HIMSS organizers, in preparation of its annual conference and trade show and as a way to rally attendees around several trending topics for the coming show, asked the healthcare community how it feels about several key issues. I’ve reached out to readers of this site so they can respond to what they see as the future of healthcare innovation, data security, patient engagement and big data.
Their responses follow.
Do you agree with the following thoughts? If not, why; what’s missing?
Innovation
Sean Benson
Sean Benson, vice president of innovation, clinical solutions, Wolters Kluwer Health Future innovations in health IT, big data in particular, will focus on the aggregation and transformation of patient data into actionable knowledge that can improve patient and financial outcomes. The ever-growing volume of patient data contained within disparate clinical systems continues to expand. This siloed data often forces physicians to act on fragmented and incomplete information, making it difficult to apply the latest evidence. Comprehensive solutions will normalize, codify and aggregate patient data in a cloud system and run it against clinical scenarios to create evidence-based advice that is then delivered directly to the point of care via a variety of mobile devices. This will empower physicians with patient-specific knowledge based on the latest medical evidence delivered to the point of care in a timely, appropriate manner, ultimately resulting in higher quality treatment and more complete care.
Susan Reese
Susan Reese, MBA, RN, CPHIMS, chief nurse executive, Kronos Incorporated
Gamification — the trend of creating computer-based employee games and contests for the purpose of aligning employee productivity with the organization’s goals — is currently a popular topic with business leaders and IT. For proof, consider that Gartner recently projected that by 2015, 50 percent of all organizations will be using gamification of some kind, and that by 2016, businesses will spend a total of $2.6 billion on this technology.
With numbers like these, it is clear that that gaming is serious business and that it is here to stay. But at this point, you may be asking yourself, “Could gamification work in my healthcare environment? What potential benefits could it have?””
Today, many healthcare organizations are looking to the future and considering gamification as a way to increase employee engagement, collaboration, and productivity as well as to align their behavior with larger business goals – but they don’t know how to do it quite yet. Also, gamification can be a delicate decision, complete with advantages and risks. After all, employees’ day-to-day work responsibilities and careers are not games and can’t be trivialized. Healthcare organizations must be careful to avoid sending the wrong message to their workforce, or the whole program could backfire, or even lead to more negative consequences.
Mike Lanciloti
Mike Lanciloti, vice president of product management and marketing, Spectralink
In today’s digital age, healthcare IT needs to come a long way to get up to speed in innovation and connectivity. However, as we begin to see mobile play a larger role in the industry, healthcare is moving the needle on innovation as well.
The mobile revolution has picked up in healthcare for both health IT professionals and in patient care. Primary as healthcare providers find ways to utilize smartphones, mobile devices and Wi-Fi networks to improve the communication and efficiency of their workforce.
Through mobile devices, clinicians have the ability to access what they need, when they need it. Mobile devices ensure nurses and mobile staff are equipped with the right technology to promote timely, efficient and reliable communication. This not only allows healthcare professionals to perform their jobs more effectively but also helps deliver a higher quality of patient care.
The growing mobile trend does present several questions for the industry. Hospital managers are quickly learning that an influx of smartphones into the hospital setting can become a larger problem than anticipated. Not only do personal devices lack the security required for enterprise-owned devices, they pose other risks, calling into question issues surrounding encryption, authorized access and mobile security. Personal phones aren’t designed to be equipped with the same encryption capabilities as enterprise-owned mobile devices.
Seems all the chittering was right: The meaningful use Stage 3 proposed rule has been released prior to the annual HIMSS conference, to give all conference goers and government officials in attendance something to talk about.
The news of the rule’s release now comes as no surprise.
The feds like to make these kinds of splashes, to be the bearers of news – any kind of news – especially at big venues where they’re likely to get lots of ink and face time with those in attendance, and the supposed powers that be.
The same thing happened last year at HIMSS when officials, peppered with questions, were vehement that the ICD-10 roll out deadline would not be delayed. Only a few weeks later, federal officials had to walk that back and, untimely, wound up changing the deadline.
These are apples and oranges, I understand, but the grandiosity of the occasion (HIMSS15) means that everyone attending the conference really does need to “bring it.” Vendors, presenters, the feds. At HIMSS, to capture hearts and minds, this is a simple truth — we need to bring it no matter who “we” are.
I’m not trying to be cynical about the announcement or the timing of the proposed Stage 3 rule, but there seems to be something about the nature of its timing that seems suspect. It’s as if CMS wants the news about meaningful use to be relevant. But, as we know, on its own, it is relevant; we all know this.
It’s as if CMS is trying to secure the legacy of a failing program – where as of January 0nly 4 percent of eligible professionals had met meet Stage 2 requirements. It’s sort of like the agency, to make people talk about a once relevant product, is bursting through the HIMSS gates like a has-been celebrity and is announcing, “Don’t worry, we’ll be there.”
How could we forget?
We know you’ll be there, we know we’ll be looking to you for guidance, we know what you have to say is important to us because it impacts the very professions in which we have built our lives.
CMS will make their claims, get us to talk then they’ll ride off into the sunset like Shane.
HIMSS organizers, in preparation of the annual conference and trade show, and as a way to rally attendees around several trending topics for the coming event, are once again asking the healthcare community how it feels about several key issues that are likely to resonate. As is often the case with this ongoing experiment, the folks in my position — those with a venue to voice their opinions who tell the rest of us what they think — pontificate on the potential impact of these trends.
Certainly, some of my fellow journalists are far better qualified than I to answer the questions posed by HIMSS with any level of authority. Therefore, I’ve given my small microphone to readers of this site so they can voice their opinions of the topics that conference goers are likely to hear about dozens of time while in Chicago.
This year HIMSS is asking what we feel will be the future of: the connected healthcare system, big data, security, innovation and patient engagement. Today, here, we focus on the future of the connected healthcare system, and what several insiders believe that future to be.
With that, enjoy and let me know if you agree with the following thoughts. If not, why; what’s missing?
Tom Bizzaro, vice president of health policy, First Databank
Tom Bizzaro
We’re hoping that the electronic health records (EHR) interoperability movement follows a trajectory similar to that of e-prescribing. To start, as an industry, we have to universally acknowledge the value of interoperability within healthcare IT systems. Indeed, sharing data across systems can help to improve care quality and efficiency in the country’s health system and lead to success of value-based reimbursement models. However, all players – providers, payers, patients and vendors alike – need to truly embrace the value EHR interoperability, putting it above any proprietary concerns.
Then, we need to get to work. We must continue to develop and implement a wide range of standards and vocabularies. Through these, we will ensure that our data is in synch and that systems will always be speaking the same language. Perhaps most important, we need a National Patient Identifier, which will make it possible to match information to specific patients as they traverse the health system. And, while it might seem like doing all this work will take a long time, if we roll up our sleeves and do what’s required, the EHR interoperability story will be on its way to its own happy ending soon enough.
Jonathan Isaacs, executive vice president and general manager, surgery solutions, SourceMedical
Jonathan Issacs
It’s 3:00 a.m. and you wake up with an acute pain in your side that won’t go away — you head to the ER. The CT scan shows nothing — you head to the GI specialist. The doctor says to get an endoscopy — you head to the ASC. The endoscopy says you have a chronic condition that will need to be managed by you, your PCP, and even more specialists. Where does all that data live? Everywhere!
It’s a changing world out there. From cancer centers to freestanding Emergency Departments, healthcare organizations must deliver quality care at lower prices. But information collected at different points can fall through the cracks, putting the patient at risk. That’s why data interoperability is a critical issue.
The solution is not to put every entity in the healthcare value chain on the same closed, monolithic EHR that tries to do everything. We have seen time and again what happens when innovation is stifled and vendors become “too big to fail.” But by embracing connectivity standards, providers and patients alike can leverage best-in-class tools purposely built for specific treatments and outcomes. The easier it is, the higher the likelihood of success. And isn’t that the whole point?
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
PatientKeeper provides workflow applications for physicians that transform hospital EHRs from what they typically are – a distraction or hindrance topatient care – into what they should be: an intuitive support system for physicians.
About Statement
PatientKeeper, Inc. is a leading provider of healthcare applications for physicians. PatientKeeper’s highly intuitive software streamlines physician workflow to improve productivity and patient care. PatientKeeper’s CPOE, physician documentation, electronic charge capture and other applications run on desktop and laptop computers and popular handheld devices and tablets. PatientKeeper’s software integrates with many existing healthcare information systems to help provider organizations drive physician adoption of technology, meet Meaningful Use, and transition to ICD-10. More than 60,000 physicians across North America and the UK use PatientKeeper software.
Market Opportunity
PatientKeeper plays in two different market segments: (1) EHR optimization, and (2) revenue cycle optimization. In the former, we target 100+ bed community hospitals and hospital networks that rely primarily on affiliated physicians (vs. employed physicians) for patient admissions – clinicians whose loyalty (and business) must be “courted” and competed for – and which have not deployed or committed to an Epic EMR system. In the “Revenue Cycle Optimization” side of our business, we target physician practices of 25 doctors or more (but typically larger academic medical groups), and hospitals with a significant corps of employed physicians.
In this new 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 tradeshow 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.
The Usability People
The Usability People provide user experience (UX) consultation and usability testing services to clients in the US and across the globe. We have helped “mom-and-pop” shops and Internet startups, healthcare software (EHR) vendors, enterprise organizations, universities and government agencies. We have more than 25 years of experience providing user experience consultation, usability testing and interface design services to businesses of all shapes and sizes. The Usability People have the experience, knowledge and passion for UX to help your website, mobile web or phone app delight users.
Elevator Pitch
We like to tell people that we are cognitive ergonomists. That is that we take and apply the theories of psychology, specifically cognitive psychology, to the design and development of more usable software systems. We do this by helping development organizations better understand their users, and their users thinking. We work with software developers to design and test their systems to better match the workflow and mental models of those use the software every day.
Market Opportunity
EHR vendors that are seeking meaningful use Stage 2 certification are required to have a user-centered design process and to provide a report of a summative usability evaluation. We work with EHR vendors to help them understand their users, to design better software and provide the summative tests required for meaningful use Stage 2 certification.
Services and Products Offered
Safety-enhanced design (aka Usability) testing for meaningful use Stage 2 certification
User experience design, workflow, information architecture and wireframes for healthcare applications.
We conduct and report summative usability evaluations using the NISTIR 7742 Customized Common Industry Format Template for EHR usability testing suitable for presentation as the safety-enhanced design criteria portion of MU Stage 2 certification.
Problems Solved
Usability issues with EHRs and user-centered design consultation.
Value Proposition
Usability and user centered design typically has a 10 to 100 times return on investment. The savings typically are realized in reduced development costs, reduced training and documentation costs and reduced support costs. Usability in healthcare can also save a life.
PatientKeeper provides workflow applications for physicians that transform hospital EHRs from what they typically are – a distraction or hindrance topatient care – into what they should be: an intuitive support system for physicians.
The Usability People