Technology

Although physiologic vital signs tell healthcare providers a great deal about their patients’ health status, providers need, but don’t have ready access to, information about their patients’ neighborhoods.

Healthcare informatics have improved education programs and initiatives as patient data becomes more open. However, data should be more widely shared, especially between employers and clinical providers, in order to better eliminate barriers to care access, said Karen van Caulil, PhD, president and CEO of the Florida Health Care Coalition.

What we're reading, June 20, 2016: employers are cutting back on wellness benefits; new apps and websites provide birth control prescriptions to women; and Novartis pledges to triple the number of biosimilar drugs on the market by 2020.

As America’s Health Insurance Plans’ Institute & Expo kicked off in Las Vegas on June 15, Susan Dentzer, president and CEO of The Network for Excellence in Health Innovation, moderated a panel discussion on the possibility of delivery better healthcare at a lower cost.

CancerLinQ is a big data platform developed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) that aggregates clinical data from electronic health records for quality benchmarking and hypothesis generation. Such observational data can complement traditional evidence but must be used with caution.

Healthcare providers are facing a syndrome called “EHR alert fatigue,” a product of the constant bombardment of health alerts on electronic health records (EHRs). How are providers and health systems reacting to this issue?

What we're reading, June 15, 2016: opioids also linked to heart-related deaths and fatalities other than overdoses; judge overrules Federal Trade Commission's efforts to block merger of Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem in Illinois; and using social media to monitor patients outside of the healthcare setting.

Julia Adler-Milstein, PhD, assistant professor at the School of Information and the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, describes the challenges of data gathering, and ensuring not only that the data is accurate and complete, but that the patient can use that data and ultimately lead a healthier lifestyle with that knowledge.

Prescription drug monitoring programs have been associated with a decreased number of written prescriptions for the highly-addictive and most recently abused drug.

There is a significant variation in quality of urgent healthcare provided during virtual visits, according to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

This year at The American Journal of Managed Care's 4th annual Patient-Centered Diabetes Care meeting, select faculty provided their key takeaways from the sessions.

Lonny Reisman, MD, CEO of HealthReveal, expects big data to help achieve the triple aim goals by combining disparate sources of rich and varied information.

Telemedicine works well with diabetes because it is a condition that works with a lot of numbers and data, and physicians can look at that data remotely rather than requiring a face-to-face visit, explained David Brumley, MD, MBA, senior medical director at Tufts Health Plan.

In order to provide care to people with behavioral health issues early, in the primary care setting, Carolinas HealthCare System set up a virtual behavioral health provider team that can provide care to the 200 primary care offices and roughly 800,000 people in need that are part of the system, explained John Santopietro, chief clinical officer of behavioral health at Carolinas HealthCare System.

How doctors are using telemedicine to help relieve the desperate situation in war-torn Syria.

Efficiencies that could be gained in healthcare information exchange present emerging opportunities to close discrepancies between evidence-based recommendations or best practices and the care that is actually delivered.

At the spring live meeting of the ACO & Emerging Healthcare Delivery Coalition in Scottsdale, Arizona, attendees heard presentations and participated in workshops that discussed better integration of care, improved use of technology, and the future of healthcare and the Affordable Care Act.

With an increased interest in transitioning to a Learning Health Care System, there is an urgency to understand the ethical implications associated with the transition.