Decision Support

Across the healthcare industry, "the state of decision-making is really bad." Following the so-called Three Ps could point a way forward.

UH CMIO Jeffrey Sunshine said that deploying an interoperability tool and new modules will help the hospital to create a single patient record physicians can access at the point of care.

New research found variations in cholesterol levels that drew concern because they could potentially determine whether a physician at point of care would prescribe medication to a patient.

Experts say healthcare providers need to turn up the pressure on tech vendors to create more intuitive products.

LAS VEGAS – Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare will deploy the Clinical Variation Management software from Ayasdi, a developer of machine intelligence applications for healthcare. Intermountain Healthcare believes the software can boost the insights the health system can gain from its mountain of health data. Ayasdi’s software leverages machine learning and topological data analysis to extract meaningful insights from billions of data points, the vendor explained. Consequently, Intermountain sees the software helping it to more rapidly gain data insights that can help lead to better health outcomes at more sustainable costs. “Intermountain has led the industry when it comes to understanding and managing clinical variation,” said Lee Pierce, Intermountain’s chief data officer. “It is one of the key principles we have applied in delivering value-based care to our patient population. We have been impressed by Ayasdi’s technology and are optimistic for the impact it could have on our mission of helping people live the healthiest lives possible.” [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] Ayasdi’s Clinical Variation Management software can accelerate the process of gaining insights from health data because it draws on clinical data directly from a provider organization’s integrated systems of record, Ayasdi said. “Understanding and managing clinical variation remains one of the great challenges facing healthcare today, and we are pleased Intermountain recognized Ayasdi’s ability to accelerate the pace at which Intermountain gains insights from its data,” said Mary Hardy, Ayasdi vice president of healthcare. Both Ayasdi and Intermountain Healthcare are exhibiting this week at HIMSS16, Ayasdi in kiosks 14042 and 14084 in the Clinical & Business Intelligence Knowledge Center, and Intermountain in booth 1632 in the main exhibit hall. Intermountain Healthcare is a not-for-profit health system of 22 hospitals, 185 clinics, a medical group with 1,300 employed physicians, a health plans division called SelectHealth, and other health services.  Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Healthcare organizations are recognizing that clinical decision support technology that integrates with electronic health records can be utilized to improve quality of care and better utilize staff and resources. Community Medical Centers, for instance, had already embarked on adoption of an EHRs system when in 2014 it added clinical decision support technology to develop an evidence-based approach to care. Such a system promised to help nurses and doctors save valuable time by integrating CDS tools into their care plan and, in turn, improving their communication with patients. [Poll: What topics will define HIMSS16?] “The goal was to enhance quality of care and efficiency,” said Lauren Garrick, Corporate Informatics Nurse and Plan of Care Coordinator at Community Medical Centers in Fresno, California. The hospital group selected ZynxCare, a plan of care solution from ZynxHealth, which provided templates to allow nurses and doctors to recommend and provide relevant services by providing access to medical research libraries, comprising hundreds of diagnoses and procedures. With this evidence-based information at their fingertips, the clinicians could  focus on their individual patients. The CDS tools also easily integrated with Community Medical Centers’ digital Epic EHR system. Garrick said a benefit for Community Medical Centers was the ability of the ZynxCare system to be customized according to the needs of the hospital group. “They have software you build and an integration process you use to integrate it into your system,” Garrick said. “You can pull up these templates for plan of care and support changes and create templates in Excel files, and our tech team can migrate the files into EHRs.” Garrick, along with Judi Binderman, VP and chief medical informatics officer for Community Medical Centers, will outline how CDS technology program was conceived, developed and implemented across the four hospitals in a presentation at HIMSS16.    [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] Their talk, “Taking Plans of Care from Clinician to Patient-Centric” will examine how Community Medical Centers replaced its homegrown, generic plans of care with the evidence-based, CDS system specific to the patient’s condition and adjustable to special requirements the patient may have. Garrick said that with the CDS program in place, nurses can now easily access information on generic conditions for patients while examining and communicating with the patient closely. “A nurse would have access to relevant information, and be able to instantly go through medical journals and web links for a patient,” she said. “For example, if they are advising someone about Sudden Infant Death prevention, a staff member can click on links and read research right at the patient’s bedside.” “Taking Plans of Care from Clinician to Patient-Centric,” is scheduled for Wednesday March 2, 2016 from 10-11 AM in the Sands Expo Convention Center Palazzo G. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Israel-based artificial intelligence startup MedyMatch Technology has launched with an artificial intelligence product that it hopes will improve performance in healthcare through its real-time decision support tools. MedyMatch also announced earlier this month that former Philips Imaging Systems CEO Gene Saragnese joined the company as chairman and CEO. Company officials said they would soon open the company’s first U.S. office in Boston in order to provide support for the startup’s rapidly expanding list of clinical trial partners, machine and deep learning collaborations and product development. MedyMatch uses advanced cognitive analytics and artificial intelligence to provide real-time decision support tools that, together with standard emergency room imaging platforms, helps the radiologist or emergency room physician recognize what is often the hardest to see or most obscure conditions. Despite advancements in medical imaging technologies, the medical imaging misdiagnosis rate in the emergency room has remained unchanged for 30 years, executives point out, with misdiagnosis occurring in approximately 30 percent of cases. [Poll: What topics will define HIMSS16?] The American Heart Association and American Stroke Association estimate that by 2030, there will be approximately 3.4 million stroke victims annually in the United States, with a total cost of $240 billion. Moreover, 42 percent of that cost – about  $183 billion – is attributed to the annual direct medical and extended care expenses. MedyMatch officials say the startup can help reduce the cost because of its accuracy in the treatment window, which in turn can help lower the number of people with long-term chronic conditions. As Saragnese sees it, MedyMatch’s technology and artificial intelligence-based image classification will provide physicians with the deeper insights they need to make the right diagnosis and do so quickly. Before Philips Healthcare, Saragnese headed up the CT, molecular imaging and image processing divisions within GE Healthcare. Prior to that, he served as GE Healthcare’s chief technology officer and the general manager of GE's MRI business. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Agile development, once the domain of software developers, is being put to work at Intermountain Healthcare, as CIO Marc Probst and his team are rapidly building programs throughout clinical settings. “We are rolling it out and configuring it within the entire organization,” Probst said. “We’re applying it not just to software development but as an integration within the organization.” See all of our HIMSS16 previews The agile method -- in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing teams -- promises to deliver programs much more quickly and better meet the needs of healthcare providers. Probst and Jeff Townsend, executive vice president at Cerner, have been collaborating on just such an approach. And the two will present in a session on March 2 at HIMSS16 titled “What IT Takes to Succeed.” “With traditional IT approaches, you make a selection for a piece of software – for example a departmental imaging system – and you hand it to IT to implement,” Townsend said. “In the agile model, we start not as software-centric but as workflow-centric. We include process judgements, with short cycle times and we initiate prototypes and empower leaders to participate. So there is a continuous ‘show me’ element.”  Cerner, Intermountain and 400 Intermountain physicians collaborated in 2015 to apply agile development principles to design and configure an electronic health record, practice management and revenue cycle system at two Intermountain hospitals and 24 clinics across northern Utah. Teams used agile development principles to design and configure the system in six-week cycles. Probst and Townsend will outline how to recognize challenges of agile development and how to overcome them. They will also show how to identify the tools needed to implement data-driven, agile cultures within other parts of the organization. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Townsend said the new agile development approach is changing how organizations operate.  “This isn’t the CIO picking the system out,” he explained. “It’s the clinical and business leadership putting it into the organization – which is incredibly more powerful.” Their session, “What IT Takes to Succeed,” is scheduled for March 2 from 1 – 2 p.m. in the Sands Expo Convention Center Sands Showroom. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

VisualDx will debut a new version of its clinical decision support system at HIMSS16. The company is growing its image- and graphics-oriented software from supporting skin, eye and oral care decision-making to include more chief medical complaints.

The new software aims to help researchers, molecular pathologists and clinicians work together more easily to improve care.