always, an eventful year for the health information technology industry, everywhere from hospitals to physician practices, vendor headquarters to the halls of Congress. 2014 was marked by big stories about ICD-10, privacy and security, patient safety, interoperability and more. We spotlight some of them here.
Researchers from Kaiser Permanente and Weill Cornell Medical College have pointed to the importance of tracking the effectiveness and safety of medical devices in registries, after they're in use. Few EHRs can uniquely identify devices and link them to patient outcome data, but registries can.
Stage 2 meaningful use attestations have shown an uptick, but many providers still struggle. With the Flex-IT Act gaining traction in the House, Rep. Renee Ellmers and 28 fellow members of Congress have again called on HHS for a shorter reporting period. The AMA, meanwhile, is "appalled" that more than half of eligible providers will face penalties in 2015.
Could younger patients be the key to achieving Stage 2 meaningful use patient access requirements? A new report finds strong desire for online medical records among the 18- to 34-year-old generation, with 43 percent of millennials saying they want to access their portals via smartphone.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will deploy IBM's Watson technology as it builds its clinical reasoning system to help physicians make evidence-based primary care decisions. The Veterans Health Administration will also be using Watson to help treat returning service members with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The risk of experiencing a data breach "is higher than ever," according to Experian's second annual industry forecast, which shows how the "consistently high value of healthcare data on the black market" means there will be little respite for an industry already beleaguered by cyber threats.
Montefiore Medical Center delivers care to some 2 million people in the Bronx and beyond, and has been a longtime leader in population health initiatives. But one of the "basic challenges that we face," says Jack Wolf, Montefiore's chief information officer, "is the lack of a unique patient identifier."
Having established a level of trust and familiarity with electronic health records over the past few years, increasing numbers of U.S. patients are looking for more advanced features, such as access to doctors' notes and test results, according to a new survey from the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Flatiron Health, the oncology analytics company, has partnered with Vector Oncology on a new project that lets cancer clinicians view patient-reported symptoms at the point of care.