12 of the most-read columns of 2019

Rapid changes in the healthcare industry are placing new challenges on information technology.


Readers had their favorites; top columns of 2019

Health Data Management regularly asks industry experts to share their thoughts about the industry and what trends are just over the horizon. Contributions regularly come in to discuss emerging technology, security issues, new pressures on IT posed by value-based care, and more. What follows are summaries of, and links to, some of the most-read columns of 2019.



Why six trends are pointing to a revolution in healthcare

Fred Bazzoli

Published: March 30

Healthcare is in the midst of a dramatic shift, as new players surge into the business of health. The latest step in this evolution came Friday, with reports that Walmart is in discussions to partner with—or perhaps even acquire—Humana, one of the nation’s largest insurers.

Read this column here.



How telemedicine is evolving to support variety in care delivery

Sawad Thotathil, MD

Published on March 21

Telemedicine is nothing new; former American Telemedicine Association CEO Jonathan Linkous estimates that it’s been around for about 40 years, ever since doctors started doing two-way telephone consultations. What is new is how telemedicine has grown exponentially in the past five years. Simply put, more sophisticated and cheaper telecommunications, mobile device and remote monitoring technologies are empowering telemedicine to substantially bridge the gap, quite literally, between the physical locations of doctors and patients, anywhere in the world.

Read this column here.



Salesforce acquisition of Tableau – What does it mean?

Andrew White

Published on June 12

Recent acquisitions signal something in the market. I am not sure myself what, though the hype related to the moves is exciting. Some might conclude this is a new trend; some might look back at the days when SAP acquired Business Objects and IBM acquired Cognos and Oracle acquired Siebel. I really can’t say one way or the other. I am sure our analysts will have a point of view here

Read this column here.



Four trends that may steal the show at HIMSS19

Alex Green

Published on January 31

Just before the HIMSS19 annual conference, Green offered these observations.

In less than two weeks, 45,000 health IT professionals, clinicians, executives and “technology superheroes” (a HIMSS’ term, not ours, but one we’re going to run with) will descend on Orlando for the annual HIMSS conference. Viewed as the pinnacle for new product launches in digital health, the exhibition floor at HIMSS also offers a glimpse of the future and a reflection of the state of healthcare IT today.

Read this column here.



How to get the data right to advance collaboration, build trust

John Kontor, MD

Published on August 30

In the decade has since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, adoption of electronic health records has broadened significantly, and technology has exponentially increased the amount of information healthcare professionals have about their patients. Through mandating transparency of medical records, the reality of interoperability—the ability to efficiently and effectively share patient information with patients and everyone on their care team—is credibly on the horizon. The incentives are aligned; the technology exists. Now is the time to accomplish our goal of shared patient, provider and payer access to health information—and the onus is on us to get it right.

Read the column here.



Why Social Determinants of Health raise the question, 'Now What?'

Jacob Reider, MD

Published on September 30

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are at last being given the recognition they deserve, thanks largely to their central role in achieving value-based care. One example of the increased recognition is the creation of ICD-10 “Z codes,” enabling providers to document and communicate SDOH issues within the electronic health record. Initiatives such as the Social Interventions Research & Evaluation Network (SIREN) Gravity Project are focused on identifying and expanding medical codes across multiple standards systems to improve providers’ capacity to document and communicate SDOH screening, diagnoses, and related interventions.

Read the column here.



Why healthcare analytics will deliver more results in 2019

Andy De

Published on January 28

We find ourselves on the cusp of some very interesting dynamics in 2019 from a healthcare technology and innovation perspective. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) including machine learning, natural language processing (NLP) and robotics have shown incredible promise in terms of automating repetitive manual tasks as well as improving decision making. Leaders in the healthcare industry—as well as technology vendors—are witnessing this first hand and are planning to integrate AI with next generation analytics platforms to empower executives, clinicians and analysts with unprecedented actionable insights from the board room to the point of care.

Read the column here.



Why interoperability matters to the current and future state of healthcare

Jerris Heaton

Published on November 8

In the modern world of healthcare, it’s critical for technology to be interoperable. Different EHR systems must have the ability to exchange information between providers. Offering better workflows, improved clarity, and better patient care, true interoperability between systems, however, remains elusive. Fundamentally, interoperability delivers the opportunity for better care coordination and lower healthcare costs. The reality is that there are many different EHR systems, and when sharing patient data is vital to providing care, the inability of these systems to talk to one another results in hurdles and challenges.

Read the column here.



Why it’s time to hire a medical device security officer

Shelly Harvill

Published on April 25

Healthcare, compared with many other industries, is slow to adopt organizational change around new tools and technologies. This rings particularly true in the creation of new professional roles to revised adaptive organization frameworks. Medical device security enforcement is a great example of this. Until recently, healthcare leaders prioritized digitizing their collateral, including patient data and health records, without a leading focus on security and data privacy. This classic case of running before walking is affirmed by the Ponemon Institute’s benchmark study on healthcare data security, which revealed 89 percent of healthcare organizations had patient data lost or stolen in the past two years.

Read the column here.



How blockchain could make an impact in healthcare

Rick Krohn

Published on January 8

Blockchain, like other young and disruptive technologies, offers wide opportunities to impact healthcare, an industry that is primed for disruption. Despite being the largest sector of the U.S. economy, healthcare is plagued by slow systems, wasteful financing, and resource utilization and operational inefficiencies. To address these issues, innovative solutions like blockchain can alter the arithmetic of healthcare delivery, and the solution set is wide ranging.

Read the column here.



Why episode-based analytics help unlock healthcare value

Kevin Mehta and Matthew Beatty

Published on August 12

By enabling healthcare organizations to better assess risk at the patient level and develop a more nuanced understanding of care delivery, episode-based analytics are essential to the healthcare industry’s shift from volume to value. Episode-based payments, or bundled payments, have become an increasingly important part of value-based care agreements between payers and providers in recent years. An episode of care is a group of clinically related services delivered to a patient over time, such as the term of a pregnancy culminating in delivery, or a knee replacement and rehab.

Read the column here.



Challenges in using predictive analytics within clinical workflow

Patrick Wells

Published on May 7

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink—this adage is especially true when it comes to implementing predictive analytics in a healthcare setting. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to detect the likelihood of disease is still a hot topic. As anyone who attended this year’s HIMSS conference will tell you, there is no shortage of vendors making grand promises based on what they can do with your data.

Read the column here.



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