Interoperability

New Jersey Spine Center was attacked by Cryptowall, which locked up its EHR, backups and phone system. Marin Healthcare District in California lost two weeks of backup data during restoration.

Oxford, Mississippi-based Urgent Care Clinic of Oxford reported it was a victim of a ransomware attack, which appears to have been initiated by Russian hackers.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will ante $350,000 toward a better system of information sharing about cyber threats across healthcare.

IBM announced October 3 that it would put Watson to work on IoT, and would devote up $200 million of a $3 billion total investment – the most IBM has ever spent in Europe – to open a new global headquarters in Munich for Watson's IoT business.

Health professionals and policy makers think using telemedicine to connect patients with addiction specialists will help address the physician shortage. The potential direction is clear, as are the opportunities. But challenges, of course, persist. 

By: Dr. Russell Leftwich, senior clinical advisor, interoperability, InterSystems Interoperability begins at home.  The most fundamental interoperability is the ability to access the data in your own system and use that data for care delivery.  There are two steps: first accessing the data and then viewing it in a way that you can most effectively and efficiently use it. A part of the promise that the HL7 FHIR standard is already delivering on is a new and easier way to access and use the data in your own organization’s EHR system.  FHIR is based on the same technology behind social media, e-commerce, travel sites, and other familiar web services many of us use every day.  It is easy for those familiar with this web development technology to begin building with FHIR. Because like these familiar web services FHIR is very adaptable to mobile devices, there is an early explosion of innovation of FHIR apps on mobile devices in a number of organizations. Most of these innovative apps are built around access to data in one’s own system and use fundamental data like patient demographics, vital signs, medications, and problem lists.  This has given clinicians customized views of their data and customized decision support for clinical care.  Clinicians have long desired these customizations, but such customized functions were prohibitively expensive to develop as add-ons for individual EHR implementations. Notable examples of such apps include a pediatric growth chart app already in use in a number of institutions and an app that displays an individual’s blood pressure over time and that is easily implemented in different EHR systems. There are also simple decision support apps being deployed that are invoked by a medication order (prescription) and can show alternative medications based on cost or formulary restrictions.  Decision support apps under development with expectation that they can be implemented within weeks identify patients at the point of care at risk for conditions like Zika virus and associated complications.  It is already apparent that like the new functions that have appeared with each version of a smart phone, the development cycles of the FHIR standard will bring new capabilities and value to healthcare every few months. We know we didn’t have to wait for smartphone-5 to start seeing innovation, and the same is true of HL7 FHIR.   Register for Dr. Leftwich’s upcoming webinar, "Three Apps Fan the Flames as HL7 FHIR Spreads," at http://www.intersystems.com/who-we-are/events/event/three-apps-fan-flames-hl7-fhir-spreads/

One of the largest healthcare providers in Hawaii, it's only the second two-time winner of the Enterprise Davies Award since the inception of the program in 1994.

While the ransomware has been active for two years, Netskope researchers say its new strain leverages users syncing and sharing data to spread infected files through the network.

Startup founders said they will use the funding to build out a nervous system for healthcare that connects providers, patients, pharmacies, labs and specialists. 

Consultancy Deloitte explained that the architecture has widespread implications for connecting fragmented systems to better assess the value of care and safeguard protected health information.