Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
…is the potential for data breaches. Experian’s 2015 industry data breach forecast notes the following: We expect healthcare breaches will increase — both due to potential economic gain and digitization of records. Increased movement to electronic medical records (EMRs), and the introduction of wearable technologies introduced millions of individuals into the healthcare system, and, in…
Robert Pearl’s MedX keynote address gives some reasons. Many New Technologies Don’t Address The Real Problem. Tech entrepreneurs often take a backward approach to invention. They start by discovering a nifty technology. Later, they figure out how people can use it…Alan Cooper, considered by many to be the father of modern user experience design (UXD),…
PwC just released a report on wearable technology. Some findings from the health field include: More than 80% of consumers said an important benefit of wearable technology is its potential to make health care more convenient. Consumers have not yet embraced wearable health technology in large numbers, but they’re interested. More than 80 percent of…
How have different countries developed their health IT systems? A paper by Adler-Milstein et. al in Health Affairs provides some insight. I summarize their findings below. Australia. In the 1990s-early 2000s, the government supported the adoption of EHRs through federal incentives to general practitioners. These efforts focused primarily on EHRs with e-prescribing. In 2005 the…
Apple recently unveiled its smart watch. The watch not only is a mini-computer, but it can help improve your health. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktujsc4ZUTo Pharmafile reports: The watch comes with an app that promises to calculate all kinds of data including heart rate, calories burned and other metrics in one place – and can also count how many…
There has been lots of public outcry for integrated, interoperable electronic health records (EHR). Having EHRs silos makes it difficult for physicians, hospitals and other providers to share information with one another and with patients. However, there is one benefit of these silos; any data breach will be somewhat contained. Are data breaches of EMRs a problem.…
Upcoding occurs when physician or hospitals artificially increase the patient’s severity of illness. For instance, a hospital may record additional comorbidities. In Medicare’s inpatient prospective payment systems (IPPS), Medicare reimburses hospitals more for caring for patients who are sicker. Some health policy experts worry that electronic health records (EHRs) will decrease the cost of documenting…
Typically, when Apple unveils a new operating system much of the talk is about new features, faster processing speeds and new visualizations. Apple’s unveiling of their most recent operating system is no different. However, this release has a unique focus: health. Apple is getting into the quantified self health movement with their new Health app. The app…
This quote is from David Blumenthal, a physician and former Harvard Medical School professor, who was the national coordinator for health information technology between 2009-2011. He describes in an interview for the Atlantic why adoption of electronic medical records has been so slow in the U.S. From the patient’s perspective, this is a no-brainer. The benefits…
Technophiles pine for the data when any hospital or clinic can access all your health information from a single source. Due to competitive pressures, however, it is unlikely that a national EMR will emerge in the near future. Miller and Tucker (JHE 2014) explain: We find empirically that larger hospital systems are more likely to…