Population Health

(SPONSORED) This fall, athenahealth convened 60 leaders of hospitals and health systems at population health advisory roundtables to dig into the top concerns and challenges as the industry shifts to value-based reimbursements.

Centering Healthcare Institute, Community Care of North Carolina and the Jersey City Medical Center – Barnabas Healthcare will present on their models at a March event.

Even grand visions should begin by soliciting feedback from as many employees as possible, according to Jerry Sobolik, senior business analyst at the famed health system.

It’s a futuristic idea to be sure: Harnessing the intelligence of IBM Watson, the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer, to support cardiac-care recovery, reduce hospital readmissions, and save healthcare costs. But that’s what the Colorado-based healthcare nonprofit Centura Health and consumer enterprise platform vendor Welltok are doing right now with CaféWell Concierge, currently in pilot with consumers who are transitioning back to everyday life after experiencing a heart condition. See all of our HIMSS16 previews “Cognitive computing mimics the way humans think by combining artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms,” said Jeff Margolis, CEO of Welltok. “IBM Watson understands natural language in context; it can determine the intent of a phrase or question and provide a pertinent, useful response.” Margolis, along with Pam Nicholson, senior vice president of strategy for Centura Health, will present “Applying Cognitive Computing to Population Health” at HIMSS16. Nicholson said that the technology the companies are piloting learns from interactions to provide personalized recommendations over time. For example, if a consumer has opportunities to join a team activity challenge and schedule a one-on-one coaching session, and consistently chooses the team activity, the app would recognize that this person favors social activities and recommend a support group at the local community center. [Also: IBM Watson picked to help tackle heart disease] Among the other ways that patients interact with CaféWell: Finding options for cardiac rehabilitation exercises and activities; researching new heart-healthy recipes and dishes at local restaurants, and identifying educational resources and videos on living with heart conditions. In these ways, cognitive computing is broadening the scope of healthcare delivery “so that it can happen outside what we normally think of as the healthcare setting,'” Nicholson said. “The contrast with traditional health care, where we only get to interact with the consumer when they step inside our four walls and temporarily become a patient, is profound.” As the real-world pilot users continue to train the application’s “brain,” as Margolis put it, these innovators see ample opportunities for cognitive computing to have an impact in the four areas of health: healthy behaviors, genetics, medical interventions, and environment. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] “In five years, we believe that predictive analytics will further evolve and enable providers and consumers to make better health decisions while allowing for care to be highly personalized,” Nicholson said. “This will require us to continue to build solutions that incorporate timely and new data sources, offer reliable, consistent predictive models, deliver convenient and immediate personalized health and lifestyle recommendations, and learn intuitively and rapidly.” The session "Applying Cognitive Computing to Population Health,” is slated to take place March 3, 2016 from 1 to 2 p.m. in Rock of Ages Theater at the Sands Expo Convention Center. Twitter: @HenryPowderly This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Only a few days remain to submit speaker and session proposals for the Healthcare IT News and HIMSS Pop Health Forum 2016, which will be held in Boston May 19-20. The Pop Health Forum’s goal is to give attendees, 250-plus healthcare providers and payers, solid information on how to improve their population health initiatives. Proposals should focus on one or more of the forum’s three key areas, the cornerstones of population health: data and analytics, coordinating care, and patient engagement.  Attendees prefer case studies and are eager to learn how their peers are addressing common challenges and pain points. As such, we place a high value on proposals from payer and provider organizations that offer practical, actionable information and real-life solutions.   The deadline to submit a proposal is 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12. Click here to submit a proposal and for more information.

(SPONSORED) As the outcomes of healthcare reform become clear, it is equally clear that healthcare executives need to objectively analyze internal systems and processes, such as information technology and care delivery, to determine how they will effectively adapt to a new reality.

Analytics functionality has improved measurably in recent years, according to Chilmark Research, but  workflow integration remains a key hurdle.

Privia Health will expand its work with athenahealth to ratchet up its focus on population health, the accountable care organization announced on Wednesday. Arlington, Virginia-based Privia Health will fully integrate athenahealth’s population health offering into its existing framework of athenaOne services for all 1,200 of its multi-specialty independent providers across five states and Washington, D.C. [Also: Jonathan Bush performs CPR on San Francisco sidewalk] Athenahealth will assign evidence-based health risk statuses to patients. The goal is to enhance patient engagement, and provide insight to better direct and align clinical protocols and team-based capabilities – all in an effort to provide value-based care. Privia Health CEO Jeff Butler credits athenahealth with helping the medical group become one of the top ACOs in the country, with care models and incentives fully-aligned around driving value into the system. In 2014, the first year Privia assumed shared-risk in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Shared Savings ACO model, Privia saved Medicare nearly $5.7 million and received half of that back in an incentive payment, according to CMS data. Privia Health has worked with athenahealth since 2014 to support clinical integration and connectivity between its medical groups and clinically integrated networks. Privia and athenahealth have already integrated athenahealth’s platform with Privia’s proprietary population health workflow systems and technology, bringing automation and scale to Privia’s programs that are focused on improving outcomes and reducing healthcare spending. Twitter: @HealthITNews

Steve Sisko, aka @Shimcode on Twitter, did not originally embark down the path toward healthcare IT. His primary career choice, rather, was in the field of aviation technology.

Since his days as executive editor at WIRED magazine, which he led to a dozen National Magazine Awards in as many years, science journalist Thomas Goetz has been driven by a key question: "How are industries tipping in the face of information technology?"