Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.
Making Machine Learning Work With HIPAA. Andy Oram chatted with Abhi Sharma at Loyal about what it takes to make HIPAA-compliant chatbots. Data masking and separate databases for each client are essential, he learned. So is customizing the chatbot for each client and making responses sound natural. Read more…
Applying AI to Healthcare Decision-Making. John Lynn asked the Healthcare IT Today community to weigh in on AI’s role in supporting data-driven decision-making. Experts pointed to benefits such as analyzing unstructured data, automating operational processes, deduplicating patient records, and reading test results. Read more…
Retrieving Billions in Medicare Overpayments. Improper payments for Medicare are estimated to exceed $43 billion per year, and determining overpayments in open-ended value-based Medicare Advantage plans poses a problem. Andy spoke to Kel Pults at MediQuant about the importance of maintain high-quality, measurable, and reportable data. Read more…
Fixing Medicare Advantage Payments. Andy continued his look at Medicare Advantage overpayments by talking to Meleah Bridgeford at Episource about the benefits of chart review for helping Medicare Advantage plans bill properly for conditions that introduce risk. This helps plans submit accurate payment information to CMS the first time around. Read more…
Tapping ChatGPT for the Latest Healthcare IT Podcast. John and Colin Hung asked the wildly popular generative AI program to come up with the questions for the latest podcast. The first batch of interview questions from ChatGPT was pretty generic, but asking for more specific questions yielded better results. Read more…
Improving Service Assurance and Availabilty for Healthcare. 5G has significant transformative potential for healthcare, both within and outside the hospital. Chris Menier at Vitria Technology indicated that managing 5G networks at speed and scale requires automation – and that’s where AI for IT operations (AIOps) comes into play. Read more…
Enhancing Healthcare Data Protection and Enabling Innovation. The industry’s conservative approach to managing patient data is understandable, but too much risk aversion can stifle innovation. Kate Barecchia at Imperva identified three common myths about HIPAA requirements that make vendor negotiations difficult but don’t necessarily have to. Read more…
Learning Lessons From a Ransomware Attack. In October 2020, a ransomware attack hit Sky Lakes Medical Center, taking down 2,000 PCs, 650 servers, and 150 applications all at once. Director of Information System John Gaede discussed how the health system recovered ransomware by planning past the network failure, investing in architecture, and leaning on the strength of its IT partners. Read more…
Discovering Better Insurance Coverage. A guest post from Inovalon outlined the importance of quickly identifying a patient’s insurance coverage at the point of care to determine whether a service is covered – and, if not, how a patient is most readily able to pay for it. Read more…
Featured Health IT Job: Lead Data Architect – Healthcare, a remote position with value-based senior care provider Vytalize Health, posted to Healthcare IT Central.
Funding and M&A Activity:
- CVS Health is acquiring Oak Street Health at $39 per share, with a total value estimated at $10.6 billion.
- NHS software provider System C acquired Clevermed, which makes digital health tools to support newborn and maternal care.
- Ambience Healthcare launched its fully automated AI medical scribe, Ambience AutoScribe.
- Digital hearing health company Tuned raised $3.5 million in funding.
Thanks for reading and be sure to check out our latest Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundups.
