Connected Health

Shapiro joins the company after Zane Burke took the CEO post and Jennifer Schneider became president.

Samsung's wearable S-Patch ECG monitor collects and automatically uploads data to the cloud, making it easier to use than conventional monitoring technology, says Yun Hong, Global Business Manager, Samsung SDS.

Here’s a look at what experts are saying hospital business decision makers should be doing today to prepare for the future.

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.

A national group is being formed to start work on linking the country’s four regional clinical portals, with approval from the district health boards’ (DHBs) chief information officers. The group is being led by Stella Ward, chief digital officer at Canterbury DHB. If successful, the project would allow any clinician involved in a patient’s care to view that person’s computerised health data from anywhere across New Zealand. Waitemata DHB clinical adviser digital innovations Lara Hopley is a key driver of the project and says clinicians are very keen to be able to see patients’ data from other regions as they often move around the country. An information paper, Connecting the Regional Clinical Portal to improve patient safety and quality of care, went to the National DHB IS Leadership Forum in November and was noted. The idea was also raised at a recent meeting of clinical IT leads from around the country, who were supportive. The paper says, “safety and clinical care would be improved if the clinician was aware of the other records, and could seamlessly view, from within their local Clinical Portal, all the available nationally stored computer information about their patient”. New Zealand’s 20 DHBs are grouped into four regions that each have a shared view of their region’s patient information via Clinical Portal 8 from Orion Health. Of the 20 DHBs, three are not yet using their regional shared portal, but all have imminent plans to move on to one. The southern region has all five South Island DHBs using Health Connect South and the Midlands region has five DHBs using the e-space Midland Clinical Portal. The central North Island has five DHBs already using the Regional Health Informatics Programme portal and Capital and Coast DHB has plans to join. Two Northern DHBs are using the Northern Regional Shared Clinical Portal and Auckland and Northland are due to join in 2020. Hopley says the details of exactly what data will be shared and how to technically achieve the sharing still need to be worked out but she would like it to start as a read-only “portal into other portals”, meaning they would have a tab to access one of the other three portals and land on their dynamic patient summary screen. “Access to the latest documents is likely to give 80–90 per cent of the information you need while assessing a patient,” she added. “It’s a rich data set and we don’t want information overload, but we are skilled clinicians at filtering out the signal from the noise.” Ultimately, the aim would be to have more integrated sharing of all the data with documents and results from other areas, and the end clinicians not needing to tab into a different portal, she says. Issues around auditing also need to be agreed, but Hopley says DHBs already have robust internal auditing processes in place and could extend these to monitor staff looking at other portals. She suggests starting with a proof of concept to prove the value, allowing paediatricians in the Midlands area to access the Northern Regional portal, as a lot of children go up to Starship Hospital for treatment. “As we are already supplying them with access via CareConnect’s TestSafe portal, we are not really changing what they can see, we are just making it easier,” explains Hopley. “This would prove the value and allow a blueprint for how we can do this as a minimum viable product, allowing each region to then understand the cost and prioritise accordingly.” Auckland DHB chief digital officer Shayne Tong says, “in Auckland metro a big number of our population come from outside the region so linking up the portals nationally would be beneficial”. ADHB recently approved a business case to move on to the Northern Regional Clinical Portal. The project is underway and ADHB has an estimated go-live date of February 2020, followed closely by Northland DHB. “Our doctors and clinicians move around DHBs so to have that one-stop-shop for the region is pretty incredible and being able to link nationally too is a real benefit,” says Tong.   This article first appeared on eHealthNews.nz. 

The move comes as the AMA has published new data about how many physicians are actually using telemedicine technology.

A look at how both Healthcare IT News and sister site MobiHealthNews are now serving an international audience and what that means.

In July 2018, IDC Thailand named Khon Kaen as having the most outstanding smart-city project in APAC excluding Japan, alongside Phuket. The winning projects, Khon Kaen Smart Health and Phuket Smart Tourism and Living Communities won under the “Public Health and Social Services” and “Tourism, Arts, Libraries, Culture and Open Spaces” categories respectively at the 2018 IDC Smart City Asia Pacific Awards. Healthcare IT News Asia Pacific had the opportunity to learn about the latest developments of the Khon Kaen Smart Health Project from four key stakeholders involved in this pioneering digital health project. They are: -Associate Professor Cholatip Pongskul, Associate Dean for Information Technology, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, -Dr. Apichat Jiravuttipong, Director, Srinagarind Hospital, -Dr. Chavakij Bhoomibunchoo, Associate Dean for Medical Hub, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University and -Ms. Chaturapron Chokphukhiao, Representative, Digital Economy Promotion Agency, Northeastern branch, Khon Kaen, Thailand The Khon Kaen Smart Health Project originated from the “Manee Project”. Could you tell us more about the “Manee Project”? (Response from Prof Cholatip) Manee Project is the research project funded by The Thailand Research Fund. It is aimed to find the suitable health sensor platform for monitoring health and behaviour of the household residents, mainly the elderly staying at home on their own. The data from their homes will be integrated with their medical records in order to help the doctor better analyse the health data. Its ultimate goal is preventive analytics of the individual for the purpose of changing their lifestyles from corresponding persuasive technology. Webinar: Educating the Next Generation of Physician Informaticians Khon Kaen City recently announced its integrated smart healthcare model with three components – smart ambulance, preventive healthcare service and blockchain & analytics. This Smart Health project is driven by local healthcare service providers and universities. Could you share with us which are the healthcare providers and universities that are involved in this project?   (Response from Prof Cholatip) The healthcare providers involved in the project are: (i) Srinagarind Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University (ii) Khon Kaen Provincial hospital (iii) Regional Health Promotion Centre, Khon Kaen (iv) Upper Northeastern Pharmacy Association (v) Khon Kaen Provincial Health Office Could you provide us with an update on the latest developments of each of the three components – smart ambulance, preventive healthcare service and blockchain & analytics? (Response from Ms. Chaturapron) Smart ambulance: This project is initiated by the trauma and critical care centre, Khon Kaen Provincial Hospital. It consists of the Ambulance Operation Centre or AOC, a technology designed and developed to reduce limitations caused by the distance and time taken to travel to the site.  With the AOC system, everything can be connected through the Internet and the barriers for the ambulance to reach the exact position without consuming too much time are greatly reduced. Ambulances can accurately reach the patients in a faster time. GPS will indicate the exact site and the nearest ambulance will be assigned. As such, the patient has a higher rate of survival. All necessary information for doctors to make critical decisions such as vital signs, blood pressure, patient situation are sent to the hospital in real time by snapshot or video stream displayed on the screen. Staff at the hospital can prepare appropriate methods for the patient prior to the arrival of the ambulance. (Response from Prof Cholatip) Preventive healthcare service: This service was initially launched using smart wristband to monitor the steps from the selected population. Regarding the health sensors platform, Manee Project, 30 households that have elderly residents with chronic diseases were selected for the installation of sensors. The installment has begun in October 2018 and will be expected to be completed by the end of November 2018. (Response from Dr. Apichat) Health analytics: Prototypes of the smart ICU have already been completed. Data from the respirators and vital sign monitors were sent to Google Cloud Analytics. The system can display warnings for 10 minutes before the blood oxygen desaturation. The next step is the integration of EHR data and customising it to the UI and alert system. Health information exchange via blockchain is also being developed. CAT Telecom, which is a government-held telecommunication company will provide the infrastructure for information exchange. The first project will be on drug information exchange followed by logistics and material flow. Data standards such as SNOMED CT, LOINC, GTIN, and ICD code will be used alongside the project. As part of the preventive healthcare service component, preliminary data from 30 elderly subjects indicated the acceptability of a smart wrist band, together with additional devices to monitor blood pressure, sugar levels, movements and even eating patterns/habits. How is the data from these different devices going to be integrated with electronic medical records from the healthcare providers? What are the opportunities and challenges of such an integration? Above photo: An elderly resisdent tries on smart wrist band as part of the preventive healthcare service component of the Khon Kaen Smart Health project. (Response from Prof Cholatip) Data from each device can be integrated with EMR using the Thai unique ID for identification purposes. The most important step is to apply standards for home use/wearable device connectivity such as Continua to all participating devices. The challenges are mapping values from various devices in to a single standard and getting the data from each cloud storage to a single data lake. Working with local and international device companies on behalf of the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) and Khon Kaen Smart City will be one of the keys to the success of the project. Working with the local communities is an important part of the Smart Health Project. What are some early lessons learnt from working with the local communities? (Response from Ms. Chaturapron) Local communities such as universities, chamber of commerce, health tech associations, local drug stores and people working with sand boxes have been actively involved in this project. The Digital Economy Promotion Agency or DEPA, is the main organiser for the cooperation. Sharing the vision and knowledge is very important. Communities need ongoing support if change and sustainability are to be achieved. Are there future plans to expand the Smart Health Project to other parts of Thailand? (Response from Dr. Chavakij) Following Thailand’s 20-year-strategic plan and eHealth Thailand, the national health information system, telehealth and big data analysis are major pillars for healthcare. Our Khon Kaen Smart city project can be the spearhead to the goal. Prototypes from the project will be expanded to cover every health region in northeast Thailand in the next couple of years. Working with government organisations such as DEPA, Ministry of Public Health help us to integrate and customise our project to the whole picture of our country. Prof Cholatip is a speaker at HIMSS AsiaPac 18 in Brisbane this November.

The publication now serves international readers with news, features, analysis and insights about the many innovative ways health IT is being put to use improving healthcare. 

Nick Dougherty, managing director of MassChallenge HealthTech, is energized by all the pilots converting to broader implementation and the “end of pilot purgatory”; he is also working on an assessment review to help innovators get over the security hurdles that bog down project launches.