Tom Sullivan

Once the specification gains wider use for data exchange, it will open the doors for more advanced uses of data, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, IBM, Google and Microsoft executives said at HIMSS19. 

Former U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra said that CMS embracing FHIR means an end to any fight over data standards.

The new Claims Lifecycle Artificial Intelligence works with Change's Intelligent Healthcare Network to improve the revenue cycle, the company says.

There’s little debating that healthcare and technology are at an interesting intersection right now. So many big ideas, so much promise. But wide-scale transformation doesn’t just happen. “All the ideas need doers, those who enable action to shift ideas to execution,” Google Cloud Director of Global Health Solutions Aashima Gupta said at the HIMSS19 Cloud Computing Forum. Three such doers also took the stage to offer a glimpse of how they are using cloud computing today and hints about the future: NewYork-Presbyterian, Mercy and Humana. “By 2022, we’re expecting to move the majority of our applications and infrastructure to the cloud, leaving just 20 percent on-premises,” Vice-President for Analytics and Clinical Systems at NYP, David Vawdrey, said. It’s not merely embracing the cloud for cloud’s sake. Vawdrey said it’s to improve patient experience, make the hardest parts of tech invisible to users and equip them with patient-facing technologies such as virtual visits. “Imagine you are asking financial advice. You call the 1-800 number, and Warren Buffett answers the phone,” Vawdrey said. “This is the vision we’re trying to create with telehealth.” Antonio Melo, Director of Humana’s Digital Experience Center, said it’s working to shift from an institution-first model to one that is person-first. “We’re interested in providing care where people spend the majority or a lot of their time,” Melo said. “How do we reinvent who is improving care in the home? How do we create contextually relevant experiences for what might be considered low-level care? We’re talking about lifecare, and it’s an entirely different thing.” While acknowledging the cultural shift required to move considerable data sets into the cloud, Curtis Dudley, Vice-President of integrated Performance Solutions at Mercy, said that moving to the cloud has also enabled the system to commercialise its cloud services and, in turn, offer them to other hospitals. Cloud-based “descriptive analytics has led to the development of data science, AI and machine learning,” Dudley said. “Our goal is analytics at the speed of thought so they can walk into meetings to actually make decisions.” NEXT UP FOR MERCY? “Our future on the cloud side is going to be more and more healthcare data in the cloud. We’re working with Epic, Azure [and] Google, and our view is the cloud analytics competent is reaching inside four walls of the hospital and accessing the data in our datacentre. We are sharing data with third parties today through the cloud, in more than 200 different places,” Dudley said. “The more we do, the more people want, internally and externally.” Humana Edge CTO Jeff Hawkins said embracing the cloud opens doors to innovation. “Cloud is important for the future of how we engage our consumers. We’re taking an approach of automation over lift and shift,” Hawkins said. “We are not moving to the cloud for speed and resiliency, though we think we’ll achieve those. The fundamental drive of the cloud is to improve the experience of our consumers.” NYP’s Vawdrey agreed that it’s about patient and caregiver experience. “We want to provide a more comfortable, relaxed environment, where caregivers can deliver high quality, high satisfaction for low acuity patients,” Vawdrey said. “That’s using tech to re-humanise rather than de-humanise healthcare.”

It’s not for cost-savings on storage and compute. Instead, NewYork-Presbyterian, Mercy and Humana are harnessing the cloud to improve patient and clinician experience.

Offerings include record locator service, identity management and document retrieval, the company says.

Expect to see our interview desk, roving reporters, and discussions with industry luminaries, innovators and top executives forging the future of healthcare -- livecasted and on-demand.

The EHR vendor signed a corporate integrity agreement that lays out action items for the next five years.

The agency will continue its resolve to uncover and pursue cases to protect the public from corporate greed, U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan says.

CEO Dan Burton explains what the billion-dollar mark means to the company and the industry, where its technology is headed – and where it stands on an IPO.