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Columbia University College of Dental Medicine this week announced that it will establish a new Center for Precision Dental Medicine, which will make heavy use of technology to enable data-driven research, advancing understandings about the link between dental and overall health. By applying analytics to multiple data streams, including both medical and dental electronic health records, the center aims to advance education and bring oral health care into the age of precision medicine, officials say. Christian Stohler, Dean of the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, said the new center will deploy "digital technology and information science to stretch the boundaries of dental research, relating oral care to overall health care, and putting the 'mouth back into the body.'" [Also: Call for speaking proposals: HIMSS Precision Medicine Summit] The school is planning several initiatives over the next two years to help break down some of the longstanding silos between medicine and dentistry –boosting the use of predictive analytics for better disease prevention and helping improve dentistry's standing for the transition to value-based care. "Deep data mining could pave the way for systems of care that continually assimilate new evidence showing which treatments are most effective, offering personalized diagnoses and treatment plans based on thousands of parameters," said Stohler. The College of Dental Medicine will be among the first academic dental institutions to unify dental and medical patient records in Epic electronic health records, officials say – enabling them to be shared among clinicians at Columbia, NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine. Physicians and dentists usually work independently of each other, but this integration will offer a two-way flow of information to help caregivers detect and manage interrelated chronic conditions. Dentists are often the first to notice oral conditions that can be related to chronic diseases, such as diabetes and certain cancers. Clinicians will also be able to access some patients’ genomic information – when it's voluntarily shared with the school – to help tailor personalized treatments. Columbia is also aggregating anonymized data from patient visits to help researchers study evidence-based connections between oral and overall health, procedures and outcomes, stress levels and health, among the range of topics, officials say, with the aim of fostering more real-time provider feedback and predictive analytics for precision care. The Center for Precision Dental Medicine also aims to drive improvements in education, through tools such as video cameras, mobile devices and live-streamed real-time procedure data. It will also deploy new dental tools that come equipped with RFID technology to show how procedures are performed for better assessment and faculty feedback. With an eye toward financial and operational efficiencies, it also plans to roll out several new technologies to track instrument and supply use, ensure safety precautions, address patient wait times to helping future dentists better manage costs and improve patient satisfaction. Dentistry is also moving toward value-based reimbursement, officials point out, and predictive analytics and precision-based care will toward those goals. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

Experts from a leading nonprofit ranked device cybersecurity as the single biggest challenge hospital face today.

A partnership with Philips’ eICU and LiveOnNY is helping the massive New York health system tackle the organ supply shortage in New York.

Athenahealth appointed former GE CEO Jeff Immelt as chairman of its board of directors. Immelt’s appointment is part of a series of strategic initiatives athenahealth started in 2017 to create a more focused and efficient company, drive increased levels of profitable growth, and enhance shareholder value after activist investor Paul Singer took a 9.2 percent stake in the cloud-based EHR company. That strategy to reduce expenses by $115 million also involved what athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush called a “one-time tightening.” That included selling the corporate jet and a management restructuring wherein athenahealth said it would bring in a new president and chairman, two roles Bush previously held along with being athenahealth chief executive officer. Immelt, who worked his way up to GE CEO under Jack Welch, is recognized for driving the first wave of digitization across healthcare enterprises and the healthcare industry at large, as well as across other industries. “We are thrilled to welcome Jeff as the new independent chairman of the athenahealth board,” Dev Ittycheria, chair of the board’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, said in a statement. Ittycheria added the board had considered a number of highly qualified candidates. Immelt stood out for helping to grow GE Healthcare from a $3 billion enterprise to a $20 billion innovator, Ittycheria noted, adding that GE Healthcare diversified its portfolio from imaging to life science and digital services, building leadership positions by delivering valuable solutions to providers and patients. “Jeff shares our vision for more connected, efficient, and human-centered healthcare,” Bush in a statement. He added that Immelt’s appointment as chairman is one of many important steps the company has taken over the past year to boost the board and management team and also to strengthen and focus operational and go-to-market strategy. Athenahealth in late November appointed Marc Levine its new CFO to replace interim chief financial officer Jack Kane, who took over after Karl Stubelis was removed from that post. The EHR vendor has yet to name a new president. With the addition of Immelt, the athenahealth board has been expanded to 11 members, including nine independent directors. Athenahealth also said that Immelt will make an undisclosed financial investment in athenahealth, and plans to purchase approximately $1 million of athenahealth common stock in the open market. Immelt’s appointment is effective immediately. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

The multilingual Athlete Management Solution aggregates an array of health data types to help medical staffs deliver personalized care and identify hotspots of injury or illness.

Florida District Court Judge said the plaintiff is lacking facts to backup the allegations that a glitch in Epic electronic health record software caused hundreds of millions of dollars in overbilling.

The security vendor will debut show floor sessions so attendees can witness first-hand how easily devices can be compromised.

Event connecting pharma, hospitals and payers with tech companies will be at this year’s health IT conference for the first time.

The informatics group says that with big innovation on the horizon it still sees ongoing confusion among developers and clinicians over which CDS and PDS software is considered a "device" and which isn't.

Most of the rural hospital's challenges revolved around physician workflow, but encouraging partnerships between departments and ensuring the project was tackled organization-wide were other key strategies.