News

For threats ranging from data leakage to ransomware to credential-stealing malware, healthcare executives must develop strategies for before, during and after attacks.

The Northeast Indiana Innovation Center plans to use the funding to provide infrastructure and resources to entrepreneurs and companies with innovative Internet of Things ideas.

Companies will look to emerging technologies, such as a virtual diabetes program and a medication adherence pilot, in an effort to combine Verily’s tech with Walgreens stores.

Amazon, Change Healthcare and Walmart all made moves worth watching as we head into 2019.

The health IT vendor is also concentrating on AI and FHIR heading into HIMSS19. 

Thousands of women in England were “warned unnecessarily” that they did not receive an invitation to a final routine breast screening in an incident believed to have been caused by an IT error, according to an independent review released this month. Back in May, then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Jeremy Hunt told Parliament that around 450,000 women aged 68-71 missed their final screenings, from 2009 until the beginning of 2018, and that between 135 and 270 might have had their lives shortened. The incident was initially thought to have been the result of a failure in the introduction of an algorithm randomising women for the AgeX trial assessing the risks and benefits of extending the age limit for screening. A review chaired by Macmillan CEO Lynda Thomas, consultant oncologist at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust Martin Gore and Care Quality Commission Chairman Peter Wyman found that policy on the upper age bracket for breast screening had been “ambiguous” since the programme was introduced in late 1980s, and that the incident stemmed in fact from a specification issued in 2013 aiming to clarify how it should be defined.  The document, stating that women should be invited for screening "within 36 months of their previous screening, until they reach the age of 71", resulted in a "misalignment" with IT systems in use and the implementation carried out by breast screening units. Junior minister Steve Brine told Parliament earlier this month that “the impact of the change in policy was not fully understood at this time”. According to the report, ministers were “incorrectly advised” and the public announcement from May “overstated the scale of the incident”, causing distress to women that “were left anxious until they received the results of their catch-up screening appointments”. “We have found that for many years there has been a lack of clarity around the specific age range during which women should be invited to routine screening, and that this led to confusion about what should have been offered to women and what was offered in practice. This confusion continued and ultimately led to the Secretary of State declaring an incident in May 2018,” reviewers wrote. The inquiry found at an “early stage” that the algorithm used to carry out the randomisation for the AgeX trial was “operating as designed”, and ministers said the trial would continue as planned. “There was no large-scale failure to invite women because of a systemic algorithm problem as announced in May 2018,” the inquiry found. “The primary failing for the purposes of the incident declared in May was not the IT itself, but the absence of an appropriately specific policy to be delivered against, a lack of clarity about what the IT was designed to do and a lack of understanding of how women had been invited to screenings in practice for decades.” Women are invited to screening in “batches” created by units using the following IT systems: the National Breast Screening Services (NBSS) and Breast Screening Select (BS-Select), introduced in 2016, which takes information from another system, the National Health Applications and Infrastructure Services (NHAIS). The review found that these systems, although “dated and unwieldy”, were also “operating as designed”. However, over a period of nine years, about 5,000 women were not invited to their screening appointments, a failure caused by errors in using the IT and “slippages in units’ screenings which meant that some women might have had incremental lengthening of their screening intervals until they left the age range for core screening”. Brine told Parliament that Public Health England had now estimated that the number of women that might have had their lives shortened as a result of the incident was “zero to 34”. “We agree with the recommendation that PHE progresses as quickly and as sensitively as possible the clinical review with the NHS of all women who may have suffered harm,” the minister added. In his statement, Brine also said the government was pledging an initial £1.8m for the replacement of the NBSS system, acknowledging the review’s criticism, and that they would “continue to monitor closely all screening IT systems to ensure they are robust and operating as they should”. Twitter: @1Leontina Contact the author: lpostelnicu@himss.org

The report, tabled by the Queensland Audit Office (QAO), highlighted the benefits of the digital hospital program in Queensland, while making recommendations to improve governance of the future rollout. Key findings from the report identified that as a result of the digital hospital program, Queenslanders face improved health service delivery and patient outcomes, as well as a reduction in unplanned readmission rates. It found that medical staff can access clinical information faster and that patient records are more legible. Minister for Health and Ambulance Services Steven Miles said the digital hospital program is “one of the most significant health advances in decades”. “Digital hospitals are making Queensland hospitals safer than ever before. Doctors and nurses have told me when I’ve visited hospitals that the digital system helps them do their jobs and helps patients,” Miles said. Miles brought up the example of Metro South Health’s digital program, which he said contributed to a “significant increase” in early identification of deteriorating patients, as well as a decrease in emergency patient readmissions, less incidents linked to drug administration, monitoring, dispensing and supply and a significant drop in infections. As part of its move to digital, the healthcare provider most recently embarked on a journey to enable people living with progressive neurological conditions like Motor Neuron Disease (MND) to use mobile digital assistants daily. The report also identified the benefits that Princess Alexandra Hospital has faced and how it has become a template for the rest of the state following its adoption of an integrated electronic medical record (ieMR) system. “We can see digital hospitals are reducing the average length of stay and unplanned readmissions,” Queensland Chief Clinical Information Officer Dr Keith McNeil said. “Doctors are telling us the new system means they can spend more time on patient care and less time on paperwork. “Nurses are saying that the system means they have a huge amount of readily available information and they are not having to waste time searching for notes. This means the system is working.” He added that the increasing focus on technological advances and continuing improvements will continue to provide new opportunities. “Our increased focus on ieMR’s clinical capability will ensure our patients can access these opportunities, now and in the future.”   The report also found that while implementation costs exceeded initial expectations, it was often because hospitals spent more to go beyond the planned scope of their digital hospitals, bought extra devices to increase utilisation of the systems and invested more resources to reduce disruption on patient flow when new systems were introduced. Queensland Health Director-General Michael Walsh has reviewed the status of the system rollout and has made a number of changes relating to report recommendations. Walsh said the system was in place in 10 hospitals across the state’s Hospital and Health Services and that the department would continue to focus on ensuring the system delivered on benefits. He said Queensland Health has expanded the responsibility for managing the relationship with the digital hospital system provider and commenced an independent assessment to confirm that, as per the contract, the prices being paid for the system were no less favourable than those being paid by other health service providers in Australia. “The people of Queensland expect and deserve the very best care when they are treated in the state’s hospitals,” Walsh said. “The report confirms the system is helping us deliver that and we accept the system-oversight recommendations the QAO has made. They are not difficult to implement because they are not major adjustments.” This article first appeared on Healthcare IT News Australia.

RMF 2.0 includes seven objectives and adds a preparation step.

Health systems must manage technical resources at the speed of healthcare, not the speed of technology, to pave the way to strategic digital health.