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.
By Erin Jospe, MD, chief medical officer and SVP of account management, Kyruus.
As clinicians, we pride ourselves on our ability to provide care that meets the clinical needs of our patients and to call upon our colleagues when their skills are needed. We advocate for our patients in word and deed, and we are committed to our common mission of caring for our fellow human beings with warmth, sympathy, and understanding as much as with scalpels and drugs. We took the Hippocratic Oath, and we execute upon it in a deeply personal way.
However, for something that is inherently so personal for many of us, it is shocking to learn that so many of our patients—60%, in fact—are prepared to switch to another provider. It feels like a betrayal, and we can’t help but feel hurt just a little if we continue to cling to the idea that healthcare should be more than merely transactional.
Healthcare consumer research shows that patients do continue to value the quality of their interactions and experiences with us, with 84% saying that our communication skills and approach are extremely or very important to them. Likewise, 88% of respondents hold our clinical expertise in the same regard. So why are so many looking for new providers?
The answer is access. Access in the form of a sooner appointment. Access in the form of online scheduling. Access in the form of a more convenient location, accurate insurance information, and insightful feedback from other patients like them. Access is what matters when it comes to where and with whom consumers choose to receive their care.
Being seen quickly is consistently one of the top priorities consumers cite when selecting a provider. Nearly 60% have searched for a provider who could see them sooner and 39% have actually switched to see a different clinician as a result. We can conclude from this that having alternative sites of care and delivery mechanisms that can accommodate this need for timeliness can, at a minimum, keep patients within our networks.
Because convenience is such a prominent driver in patient behavior, we need to embrace it by either creating space within our schedules – which is often nearly impossible – or integrating with other care modalities, such as through virtual visits and urgent care or retail clinics, when appropriate, to ensure our patients’ needs are met.
Healthcare and pharma is one of the fastest-developing industries today, with 2019 characterized by a diversity of startups developing blockchain-based solutions to track and trace global drug supply.
The Quality Assurance engineers at QA Madness predict the active use of blockchain and the growth of traceability system solutions. This trend was offered in 2018 by the Global Future Council Report on Health. But since we get more and more healthcare digital software that functions on the blockchain, I think the trend will be gaining traction in 2020.
Blockchain has all chances to revolutionize the industry, making the global pharma export/import/supply transparent and safe. Blockchain can divide pharmaceutical suppliers and customers as well as to provide secure record-keeping of each transaction. This is by far the most effective and transparent way to ensure trust among the supply chains.
Although usually blockchain apps differ, they share a common approach — creating nodes, digital financial transactions distributed among several parties. That means blockchain creates a corruption-resistant system where the nodes detect legitimate data and, therefore, enable them within the system.
The data itself looks like a series of chronologically organized transactions with a unique digital signature. Such mapping supports stable activity regulation where a person, system or company openly links to the data they contributed.
Therefore, digital signatures, hash values, encryption — all standard security features will come in handy for those who develop a blockchain app for tracing pharma products.
The benefits such traceability system brings
Data protection. Blockchain capacity combines streamlined visibility of stakeholders’ movements through the supply chain transits with private data messaging. The system prevents sensitive business data leakage. Permission-based private messaging controls the list of partners you trust.
Trust and transparency. This is about certifying the drug & material suppliers and the opportunity to trace the whole journey in any supply chain. The possibility to trace stakeholders at any supply chain stage is by far the most effective way to eliminate global illegal drug shipping. As a result, drug safety blockchain creates a greater sense of trust between pharmaceutical companies and patients. Moreover, medicine turn back policy will become much more effective through the traceable supply chain.
Easy and fast management. Blockchain pharmaceutical supply helps to identify the trusted trading and supply service providers. The technology sends quick batch reminders to detect the exact location and source of medicines maintaining increased safety of patients’ health.
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.
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.
As clinicians, we pride ourselves on our ability to provide care that meets the clinical needs of our patients and to call upon our colleagues when their skills are needed. We advocate for our patients in word and deed, and we are committed to our common mission of caring for our fellow human beings with warmth, sympathy, and understanding as much as with scalpels and drugs. We took the Hippocratic Oath, and we execute upon it in a deeply personal way.
Healthcare and pharma is one of the fastest-developing industries today, with 2019 characterized by a diversity of startups developing blockchain-based solutions to track and trace global drug supply.