WOMEN IN HEALTH IT

Access to healthcare is underpinned in large part on a health consumer’s access to information about available health care services, their location, price, and if the patient is very fortunate to glean, quality. As people take on more responsibility for managing their health care utilization and financing in America, their access to information that is easy-to-find, clear, comprehensive and current is critical to personal and public health outcomes. But consumers are dissatisfied with the state of health care information in their lives, discovered through a survey supported by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Oliver Wyman, and conducted by the Altarum Institute. Results of this study were published in the report, Right Place, Right Time: Health Information and Vulnerable Populations. Oliver Wyman featured these findings in a conversation held at the World Economic Forum in Davos week titled, Vulnerable Populations and the Great Health Divide. The study’s top-line insight was that vulnerable US health citizens are health information-compromised. This group of people tends to be uninsured, Spanish-speaking, caregiving, and enrolled in Medicaid. The lack of health/care information access jeopardizes care access and quality, putting people at-risk for worse health outcomes, eventual higher costs, and greater burden of disease compared with people who enjoy health information access. Health consumers want financial transparency; simpler, direct language; mobile-friendly formats; and, respect. This is a lightbulb moment finding in the survey; see the Hot Points, below. The study’s key findings were that: Consumers demand cost information and mobile-friendly websites Consumers seek improvements to information about cost of care, accessibility, and comparisons Caregivers use the most health care information but struggle to find resources to help themselves Uninsured people have greater difficulty accessing health care information Spanish speaking people struggle with language barriers, and rely on friends and family to offer advice and remedies Patients who feel disrespected by providers are less likely to trust health care information or follow medical advice. For the poll, Altarum Institute interviewed 4,068 consumers via a mail and web survey, and conducted interviews and focus groups with 65 consumers. Research was fielded between June and August 2016. Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The role of respect in the relationship between patient-consumer and provider cannot be underestimated, based on the clinical evidence found in this study. Specifically: feeling disrespected was linked to medication non-adherence. Thirty-two percent of people without health insurance feel disrespected, this study found. People who are sicker tend to feel less respected, as well as those with lower incomes. The Rodney Dangerfield feeling of “can’t get respect” leads to health consumers being three times less likely to trust information provided by their doctors. Furthermore, patients who feel disrespected by providers are twice as likely to be non-adherent to medication regimens. For example, people with diabetes (PWD) who do not feel respected are one-third more likely to have poorly-controlled diabetes compared with PWDs who feel respect from their providers.  User-centered design is mandatory for the health information economy. Health information portals are poorly utilized because they lack good design informed by patients’ values, digital literacy, and life-flows. Empathy is part of this ethos. The report notes that, “Good patient-provider relationships are not just part of good bedside manner…positive patient-provider relationships should be considered a medical priority, and should be encouraged through training, education and, potentially, compensation changes.” Throughout the health/care ecosystem, as we work to incorporate health in all policies and cultures of health, we must be mindful that empathy, caring, and respect are key ingredients in user-centered design. Check out the approach of Dignity Health’s #hellohumankindness as an example of branding and delivering on empathy in healthcare. This post originally appeared on Health Populi.

I’ve written many posts on leadership. As we witness the peaceful transfer of power in the Office of the President, it seems fitting to reflect again on leadership and what we should expect of leaders. When I think of critical leadership qualities at the executive level, I think of vision, integrity, presence, communication, and authenticity.  If you look at position descriptions for executive level leaders in business, you will see all of these and more.   I’ve talked in the past about the core principles and values I share with my staff when starting a new leadership position. In that early period, I want my team to get to know me and to understand what’s important to me. I want them to hold me accountable for living these values every day in every situation. And I also expect everyone on my team to live them as we work together. Here they are again but with a more generic description that can fit any leadership position: Teamwork – the leader must set a tone in all their words and actions that people are expected to respect one another and work collaboratively toward common goals in the best interest of all. Transparency – the leader must practice open, honest, and proactive communication and expect that from others. Customer service – the leader must remember who they are ultimately serving and have that guide their decisions. Accountability – the leader must be accountable, take ownership and deliver on their commitments. Innovation – the leader must create an environment where people are encouraged to be creative and bold in their thinking. Continuous improvement – the leader must encourage change and not allow the status quo to be the norm if it no longer works. Results focus – the leader must focus on end results with appropriate respect for the rules and processes. You should expect no less of your leaders. You should expect all this and far more. This post was first published on Sue Schade's Health IT Connect blog.

Think about the little girls you know. Did they get even more dolls for holiday gifts? Or did they get toys and games that teach creative thinking and how to build things? Or did they maybe even get toys officiallylabeled in the STEM category? Social norms start young. I recently played a match game with my two-year-old granddaughter. When we matched the truck picture, she took it over to her 6-month-old baby brother as though it was his domain! This granddaughter and her two-year-old girl cousin have a variety of developmental toys. But when it’s free play, they are often clutching one of their dolls, whether it’s Princess Sofia the First or the newest Disney Princess Elena of Avalor. At least these characters are both confident, strong and compassionate princesses! My four-year-old granddaughter isn’t as attached to dolls these days. After a break, she is back in dance class, my birthday gift to her. I know she loves it.  At Christmas, with her mother’s advice, I gave her 3 months of Koala Crate – a creative, educational activity box for 3-5 year olds. She loved the first box – making stuffed reptiles and learning about them. You may be saying it’s all about exposing kids to a lot of different things. I agree. But it’s important to not fall into the gender norms when they are young. Let’s fast forward from my three little granddaughters to some of the female leaders in our health IT industry. The CHIME-HIMSS John E. Gall Jr CIO of the Year is Pam Arora, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Children’s Health System of Texas. I am delighted. Pam is a leader in our industry and deserves this honor. I can’t help noting though that Pam is only the fifth woman to receive this award which began over 25 years ago. I spoke on  a HIMSS Women in Health IT webinar on Tuesday, January 17th titled “Yes we can, attracting the future leaders in STEM”. To prepare my talk, I asked Pam and the past female CIOs of the Year about how they got into IT and what advice they would now give their younger self. While there are many women health IT leaders, why not turn to these recognized and accomplished women for some advice? They got into IT because of the encouragement of either a parent, a teacher, or a boss. These important influencers encouraged an early interest in math and helped them stay with it as they started working. For two of them, like myself, their first IT job was programming. And it was back in the day of punch cards and programming languages you’d not recognize today. The advice to their younger selves and to young women going into IT and STEM fields today was to have a can-do, positive attitude and to find balance. Stephanie Reel is the Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost for Information Technology for the Johns Hopkins University, and Vice President for Information Services for Johns Hopkins Medicine. A bigger and broader role than the average healthcare CIO. She advised: “Be happy; be proud; go home a bit earlier to enjoy time with family”. She is a strong advocate for building a healthy work environment. She went on to say “We need to be kinder and gentler, and we should never allow ourselves to be bullied, or made to feel inadequate.” Pat Skarulis is the Vice President and CIO at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Her advice is “Just do it. Take as much math and science as you can early in your academic career.” She also advised to not overlook the arts which are very important to your development and career. Pam McNutt, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Methodist Health System, remembered the advice from her parents. “Don’t focus on the differences between men and women, just do your best and show value”. Her father told her she could do anything; the sky is the limit. Her mother taught her how to be a woman in what was a man’s world. Per Pam Arora, it’s important to stretch and not be afraid of new challenges. “Don’t be afraid of work you have never done before. It’s a first for everyone at some point. Dare to be the first!” I have great respect for all these women. We can all learn from them. The two leading professional organizations in our industry, HIMSS and CHIME, recognize the importance of developing women. I applaud the efforts they have launched under Carla Smith and Liz Johnson’s leadership respectively. Resources: HIMSS Women in Health IT CHIME Eyes Programs to Improve Leadership Diversity  This post was first published on Sue Schade's Health IT Connect blog.

Most medical things exhibited at CES 2017 are connected devices with apps that collect, analyze, and feedback data and information to users (patients, consumers, caregivers) and health/care providers (physicians, nurses, care coaches, and others who support people in self-care). While the Internet of Things is generally thought to cover more generic stuff for smart and connected homes, network-connected health and medical technologies are also part of the larger IoT phenomenon. And like health and medical “things” exhibited at #CES2017, other consumer electronics that people will purchase this year ongoing will be connected to the Internet, from refrigerators to cars, to TVs and hearing aids. Among the most popular connected devices during the 2016 holiday season was Amazon’s Alexa, providing voice-assistant technology in the home: Amazon shoppers bought more Alexa devices than ever in the 2016 holiday season. Alexa’s base technology can be used for healthcare at home, which was demonstrated by Orbita at the recent Connected Health Conference in December 2016. The company showed voice-activated home health capabilities such as medication adherence, pain management, patient monitoring, and caregiver coordination. This is an early example of home health through home tech assistants, of which Amazon’s Jeff Bezos waxed, “I think health care is going to be one of those industries that is elevated and made better by machine learning and artificial intelligence. And I actually think Echo and Elena do have a role to play in that.” Boston Children’s Hospital is a pioneering healthcare provider, implementing Alexa in KidsMD, which uses the device to support parents caregiving for their kids’ healthcare. As the Internet of Things takes hold in all aspects of consumer technology adoption, another phenomenon may also simultaneously occur: the Insecurity of Things, coined by Accenture in advance of #CES2017. The Insecurity of Things, Accenture’s John Curran explained to VentureBeat last week, is the challenge that consumers won’t universally trust IoT connected devices until the ongoing security issues around them are resolved. Health Populi’s Hot Points: I addressed the privacy and security issues of connected health data in my recent paper published by the California HealthCare Foundation, Here’s Looking At You: How Personal Health Information Is Being Tracked And Used. Most consumers are unaware of what’s in the fine print in mobile health opt-in notices, but if people buy a new wearable tech or download an app they’re keen to use, most click through the privacy policy without really knowing what’s gonig to happen to their data. That information can end up in third party data brokers’ data mines that can be mashed up into consumer profiles and sold to any number of organizations who might benefit from getting up-close-and-personal (albeit, in the dark shadows) with consumers; say, mortgage brokers evaluating loans for home buyers, or employers considering job applications for prospective employees. That’s the privacy aspect of data shared, unwittingly, by health consumers whose diagnosis of, perhaps, depression, or active use of a food-tracking app that documents one’s personal obsession with Twinkies. From privacy in IoT for health and medicine, we can then consider security. The US Department of Homeland Security published the report, Strategic Principles for Securing the Internet of Things (IoT), in November 2016. The report talked about the growing ubiquity of network-connected devices, from fitness trackers and pacemakers to cars and home thermostats. Cybersecurity has gained more attention in the age of connected health and the Internet of Healthy Things, the phenomenon discussed by Dr. Joseph Kvedar in his book of the same name. The Homeland Security report mentions the Food and Drug Administration draft guidance on Postmarket Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices discussed in a recent blog on the FDA website here. A Healthcare IT News survey out this week found that the No.1 health IT challenge hospital IT execs cite for 2017 is data security (52 percent), followed by analytics; patient engagement and population health tied for third place. Electronic health records took the fourth position, indicating that now that most healthcare providers have patients’ records digitized, they’re now ready to mash them up and analyze them to manage  population health, prevent readmissions, and personalize services for increasingly demanding consumers. But that data, first, must be secured to prevent cyber-attacks, malware, and personal health data theft. Trust is a precursor to health engagement: patients engage with healthcare stakeholders who earn that trust and authenticity which drives patient satisfaction. Data security in health care is now a patient engagement issue in the growing telehealth and health IoT era. I’ll be asking digital health companies about privacy and security issues all week here at #CES2017.

This week, seven women from across the globe learned that they are the inaugural recipients of HIMSS’s Most Influential Women in Health IT Award, sponsored by Verizon and EY. Our distinguished judges, themselves notable influential women, selected our awardees from more than 140 nominations. I am honored to share this exciting news with you.  Each of these women has demonstrated transformational influence in the health sector. They are at various stages of their careers, which was a defining philosophy of our Awards program – that a woman at any stage of her career can be influential and positively change health and healthcare in meaningful ways. Each Awardee collaborates and innovates within her area of health IT-related expertise. Each understands, and has acted upon, the power of harnessing the best of IT across many different components of health and healthcare including nursing, pharmacy, medicine, government, public policy, industry and business management. The accomplishments of these women matter not only within their respective organizations, but across the healthcare trajectory. As many of our nominees demonstrated various characteristics required of the Award, our judges had a challenging time determining our inaugural recipients.  The stories and accomplishments are inspiring; one Awardee has positively impacted the lives of millions of citizens, while another has shaped the entire trajectory of the health IT sector. And, we have recipients who have used IT in health settings to utterly transform the ability of a region’s population to remain well, and to receive optimal care when needed. [Gallery: Meet the winners of HIMSS Most Influential Women in Health IT awards] Inaugural recipients of HIMSS’s Award are: Shareefa Al Abulmonem, MSc CPHIMS Head of eServices King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Saudi Arabia Marion J. Ball, Ed.D, FHIMSS, FACMI, FAAN, FAHIMA, FCHIME, FMLA Senior Advisor, IBM-Center for Computational Health, USA  Professor Emerita, Johns Hopkins University Rachelle Blake, PA CEO and Managing Director Omni Med Solutions, Germany Christina Caraballo, MBA Senior Healthcare Strategist Get Real Health, USA Karen DeSalvo, M.D., MPH, MSc Acting Assistant Secretary of Health US Department of Health and Human Services, USA Karen Guice, M.D., M.P.P. Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs US Department of Defense, USA Lisa Stump, MS, RPh, FASHP Chief Information Officer Yale New Haven Health and Yale School of Medicine, USA When I reviewed the nominations of our recipients, I found consistent references that captured the accomplishments and drive of these seven leaders. As leaders in their respective careers, these seven women also understand the strategic role IT plays in improving health and healthcare. They acted on that knowledge, and as a result, made patient care better, more accessible and more affordable.   Here are examples from the nominations: Marion Ball has and is mentoring many young women and men in her long career as a national and international leader in health IT.    Dr. Karen Guice’s leadership has already created profound improvements for our military’s fighting forces, and will shape military medicine’s engagement with the world for the coming decades. With a focus on innovation, Lisa Stump is leading efforts to experiment and roll out new technologies aimed at improving population health, patient engagement, and the patient’s experience with the healthcare system.     Dr. Karen DeSalvo is a physician who has dedicated her career to improving access to affordable, high quality care for all people, especially vulnerable populations, and promoting overall health. Recognizing Shareefa Al Abulmonem as one of the Most Influential Woman in Health IT will set the female population of her home, Saudi Arabia, ablaze as to an example of what can be accomplished when you put your passions to purposeful use. Christina Caraballo is highly respected in the community for her passion to move health IT forward, working with other thought leaders and getting involved in her community to learn, share ideas and solve problems. Rachelle Blake’s critical thinking and problem solving skills allow her to equip professionals to meet policy, business, and regulatory requirements in everyday practice – to take the possible in health IT and make it real.   [Also: A guide to Women in Health IT happenings at HIMSS17] HIMSS knows that women in health IT seek resources and community: About a year ago, after surveying over 20,000 women about the current state of women’s professional needs in health IT, we identified a need for expanded recognition of women sector-wide. Some 83% of respondents said there remains insufficient recognition for the women executives in health IT.  And, an overwhelming 85% would find value in a resource recognizing contributions, and supporting the career advancement, of women. Women across all career levels within health IT seek community and resources. HIMSS is answering that call.  Our resources include a biweekly enewsletter from HIMSS Media and HIMSS webinars, podcasts, roundtable reports and more offered online for anyone ready to enjoy and benefit from this information.  Women have been making a difference in health IT for decades, but their accomplishments and contributions are not often visible to all of us. Recognizing these seven recipients of the HIMSS Most Influential Women in Health IT Award changes that scenario. I congratulate them and encourage all of us to embrace and learn from their collaborative spirit and success.  This post originally appeared on this HIMSS site.

Holiday gift lists, baking lists, family fun lists while kids are out of school and “honey do” lists while off from work…..we have personal to do lists everywhere. But as the year ends, it’s interesting to look back on some of the industry based 2016 lists and look ahead at what to expect in 2017. I’ve compiled some of the most interesting healthcare and technology lists to share as we approach this annual turn of the year. You’ve probably seen some of them already. There are the best places to work lists where we can all learn best practices to attract and retain talent in a competitive market: Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work in Healthcare 2016 and Becker’s 150 Great Places to Work in Healthcare 2016. And more specific to IT, there is Healthcare IT News’ Best Hospital IT Departments 2016. Check out their profiles and possibly get some new ideas to apply in your own organizations. As healthcare and technology are constantly changing, it is good to check out the highlights from 2016 and trends to watch in the coming year.  PWC’s report on top health industry issues of 2017 calls it a year of uncertainty and opportunity. Their 2016 projections were summarized in an article in FierceHealthcare last January. Deloitte shares their views in Health Care Providers Industry Outlook 2017. Focusing in on technology, what was hot in 2016 and what can we expect in 2017? Healthcare IT News highlights health care IT startups to watch. They also are projecting hot health technologies to watch in 2017.  And Health Data Management has identified the 12 top data and IT trends to expect in 2017. And then there are the people you want to learn from who are helping transform our industry.  Modern Healthcare’s list of the 100 most influential includes leaders from government, providers, payors, and private industry. The top 50 experts in health care IT is a two-part list from Health Data Management. Becker’s Hospital Review named their annual top 100 hospital and health system CIOs to know. Congratulations to all the talented industry leaders and experts who have been recognized this year! I was honored to be included again on this last list from Becker’s Hospital Review while I served as interim CIO at University Hospitals in Cleveland. Last but not least there is social media. You might want to check out some of the top blogs and twitter accounts to stay in the know. CDW Healthcare published a broad list of health-related blogs they consider the top 50 ones in 2016. Health Data Management published a list of 25 top healthcare IT blogs they think you should be reading in late 2015. And Health Data Management named the 55 top HIT and health care experts to follow on Twitter. As I continue to contribute to the industry through social media, it’s great to be included on these last two lists as well! Wishing you all a happy, healthy, productive, and balanced new year as we slide into 2017!  This post was first published on Sue Schade's Health IT Connect blog.

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