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A nurse gets into a car accident and requires surgery. After surgery, the nurse is prescribed painkillers and becomes addicted. Because she works in a hospital, the nurse has access to drugs and continues to pilfer them to feed her addiction for many months.

Having an EMR system brings to a healthcare organisation an integrated system. However, it may not suit individual department needs or workflows, an industry expert has warned. Speaking at the recent Australian Healthcare Week in Sydney, Sydney Local Health District Assistant District Director of Pharmacy and CPIO Rosemary Burke said in the chase to adopt EMR, many organisations end up having multiple electronic systems within an organisation. “Do you go for a best-of-breed system where the functionality is tailored to the environment where it is working, its business needs and workflow for a fairly easy for user adoption?” she questioned. “But then it gets challenging when you have a number of silos within an organisation, in addition to the silos that exist between the hospital sector and the community sector. Terminologies and functionalities can be different as well, so it can be very confusing.” According to Burke, many healthcare organisations traditionally went with best-of-breed systems as automation of care and electronic systems were about creating electronic health records and providing comprehensive views of patient data. But going forward, Burke stressed the need for systems that all talk to each other, address data leaks and provide analysis of patient data. “The use of multiple systems aren’t usually strategically planned. Some are led by clinicians, while others are led by the organisation. And sometimes, as things develop, the other groups weren’t even aware of these system developments,” she said. “Access and handover of care become a challenge. Healthcare practitioners don’t understand the complexity of the various systems, resulting in complex workflows and duplicated data in multiple systems. “There’s also fragmentation of patient information, which becomes a safety concern.” [Read more: Monash Health and SCHS commence EMR rollouts | SA Health upgrades its EMR system following review] As such, Burke suggested that EMR implementations should be done in accordance of the needs of an organisation and include: A system that speaks the same language, and have the same character-field limits  A secure, integrated system that works across the entire organisation  Staff training across the entire organisation  “What we need to do is create seamless continuity of care across the organisation; enable systems for patient safety, quality and outcomes; and have systems where we can extract data from so that we end up with better analytics, better research and better outcomes for our patients,” she said.

Telehealth technology has helped the Friedwald Center reduce hospital transfers for falls by 90 percent, and transfers for dementia by 83 percent, among other quality improvements.

Digital transformation is a top priority at most healthcare organizations today, but progress so far has been fragmented.

Top takeaways from a month of reporting on today's current state and the future of health data sharing.

Health secretary hails Northern Powerhouse for its "big part" in UK’s success.

Yonsei University Health System (YUHS), one of the oldest and largest private university hospital networks in South Korea, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SK Telecom, South Korea's largest wireless carrier, to build a 5G-powered digital hospital. Under the MOU, SK Telecom and  YUHS will work together to build a 5G network and develop specialised solutions for the Yongin Severance Hospital, which is scheduled to open in February 2020, by leveraging SK Telecom’s technological expertise in areas of 5G, AI, IoT and media. The 5G-powered digital hospital will be equipped with SK Telecom’s AI speaker NUGU to enable patients with physical difficulties to easily control their beds, lighting and TV with their voice. They can even use NUGU Call service to get medical assistance in case of emergencies. AR-based indoor navigation service through the application of indoor positioning and 3D mapping technologies to enhance the convenience of patients and visitors will also be introduced at the new 5G-powered hospital. SK Telecom is also considering to apply its quantum cryptography solutions to its network covering the Severance Hospital, Gangnam Severance Hospital and Yongin Severance Hospital (hospitals under the YUHS network) as a cybersecurity measure to prevent unauthorised access to sensitive medical information. What’s the trend It is important to note that 5G is not just an extension of 3G and 4G networks. The technology is rather a network that combines 4G, Wi-Fi, wireless access technologies and millimetre wave. It also leverages cloud infrastructure, intelligent edge services and virtualised network core. It promises a massive boost in transfer speeds that things like distributed computing or IoT devices in healthcare need to reach their full potential. 5G technology is not quite ready to be harnessed, but by 2019 the first vendors plan to bring this technology to its full potential. According to a Xinhua news article last month, China's Guangdong province will build its first 5G-based demonstration hospital, which is a joint partnership between Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, China Mobile Group Guangdong Co., Ltd. (Guangdong Mobile), and the tech giant Huawei. In the US, Rush System for Health in Chicago has partnered with AT&T to become what it says is the first in the nation to use a standards-based 5G network in a healthcare setting.  On the record “Today is a high-tech digital era, so the digital transformation for hospitals is a must,” YUHS President and CEO Yoon Do-heum said in a statement. “Yongin Severance Hospital will become the core of Yonsei Medical Centre as an intelligent digital innovation hospital.” Park Jung-ho, President and CEO of SK Telecom, said: “SK Telecom’s partnership with Yonsei University Health System carries a significant meaning as it represents a new level of collaboration between two different industries.” “SK Telecom will work closely with the Yonsei University Health System to build the world’s best 5G-enabled hospital by utilising cutting-edge ICT.”

Artificial intelligence (AI), neural networks and machine learning can be ethereal concepts to the average punter, but when applied to the health sector their benefits come into sharp focus. When technology can save a life, it suddenly becomes meaningful. Magnetic fields and radio waves took on a new meaning with the introduction of the MRI machine, and the same will happen with the application of today’s technologies in the health sector. We’re just starting to see the impact AI and image recognition can have on healthcare, but it is poised to be the technology’s biggest contribution to society yet. Earlier this year, a group of Chinese and US researchers developed a program to automatically diagnose childhood illnesses including meningitis, asthma, gastro and the flu. This AI program works faster and, in some cases, more accurately than doctors. However, as in the early stages of every new discovery, there are obstacles to navigate. Privacy concerns, investment requirements and regulatory issues are just some of the hurdles that need to be overcome. Despite the challenges, there are potential benefits. Doctors are an invaluable part of society, but they are still human, and misdiagnoses happen. According to research, there are approximately 140,000 cases of diagnostic errors in Australia each year, with 21,000 resulting in serious harm and more than 2,000 resulting in death. Modern AI promises to solve this issue through the power of neural networks. Unlike traditional software that only does what it’s told, neural networks can teach themselves new skills with enough training data. By reviewing mammograms with and without cancerous cells, for example, a neural network can learn to identify malignant cells in new mammograms. In 2016, a research team achieved just this. The Houston-based team built a program that analysed mammograms 30 times faster than a human, and with 99 percent accuracy. More recently, Maryland researchers used AI to diagnose cervical cancer with 91 percent accuracy, vastly improving the 69 percent human success rate. These diagnoses were all made without an expensive medical professional, and without the cost of a clinic. The upshot is AI could offer better diagnosis, to more people, for less money, in less time, allowing doctors to focus on patients that truly need their care. Not only can technology improve current diagnostic methods, but it can also create new ones; neural networks will eventually identify links between symptoms and illnesses that human researchers would never have found. Unfortunately, the AI healthcare revolution has a down side, and a price many Australians seem unwilling to pay. To be effective, neural networks need the training data of many thousands of people in order to learn which symptoms correspond to which diagnoses. In the China/US study, 600,000 Chinese health records were used as training data, a feat possible thanks to the sheer size of the country, as well as China’s less stringent privacy culture. In Australia, we’re far more protective of our data and cognizant of the implications of sharing too much. Privacy aside, there are challenges around getting consistent data, both to teach programs and to feed them for diagnosis. Inconsistent standards are used across the private and public sector, even between doctors in the same clinic. While getting clean data is technically possible, it could be a regulatory and administrative nightmare. Despite the obstacles, AI’s potential benefits to healthcare are not just worth pursuing, they should be a priority. Just as governments are now (rightly) planning for the arrival of self-driving cars, we need to plan for an AI powered healthcare system today. Standards on access to data need to be agreed upon, along with a transparent and open opt-out process. A standardisation of medical data is also long overdue. More than just setting us up for the benefits of AI, patients would see immediate benefit from more consistent data recording. It’s a long road between here and a world of automated and accurate AI powered healthcare, but it’s one we should start preparing for today. Without this preparation we’ll see more noble but half-baked ideas launched before they’re ready, eroding public trust. It’s a world we can see, but one we can only reach with a clear-eyed vision of the journey ahead. Allan Waddell is the Founder and Co-CEO of Kablamo

Dr. Sebastian Krolop, a physician, economist and technology consultant, will help chart worldwide plans and policies for HIMSS. He says he's focused on member experience and enabling more patient-centered healthcare.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock is able to customize best practice processes from the technology out of the box – helping manage Epic's many environments, constant requests and complicated infrastructure, one IT exec explains.