Connected Healthcare Will Drive Global Change in 2013

Driven by new technology, patient-centered connected healthcare will help people worldwide receive better and more cost-efficient treatment and care, said one of Accenture’s top healthcare consultants.

Rick Ratliff, Accenture’s senior executive of health and public service, speaking at the recent Healthcare IT Summit, disclosed the results of a massive global study on connected healthcare that delved into such global trends as the aging population, a decrease in fitness, and increased incidence of chronic and lifestyle disease.

“At the end of the day, it’s important that the technology supports access to the information at every phase of patient care, and that there is an ability for a single view of patient information to provide all those who are involved in the care with a common view of the patient’s information for fully expedited and coordinated care,” said Ratliff.

He disclosed the findings of Accenture’s study of 3,700 physicians and 160 healthcare experts worldwide that examined connected health, healthcare IT adoption, health information exchanges and insight-driven healthcare.

“We need to digitize healthcare with electronic medical records, and we need to make sure that it’s digitized in a certain way that will allow us to use that information to manage workflow to improve overall healthcare,” said Ratliff. “We, then, need to exchange that data among hospitals, physicians, payer organizations and patients, and use analytics to assess the care, find the gaps and change the behavior of the healthcare system.”

Right now, primary care organizations in Spain and England are leading in the areas of healthcare IT adoption and health information exchange, followed by the U.S. Secondary, or specialist, care organizations in Spain and the U.S. are leading in those areas, with Singapore following very close behind, according to Accenture’s research.

“Here in the U.S., the HITECH Act is driving significant adoption of electronic medical records and we are starting to see slow growth in health information exchange, but there is still a long way to go,” said Ratliff.

The main reason why many countries are falling behind with technology-driven connected healthcare is because of cost. “In addition to cost, there is concern about privacy and lack of interoperability standards, and there is a lack of incentives to drive adoption and utilization of electronic medical records. These issues are seen consistently across the world,” said Ratliff.

According to the survey, only one in five physicians receive incentives for managing patients with chronic conditions while less than 20 percent have incentives for achieving quality measures and only 10 percent have motivation for coordinating care with other organizations.

In the U.S. today, approximately two-thirds of physicians have an electronic medical record system in place, and the U.S. is doing well in using EMRs to capture information during exams, however, there is not as much uptake on the exchange of information. Only about 16 percent of primary care physicians who responded to the survey are doing some level of communication, and about 24 percent of secondary care physicians are communicating via HIEs.

“We are still seeing a lot more progress in the U.S. than we are seeing in some other countries around the world regarding HIE and the use of electronic medical records for connected healthcare, and I am confident that progress will only grow over the next few years,” said Ratliff.

The 4 Pillars Of Technical Innovation In Healthcare

Four major technology trends, which are becoming more intertwined every day, will dominate the healthcare IT landscape in 2013, according to IDC Health Insight’s top researcher, Scott Lundstrom.

These trends—social media, cloud, big data and analytics, and mobility—already are having a big impact on many healthcare provider and payer organizations, but CIOs will be faced with managing and deploying many of these technologies as their use becomes pervasive during the coming year. Lundstrom calls these tech trends the “four pillars” of healthcare IT and recently presented them during a keynote presentation at UBM Technology’s Healthcare IT Summit.

“By using technology we can go out and make a difference in the quality and cost of care,” Lundstrom told the CIOs gathered at the conference. “The answer to doing more with less in healthcare is getting closer to the patient with cloud, analytics, mobile, and social/unified communications.”

Cloud

When it comes to cloud computing, private cloud is emerging as the platform of choice to transform healthcare IT departments and make technology more efficient and accessible. New business requirements are demanding new architectures, and cloud platforms are a priority for payer and provider CIOs.

Healthcare IT executives are using the cloud in many different ways and for varying reasons, but according to IDC Health Insights’ research, both payer and provider healthcare organizations stated that data backup and archiving is the No.1 storage solution in the cloud, with server capacity on demand  a close second.

Security issues, however, may be holding back broader deployment—at least in the short term. Security and availability concerns were stated as the biggest impediments to deploying cloud storage solutions by 22 percent of the payers and by 40 percent of providers surveyed by IDC. “Most breaches are not the result of an inept third party; they are from a laptop left in the car or a USB left on the desk by employees,” said Lundstrom.

Also, healthcare organizations must adhere to HIPAA security safeguards such as security management processes, workstation and device security and access control for proper implementation, which pose further challenges.

With all of the advantages of cloud storage, payer and provider IT executives are slowly looking beyond its challenges and beginning to implement cloud strategies for 2013. According to IDC Health Insights, nearly one-third of both payer and provider organizations are currently researching and evaluating the purchase of cloud technology.  Meanwhile, 31 percent of payer organizations said they are currently deploying cloud technologies while only 16.5 percent of provider organizations said they were using the cloud.

“At the end of the day, the cloud is just another place to put things,” said Lundstrom.

Big Data And Analytics

The explosion of data is creating challenges in healthcare around the volume, variety, velocity and value of information associated with it.

HIEs are certainly a focus area for big data and analytics in 2013 because of the vast amounts of data involved with the sharing process. “We’ve done a great job of getting analytics and research, but we’ve done a really bad job of getting it in the hands of the physicians,” Lundstrom said. The safe exchange of patients’ information will continue to get a lot of payer and provider IT executive attention in the coming months.

At the same time, IT executives’ focus regarding big data and analytics will slightly shift to include care management, population health, care team collaboration, transitions in management, analytics and business intelligence. This move in the focus of data aggregation to big data and analytics is the future of healthcare IT.

Mobile

Mobility’s pervasiveness is creating new demands on healthcare data centers—given the need for instant connectivity, streaming video and the transfer and sharing of large medical images.

Doctors want to the ability to take a CAT scan image from the hospital’s system to their iPad or iPhone simply and seamlessly so that they can travel throughout the hospital with the image. Doctors, nurses and other health payer and provider employees are demanding mobile applications and access to the network, and CIOs must have the back end ready to host such devices.

However, accessing patient data on mobile devices is still a challenge because of security issues and the cost of supporting such devices. “It always seems to be the discussion of the gadget. The gadget is not where the money or difficulty is—supporting the device is also easy from a technical standpoint. The real issue is the money that’s in the back end [network, storage, data centers, virtualization],” said Lundstrom. “We have to grow our mobile platforms to satisfy the gadget demands of the users, and we have to secure information. “

Social Media And Unified Communications

Every customer or patient has a voice, and healthcare payer and provider organizations can use social media to hear those voices and use them to bring tremendous value to patient care. The next generation of consumer engagement will leverage consumers’ social profiles, according to IDC Health Insights, as should be tapped into as a resource to effect positive health behaviors.

IDC Health Insights asked payer and provider IT executives about their top challenges in using or deploying social media tools and found that executive support, justifying expenses of social software, maintaining and keeping track of all the posted content and getting customers to participate were cited most often.

Forty-two percent of payers and 24 percent of providers said their top challenge is getting executive support—the fact that these numbers are slightly low compared to the other challenges proves that healthcare organizations understand the need for social media and technology method innovation.

However, regardless of the challenges, social media is a technology that will thrive in the healthcare industry in 2013, according to IDC Health Insights. “Facebook is an 800-million- user social media application platform, and consumer engagement solutions in healthcare will be increasingly mobile and connected to social networking sites like Facebook in the coming year,” said Lundstrom.

XChange Events Announces 2012 Healthcare IT Summit XCellence Award Winners

Both Payers and Providers Recognized for Innovation and Driving Value

Held from Nov. 11 to 13 at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress, Orlando, FL, the 2012 Healthcare IT Summit explored the changing face of healthcare IT for both payer and provider communities. The event is the only IT-focused conference that brings together both sides of the industry, providing education and insight on future market drivers, business trends, economic factors and technology opportunities impacting the healthcare IT market.

Vendors with solutions for both payers and providers were recognized for demonstrating the most exceptional products, services and presentations during the Summit. Here's a photo of the winners.

Winners include:

Best Technology Solution – Payer: Scale Computing
Best Technology Solution – Provider: Fortinet
Best Case Study Presentation – Payer: Health Solutions Plus
Best Case Study Presentation – Provider: InterSystems
Best Demonstration of Value/ROI – Payer: Fortinet
Best Demonstration of Value/ROI – Provider: Scale Computing
Best Emerging Vendor – Payer & Provider: Scale Computing
Best of Show – Payer: HealthEdge

Best of Show – Provider: Xirrus

"By bringing together industry analysts, IT executives and vendors to collaborate and share ideas, the 2012 Healthcare IT Summit shines a spotlight on the changing face of Healthcare technology," said Robert C. DeMarzo, Senior Vice President of Strategic Content, UBM Channel. "The XCellence Awards recognize the organizations that are driving innovation, demonstrating value and helping to navigate an increasingly dynamic industry. Congratulations to all the winners."

VP Of Care Management At John Hopkins HealthCare To Speak at the 2012 Healthcare IT Summit

Linda Dunbar, PhD, RN and vice president of care management at Johns Hopkins HealthCare will be speaking at the 2012 Healthcare IT Summit that runs Nov. 11-13 at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Fla. Dunbar's session, "Integration and Innovation: New Care Delivery Models and the Technology to Support Them," will be extremely beneficial for both provider and payer attendees.

Dunbar will be speaking about Population Health strategies and new models of care delivery in support of improving the health, and decreasing the cost, of the care of a population.

"The model I will describe has been implemented at Johns Hopkins Medicine and is comprised of an Integrated Delivery Team at the site of primary care," said Dunbar.

The model addresses primary, secondary and tertiary prevention and care of a population with an integrated care system. In the JHM model of care, the Primary Care Provider, a Nurse Case Manager, a behavioral health specialist and a community health worker complete an assessment of behavioral and clinical needs, complete a rounding process and then work to support self-management activities, explained Dunbar. 

"The biggest takeaway from my session,  for healthcare IT executives, will be a better understanding of the importance of IT in supporting the interdisciplinary team in their activities, aggregating data and measuring outcomes," said Dunbar.

Here's a little more background on Dr. Dunbar...

Dr. Dunbar serves as vice president of care management at Johns Hopkins HealthCare. In her role as Vice President for the past ten years at JHHC, Dr. Dunbar directs the 220 staff members in the divisions of Population Health Management, Behavioral Health, and Research and Development. Since 1997, Dr. Dunbar has led the department to create, deliver and evaluate innovate population health management strategies in the areas of single and multiple chronic diseases, behavioral conditions and substance abuse disease. 

Dr. Dunbar holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the JHU School of Nursing and Bloomberg School of Public Health, and frequently teaches and lectures on such topics as managed care, population health strategies, health policy and reform, risk adjustment, and research and evaluation.

Dr. Dunbar’s dissertation work, entitled “Alternative Methods of Identifying Children with Special Health Care Needs: Implications for Medicaid Programs”, explored the use of predictive models and risk adjustment in populations of children with chronic conditions. Dr. Dunbar has published in peer-reviewed journals on chronic illness in infants and children, risk-adjustment methodology, predictive modeling in high-risk patient identification, health policy for children and adults, pay-for-performance and quality, primary care and population health strategies. She has served as a consultant in the Disease Management industry and for State Medicaid Agencies and health plans. Dr. Dunbar speaks and consults nationally and internationally about risk-adjustment and population health strategies.

Dr. Dunbar completed 40 credits in the Master’s of Business Administration program at Johns Hopkins University in early 1984-1988, a MS in 2000 and PhD in 2005 from University of Maryland in Nursing and Health Policy.

The TriZetto Group Plays The Role Of ‘Global Solution Partner’

As the health-care industry continues to change and evolve, IT vendors are realizing that they must step up to help payers and providers seamlessly transform their organizations from a technology standpoint. Emil Peters, vice president of Hospital and Health System Markets at The TriZetto Group, shares his message with health-care CIOs, The TriZetto Group’s new solutions and improvements to its flagship offering, how it’s innovating and what he is hearing from its customers and partners.

HCITS: The TriZetto Group is attending the Healthcare IT Summit, which attracts CIOs of health-care payer and provider organizations. What is your message to them?

Peters: I think I would say, ‘Welcome to the most interesting time in the most important industry in the world that impacts every member of every society.' We bring comprehensive experience and decades of knowledge from supporting risk-bearing entities to both payers and providers. As we enter new and innovative models that seek to solve the global health-care affordability crisis that we collectively share, we think our solutions will help new stakeholders play a pivotal role. We look to support and contribute to this new world not just by being an IT vendor, but also by being a global solution partner that supports its clients as they transform themselves.

HCITS: What new deployment methodologies and architectures is your flagship solution providing today?

Peters: With the payers’ drive to become more efficient, and the providers’ goal to enter new models without breaking their already broken piggy banks, we see an opportunity to be relevant and supportive in both spaces. TriZetto has not only made investments in functional capabilities to deepen our ability to support a variety of customers, but we have made some key acquisitions that extend our capabilities to address what these new payer/providers clients will ultimately look like.

Our GatewayEDI acquisition, last year, has given us tremendous insight and capability into physician revenue cycle management (RCM) and real-time payment capabilities. Recently we bolstered that investment in provider infrastructure by bringing NHXS on board to help group practices obtain accurate claim payments and recover underpayments. Continuing this expansion, we've just announced the acquisition of ClaimLogic, a medical claims and payment processing company that has serves hospitals and large medical practices. By combining all these capabilities, TriZetto is building an integrated, real-time payer-provider technology platform that helps health plans and physicians achieve efficiency and effective care.

HCITS: How are you innovating and driving innovation from a technology standpoint?

Peters: Having just spent a few days with our TriZetto technology team, I can't be more positive about our technical innovation trajectory. We continue to evolve our solutions to meet the ever changing demands of both our payer and provider clients. Being able to provide flexibility with a focus on TCO is important and the ability to scale is something that we think is going to be vital for payers and providers moving forward. When you think of information as the new currency for global population health management, the ability to flex with our customers is paramount. We're truly excited to be in position to lead with our clients, but it also brings a tremendous amount of responsibility that we are ready for.

HCITS: What are you hearing from your IT executive partners and customers?

Peters: There is a sense of tremendous opportunity, while at the same time there is a lot of risk. Providers, specifically, are catching their breath from the first wave of Meaningful Use and are getting ready to run and jump into stage two. Payers are looking to drive administrative efficiency, increase automation and improve the cost and quality of care. It's no surprise that everyone is a bit weary of all these new models that will require heavy doses of information to succeed. That's why we think we can play an impartial and transparent role in helping them mitigate risks and maximize opportunities. There is a lot of opportunity as I mentioned earlier, but it's below the surface and going to require some excavation to get there. If you're going to excavate, you're going to need the right tools and capabilities and our clients are coming to us asking for answers.

HCITS: What is your biggest piece of advice, from a vendor perspective, to our Healthcare CIO audience?

Peters: I think it would be to specialize and know your end destination. Know your place in the market and what your value proposition is. There will be a lot of iteration in order to get to that final destination and undoubtedly it will be an arduous journey, but if you know the end point and the way points to get there, the organizational risk can be manageable. To reuse my boat analogy, you need to plan for the whole journey and not just the rapids or the calm waters. Your equipment needs to serve you in the way you need to be served at the time you need it. Planning with that end in mind will help you get the right balance of people, process and technology. It sounds elementary, but it's really important.

Mimecast Helps Ease The Pain Of Health-Care IT

With all of the IT challenges within the health-care industry today, IT executives are looking for a little piece of sanity that a good vendor could provide them. Miguel Llopiz, vice president of the health-care sector at Mimecast, finds it remarkable how health-care CIOs handle all of their day-to-day responsibilities while still finding time and resources for innovation. Mimecast’s goal is to take some of the pain, and cost, away from these IT executives from cloud to email environments.

HCITS: How does Mimecast cater to health-care payer and provider IT executives? What are you doing in the health-care space?

Llopiz: Mimecast brings to bear a very powerful mix of capabilities aimed at distinct value propositions—compliancy and collaboration—while leveraging the cloud to attain much lower costs. We provide a cloud-based service that delivers collaborative HIPAA security and privacy, and compliance enablers that enhance the current mail platform, while reducing complexity and costs. We expand the capabilities that the current email system delivers while driving huge efficiencies in the IT organization. It completely aligns with health-care initiatives to drive costs down while delivering better service.

HCITS: Are there any new products or services that you would like to share with our audience?

Llopiz: We have spent a lot of time speaking to our current health-care customers as well as prospective clients, thus, have been able to align our existing suite of cloud-based services to their individual requirements. Additionally, we have learned that many are using either an inefficient mix of independent products or using such products in a manner for which they were not intended. Either way spells deficiencies and skyrocketing costs. What we are doing is delivering a unified approach to email management, where customers can leverage investments or consolidate disparate applications at much reduced cost and complexity.

HCITS: Do you have a specific example of this unified approach?

Llopiz: Our mobility products and services allow for BYOD deployment and bring 100 percent continual access to email, and archive for the mobile health-care worker. Even better, it does this seamlessly and inexpensively. Of the many new capabilities we are delivering, I am excited about our MSO4 (Mimecast Services for Outlook), which tightly integrate with the user interface and deliver contextual “on demand” retention, security and privacy policies. This allows IT to manage the compliance burden through good procedural mechanics. In addition, we are investing in some revolutionary technologies that provide high-level analytics that extract particular insights from our archive. In the future, we can shape these tools to the specific needs of not only our health-care clients, but also address custom requirements for many of our customers.

HCITS: How does Mimecast help health-care IT executives stay ahead of the curve in the health-care industry today?

Llopiz: This is very basic: We take the pain and cost of managing their email environment, thus liberating IT staff to direct their attention to the many other areas and initiatives that they have to support—again, doing more with fewer headaches. Our mantra includes our five Cs of IT: reducing cost and complexity while offering compliant and continuous collaboration.

HCITS: What is the biggest IT trend that you are seeing in the health-care industry today, and how are you addressing that trend?

Llopiz: IT executives are burdened with a tremendous amount of responsibilities, applications to support and initiatives to manage. Frankly, I don’t know how some of these folks do it! They have less budget, time and resources at their disposal. This presents a unique scenario in that they are also being asked to maintain an increasing portfolio of services, compliance initiatives, resources, applications, thus, vendor relationships. The challenges are great and the solutions are many, but the real efficiency is in ensuring these solutions address real concerns and not become shelf-ware. Our customers are looking for ways to leverage the cloud and bring about cost effectiveness and simplicity, and most offerings come in an all-or-nothing format. What we can provision are ways for them to leverage the efficiencies cloud technologies can potentially deliver, but not have to face the mountainous challenges in bringing these technologies to full use in a short time period. We can activate our services in days for incredibly low costs.

HCITS: What will Mimecast be presenting at the Healthcare IT Summit?

Llopiz: We will be showcasing success stories from our broad customer base and introducing new products and enhancements, as well as new partnerships that will please current and future clients.

LogiXML Will Release New Version of Its Product In Early November

The health-care industry is under more pressure than almost any other industry. Its environment is changing faster than most in respect to what health-care IT executives have to do with their data. Ken Chow, chief marketing officer of LogiXML, believes that LogiXML’s health-care dashboards, reporting and analytics tools enable IT executives in this space to adapt to the rapidly changing industry landscape. In this interview, Chow discusses LogiXML’s newest version of its product, which will be released jsut in time for the Healthcare IT Summit in November, what they will be showing at the conference and how they are catering to the health-care CIO audience.

HCITS: How does LogiXML cater to health-care payer and provider IT executives? What are you doing in the health-care space?

Chow: We provide a way of producing the analytics and reporting health-care CIOs need across multiple disparate databases. Typically, the two main drivers of their concern are speed and having fragmented data sources; our solution addresses these issues as it provides a web-based platform that adapts to the changing health-care environment quickly and in an organized manner. The only other major way in which I think we are really outstanding in that area is that we provide a fine level of security, which I think is important for all health-care IT executives.

HCITS: Are there any new products or services that you would like to share with our audience?

Chow: This year, in early November, we are going to have a major release of a new product coming out that provides even more intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces and visuals. I think that’s important, because many health-care payer and provider institutions are delivering metrics that need to be interpreted on-the-fly both quickly and easily, so we are just making the whole visual impression even better. We plan to show it off at the Healthcare IT Summit.

HCITS: How does LogiXML help health-care IT executives stay ahead of the curve in the health-care industry today?

Chow: These individuals are certainly being thrown a lot of curveballs both from the regulatory arena as well as the increased competitive environment they are in. So, we give them a way of reacting more quickly. The same agility I spoke of in the first questions—the ability to get to multiple databases, get to them securely, and to really quickly make and change the views of the things they are looking at—is how we help them stay ahead. They know this industry and they are having a difficult enough time predicting these trends. They need to adapt and change the way they adapt and change to their data really quickly in order to stay ahead.

HCITS: What is the biggest IT trend you are seeing in the health-care industry today, and how are you addressing that trend?

Chow: The single biggest trend would be about cost control and reimbursement, and much of that has come by way of the change in the regulatory environment as well as the industry structures that have arisen to handle it. Things like the notion of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), and so forth, have changed the landscape of how both payer and provider institutions have to look at their data. If they are going to adapt to these new systems, particularly the new Medicaid and Medicare programs, they are going to have to really stay on top of that data. Cost control and reimbursement is probably one of the pain points—it certainly doesn’t take a back seat to patient care, which has always been a priority—but, cost control and reimbursement is the fastest-growing trend today.

HCITS: Please share a customer example of your success in this space.

Chow: NACHRI (the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions), which recently merged with CHCA and is now together known as the Children’s Hospital Association, use our product’s portal to allow all of their members to compare their operational metrics to their peers. They are able to help their members operate efficiently and make sure their memberships are as cost-efficient as possible by benchmarking, sharing and collaborating on best practices.

In contrast, Partners In Health has actually instituted our product to deliver patient care and direct patient metrics onto the floor of the care institutions so that the hospital staff, nursing staff, doctors and administrators can quickly take a look at care statistics and available resources to match the care needs. These are just two examples of the types of things that we do and offer.

HCITS: What will LogiXML be presenting at the Healthcare IT Summit?

Chow: We will be showing off the newest version of our product with some very compelling visuals, as l mentioned earlier. I think the main “aha” moment that most of the IT executives will have with our technology will be when they see how fast it is, how easy it is to hook it up to all of their data and the level of role-based security that it provides. The main thrust of the product will happen at the Healthcare IT Summit—we will be talking about the new enhancements and the release so we are really excited for the conference.