Population Health

Without cross-border co-operation the potential of personalised health cannot be realised, acccording to Bogi Eliasen, director at the Health Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and HIMSS Future50 leader, who will be speaking at HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Digital Event taking place 7-11 September.

A Missouri Hospital Association representative says that closed hospitals are listed as not reporting COVID-19 patient data for that state, potentially skewing totals.

The COVID-19 global crisis has undoubtedly brought about huge changes in healthcare systems all over the world. One of the major impacts which it had would be its role in serving as an impetus to accelerate the digital transformation of healthcare globally. At the HIMSS APAC Malaysia Digital Health Summit session titled “Accelerating the Digital Transformation of Healthcare” hosted by Tim Kelsey (Senior Vice President HIMSS Analytics International), Christian Besler (Chief Digital Officer of Ayala Health Philippines) and Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin (Senior Deputy Director of Ministry of Health Malaysia), the panelists discuss the various approaches which the Philippines and Malaysia have taken to continue providing online healthcare services to their citizens amidst this global crisis. Steps taken by the respective governments In the Philippines, a huge amount of emphasis was placed on corporate health. This was done in a bid to help employees detect and effectively manage chronic diseases at an early stage which would in turn help to greatly reduce medical insurance costs that will be borne by employers eventually. Primary care clinics were built within large corporations themselves, greatly facilitating employees’ visits to the clinics. With the onset of COVID-19, doctors were open-minded and fast thinking which allowed for the smooth and swift transition to telehealth. With this continued provision of medical services to employees, they could continue working from the safety of their homes whilst receiving the appropriate medical assistance.  Similarly, Malaysia was able to quickly put together a COVID-19 digital response with 6 main focus areas: Strategic Risk and Communication Community Engagement Operational Efficiency  Insights and Foresights Infrastructure and Upgrade Research and Clinical Trials  Mainstream media coupled with social media were the key online platforms which were utilised to provide constant updates about new cases or any cluster outbreaks within the country. Contact tracing applications such as “MySejahtra” and “MyTrace” were set up using a QR code digital log system. Each store/restaurant would have a unique QR code which stores the phone number of each individual entering when the user scans the code. In the event that someone who enters the store gets positively diagnosed with the virus, this information can then be promptly disseminated to other visitors of the store and appropriate quarantine actions meted out if necessary. Virtual clinics and electronic appointments were also made readily available to the public so they can continue to receive the required healthcare services even from their homes.  Numerous operational systems were also deployed in order to manage the sudden influx of infected patients. Queue management systems and facility based systems were set up to aid in crowd control and enforce social distancing measures, effectively mitigating further spread of the virus. eCOVID19, a data collection system comprising of analytical tools and various dashboards served to help monitor new COVID-19 cases and changes on the ground which paved the way for better government decision making in their policies. On the record “COVID actually made us realise that a proper data collection tool/system is very important” said Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin. She postulates that Malaysia should continue to strengthen  redesign the healthcare systems as well as enhance digital technology and innovation in healthcare even with the passing of COVID-19. All these, coupled with the collaboration and coordination of the various sectors of the country will be sufficient to help “revitalize the Malaysian economy which was badly impacted by COVID-19”. To gain access to the on-demand video of the keynote dialogue, please email Evelyn.Wee@himss.org. 

The public health, research, medical, science and legal organizations all voiced concerns about data availability and transparency under the new process, which instructs hospitals to bypass the CDC and report directly to HHS.

UPMC spin-off Curavi Health, CarePointe and U.S. Health Systems will work together on integrated pop health analytics and virtual-care tools for nursing homes and other underserved elder populations.

Equality Health Director of Clinical Outreach Solutions Roger Pena says patients' age, race, gender and ZIP code can have a big impact on their overall health.

 The University of California COVID Research Data Set comprises more than 640 million data points from electronic health records, and helps inform approaches to new treatments.

This week's top stories include the Trump administration telling hospitals to bypass the CDC and submit COVID-19 data directly to HHS, and telehealth helping patients navigate complex systems.

As the world contends with the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is expected to see a significant drop in growth.