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The oncologist and health IT veteran will take the highest non-political position at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Properly configured EHRs are a start. From there, top leadership can employ several tactics to address the difficult and complex challenge.

Last week, Parkway Pantai, one of the largest integrated private healthcare groups in Asia and UCARE.AI, a Singapore-based AI healthcare startup, announced that they have been using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to dynamically generate personalised, more accurate hospital bill estimates that vary from the actual bill by a high 82 per cent accuracy rate on average, a significant 60-percentage-point improvement over the current bill estimation system. This means that eventually, all patients would receive highly accurate bill estimates that fall within an 18 percent margin from the final bill figure. Using an advanced suite of AI and machine learning algorithms from UCARE.AI, Mount Elizabeth, Mount Elizabeth Novena, Gleneagles and Parkway East hospitals in Singapore will dynamically generate personalised bill estimates based on relevant parameters such as the patient’s medical condition and medical practices. It also takes into account the patient’s current age, revisit frequency and existing co-morbidities like high blood pressure or diabetes. “Parkway Pantai has always been committed to enhancing price transparency of hospital charges. Our investment in this new AI-powered system gives patients more accurate hospital bill estimates and empowers them to make more well-informed decisions on the medical treatment options available. More importantly, it allows patients to have greater peace of mind over their healthcare expenditure so that they can focus on getting well,” said Mr Phua Tien Beng, Chief Executive Officer, Singapore Operations Division, Parkway Pantai. The new estimation system, which has been in use since November 2018, has made more than 10,000 predictions so far. In its first two weeks of going live, the AI system has already closed the average gap between the estimated and actual bills by 60 percent. The accuracy of its predictions is expected to improve over time as the AI collects and references more data through a process of self-learning. The system analyses a multitude of dynamically changing parameters specific to the individual patient. The information is then used to automatically and quickly predict the patients’ bill size at different touchpoints, from pre-admission till their eventual recovery. As such, patients are better informed and empowered to seek the treatment option that is most cost efficient and effective for recovery. In contrast, conventional bills estimation methods are based on statistical calculation of historical hospital bill sizes from past admissions up to two years ago. They are unable to account for dynamically changing factors such as disease aggravation and unexpected complications resulting in longer length of stay or additional unplanned surgeries. Mr. Neal Liu, Founder and CTO of UCARE.AI said, “UCARE.AI was selected by Parkway Pantai for providing (1) the most accurate and precise predictions based on blind-testing, and (2) a cloud-based microservices architecture solution that offers flexibility, scalability, ease and speed in implementation. We are thrilled to work with Parkway Pantai, one of the largest global healthcare players who pride themselves on innovation and quality patient care, to debut UCARE.AI’s first revolutionary AI-powered system. Together, we seek to ride the wave of healthcare disruption and roll out more AI systems and services to benefit patients globally.”

According to a new report from Kaspersky Lab, healthcare employees in the U.S. and Canada not only admit their organizations have fallen victim to ransomware cybersecurity attacks, they also claim it wasn’t a one-time occurrence. The report, titled “Cyber Pulse: The State of Cybersecurity in Healthcare,” stems from a survey conducted by research firm Opinion Matters that included 1,758 healthcare employees in roles ranging from doctors and surgeons to administration and IT staff. All were located in the United States and Canada. WHY IT MATTERS The findings expose a “continuous pattern of ransomware cybersecurity attacks plaguing organizations” in the healthcare industry. It also shed light on employee perceptions and behaviors. Among the results, one important finding showed that organizations don’t always learn their lesson the first time around. Of the respondents who stated they were aware a ransomware cybersecurity attack had taken place in their organization, 33 percent noted that it had happened more than once. THE TREND Just this year, there have been more than 100 hacking/IT-related healthcare organization incidents affecting 500 or more individuals, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, tasking healthcare IT staff with the monumental challenge of preventing future incidents in their own systems. More than one-in-four healthcare IT employees in North America admitted their employer has experienced a ransomware cybersecurity attack within the past year and of those healthcare employees aware of a cyberattack occurring, 85 percent of Canadians and 78 percent of Americans said their organizations had fallen victim to up to five ransomware cybersecurity attacks in the past five years or more, showing missed opportunities to learn lessons and implement new best practices. The repeated attacks, however, are not for lack of caring on the part of employees, the survey said. In fact, for 71 percent of responding employees, the top reason healthcare employees cared about having cybersecurity measures in place at their organizations was to protect patients, followed by 60 percent who said they wanted to protect people and organizations they work with. Finally, and nearly a third of respondents said they didn’t want to lose their job thanks to not having adequate cybersecurity measures. Additionally, employees are willing and able to be vigilant, with 57 percent of employees of very small businesses saying they would report a suspicious email to their employer’s IT team, as opposed to almost three quarters of those working at small or medium businesses and 79 percent of employees working at enterprises. ON THE RECORD “Through our study, we found that healthcare employees in North America were confident that their organization would not suffer a data breach in the forthcoming year, but whether they realize it or not, their industry is suffering hundreds of breaches a year,” said Rob Cataldo, vice president of enterprise sales at Kaspersky Lab. “Healthcare companies have become a major target for cybercriminals due to the successes they’ve had, and repeatedly have, in attacking these businesses. As organizations look to improve their cybersecurity strategies to justify employee confidence, they must examine their approach. Business leaders and IT personnel need to work together to create a balance of training, education, and security solutions strong enough to manage the risk.”   Twitter: @BethJSanborn Email the writer: beth.sanborn@himssmedia.com

The Center for Addiction and Mental Health implemented alerting tech that saves patients’ lives.

Shrestha will take the Chief Strategy Officer role at the health system serving the Carolinas.

Google Cloud identifies these as two important healthcare trends going into HIMSS19.

One seeks to reduce variations in care, the other is about increased variations. But both are key to the future, says the health system's chief innovation officer.  

Vancleave, vice president of Revenue Cycle at Mosaic Life Care, mentors others within the organization and encourages women to take on leadership roles.