In today’s concierge economy there is an increasing number of things available on-demand at our beck and call. TV shows and movies, car services, local dining hot spots, even directions, are all accessible at the ready. With the proliferation of voice commands, typing has even been removed from the equation in certain instances. Patient portals aren’t quite there yet but the consumerization of IT has forever changed user expectations and unfortunately, left many industries struggling to catch up.
For the healthcare industry specifically, it’s been a hard pill to swallow as organizations have gone after the various government incentives offered through the HITECH Act. As those organizations have found out, the trail from paper-based records to fully digital portals can be a long and weary journey, but if the lofty consumer expectations can’t be met, the impatient patients will rear their ugly heads and make meaningful use requirements an even more elusive prey. The good news is that there are ways for healthcare organizations to make their patient portals seamless and efficient without having to develop an extravagant user experience that is on par with an Apple operating system.
When developing a patient portal, first and foremost, ease of use is of the essence to minimize the time needed for patients to accomplish tasks. Patients have very short and finite attention spans that are easily surpassed if they have to jump through too many hoops. Stage 2 meaningful use requirements included secure messaging, the ability to access and download electronic information, reminders sent for preventative and follow-up care, and general education materials.
These are all very basic tasks, but the parallel consumer experiences are incredibly user friendly, fast and intuitive. The key point to make is that the majority of patients really only need one of those criteria met for patient portals … speed. If patients can get what they need quickly, they are often satisfied. It’s not a social network, it’s a tool, so building patient portals with speed in mind is key to driving the patient engagement percentages required to meet the meaningful use standards. Given that so many of these processes are document heavy, streamlining the document viewing process is a key piece of the pie.
That document viewing part of the puzzle centers on the fact that patients benefit if only one method is needed to view the multitude of documents used in the healthcare realm. Records, prescriptions, X-rays and charts; the list goes on and on, not to mention the different digital formats in which the documents are often stored. Add to that the complexities involved when different organizations have different approaches to creating and storing these documents and the potential for complications and problems starts piling up quickly. Unfortunately, the place where all of these complexities converge is the patient. Portals need to be able to handle all of these document types with ease and again, quickly. HTML5 technology is a huge boost to this process as it enables browser-based document viewers to be easily integrated into patient portals. This means that any patient with an Internet connection and a standard browser can easily access any of their documents. There is no need for additional software downloads, such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat or even an image viewer, which is often the last straw for patients before giving up on the system completely.
Representing more than 5,000 app companies and information technology firms, ACT | The App Association is widely recognized as the foremost authority on the intersection of government and the app economy. In addition to drafting best practices, guidelines, and FAQs to help inform app companies about new legal obligations, ACT | The App Association hosts conferences, bootcamps and workshops to provide developers the resources they need to ensure compliance.
As the only organization focused on the needs of small business entrepreneurs from around the world, ACT | The App Association advocates for an environment that inspires and rewards innovation while providing resources to help its members leverage their intellectual assets to raise capital, create jobs, and continue innovating.
Here, Morgan Reed, executive director of the organization, discusses its goals, the app economy, how ACT | The App Association works across mobile health, innovations in the space and what’s likely to come in the year ahead.
What are the biggest barriers to entry for new health IT companies?
Morgan Reed
We have a “cascading” problem in the mobile health space right now. Regulatory guidance hasn’t kept pace with the rate of innovation, which has led to care providers being worried they will be exposed to liability, or will be providing services that aren’t covered by health plans.
It’s this fear and uncertainty that keeps hospital systems, independent practices, and individuals from adopting new technology, leaving care providers and patients to suffer as we wait for all the pieces to catch up.
What is ACT | The App Association doing to address issues facing mobile health companies?
ACT | The App Association is spearheading an effort to bring updates to outdated health privacy laws with a group we recently launched called the Connected Health Initiative. This coalition of leading mobile health companies and key stakeholders urge Congress, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to adopt policies that encourage mobile health innovation.
How is ACT | The App Association working with Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services to bring clarity to the outdated regulatory environment facing mobile health companies?
Most recently, ACT | The App Association and a number of our member companies, all of which are part of the newly formed Connected Health Initiative, called on Congress to bring much needed updates to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). We outlined changes needed from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to ensure HIPAA fits better in today’s mobile world.
Specifically:
Make existing regulation more accessible for tech companies. Information on HIPAA is still mired in a Washington, D.C. mindset that revolves around reading the Federal Register, or hiring expert consultants to ‘explain’ what should be clear in the regulation itself. Not surprisingly, app makers do not find the Federal Register to be an effective resource when developing health apps.
Additionally, there are limited user-friendly resources available for app developers, who are mostly solo inventors or small groups of designers – not large companies with the resources to easily hire counsel or consultants who can help through the regulatory process.
Proposed solution: HHS must provide HIPAA information in a manner that is accessible and useful to the community who needs it. The agency should draft new FAQs that directly address mobile developer concerns.
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator Pitch
As healthcare organizations continue to face challenges from new regulatory requirements, high-performance applications, rising data growth and the need for 24/7 data availability, they need smarter, faster and more efficient storage technology. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V Software-defined Storage solution allows healthcare providers to virtualize their storage devices and address these pressing IT challenges — all centrally managed on one platform, delivering unified services across any storage system at a fraction of the cost.
About Statement
DataCore is a leader in software-defined storage. The company’s storage virtualization and Virtual SAN solutions empower organizations to seamlessly manage and scale their data storage architectures, allowing for continuous availability of data at a fraction of the cost of solutions offered by legacy storage hardware vendors. In use at more than 10,000 customer sites around the world, DataCore’s adaptive and self-learning and healing technology takes the pain out of manual processes and helps deliver on the promise of the new software-defined data center through its hardware agnostic architecture.
Services and Products Offered
DataCore’s SANsymphony-V10 Software-defined Storage platform maximizes the availability, performance and utilization of storage resources. It pools, replicates and accelerates all types of storage, including DAS, SAN and cloud. Extensive automation and monitoring under centralized management simplifies provisioning, data protection, performance acceleration and load balancing.
DataCore Virtual SAN software transforms direct attached storage (both flash and magnetic) across a cluster of 2 to 64 server nodes into a converged storage environment. It can also utilize storage capacity from a central SAN and cloud storage. The software works with all the major hypervisors including VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Linux KVM and Citrix XenServer. The latest release doubles the scale of nodes from 32 to 64 enabling large scale hyper-converged configurations to support up to 64 petabytes and over 100 million IOPs, making the DataCore Virtual SAN one of the most powerful and scalable hyper-converged solutions available on the market today.
Problems Solved
IT departments are under increasing pressure to deliver more storage capacity, better resiliency and faster performance, all while managing costs. DataCore’s Software-defined Storage solutions address these challenges by delivering significant performance improvements, better utilization of storage devices and improved data availability.
Quality of care has long been a primary factor in choosing a healthcare provider, but convenience and communication are also becoming key considerations for patients. Still, many physicians do not appear to be offering the digital engagement services that can meet those demands.
According to a new nationwide survey conducted by TechnologyAdvice Research, a majority of patients (60.8 percent) said digital services like online appointment scheduling and online bill pay are either “important” or “somewhat important” when choosing a physician. However, when asked what services their current physician provides, less than one-third of patients indicated they have access to either online bill pay, online appointment scheduling, or the ability to view test results and diagnoses online, which are the top three services that patients report wanting the most.
In addition, 68.6 percent of respondents said it was either “somewhat important” or “very important” that a physician follow up with them, yet only 30 percent of respondents reported receiving a follow-up that wasn’t related to bill pay
“Primary care physicians are reporting some of the highest rates of EHR adoption to comply with government regulations and to receive incentives from Meaningful Use, but a significantly lower number of patients claim to have access to these patient portal services,” said TechnologyAdvice Managing Editor Cameron Graham, who authored the survey. “The issue here may not be implementation of digital services, but instead a lack of patient awareness. If physicians are offering these in-demand digital services, a more proactive approach to promoting them is needed and could create an advantage in attracting and retaining patients.”
IDC Health Insights new report that describes the distinctive offerings and capabilities from six fraud, waste and abuse (FWA) services providers and the market they compete in. The new study, IDC Marketscape: US Healthcare Payer Fraud, Waste and Abuse Services 2015 Vendor Assessment,” (Document #HI253636) examines in detail the FWA consulting and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. Vendors evaluated in this report include: Emdeon, IBM, McKesson, Optum, SCIO and Xerox.
Priority for investment in payer fraud, waste and abuse solutions is rising quickly on payer executive agendas because of the accelerated rate of evolution of the payer marketplace in the wake of government-mandated reform. Investment in U.S. healthcare payer FWA solutions (software and services) is rising rapidly in 2014–2015. While already present in over 50% of payers, in the next few years, such solutions will become ubiquitous among payers of all types and sizes in both the commercial and government sectors in some form. In the next three to five years, many payers will continue to enhance their overall FWA defensive capabilities by investing in oftentimes complementary solutions from multiple vendors.
The services component of payer FWA solutions is becoming more and more important, and it is now common for payer FWA software to be delivered to buyers “as a service.” Technology improvements in analytics and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution delivery have made it more feasible for vendors to provide rapidly scalable, outsourced services at decreasing costs with defensive capabilities that outstrip those available to all but the largest payers.
Because of these developments, payers are therefore seeking guidance on how to invest in the different types of service offerings available and how the major vendors compete with each other. This IDC Health Insights report uses the IDC MarketScape methodology to assess six vendors competing in the U.S. healthcare payer FWA services market. A detailed profile supports the evaluation of the offerings from each of the selected vendors. Each profile outlines a vendor’s offering components, evolution, strengths, and challenges.
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Even as HIMSS Media has said that its employees will be making more of an effort this year to cover the trade show floor and its vendors and events, hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator Pitch
Founded in 2009, etherFAX offers a solution that extends existing fax server solutions to the cloud. By eliminating the need for costly network fax systems, such as fax boards and recurring telephony fees, etherFAX leverages the Internet to manage all business-critical fax communications for healthcare organizations.
About Statement
etherFAX was established in 2009 and leverages talent with 30-plus years of experience designing and developing fax technology solutions. By eliminating the need for costly components such as fax boards, media gateways, and telephony infrastructure, etherFAX’s namesake technology, network and datacenter solutions leverage the Internet to manage business-critical fax communications.
As a hybrid fax solution, etherFAX eliminates the complexities and costs of provisioning SIP, T.38, PRI, T1, and other analog connections. By simply connecting on-premise fax server resources to etherFAX, all fax communications are securely delivered via the cloud. Say goodbye to expensive fax hardware, complex fault-tolerant designs, and costly disaster recovery solutions. etherFAX is the fax board in the cloud, capable of processing billions of faxes.
Market Opportunity
etherFAX serves the healthcare market by securely transmit electronic health records (EHRs), electronic medical records (EMRs), health information exchange data (HIEs) and unstructured patient data. etherFAX enables healthcare organizations and medical groups, insurance companies and billing operators to securely transport data and ensure compliance with government mandated regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Fully integrating with existing fax servers and applications such as EMR solutions and healthcare management systems, etherFAX leverages the Internet to manage all healthcare-critical fax communications without capacity constraints.
Services and Products Offered
HIMSS 15 Focus:
o etherFAX – Extending existing fax server solutions to the cloud, etherFAX eliminates the need for costly network fax systems, such as fax boards and recurring telephony fees. etherFAX leverages the Internet to manage all your business-critical fax communications.
o etherFAX SEN – Gives healthcare and enterprise organizations the capability to create their own private fax network to ensure secure data and document transmissions. Offering a simple and unique approach to document delivery, etherFAX SEN offers speed, performance and reliability without compromising security.
o etherFAX A2E – The etherFAX A2E device, manufactured by MultiTech, provides a plug-and-play device that enables organizations to extend their existing fax machines to the cloud.
Additional Services:
etherFAX DR – Provides immediate failover for all business-critical fax communications, ensuring uptime when existing telephony equipment fails, such as fax boards, PRI lines, servers and applications.
etherFAX Toolkit – Integrating fax capabilities within applications has never been easier with the etherFAX API. The solution provides the capability to fax-enable custom developed applications in addition to enterprise resource planning (ERP), document management systems, etc.
etherFAX Colocation Services – etherFAX provides highly-secure, protected, and climate-controlled colocation services that are capable of supporting the most complex business-critical IT environments.
According to a 2014 Identity Theft Resource Center Report, the healthcare industry has officially surpassed other major industries and now accounts for 42.3 percent of all data breaches recorded last year. As the number of patient medical records transitions to a digital sharing model, the potential cost of data breaches is now substantially higher than for those less regulated, like retail and public services. It’s clear that the industry is increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated cyberattacks; hackers are after vital patient information such as social security numbers and past medical records.
With limited budgets and priorities often, and rightfully, placed on patient care, many healthcare organizations lack the resources to implement stronger security levels. Despite these constraints, with the right technology and best practices in place healthcare organizations can position themselves for success.
The costs associated with “damage control” for many healthcare providers is steep with the annual cap on fines for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and HITECH Act of 2009, up from a maximum of $25,000 per year to $1.5 million. And fines are only part of the financial burden. Investigation and legal efforts, business downtime and decreased credibility all drive up costs even further.
Unfortunately, many healthcare organizations are still facing challenges when it comes to effectively communicating and collaborating on security. In many of these healthcare organizations, there is a department for privacy and compliance and then a separate department for enterprise IT security. Functional groups are often siloed and share very little information with each other. This becomes a major issue in the event of a breach as neither side is able to understand the full spectrum of the threat without the others’ data.
The consequences of the gap between compliance and IT security becomes evident when dealing with insider threats. An individual’s actions may look legitimate, but when correlated against other activity, could indicate that malicious activity is occurring. A workstation that has always previously accessed clinical data or some other patient information doesn’t raise suspicion. But a subtle, steady increase in traffic, say of 5 percent or 10 percent, correlated with communication to an unauthorized or new IP address, likely indicates a breach. The same example could apply to an external threat with a malicious actor using social engineering methods to entice an unwitting user to download malware. Once inside the network, the malware can replicate the very same scenario. Either way, a breach has occurred. The IT security department may discover the situation, investigate and handle it and move on to the next task. But without visibility into this type of data, how would the compliance department learn about possible data leakage and take the necessary steps to investigate and report?
The Medical Memory’s mission is provide simple and convenient methods for video recording medical conversations and sharing them with patients and their families.
Elevator Pitch
The Medical Memory provides a simple and convenient method of recording medical conversations and distributing them to patients and their families.
Founder’s story
Dr. Randall Porter founded The Medical Memory to help his own patients better understand their condition and treatments. Dr. Porter recognized that his neurology patients did not comprehend the information imparted to them during appointments. Furthermore, Dr. Porter was frustrated with his inability to receive information regarding his own father’s cancer treatment in another state. Since its inception, the company’s vision has been to use video recording technologies to enhance patient understanding of their medical conditions and treatments and to share that information with family members and loved ones.
To achieve this The Medical Memory partners with doctor’s offices to make it simple for patients to request video recordings of their visits. A portable video camera is used to record discussions, imaging and demonstrations. Post visit, an email is sent to the patient with log in information to a page containing the videos. The patient simply logs in from any location with internet access to start reviewing what the doctor said. If desired, the patient can share the page with family and loved ones.
The Medical Memory is a simple and convenient method to keep patients and their loved ones informed of important medical discussions in many cases eliminating unnecessary follow-up appointments.
Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy for The Medical Memory is a comprehensive local and national marketing and public relations campaign focusing on Dr. Porter’s personal experience with patients’ recall, the need for The Medical Memory and the benefit. The media focus is on editors, bloggers, and publications covering health, technology and startups.
Representing more than 5,000 app companies and information technology firms, 
As healthcare organizations continue to face challenges from new regulatory requirements, high-performance applications, rising data growth and the need for 24/7 data availability, they need smarter, faster and more efficient storage technology. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V Software-defined Storage solution allows healthcare providers to virtualize their storage devices and address these pressing IT challenges — all centrally managed on one platform, delivering unified services across any storage system at a fraction of the cost.
IDC Health Insights
