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An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare study finds that 92% of patients said they received the information they needed about their care or treatment from their general practitioner.

A survey Vocera® conducted at HIMSS19 with HIMSS Analytics, whose market research offering is now a part of Definitive Healthcare, points to the prevalence of cognitive overload. A vast majority of clinical and IT leaders have recognized signs including clinicians appearing stressed or overwhelmed. More than half of survey respondents said clinicians ignore or fail to notice actionable alerts, which are alerts related to a patient’s condition or care.

Like all consumers, today’s patients expect a better experience: convenient scheduling, easy access to services and responsive clinicians. And focusing on the patient is improving the experience for clinicians, too.

The program is a labor of love for the health system’s chief information and administrative officer. And it’s helping entry level employees in IT move up to principal engineer/senior analyst.

The e-prescribing giant says the Federal Trade Commission's complaint shouldn't be reviewed in federal court because it relies on several factual errors.

The 10-year initiative will focus on workforce development, education and training for next-generation care delivery.

Charles Alessi, HIMSS chief clinical officer, looks at the impact of patients becoming more informed, assertive and engaged in their care.

GE Healthcare says its anaesthetic machines pose no patient risk, after concerns that the devices could be tampered with by hackers. Cybersecurity firm, CyberMDX, flagged a vulnerability related to the GE Aestiva and GE Aespire 7100 and 7900 devices, that could allow hackers to alter the amount of anaesthetic delivered to patients and silence alarms which indicate danger. According to researchers, if a machine was connected to a hospital’s networks via terminal servers, an attacker could remotely modify its parameters by forcing the device to revert to a less secure version of the communication protocol. But Hannah Huntly, global external affairs manager for GE Healthcare, said its investigation found there was no clinical hazard or direct patient risk. “There is no vulnerability with the anaesthesia device itself, and we generally recommend that anaesthesia devices not be connected to a network,” she said. The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) also stated there was no reason to panic over use of the devices. “In the unlikely situation where hacking of a single device may take place, patients should be reassured that their anaesthetist will be monitoring them constantly and will have received many years of training to rectify immediately the situation of a device failure,” said RCoA council member, Dr Helgi Johansson. WHY IT MATTERS Fears were raised that patients could be put at risk in NHS hospital trusts using the devices.   “We’re currently assessing the volume of these particular anaesthetic machines in use across England and will be sharing any subsequent advice with trusts in the coming days,” an NHS Digital spokesperson said. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said it is working with the manufacturer and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, to establish the effects of any vulnerability. THE LARGER TREND In May 2017 the WannaCry ransomware attack severely disrupted more than 80 NHS hospital trusts causing 19,000 patient appointments to be cancelled. A recent report by the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, led by Lord Ara Darzi, called for investment in cyber-security to be prioritised to prevent the NHS being a “vulnerable target” for hackers. ON THE RECORD Axel Wirth, distinguished healthcare architect at US software company, Symantec Corporation, told Healthcare IT News: “Although a vulnerability may be exploitable when I have the device in front of me with full access to it, it doesn’t mean that under normal use an attacker could execute the same attack. “I don’t want to downplay the problem - medical device cybersecurity is an issue that has been ignored too long, but I also don’t think we need to panic. I advise proceeding with a sense of urgency, yet in a planned and coordinated approach.”  

Virtustream Healthcare Cloud helped the North Carolina-based health system "future-proof" its IT system by moving mission-critical data to its hosting service.

Natural language processing-powered software has helped the clinic gain efficiencies, leading to more time with patients, fewer EHR burnout symptoms and the ability to see more patients in a day.