Bill Siwicki

The company is also showing enhancements it made to its ASC suite since acquiring gMed in late 2015, CEO Dan Cane said.

A new initiative permits states to request the 90 percent enhanced matching funds to connect a broader variety of Medicaid providers to a health information exchange.

LAS VEGAS – Doc Halo has introduced Pronto, an enterprise-wide scheduling and messaging system that is part of the vendor’s Halo Mobile Health Platform for clinical communication. The system is designed to replace paper schedules and pagers. The vendor made the announcement at HIMSS16 in its exhibit hall booth (#661), where it is demonstrating the new technology for conference attendees. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] Using the new Pronto module, caregivers can access enterprise-wide schedules with up-to-the-minute accuracy, find on-call providers anywhere in a health system and message them immediately, activate critical-care teams within seconds, and create custom clinical teams for care coordination, Doc Halo said. Clinicians access Pronto teams and schedules from their smartphones. Administrators can input and update schedules through a web console. Healthcare providers often serve several functions at once, making it nearly impossible to automate healthcare scheduling using a tool designed for another industry, Doc Halo said. “This technology will coordinate care by connecting healthcare providers in ways never before possible,” said Jose Barreau, MD, the CEO of Doc Halo. “Pronto saves time in a setting where time is critical.” 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.

LAS VEGAS – ClearDATA unveiled Wednesday at HIMSS16 a cloud-based system designed to monitor HIPAA compliance levels throughout a healthcare organization’s IT environment. The ClearDATA Active Compliance and Security Monitoring Dashboard offers providers, pharmaceutical organizations, payers and their business associates transparency to quickly identify and remediate physical, technical and administrative safeguards that have drifted out of compliance in their IT settings, the vendor said. The dashboard is designed to provide healthcare organizations with a view into one of their most vulnerable environments for a data breach, their IT ecosystem, ClearDATA said. Using the dashboard, technology and security professionals can view their organizations’ compliance levels across configuration scanning, log-in and log monitoring, log retention, patch-level reporting and backup validation, with additional standard and custom checks added weekly, the vendor said. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] Each check is mapped to specific HIPAA security safeguards – should systems drift from compliance, the dashboard enables customers to view individual system details to best understand what steps are needed for remediation, the vendor said. In the wake of an actual breach, the first question organizations are asked is whether they can provide a full accounting of all their protected health information, including where it is stored and who has access to it, ClearDATA explained. The ClearDATA Active Compliance and Security Monitoring Dashboard gives insight into this data inventory, while also proving the extent to which measures are in place to protect it, the vendor said. “Healthcare IT and security professionals have never been so challenged as they are today with meeting HIPAA compliance standards and preventing a data breach at their organization,” said Darin Brannan, CEO of ClearDATA. “The dashboard offers these professionals a tool that rapidly pinpoints where security vulnerabilities exist, including in the context of a HIPAA compliance audit.” 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.

LAS VEGAS -- A new survey from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in partnership with the Personal Connected Health Alliance claims 52 percent of hospitals currently use three or more connected health technologies while 47 percent are looking to expand the connected health technologies they use, citing tech that enables such services as telehealth, concierge, patient-generated health data and secure text messaging. The organizations announced the survey results Wednesday at the HIMSS16 Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas. The 2016 HIMSS Connected Health Survey, which polled 227 IT, informatics and clinical professionals in U.S. hospitals and health systems, evaluated the use of seven technologies that represent a broad range of clinically-oriented systems currently available in the marketplace. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] The technologies examined in the survey include: apps for patient education and/or engagement; mobile-optimized patient portals; patient-generated health data, collected from consumer devices used for remote monitoring; remote patient monitoring using clinical-grade medical devices; text messaging, and telehealth. Use of connected health solutions appears to be a widely accepted standard practice among hospitals in the United States, the survey found. Not only did 81 percent say their organization uses at least one of the mobile health technologies included in this research, but 67 percent reported deploying multiple systems across their organization. In addition, the adoption of mobile-optimized patient portals is most widespread among survey respondents, with 58 percent indicating this type of technology is in use in their hospital or health system. Further, 69 percent of respondents using a mobile-optimized patient portal indicated the technology extensively supports the hospital’s secure data exchange strategy. Remote monitoring tools were found to play a key role in the areas of provider satisfaction, facilitating treatment/care plans and population health management initiatives, the survey said. Mobile and wireless devices, often referred to as “connected health tools,” hold the promise of positively impacting the future delivery of patient care – these tools are projected to become increasingly important as healthcare organizations explore ways to provide quality care at a lower cost, while at the same time increasing satisfaction for both providers and patients, HIMSS said. These projections are especially true in the United States, where the healthcare system continues to realign itself toward optimized experiential and clinical outcomes delivered in a cost-conscious manner, HIMSS added. The potential impact of connected health tools for providers largely is in the area of “care coordination,” where the goal of coordinated care is to ensure patients get the right care at the right time while avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing medical errors, HIMSS said. As caregivers increasingly attempt to extend their care coordination efforts beyond traditional care settings such as hospitals and physician practices, the use of connected health tools will take on greater significance, HIMSS added. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN 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.

LAS VEGAS – Signet Accel has launched Avec, a commercial federated data integration platform designed to offer interoperability to healthcare organizations, the company announced at HIMSS16. Avec enables analysis of complex, distributed healthcare data in a manner that is secure and protects the ownership and control of data at every site, Signet Accel said. It does not require changes in the process of collecting data, the manner in which data is stored, where data is stored or how data is structured, the vendor added. Signet Accel’s Avec platform was created at The Ohio State University in collaboration with investigators and technologists across the globe, the company said. The platform was developed with an investment of more than 13 years and $20 million, it added. [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] “We’re connecting data as it is and where it is,” said John Raden, Signet Accel CEO. “Providing physicians and researchers the ability to view, analyze and experiment with aggregated data from entirely disparate sources, globally, is a reality we provide our clients. We believe technology plays a central role in how data is used to cure disease.” Some in the industry talk about interoperability as purely a technical problem, others as a policy or standards problem, and still others as a usability or user experience problem, said Philip Payne, MD, co-founder of Signet Accel and professor and chair of the department of biomedical informatics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. “True interoperability is when all three of these communities and their needs and approaches meet,” Payne said. “We’ve deliberately designed a platform that is useful to clinicians, researchers and decision makers—while also directly impacting patients, their families and their communities.” Avec links and harmonizes disparate databases across healthcare, enabling researchers to identify patterns and trends over a large patient population and offering comprehensive insights into both research and patient treatment, Payne added. Robust repositories of connected data are key to realizing the promise of precision medicine, a research effort aimed at improving health and treating disease by accounting for patients’ individual differences, he said. “We’re only just now seeing large systems partner to begin the long and arduous process of determining how to align, share and exchange data, but we want the industry to know that true interoperability is already here,” Raden said. “Avec connects data for our clients and enables them to safely share it, regardless of its starting point.” Signet Accel clients include The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Alliance of Dedicated Cancer Centers, the Hairy Cell Leukemia Foundation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs VINCI initiative in partnership with Hewlett-Packard, the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network, and a joint venture between Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. At HIMSS16, Signet Accel will be demonstrating Avec in both the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase and in booth 12550 of the main exhibit hall. 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.

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.

LAS VEGAS – WellDoc, a mobile health technology vendor, announced Tuesday at HIMSS16 a collaboration with LifeScan, a blood glucose monitoring business within the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Care Companies, to deliver a digital health system for patients living with type-2 diabetes. In addition to the collaboration, Johnson & Johnson Innovation/JJDC Inc. participated in WellDoc’s $29.5 million Series B financing. Under the collaboration, WellDoc’s BlueStar product, an FDA-cleared digital therapeutic for adults who live with type-2 diabetes, will be integrated with LifeScan’s OneTouch Verio Flex Bluetooth Smart blood glucose monitoring system and OneTouch Reveal mobile app. The collaboration seeks to leverage LifeScan’s blood glucose monitoring system and mobile app along with the data analytics and patient engagement of WellDoc’s reimbursable mobile prescription therapy to create a real-time, personalized approach to the management of type-2 diabetes. “Together we seek to provide those living with type-2 diabetes a best-in-class diabetes management solution that delivers evidence-based and outcomes-driven support in a consumer-friendly manner,” said Kevin McRaith, CEO of WellDoc. “This is a very significant step forward for our company and has the potential to make a difference in the lives of millions of people living with this chronic disease.” Samsung Ventures, the venture arm of the consumer electronics giant, acted as the lead investor in the initial WellDoc Series B raise with existing investor Merck Global Health Innovation Fund serving as co-lead. Adage Capital Management, Excel Venture Management, Asset Ventures Management, Alexandria Venture Investments, Hudson River Capital Partners LLC and other investors also participated in the financing. WellDoc develops mobile systems to drive behavioral and clinical change in chronic disease with the goal of improving patient self-management and helping physicians overcome gaps in care to improve clinical outcomes and decrease cost. 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.

Platform is designed to give providers a way to see a more complete view of a patient’s health history.

LAS VEGAS – Medisafe, which offers a medication management mobile health app with more than 2.6 million users, launched Tuesday at HIMSS16 Medisafe Providers, a new system that enables physicians, care teams and pharmacists to track their patients’ medication adherence between visits. Using Medisafe Providers, caregivers also can view adherence alongside patient biometric measurements – including blood pressure, blood glucose, weight and others – that Medisafe app users can self-report or bring into the mobile app through various connected devices. Medisafe Providers extends the Medisafe app platform beyond its consumer focus by enabling healthcare professionals to see how their treatment plans are working and to make any needed changes as soon as they identify a problem, helping patients to avoid unnecessary visits and hospitalizations, the company said. [Also: See photos from Day 1 of HIMSS16] The Medisafe app is designed to make it easier for patients to follow the most complicated medication schedules; enable care collaboration between a patient, their family and caregivers; and deliver content and services personalized to specific conditions and situations. “Medisafe Providers reinforces Medisafe’s patient-centric vision by better connecting our users to those guiding their care,” said Omri Shor, CEO and co-founder of Medisafe. “Since the beginning, our users have valued sharing their adherence reports with their doctors and told stories of learning about Medisafe from people on their care teams.” Medisafe will be demonstrating Medisafe Providers at HIMSS16 in the HX360 Pavilion booth A-06. 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.