Mike Miliard

An alphabet soup of healthcare stakeholders, including AHIMA, CHIME, MGMA and others, want the Senate HELP Committee to ensure the proposed regs serve the "needs of patients and those who deliver their care."

For its 13th annual National Health IT Week, which kicks off today and runs through Sept. 27, HIMSS will be focusing on how public- and private-sector stakeholders can better align information and technology to drive advancements in population health. WHY IT MATTERS With the theme this year of Supporting Healthy Communities, HIMSS will be convening in-person and virtual events – along with White House officials, Congressional leaders, federal and state agencies, healthcare providers and community groups nationwide – to spotlight opportunities to address five key factors of community health: Advancing public and population health Modernizing the public health infrastructure Accelerating workforce development Expanding access to broadband and telehealth Addressing social determinants of health More than 500 different stakeholders, including government agencies, industry and community groups nationwide, are participating, in NHIT events all week long. You can see a full listing of events here and follow along on Twitter using the hashtags #NHITweek, #HITworks, #IHeartHIT or #GovHIT. Be sure to check back on Healthcare IT News this week for further coverage of NHIT Week events. THE LARGER TREND National Health IT Week's theme of Supporting Healthy Communities coincides with our own focus this month on the social determinants of health. So far in September, HITN and its sister sites have explored data-driven partnerships, the impact of social services spending, how AI is helping providers manage SDOH data, and how other new technologies and new ideas are changing the calculous for personal and population health. ON THE RECORD "Advancing public health and population health efforts will be critical to overcoming the problems that drive poor health outcomes and in turn will facilitate supporting healthy communities," according to HIMSS. "Communities must learn how to identify linkages with existing mobile/telehealth/social media technologies. The drive toward smart cities and communities may be most impactful in advancing public and population health, particularly when they are able to interoperate across core health, human services and non-health sector systems." .jumbotron{ background-image: url("https://www.healthcareitnews.com/sites/hitn/files/u2556/SocialDeterminantJumbotron.jpg"); background-size: cover; color: white; } .jumbotron h2{ color: white; } Focus on Social Determinants of Health In September, Healthcare Finance News, Healthcare IT News and MobiHealthNews will take a look at the SDOH and how varied health systems, IT companies, Congress and others are addressing it. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.

The Minister of Health Malaysia, Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, in one of his remarks said, the Ministry of Health (MoH) is committed to ensure that the electronic medical record (EMR) system can be realised within three to five years in all hospitals and clinics nationwide. Noting that the EMR system is one of the basic and fundamental digital infrastructure for building a digital health ecosystem, he said the system would allow for the entire clinics and hospitals to be integrated. It will then enable the health facilities to achieve a seamless level of patient information services and systems, with no obstacles or barriers to accessing patient information. Fortunately with EMR, MoH will be able to enhance the effectiveness of health services in terms of patient care and management. Part of the MOH Malaysia’s ICT Strategic Plan is to achieve a standardised digital health agenda and the vision is for an integrated healthcare system to provide comprehensive health services to the people. An integrated healthcare requires information that flows from different systems and various sources but interoperability between information systems still remains a challenge. Therefore, promoting the use of health informatics standards that is recognised internationally is important in pursuing this vision. “In Malaysia, we are continuously developing and managing standards with international benchmarking. Among the standards implemented include the Malaysian Health Reference Data Model (MyHRDM), Malaysian Health Data Dictionary (MyHDD), ICD, ISO TC 215, LOINC and SNOMED CT,” said Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, Director General of Health Malaysia. Benefits of SNOMED CT adoption – locally and regionally As one of the most comprehensive medical terminology standards, SNOMED CT is an international standard and validated clinically through a rigorous process. One of the main advantages of SNOMED CT is its comprehensive clinical concepts and relationships, which enable a wider range of analyses of healthcare data that could not be done previously. “We have troves of health data waiting to be analysed and with the advancement of technology and also SNOMED CT, all of these data can be used and analysed by clinicians and healthcare policymakers to further improve the services and patient outcomes,” Dr Noor Hisham explained. In the Asia Pacific region, the SNOMED CT community is also growing with members in countries such as Australia, Brunei, Hong Kong, India, Kazakhstan, New Zealand and Singapore. With a growing community, member countries can share their views and experience, particularly in the implementation of SNOMED-CT in their own countries – the exchange of ideas and collaboration will further improve the quality of healthcare services of the member countries. With increasing numbers of participating countries, the journey towards interoperability of patient data and improvement of service delivery for treatment across borders can be achieved faster. “SNOMED CT is more than just about comprehensive clinical terminology standards. It is also about the community behind it. Within the SNOMED CT family, we have an abundance of shared knowledge and experience between experts from the SNOMED International committee and also member countries,” said Dr Noor Hisham. SNOMED implementation in Malaysia and its impact According to Dr Noor Hisham, MOH Malaysia is interested in analysing health data and utilising it for evidence-based decision making and planning at the highest level. SNOMED CT allows for improved data analytics at the Ministry through the development of MyHarmony and Malaysian Health Data Warehouse (MyHDW). MyHarmony is a feature of MyHDW that has the ability to deal with unstructured data.  Through using MyHarmony with SNOMED CT, more information from free-text utilising the SNOMED CT structure can be generated, reducing the effort needed to collect data in a structured manner such as in registry and indicator reports.  Another benefit of using MyHarmony with SNOMED CT is the ability to generate new information by retrospectively running new queries on old discharge summary records, which reduces the effort and time to collect data in a prospective manner when new questions arise, such as for indicator reports that often change on a yearly basis.  Information can be delivered in a timelier fashion through using MyHarmony with SNOMED CT and this enables clinicians and health managers to plan and take action without waiting for a yearly report which can take one to three years.  Future plans for SNOMED-CT in Malaysia “Firstly, we want to expand the usage scope of SNOMED CT with MyHarmony. Currently, we are in the middle of developing the dental procedure reference dataset. We are looking into extracting the data on dental procedures by analysing the procedure data written in free text by dental clinicians. We are also planning to expand SNOMED CT’s usage for drug and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). We look forward to work with the vendor community to increase the awareness of SNOMED CT, and hope that more vendors will utilise SNOMED CT in their products and benefit from its functionalities,” shared Dr Noor Hisham.  The SNOMED CT Expo 2019 will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from Oct 31 to Nov 1. Malaysia’s Minister of Health, The Honorable YB Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad will deliver the conference opening plenary. More details about registration can be found here.

For their first new post-acquisition technology, 3M Health Information Systems and M*Modal have unveiled a clinical documentation improvement tool that uses artificial intelligence to boost speed and efficiency for clinicians and coders. WHY IT MATTERS 3M M*Modal CDI Engage One uses AI and natural language understanding technologies to deliver real-time clinical insight to clinicians, clinical documentation improvement specialists and coding teams. CDI Engage One, deployed via a cloud-based platform, integrates with the 3M 360 Encompass  computer-assisted coding and CDI workflow system, offering quality metrics and analytics. Together, the tools offer more efficient back-end CDI processes, helping health systems and save hours of manual review with CDI worklist prioritization, streamlined queries and clinical evidence-based documentation analysis, according to 3M. The platform embeds AI-powered clinical intelligence into both standard physician and CDI workflows, analyzing electronic health record notes and clinical data to find gaps and deficiencies before notes are saved to the EHR. The AI technology can help streamline document creation and enable physicians to capture a more complete and accurate patient story – boosting quality outcomes, improving revenue integrity, reducing administrative burden and allowing for more facetime with patients. THE LARGER TREND 3M announced its $1 billion acquisition of M*Modal's cloud-based AI technology in 2018, the same year a new CMS rule proposed rule more rigorous CDI requirements. (The Carnegie Mellon spinoff said it would maintain its transcription, scribing and coding business.) "By combining capabilities, we can more quickly deliver on our mission of bringing conversational AI and ambient intelligence directly into clinical workflows," said M*Modal President Michael Finke at the time. This week at Health 2.0 in Santa Clara, California, Mayo Clinic CIO Cris Ross sang the praises of AI, touting its near-term potential to transform and improve a host of clinical processes. "This artificial intelligence stuff is real," he said. "Most of this stuff is on a spectrum somewhere from discovery to translation to application." ON THE RECORD "With M*Modal now part of 3M, we are bringing together our advanced technologies to close the loop between advancing clinical care and achieving revenue integrity," said 3M Health Information Systems President Mark Colin, in a statement. "CDI Engage One is the first result of our joint efforts to develop innovative products that transform the revenue cycle and help our customers succeed in a value-based care environment." "Together, we are committed to transforming the experience of health care by proactively engaging physicians with real-time Computer-Assisted Physician Documentation to bridge gaps in patient care and clinical documentation integrity," said Finke, now a vice president at 3M Health Information Systems. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.

"And it is coming quickly to a care setting near you," said Cris Ross at Health 2.0 on Tuesday, touting "small AI and big AI" tools that can help revamp IT systems to improve the experience of clinicians and patients alike.

The prescriptive analytics company will start by helping researchers the Novant Health Institute of Innovation & Artificial Intelligence reduce readmissions for congestive heart failure.

At Health 2.0, National Coordinator for Health IT Dr. Donald Rucker and other clinical IT leaders explore the root causes of the burnout epidemic – and offer a wishlist of tech innovations that could help.

Dr. Albert Chan, chief of digital patient experience at Sutter Health, says health systems have to get better at interpreting data in novel ways to make good on their promise to patients.

“Most hospitals tend to make the mistake of selecting infeasible EHR options despite knowing their constraints. Sometimes, seeking a third party’s advice who is in a neutral position would be useful,” said Heungro Lee, Partner, VAIIM Consulting Group.