According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the flu season is going to be bad this year. There have already been more than 7 million Americans sick with the flu, and we’re still only in January.
Do you want to avoid getting the flu and steer clear of other health conditions as well? Then you should learn how to improve physical health to lower your chances of getting sick this winter.
There are a series of simple steps that you can (and should!) take to turn yourself into a healthier person overall. You won’t have to worry about getting sidelined by sickness this flu season when you take the right approach to staying healthy.
Find out how to do it below.
Eat More Fruits and Vegetables
When you sit down for a meal, health experts recommend that about 50% of your plate be made up of fruits and vegetables. Are you getting even close to that amount of fruits and vegetables with your meals?
If not, there won’t be much of a point in trying to figure out how to improve physical health in other areas of your life.
You’re not going to be giving your body the nutrients that it needs to fight off illnesses.
Some people attempt to work more fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods into their diets after they get sick. But you’re much better off making room for these foods in your diet when you’re healthy so that you can keep it that way.
Commit to Getting the Right Amount of Exercise
Studies have suggested that every time you work out, you put a little bit of stress on your body’s immune system. By doing this, research shows that you may be able to build your immune system up and make it very strong over time.
But unfortunately, most people don’t take advantage of this big benefit that comes along with exercising. More than 80% of Americans don’t get enough exercise day in and day out.
If you fall into this category and you find that you’re always getting sick, you should do something about it.
Start exercising more often by enrolling in 24-hour gym in Knox, or even if just at home, and see what a difference it makes in terms of your body’s ability to stay healthy. Pro tip: If you get hungry on your jogs, runs or bike tours, take some quick and ready to eat meals with you for a quick energy boost – you can easily order them online.
Get More Than Enough Sleep at Night
The state of sleep in the U.S. is, in a word, sad. There are so many people who aren’t getting the recommended 7 or 8 hours of sleep every night.
Some people aren’t sleeping enough because they have an untreated sleep condition. Others aren’t sleeping enough because they’re too stressed out to fall asleep at night.
And then, there are those who are staying up until all hours of the night binge-watching Netflix shows and depriving themselves of sleep for no real reason. It’s making America a very tired nation as a whole.
It’s also putting people at risk to get sick more often. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body doesn’t get the time it needs to recover from everything that you put it through each day.
This can leave you susceptible to the flu and other illnesses. It can also affect your mental health in ways you might not have imagined.
Take Your Vitamins
Do you expect the foods that you eat to provide you with the vitamins that your body needs? If so, you’re likely doing your body a huge disservice.
The foods that you’re eating likely don’t contain enough vitamins and minerals for your body to use. This is leading to a shortage of essential vitamins and minerals in your system.
Change this by talking to your doctor about taking multivitamins or other supplements for your health. You can place an order online and have these things shipped right to your front door so that you can begin taking advantage of them.
Keep Your Stress Levels to a Minimum
As we mentioned earlier, stress can hurt a person by preventing them from getting enough sleep at night. It can also wreak havoc on their lives in a variety of ways.
For example, stress can have a huge impact on your mental health. It can make it difficult for you to cope with everyday life.
Stress can also cause you to gain or lose a bunch of weight in a short amount of time in some cases. It can leave you feeling lethargic as well.
And if you don’t learn how to manage stress, it could even make you sick. There are a number of illnesses that people might be forced to deal with if stress gets the better of them.
It’s why you should make it a point to get rid of as much stress as you can from your life. You’ll feel better physically and mentally once you remove the majority of the stress that you’re dealing with now from your life.
Wash Your Hands on a Regular Basis (and Do It the Right Way!)
At the height of the flu season, you should work on washing your hands at least a few times every day. Any time you touch any person’s hand or touch something that someone else touched, think about washing your hands.
Maybe, more importantly, think about washing them the right way. Amazingly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that about 97% of people don’t wash their hands the right way in a recent study.
Washing your hands can stop germs from making their way into your system. You should wash them early and often both during flu season and all year round.
Learn How to Improve Physical Health to Avoid Getting Sick
Now that you know how to improve physical health and keep from getting sick, start doing it. Follow the steps laid out here to make yourself a much healthier person in 2020.
You’ll be surprised by how much better you feel when you eat right, exercise, sleep enough, and take your vitamins. You might even feel like a brand-new person in just a few months.
Read the articles on our blog to find other tips for staying healthy.
Kristin Simonini, vice president of product, Applause
Healthcare has long been looked at as a laggard when it comes to adopting digital services. Part of that is due to the stringent regulations of the industry and the sensitivity surrounding personally identifiable information. Part of the blame, however, falls on healthcare providers themselves. As more and more providers in the industry start to embrace digital innovation, a number of key trends emerged over the past decade including:
The embrace of mobile technology for scheduling appointments and other routine tasks
Telehealth patients accessing doctors for consults, education, and certain outpatient treatments across a variety of fields
The IoT explosion (Fitbits and other wearables) providing customers health information to drive the healthcare they receive
Healthcare’s focus on patient experience means bringing a critical eye to current digital experiences. Ease-of-use and inclusivity must be considered in order to ensure high-quality digital experiences across all touchpoints, particularly on smartwatches, tablets, and smart speakers
In terms of predictions for 2020, we expect use of voice technology will continue to grow and will empower the healthcare industry in new ways, including supporting patients. The benefits that voice brings to healthcare can be seen in medical record transcriptions, chatbots sharing the work, sharing knowledge, voice-user interface, and connecting clinics to customers.
In addition, AI will continue to impact the healthcare industry in numerous ways. As healthcare embraces AI, it will also need to address issues of bias. All types of AI – from virtual assistants learning how different users ask for the same thing, to healthcare apps identifying potential health issues from uploaded photos – have been hampered by the same challenge: sourcing enough data to teach the machine how to interpret and respond, and then testing the output at scale to ensure the results are accurate and human-like when necessary. To mitigate bias concerns, healthcare will need to make AI more representative of patients
Today, healthcare payers and providers are spending nearly $30 billion every year on analytics and using over 415 different vendors for their analytics needs. This is a tremendous waste of resources and time. We’ll see an accelerating trend toward converged analytics solutions that cross clinical, financial and operational boundaries to enterprise analytics solutions.
Enterprise analytics will dramatically increase the speed and efficacy of population health programs because when you have both fresh claims-based data and clinical analytics you can diagnosis, intervene and engage in care management programs far faster and with much greater confidence in the data and results. This is where healthcare will be moving in 2020.
In the year ahead the health care sector is going to continue to see investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. That dimension of innovation in hi-tech will continue to evolve and emerge and markets will slowly open and mature.
I believe health information exchange or HIE – once known to most of us as regional health information organizations or RHIOs – will be back in vogue. What began more than a decade ago went underground for a while but ACOs and other initiatives have resurrected HIE infrastructure and made it abundantly clear that HIE is vital to care coordination, outcomes and value-based reimbursement (VBR). All-provider clinical messaging, outcomes measure, quality assurance, transitions in care, cost and utilization management, and referral management absolutely must be supported by HIE infrastructure.
Biometrics will continue their spread and companies such as Apple and Google (for better or for worse) are making it clear they see the future and are investing accordingly.
Lastly, population health management platforms that enable functions like risk stratification will see tremendous growth.
Tim O’Malley, president and chief growth officer, EarlySense
Technology advancements over the past decade have enabled us to accurately track millions of physiological patient parameters in real time. As we head into 2020, the industry will continue to leverage the incredible power of AI-driven “smart data” and analytics to not only predict potential adverse patient events, but also prevent them.
Patient care will continue to become even more personalized and new standards for patient safety will emerge. Predictive analytics will be used across the continuum of care- from hospitals to skilled nursing facilities and homes- to support health staff and patients, improving clinical outcomes while also creating a potential for significant financial savings.
Last month saw the rollout of the latest upgrades to Amazon’s Echo speaker line: earbuds, glasses, and a ring that connect to Amazon’s personal assistant Alexa. These new products are just three examples of a growing trend to incorporate technology seamlessly into our human experience, representing the ever-expanding frontiers for technology that have moved far past the smartphone.
These trends and others are going to make a big impact in the healthcare space, especially as providers, payers and consumers alike slowly but surely recognize the need to incorporate tech into their workflows to meet the growing consumer demand for digital health tools. At the same time, the data-hungry nature of these innovations is creating its own problems, driving a discussion around privacy and security that is louder and more urgent than ever.
Here are three trends to look out for in the coming year:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning are growing into themselves
In 2020, we will continue to see AI and machine learning push boundaries, while at the same time mature and settle into more defined patterns.
With the adoption of technologies like FaceID, facial recognition technology will be an important player in privacy and security. It can be leveraged to simplify the security requirements that make multi-factor authentication a time-consuming process for healthcare professionals — on average, doctors spend fifty-two hours a year just logging in to EHR systems. On the patient end, this same technology has the ability to detect emotional states of patients and anticipate needs based upon them, and the success of startups like Affectiva, the brainchild of MIT graduates, shows its tremendous promise..
Meanwhile, FDA-approved innovations from Microsoft and others claim the ability of computer vision for assisting radiologists and pathologists in identifying tumors and abnormalities in the heart. While robotic primary care is a long way off, some view AI as a rival to more niche clinical positions.
Although Google first gained prominence as a search engine, it quickly moved into other sectors, like smart home tech and cloud computing. One of the latest projects associated with the brand relates to health care, or, more specifically, electronic health records (EHR).
In early 2019, rumors began circulating about Google’s plans to develop an EHR tool. In late November, the company confirmed with an official blog post discussing the project. It centered on the challenges associated with health data, such as the variety of formats and number of people contributing to files.
Accessible Health Records
In the blog entry, Dr. David Feinberg, the head of health, claims the Google EHR solution will put all health records into a single, search-friendly database. This setup will reduce the time providers spend hunting for information.
A product video accompanying the post featured Dr. Alvin Rajkomar, a product manager and practicing physician. He discussed how providers spend half their days working with EHR interfaces and often need to log into several systems to acquire necessary materials. While Google’s product is still in the pilot phase, it’s available for widespread clinical use.
The video demonstrates how the Google EHR tool offers all patient information needed in one place. For example, a doctor can see data about a patient’s primary complaint, plus the results of lab work, without switching between tools. Users can simply switch between tabs, much like on an internet browser, to see different information.
A search box at the top allows people to use natural-language queries and find what they need. The system also handles potentially misspelled words, similar to searching for something on Google.
Context to Patient Information
The Google EHR tool gives authorized users access to data via tables and charts, allowing them to see how a patient’s condition changes over time. When users import data from another location, it’s highlighted grey to differentiate it. Simply hover the cursor to see the original source.
5G is on its way, promising high-speed internet access to everyone, everywhere. But how will increased connectivity impact overall security? Cybersecurity companies in the healthcare industry are working to effectively secure hospital networks and medical devices against hacks and vulnerabilities, but as technology like 5G becomes ubiquitous, more and more devices will have additional — and often unnecessary — connectivity features, thus creating more potential for vulnerabilities and breaches. Taking a proactive approach to cybersecurity is the solution we need to see more of in 2020.
In 2020, I expect there to be a significant push on price transparency to help patients (and providers) align more on the actual cost of services. This will help patients know what they are getting into before services are rendered and help providers secure payment prior to any procedures being performed. There has been an upward trend on this in the urgent care space, but I expect there to be an major expansion in 2020 with many other types of healthcare providers.
The tools available in the market, which will gain great adoption in 2020, will help to not only estimate costs, but will also help provide financing options for patients. These financing options often come with high interest rates, but give patients the ability to get the services they need today. With high deductible health plans continue to gain market share, patient out of pocket costs will continue to rise in 2020. Healthcare providers can no longer afford to wait for these funds after the fact, as patients take longer than the average insurance company to pay their bill.
Therefore, providers will be eager to secure payment before services are rendered in an effort to combat this new challenge they haven’t dealt with until recent years. With higher patient responsibility these healthcare providers have seen higher bad debt write-offs than ever before. The struggle providers are facing as more and more patients can’t afford to pay their bills is battling the thought of sending patients to collections and/or firing patients from their practice.
In 2020, providers are going to have to set stricter guidelines, collect more money at the point of service, offer financing options, and give greater financial transparency to patients (and themselves) before providing services. This opportunity is ripe for more healthcare technology companies to come in with price transparency and financing technology, coupled with patient engagement tools. These tools will help providers both engage patients and secure a form of payment to limit write-offs and increase collections.
Without this, we will continue to see more patients turned over to debt collections and even more patients filing for bankruptcy, due to their healthcare care costs getting out of hand. Healthcare technology companies in this space can help alleviate this issue and reduce the burden to both healthcare providers and patients.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Solutions – platforms that aggregate large amounts of patient data, like EHRs/EMRs, will continue to partner with leading AI companies to combine the massive amounts of patient data with other analytics and capabilities to help monitor and treat populations. Digital health management will expand beyond chronic disease management to become a mainstay in the general population.
People will continue to adopt the right technology for their health goals and use digital health management to navigate their healthcare journey. Femtech will continue to expand aggressively as the female population looks to help manage every aspect of their health with both in-person and digital resources.
American consumers are moving toward making mobile health applications a part of their regular routines to manage chronic conditions or daily health and fitness, according to a 2019 online survey conducted by Redox. Nearly one-third of respondents said they use or are open to using mobile apps to manage a condition or their fitness routines. Gen Xers (35- to 54-year-olds) are at the forefront of patients clamoring to take control and manage their health with mobile apps.
The survey of 1,019 American adults found that the Gen X group is 37% more likely than Gen Z (18- to 24-year-olds), 31% more likely than baby boomers (55+), and 4% more likely than Millennials (25- to 34-year-olds) to manage a medical condition with a mobile app. Gen X is 48% more likely than baby boomers, 15% more likely than Gen Z, and 7% more likely than Millennials to use a mobile app for health and fitness.
“In leading the adoption curve, it seems that Gen Xers are not only technically savvy but also highly engaged in their well-being to help ensure they can maintain good health for as long as possible. The survey shows that Gen Xers are most likely to use mobile apps to help them take care of their health,” said Niko Skievaski, Redox co-founder and president. “But over time, more consumers will start to become comfortable monitoring, managing, and sharing health information.
As apps become commonplace in a person’s lifestyle, their comfort and confidence with the technology only gets stronger. Once they’re convinced there’s value in using apps and that their data is secure, they’ll demand apps that can deliver benefits on important health issues – from chronic conditions to preventive healthcare.”
Mobile App Benefits and Concerns
Like the adoption curve that financial and retail applications experienced a decade ago, widespread support for mobile health apps may take some time as consumers gain confidence in their privacy and security features. Of the respondents not using mobile health apps, privacy and security is cited as the top reason.
Baby boomers are the most concerned about privacy and security, topping Millennials by 54% and Gen X by 23%. Gen X selected privacy and security as a primary reason 25% more than Millennials.
Conversely, 42% of respondents are willing to share their information with doctors and providers – with baby boomers 13% more willing than Millennials and 8% more willing than Gen X. And females are 18% more likely than males to share information across all generations.
When asked why mobile apps are helpful, the top responses are enhanced communication with doctors and providers and the ability to engage with their personal health.
The rapid digitalization happening in healthcare promises to streamline patient care and the availability of patient information.
Overall, advancements in technology fueling this are a step in the right direction. That said, there are side effects to this trend that put sensitive patient data at risk.
Healthcare organizations are rife with sensitive personal data, ranging from health records to social security numbers, birth dates, and addresses. This makes them an appealing target for cybercriminals looking to steal and profit from that information. One recent survey reports that the majority of hospitals (82 percent) have had a significant security incident in the past year.
Healthcare organizations must protect sensitive patient data as mandated by theHealth Insurance Portability and Accountability Act(HIPAA), the regulatory framework for the healthcare industry. As breaches continue to rise, healthcare providers and others in the industry must understand how to properly secure this sensitive data.
Here are three ways to ensure HIPAA compliance with patient privacy.
Ensure Technical Safeguards are in Place
Healthcare organizations must protect sensitive patient data from external and internal threats. While digital health records may improve efficiency, this electronically protected health information (ePHI) must be kept safe via technical safeguards.
This includes access and audit control requirements that determine access control capabilities for all information systems that have ePHI and ensuring that activity within these systems can be traced back to specific users. Organizations also need formal policies for access control.
Authentication and integrity are also critical, meaning that healthcare organizations must protect ePHI from being altered or destroyed and must also secure that data while stored at rest. Authentication can be accomplished via digital signatures, checksum technology, and error-correcting memory.
Data in motion must also be secured, especially with the proliferation of electronic medical records (EMR) and health information exchanges (HIEs). Healthcare organizations must be able to securely transmit patient medical records between facilities.
Apply Administrative Safeguards
Healthcare organizations bear responsibility for both Protected Health Information (PHI) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII), which requires the proper categorization of each type of data. Each type of data requires its own unique treatment, making it paramount that the information is properly classified.
Administrative safeguards break down into the following categories:
Security management process
Assigned security responsibility
Workforce security
Information access management
Security awareness and training
Security incident procedures
Contingency plan
Evaluation
These areas help organizations implement policies and procedures to guide employees in the proper care and use of ePHI. This may include security training requirements along with a delegation of security responsibilities within an organization.
Prepare for Compliance Audits
It may sound obvious, but preparing for and submitting to compliance audits on a regular basis can help healthcare organizations stay in check and avoid expensive HIPAA fines. By employing a feedback loop based on the results of reviews, organizations can inform future decisions regarding security. Organizations should be conducting internal reviews ahead of scheduled audits to go over daily logs and to seek out anomalies, errors, and other suspicious activity that could signal a threat.
More than simply scanning for these anomalies, organizations must also have an appropriate and measured response mechanism in place. The ability to quickly respond to security issues is incredibly important and requires documentation and training.
This new digital environment makes for exciting new opportunities in the healthcare space. Unfortunately, it also brings with it new threats and security concerns that must be addressed. HIPAA compliance requires a comprehensive strategy to protect PHI and PII, including the right technology, the right safeguards, and the right training.
By Chad Cragle, information security officer, FormAssembly.
Data collection is one of the most important processes in healthcare today. But outdated methods of data collection have made it increasingly difficult to both efficiently collect data and keep it secure. How companies collect patients’ health information is extremely important, as personal data can easily be exposed in the event of a breach.
As we saw earlier this year, the Quest Diagnostics breach caused about 11.9 million patients to have their data exposed. These kinds of breaches are especially delicate compared to other types of breaches, since you can usually replace credit cards or social security numbers, but you can’t retract what is released to the public. This kind of leaked information can have a negative effect on patients’ lives, perhaps in areas like job applications or relationships.
To prevent these data breaches from occurring, it is essential to have the proper precautions in place. Manual data entry presents its own challenges – it is tedious and allows room for error. Manual data entry will not cut it, as we have seen from recent data breaches.
We need a new method of collecting and storing data in a way that is simple, secure and compliant with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. This is where web forms enter the picture.
Web Forms are the Key to Securing Healthcare Data
Web forms are transforming the way that data is collected and stored. This data is collected through a method where it is encrypted in transit and at rest, enabling safeguards to ensure that this data cannot be seen by those who do not have access. At our company, for example, we use TLS 1.2 to make sure that the entire data collection process, from the web browser to the endpoint, is encrypted.
These forms benefit users, providing a simple, hands-off process to collect data: all they need to do is click the box, type in the information needed, and they are then able to mask the data and send it off. Though this process might seem daunting, I’ve found that companies and healthcare professionals can use a paid service to collect data. And by doing so, they are freeing up time and resources.
Doctors and other healthcare providers should focus on diagnosing and treating patients, not collecting their information. Utilizing web forms frees up medical professionals to do what they were trained to do, leaving the responsibility to the form builder to take care of all the security measurements and checks to make sure that this data is safe.
Companies and Healthcare Organizations Need to Take Data More Seriously
Regulations such as GDPR in the EU and HIPAA for healthcare professionals are drastically changing how companies and healthcare organizations are handling their customer or patient data. GDPR was a great example of transparency, forcing companies to tell consumers that their data is being collected and how it is being used, mainly in the form of “cookies” on websites. And in the future, I believe we’re going to see a more robust security framework arise, such as in states like California, where harsher regulations such as the CCPA are rolling out, and other states are beginning to follow suit.
Healthcare professionals are also looking into data mining to diagnose patients without even seeing them in person. Even now, companies like Cambridge Analytica collect hundreds of data points on a certain person, and they receive this information from the various websites they visit.
I can see a point where data mining in the healthcare industry will be huge, as healthcare professionals could potentially diagnose a condition that a patient has just from looking at their data- either from the websites they visit, comments they posted on social media, or even over the phone.
Last month saw the rollout of the 
Although Google first gained prominence as a search engine, it quickly moved into other sectors, like smart home tech and cloud computing. One of the latest projects associated with the brand relates to health care, or, more specifically, electronic health records (EHR).
American consumers are moving toward making mobile health applications a part of their regular routines to manage chronic conditions or daily health and fitness, according to a 2019 online survey conducted by 
The rapid digitalization happening in healthcare promises to streamline patient care and the availability of patient information.