Precision Medicine

One seeks to reduce variations in care, the other is about increased variations. But both are key to the future, says the health system's chief innovation officer.  

Respondents to new research indicated that major EHR vendors are not capable of precision medicine work.  

Researchers can customize and rebrand the agency’s MyStudies App for their own clinical trials or observational studies.

Apps and devices will evolve and tools already around us will become instruments of health to advance tailor-made care delivery and treatments.

Penn Medicine is pursuing a new initiative it says will innovate electronic health records for 21st Century medicine. The goal, officials say, is to make the technology more interactive and responsive to clinicians – nudging the EHR into a new era where it's not just a documentation system but a crucial tool for care delivery. WHY IT MATTERS Since EHRs have become ubiquitous over the past decade, they've grown into an intrinsic part of the ways healthcare is administered. They've also earned no shortage of annoyance, if not downright scorn, from many clinicians frustrated by how they impact their jobs. As Penn Medicine explains, many physicians simply see EHRs as "static, digital remakes of paper charts that can increase workload, contribute to burnout and create barriers to delivering high-quality patient care." And oftentimes that's exactly what they are. But as is often the case, much depends on how such tools are used. So Penn Medicine leadership has undertaken a multi-pronged approach to making EHRs more responsive to clinicians and streamlining them to work better for better outcomes in the era of precision medicine and population health management. The Penn Medicine Nudge Unit – billed as the first behavioral design team developed at a health system – is key to the mapping of these new approaches to the EHR experience. For instance, it has devised new tweaks for Penn's Epic system designed to help ensure clinicians prescribe statins for their cholesterol patients, get cardiac patients referred for rehab after heart attacks and only order advanced imaging tests for the patients who need them most. David Asch, MD, executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation, has previously explained how behavioral economics and psychology are key to engaging patients to make meaningful changes. The same holds true for physicians, he says, which is why he's advocated for EHR customizations that, among other things, enable and encourage doctors to "subscribe" to their patients' clinical data, gaining social media-like updates in real time when certain interventions are needed. "Ultimately, we need to move past the idea that the EHR is just an administrative tool, and see it as a clinical tool – like a scalpel, or a medication, or an X-ray machine," Asch said in a statement announcing the new project. "We judge these tools by the degree to which they facilitate good patient care, and we should be judging the EHR against the very same standard." THE BIGGER TREND Much has been said, here and elsewhere, about the "post-EHR era," but Penn Medicine's efforts appear to be intent on making it a reality there – boosting the ability of IT systems to deliver enhanced care in the 21st Century. No longer just a data repository or a glorified billing system, the EHR – when properly designed, configured and used – could have a huge impact on how care is delivered, especially as the complex new era of connected devices, patient-generated health data, genomic medicine and artificial intelligence continues to come into focus. A chief goal at Penn Medicine, officials said, is to alleviate if not eliminate the need for clinicians to spend undue time looking for needles in data haystacks, getting pertinent patient information in a more "actionable, tailored manner." That's why the health system has also launched a new innovation contest designed to get teams from across Penn Medicine to identify the lowest-hanging fruit for EHR transformation. IT professionals, data scientists, educators and others will work with clinicians and staff to help conceive and refine various design and usability improvements. In addition, new so-called "sprints" – collaborative clinical workgroups to help to streamline and improve EHR interactions and engagement with email and  digital media – will be a key component of the new initiative going forward. ON THE RECORD "We recognize that EHRs are no longer just part of how clinical care is documented, but they are central to how clinical care is delivered," said J. Larry Jameson, MD, dean of Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, in a statement. "Increasingly, health information technology plays a foundational role in each domain of our work: patient care, educating the next generation of physicians and scientists, and biomedical research." Ralph Muller, CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System added: "Everything that shapes patient care should be designed to support the best possible outcomes. Electronic health records are a natural focus because they connect to everything we do." Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

The analytics platform, built using open APIs, aims to enable a collaborative environment to speed development of targeted treatments for patients.

Deloitte and Vineti announced that they are now working together to integrate and scale their technology platforms – for supply chain and patient engagement, respectively – to give various precision medicine stakeholders easier access to emerging cellular therapies. Vineti, launched as a commercial venture by the Mayo Clinic in partnership with GE, develops  a configurable cloud-based platform designed to improve patient access to cell therapies and genomic medicine. Deloitte's ConvergeHEALTH Patient Connect analytics technology helps connect health systems, pharmaceutical companies, medical device vendors and other groups working to innovate precision medicine. By integrating the Vineti and ConvergeHEALTH technologies, the two companies aim to offer life science researchers, healthcare providers, IT vendors and patients with a more unified platform for personalized medicine. Vineti's software, which is currently deployed at more than 65 leading medical centers, helps users align, manage and integrate major steps in the complex cell and gene therapy process. ConvergeHEALTH Patient Connect, used by 300,000 patients worldwide, is a suite of software tools to help enable actionable insights derived real-world information, evidence and experience. Using both, healthcare and life sciences professionals will be able to innovate and scale up personalized therapies, connect with other health providers and enable broader patient access to precision therapies. "Personalized medicine is changing all aspects of the industry including the way patients, providers and life sciences innovators interact and we believe that a solution that contains both Vineti and PatientConnect will bring an unprecedented level of real-time support and fidelity to control supply chain and care pathway management," said Chris Zant, ConvergeHEALTH chief digital officer, in a statement. .jumbotron{ background-image: url("http://mobihealthnews.com/sites/default/files/u751/Innovation-month-jumbotron-1.jpg"); background-size: cover; color: white; } .jumbotron h2{ color: white; } Focus on Innovation In September, we take a deep dive into the cutting-edge development and disruption of healthcare innovation. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

Australian Medical Robotics Academy will train surgeons to conduct certain cancer procedures Victorian Government says.

The technology, in progress at the university's CSAIL institute, could help locate cancer and guide deployment of internal treatments.

Precision Innovation Network has selected Splice Machine’s big data platform to develop its Treatment Advisor application, to be hosted in an AWS cloud.