Guest post by Dean Wiech, managing director, Tools4ever.
No matter the industry, each time a purchase is made, business leaders always want to know what they are getting in return for their financial investment. Questions frequently asked include: “How is this going to help me?” and “What is my return on investment?” Another phrase, often uttered by “Mr. Wonderful” Kevin O’Leary from the popular show Shark Tank is, “What am I getting for my investment?”
By examining the answers to these questions, business managers and organizational leaders must ensure that their budget is being adhered to and that purchases by the organization are considered, or proven, not to be a “waste” of money.” Often, return on investment (ROI) is a combination of both “hard” and “soft” costs and savings, which can often be difficult to determine. The “hard” cost is easy to define: What am I spending now versus what will I be spending on a different product, solution or system, or by doing nothing? Alternately, how is this solution going to allow me to save money in the long run? In this scenario – “hard” costs and savings — there is a definitive dollar figure that is able to be applied to implementing a solution.
“Soft” savings are a bit more of a complex issue; they are more difficult to determine and to document. For example, time and labor saved, or stress saved by employees completing a task that takes 10 minutes versus 35 minutes are soft savings. Soft savings also might be seen in improvements in customer service or in the customer experience. It is difficult to put a dollar amount on these scenarios and improvements, but they do impact a business, its success and its financial performance.
Time is money, of course, but in the case of healthcare perhaps it’s more fitting to say that “time is life.” This savings equates to valuable potential life-saving time, as we well know, and, in turn, improves patient care. As healthcare organizations seek ways to allow clinicians the ability to focus more on patients rather than on information technology, there are some solutions available — many that that are often overlooked that allow them to reach their goals. Some of these technology solutions provide a direct correlation between a physician’s ability to enter an information system, retrieve or enter information and get back to focusing on patient care. Essentially, with these types of solutions, like access and identity management, physicians can get back to work more quickly and their interaction with the technology is reduced.
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
A leader in healthcare data management, BridgeHead Software is addressing the constraints of the traditional vendor neutral archive (VNA) with HealthStore, the first independent clinical archive (ICA).
About Statement
With 20 years’ experience in data and storage management, BridgeHead Software is trusted by over 1,200 hospitals worldwide. Today, BridgeHead Software helps healthcare facilities overcome challenges stemming from rising data volumes and increasing storage costs while delivering peace of mind around how to store, protect and share clinical and administrative information.
BridgeHead’s Healthcare Data Management solutions are designed to work with any hospital’s chosen applications and storage hardware, regardless of vendor, providing greater choice, flexibility and control over the way data is managed, now and in the future.
Services and Products Offered
BridgeHead HealthStore, is the first Independent clinical archive (ICA) for long-term storage, protection and sharing of hospital data. A modular solution built on top of the BridgeHead Healthcare Data Management (HDM) platform, BridgeHead HealthStore enables hospitals to standardize access to key elements of the patient record while simultaneously freeing them from dependence on any single system to locate the information.
The Louis W. Sullivan Institute for Healthcare Innovation, which is dedicated to distribute health information technology innovation to transform quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery worldwide, announced the release of “A Year in Review: An Update on the 2013 WEDI Report & Roadmap for the Future of Healthcare Exchange.” The industry report evaluated public and private stakeholder progress in critical areas of focus.
The 2013 WEDI Report, the first roadmap for healthcare information exchange produced by WEDI since 1993, provided a framework for the next generation of healthcare information exchange designed to lower healthcare costs, improve healthcare delivery, and achieve better healthcare outcomes. In the past year, the Louis W. Sullivan Institute for Healthcare Innovation has monitored those stakeholder efforts to drive improvements through technology and data exchange, and has produced a progress report on those initiatives, which can be found here.
The initial report identified four key areas of focus and 10 related recommendations that would advance healthcare information exchange. Summarized below are assessments of how industry has performed in each of the core focus areas:
Patient Engagement
Progress rating = Green
Although the industry has lagged in driving improvements in health IT literacy, there has been continued momentum in patient information capture and patient identification. Private sector efforts, combined with a new federal vision and roadmap for health IT, are deemed to be on pace in meeting WEDI recommendations.
Payment Models
Progress rating = Yellow
Over the past several years, new payment models have leveraged technological advances to rapidly iterate, evolve, and scale across the country. However, models such as ACOs have yet to fully mature, and their success and sustainability remain uncertain – particularly in light of the mixed performance seen in 2014. A framework of core attributes and technological functionalities has yet to be developed and the industry needs further directed efforts to achieve the recommendations outlined in the initial report.
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.
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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