By Janak Joshi, senior vice president, chief technology officer and head of strategy, Life Image.
Janak Joshi
In December 2018, the FDA announced its new framework for the real world evidence (RWE) program, which would require including imaging data alongside claims, electronic health records (EHRs) and other datasets in clinical research. In issuing this new framework, regulators underlined the continued importance of using contextualized, quality datasets to make drug development faster, safer, more efficient and less expensive.
Because of this move to include authentic patient data in the drug development process, imaging data has become an essential part of RWE as it can accelerate the development cycle and improve the confidence in the final clinical arguments in support of drugs going to market.
Imaging data plays such a leading role in clinical decision-making because it is the most advanced diagnostic evidence for several diseases, and it can clearly show disease progression and drug impact across a variety of therapeutic areas, among other reasons. While EHRs and medical claims are the predominate sources of data, because they were initially designed for billing and payment purposes they do not have the depth and breadth needed to accurately capture the nuances of a patient’s full clinical history – nor do they contain imaging information.
Clinical researchers looking to achieve a holistic view of each patient’s healthcare journey by incorporating medical imaging into their RWE programs should avoid these three things.
Biased data
Institutional bias stems from using data from a single health system, which tends to follow a uniform set of treatment protocols, leading to homogenous evidence data. A diverse dataset includes variation, for instance in geography, which can influence socioeconomic and environmental factors, level of education, healthcare access, payer mix and demographics.
The most effective RWE incorporates medical data, including imaging, from varied populations that include both research and non-research settings, AMCs and community hospitals, publicly and privately funded institutions, and a mix of highly insured and uninsured patients. The ultimate goal of RWE is to be representative of any and all patients across the globe.
A limited, siloed data pool
Small datasets do not accurately reflect the “real world,” therefore RWE requires very large databases with various datasets in order to ensure data integrity and credibly match patients to appropriate clinical trials. This poses a challenge since much of today’s data is siloed. To make RWE representative of outcomes and context, clinical researchers must break down siloes to achieve a large, interoperable pool of quality data from a breadth of sources, which they can normalize and match across sets for optimal results.
Take, for example, a new drug trial that needs to involve 500 individuals meeting specific real-world data standards. For each participant, researchers may require four years of prescription details, four years of imaging data, five years of blood test results, as well as genomics and other relevant data. However, consider that over the years many of these patients likely went to various pharmacies, switched health plans and/or providers, and had imaging and blood tests performed at various facilities or out-of-network sites. As a result, each patient’s information may be spread out over multiple EHR systems and may even be in non-digital, fax or CD formats.
Ivanti today announced, during Ivanti Interchange 2019 in Nashville, Tenn., the results of a survey of 400 IT professionals that captures the challenges faced by IT when it comes to silos, data and implementation.
Among its findings, the research revealed that when dealing with silos in IT and departments, three key priorities suffer the most, including: automation (46 percent), user productivity and troubleshooting (42 percent) and customer experience (41 percent). The findings did show that onboarding/offboarding suffers the least (20 percent) because of silos – so it appears that IT and HR have one of the better working relationships.
When looking for real-time insight, security is still king. Seventy percent of IT professionals said they wanted to know most about security status versus other priorities. Respondents were least interested in real-time insights around warranty data.
Other noteworthy findings of the survey include:
15 percent of IT professionals say they have too many data sources to count
More than half of IT professionals (51 percent) report they have to work with their data for days, weeks or more, before its actionable
Only 10 percent of respondents said the data they receive is actionable within minutes
One in three respondents said they have the resources to act on their data but more than half (52 percent) said they only sometimes have the resources
Getting an SD card formatted is probably one of the worst things to happen to anyone, especially when such devices contain important or sensitive data. It doesn’t matter if you have formatted your SD card by mistake or had to do it to resolve a critical issue. Doing so can end up in unexpected data loss in one way or another. While it might seem like the end of the world, you can easily recover formatted SD card content by following the right approach. In the following, we will discuss a step by step solution to perform SD card recovery using a Mac or Windows application.
SD card classification and types
Before we discuss the working of a Mac data recovery tool in detail, it is important to cover the basics. For instance, you should know the type of SD card that you own so that you can easily perform SD card recovery on Mac or Windows. Ideally, SD cards can be classified on the basis of the following parameters.
By Capacity
This is the most common way to classify SD cards as it plays a crucial role in determining their cost as well. Most of the common capacities are 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, 128 GB, 1 TB, and so on. These days, even two or four TB SD cards are also available.
By transfer speed
This is the second most important characteristics of SD cards. The ultra fast cards are of either class 1 or 3. On the other hand, normal SD cards can be of class 2, 4, 6 or 10 (2 is the slowest while 10 is the fastest).
By size
A lot of people prefer smaller cards due to their compactness. Ideally, SD cards can be available in standard, micro or mini sizes. Standards cards have the dimension of 32x24x2.1 mm and are mostly used for PC. Mini SD cards (of dimension 21.5x20x1.4 mm) and micro SD cards (of dimension 15x11x1 mm) are mostly used in phones, digital cameras, and other compact devices.
Recoverit SD card data recovery for Mac and Windows
Recoverit Data Recovery is developed by Wondershare and supports all the above-listed SD cards. It also supports every major card manufactured by popular brands like Sony, SanDisk, Kingston, Patriot, HP, Samsung, etc. The recovery software supports all the major data types like photos, videos, audios, documents, compressed files, and more. It also provides a preview of the extracted content, letting us select the files we wish to recover.
The file recovery software for Mac and Windows features an intuitive interface and a simple click-through process.
It can recover all kinds of data from a formatted SD card. Some other data loss scenarios that it supports are corrupt storage, accidental deletion, malware attack, and more.
It supports more than 1,000 different file formats and every major data type.
The desktop application is available for free and supports macOS 10.6 or any later version (as well as Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10)
It supports all kinds of SD cards including standard, micro and mini cards of all the major brands. Apart from SD cards, you can also perform data recovery on USB drives, external hard disks, and other sources.
Imprivata announces that it will unlock the power of the cloud for clinical users by creating the first end-to-end Identity and Access Management (IAM) Cloud Platform for healthcare in collaboration with Microsoft. The Platform, anchored by Imprivata’s leading solution portfolio and commitment to building trusted digital identities, and the world-class scale and security of Microsoft’s cloud identity platform, Azure Active Directory, will address the unique challenges that healthcare customers face along the digital transformation journey.
Gus Malezis
“We’re delighted to announce this strategic collaboration with Microsoft and to introduce the Imprivata IAM Cloud Platform, which first brings the simplicity of Tap-In and Tap-Out to the cloud, and seamlessly supports access to Microsoft cloud applications like Microsoft Office 365 and more for our 1,945 healthcare customers,” said Gus Malezis, president and CEO at Imprivata. “Furthermore, the Platform leverages the existing Imprivata investments of our joint customers, enhancing the ROI of their current and future technology investments.”
As the first phase of the collaboration, Imprivata today launched Healthcare Seamless SSO, enterprise single sign-on into on all shared clinical workstations and mobile devices. Healthcare Seamless SSO extends the Tap-In and Tap-Out capabilities of Imprivata OneSign, allowing badge tap access into Office 365 and any application connected to Microsoft Azure Active Directory, including the extensive catalog of cloud-based applications in Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
“Imprivata has made great strides expanding on its proven, industry-leading solutions by integrating with Microsoft Azure Active Directory to help healthcare organizations leverage the cloud to lower costs,” said Chris Sakalosky, vice president, Microsoft US Health & Life Sciences. “This product integration with Imprivata OneSign is the exact type of technological solution that we’re proud to offer to our healthcare customers.”
Healthcare Seamless SSO eliminates the need for clinical and non-clinical Microsoft users to repeatedly type usernames and passwords to access any programs and applications. Leveraging Imprivata OneSign, Healthcare Seamless SSO can be used with all types of applications, saving care providers 45 minutes every shift, improving satisfaction levels, and driving EMR adoption. The Imprivata platform is also purpose-built to enhance additional workflows, including electronic prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS). Imprivata delivers a complete solution for complying with DEA requirements for EPCS while ensuring a fast, seamless workflow for providers through innovative and convenient authentication options, which is especially important given the increasing state, federal and industry requirements for EPCS.
BetterPT, a healthcare technology platform company providing end-to-end digital connectivity between physical therapists (PT), patients and physicians, announced today it has completed a $5 million Series A round of financing.
The Series A round was led by 5Lion Ventures and joined by Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and ID Fund. BetterPT will use the capital to expand its reach and adoption as the leading specialized PT marketplace in the U.S.
“BetterPT’s technology has the potential to address major shortcomings not just in physical therapy, but across the broader healthcare system, which continues to lag in innovative and interoperable technology,” said Ronald W. Russo, partner and COO of 5Lion Ventures. “We’re excited to work with BetterPT as we watch the business grow and scale across the healthcare infrastructure.”
“This financing is an important milestone for BetterPT as we increase the footprint of our unique healthcare offering in the U.S., connecting patients to physical therapists through a streamlined point of entry,” said Greg Peters, CEO of BetterPT. “We look forward to strategically growing our PT clinic customers as well as our patient user base.”
“HSS is focused on advancing quality and reliability across the spectrum of musculoskeletal health,” said Louis A. Shapiro, president and CEO of HSS. “Our strategic relationship with BetterPT is an important part of that, making it easier for consumers to independently identify and access the highest value physical therapy most convenient to where they live or work.”
By Ken Perez, vice president of healthcare policy, Omnicell, Inc.
Ken Perez
It was such a beautiful, logical vision: The creation of “an electronic circulatory system for health information that nourishes the practice of medicine, research, and public health, making health care professionals better at what they do and the American people healthier,” as David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology from 2009 to 2011, wrote in an article on the potential of the HITECH Act’s subsidization of the adoption of EHRs by hospitals and physician practices that appeared in the Dec. 30, 2009, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The HITECH Act was combined with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), an economic stimulus bill created to help the U.S. economy recover from an economic downturn that began in late 2007. The passage of the bill spawned an ambitious vision of an elaborate national health information infrastructure that would enable frictionless, collaborative data sharing primarily through a National Health Information Network (NHIN) that would connect an interlocking web of regional health information organizations (RHIOs) and health information exchanges (HIEs).
It must be emphasized that the NHIN vision was a federal government vision—not one generally shared by the private sector. It was never realized, and the adoption of EHRs by healthcare providers has been described as “a digital revolution gone wrong” and “a bridge to nowhere,” in the 15-page cover article of Fortune magazine’s April issue, entitled “Death by a Thousand Clicks,” by Erika Fry of the magazine and Fred Schulte of Kaiser Health News.
For their report—which has the feel of an exposé — Fry and Schulte interviewed more than 100 physicians, patients, IT experts, administrators, health policy leaders, attorneys, government officials, and representatives from several leading EHR vendors. They employ a combination of poignant vignettes of patients who were harmed by EHR shortcomings — including the experiences of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Beau and the husband of CMS Administrator Seema Verma — as well as ample facts and figures.
Per Fry and Schulte, the federal government has spent $36 billion to date to subsidize the adoption of EHRs by healthcare providers, and today, 96 percent of non-federal acute care hospitals and 86 percent of physician offices have EHRs.
Despite the significant amount of federal funding and broad adoption of EHRs, they have not fulfilled their potential, as Blumenthal has admitted. The expected “digital dividend” from EHRs has not materialized, or at least its magnitude is much smaller than hoped for. According to Fry and Schulte, EHRs’ general demerits include poor, tedious usability—which adds work and is cited as a major contributing factor to physician burnout — rampant errors that lead to patient safety risks, “upcoding” (bill inflation), lack of interoperability, widespread data blocking, and patients’ inability to access their EHRs. Data silos clearly exist between the 700 federally certified EHRs of widely varying functionality, as well as between provider organizations and other players in the healthcare system. In short, idealism has run into the reality of commercialization.
Fry and Schulte provide no optimistic, Hollywood ending to the article. Industry attempts to promote interoperability are described as fledgling, and their sobering conclusion is that the state of EHRs in the United States is “an unholy mess.”
By Manish Mathuria, chief technology officer and co-founder, Infostretch.
Manish Mathuria
The truism that “prevention is better than cure” is especially true in software, where a defect can have serious, sometimes life-threatening, consequences. Digital health presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities for those operating in this competitive and demanding market. The pressure to innovate and advance is immense, but so are concerns about safety, functionality, cost and privacy, to name a few.
When clinical insights combine with IT brilliance, the results can lead to fascinating health innovations. Radical new approaches, such as wearables and mobile devices which monitor, analyze and diagnose conditions, bring special meaning to the importance of error prevention versus recovery.
Lightning-fast technological innovation, fierce competition and stringent regulation combine to bring special challenges to a tester. The implications of software failure are severe. Another adage, “evolve or die,” springs to mind. The traditional testing function is what needs to evolve in this sector perhaps more than any other.
The quality assurance approach to testing must now make way for quality engineering, a new way of tackling quality control which focuses on improving the inherent design of the product throughout the software development life cycle. Why? Because traditional testing, performed at the end of the SDLC is out of its depth in the new era of digital transformation.
The Central and Southern Ohio chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (CSO HIMSS) announced its Spring conference titled “AI, Blockchain and Care: The Future ABC’s of Healthcare” will be held on Friday, May 10, 2019, at the Conference Center at OCLC, 6600 Kilgour Place, Dublin, Ohio.
The conference will open with a welcome from the CSO HIMSS program hair, Caitlin Graham, CSO HIMSS president, Ajay Sharma, and will include a presentation of Scholarship Awards to recipients Shreya Patel from Ohio State University and Melissa Schulte from Miami University. The conference will feature keynote addresses from Dr. Tina Moen, chief pharmacy officer of IBM Watson Health and Ed Marx, CIO, the Cleveland Clinic.
The conference will conclude with a blockchain panel discussion with two members from the HIMSS National Blockchain Task Force on the panel topic “ABC’s of Healthcare with blockchain. The Reality Today and how to make it work for you tomorrow.”
Ajay Sharma, president of CSO HIMSS said, “The CSO HIMSS Chapter likes to be at the forefront of educating our members with relevant trends for the healthcare IT ecosystem. AI and Blockchain are both areas that are being talked about in a healthcare provider setting due to clinicians being inundated with data. With cloud adoption, storage discussions start in the Petabytes. We are sure that in the not too distant future, the concept of ‘only Petabytes’ may sound quaint. AI provides hope to many in IT to tame that data challenge and be able to provide faster and more efficient care for our patient populations.”
In addition to the educational aspect of the event, there’s also the opportunity network with other attendees and innovative sponsors. Sponsors include Cisco, IBM, AHEAD and Box, Commvault, Nutanix, Path Forward IT, Zones Healthcare IT Solutions and Covermymeds.
BetterPT
