Healthcare IT Today Interviews (John Lynn)

Marketing budgets are never easy. Everything from determining the right amount to ask for to defending your spending allocation is challenging. It is even more difficult when there is misalignment between Sales and Marketing. One way to budgeting better is to use a bottom-up approach (start with meetings booked and leads generate vs revenue) and more realistic math.   

HITMC sat down with Eric Meerschaert, Executive Director for Growth and Innovation at StudioNorth and Doug Duty, Executive Director for Business Development at StudioNorth to learn the secrets behind better marketing budgeting.

Find more great healthcare marketing content: https://www.hitmc.com/

COVID-19 is stretching hospital resources thin. Not only are clinical areas like ER’s and ICU’s feeling the strain, but even call centres and websites are being overwhelmed. People want information about the novel coronavirus and are looking to healthcare providers for it. CareSignal created a solution that helps organizations disseminate trusted COVID-19 information through automated texts and calls. This takes the burden off of precious healthcare resources.   

The solution is called COVID Companion and it's being used by thousands of patients across the country...and it's free! CareSignal just wants to help. Listen to my interview with CEO and Co-Founder, Blake Marggraff as he shares how COVID Companion helps, how the idea came about and why he's so excited about its potential.   

Learn more about CareSignal: https://www.caresignal.health/

It’s no secret that patient volumes in 2022 were below expectations. NRC Health, recently found that 27% of patients are actively deferring their care in 2022. Why are so many patients putting off their care? The primary reason in 2022 was not fear of COVID-19. Instead, it was financial concerns that kept patients away. Until healthcare organizations address this, patients may continue to defer their care.   

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Ryan Donohue, Strategic Advisor at NRC Health, to dig deeper into the company’s findings and to discuss how healthcare organizations can motivate patients to return.   

Learn more about NRC Health at https://nrchealth.com/   

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

When I attended the PointClickCare Summit, I met Sanjeev Shetty, President & COO at DBSync.  They were in the partner area of the conference and had created a really interesting middleware solution to be able to better manage all your data across a multitude of applications.  While this is a very familiar problem in healthcare, it was interesting to learn how this problem happened in a lot of other industries as well.    

To learn more about the DBSync solution, I sat down with Shetty to hear about the companies experience connecting and sharing data between a multitude of applications.  He shared what it takes to really connect different software and systems using their data management platform and how easy it is to share data between them.  In many cases, he's working with things like demographic data which often need to be shared between multiple SaaS based software.  

Learn more about DBSync: https://www.mydbsync.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Trachoma remains the world’s leading infectious causes of blindness, yet for decades we have had the antibiotics to treat it. Sightsavers is an international charity dedicated to preventing avoidable blindness and is working in Africa and Asia to eradicate this disease. Their programs are having a significant positive impact. A key to their success is effective use of GIS technology to track and manage both the disease and treatment coverage.   

We sat down with Andy Tate, Senior (NTD) Data and Reporting Advisor at Sightsavers to learn more about their work and how they are leveraging GIS technology from Esri.  

Learn more about Sightsavers: https://www.sightsavers.org/ 

Learn more about Esri: https://esri.com/health 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

While at the Oracle CloudWorld conference, I had a chance to sit down with Seema Verma, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Oracle Health.  In this wide ranging interview, we cover a broad range of topics starting with her journey from CMS to now one of the leaders of Oracle Health.  Plus, she shares the vision for Oracle Health going forward. Given we're a couple years into Oracle Health's acquisition of Cerner, I wanted to check-in with Verma on the progress they've made merging Cerner into Oracle Health.  Plus, I ask her what long time Cerner users should know about what's happening at Oracle Health and what they can expect going forward.  She talks more about their new EHR and that more details will be shared at the Oracle Health Summit later this month. Learn more about Oracle Health: https://www.oracle.com/health/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

From ‘distraction therapy’ to providing educational content at a patient’s ‘medical moment of epiphany’, display devices within a hospital are capable of engaging patients in ways that have a real clinical impact. Jeff Fallon, Chairman & CEO of eVideon Healthcare, a technology company that makes smart devices for patient engagement at the bedside, believes these types of platforms have become a necessity rather than an amenity.   

Watch our interview with Fallon and learn: 

* What distraction therapy is and why it's important 

* Why patient experience needs to be thought of as an outcome rather than a goal unto itself 

* What has changed the most in the past year in terms of patient engagement 

* What technologies, other than telehealth, we will be talking about in 12 months  

Learn more about eVideon here: https://www.evideon.com/

Watch this video with Jim Jacobs, CEO of MediQuant, to see the value of archiving for both immediate clinical workflows as well as for modern data crunching, and how the field has evolved since MediQuant was founded in 1999. MediQuant can help health care systems prioritize the order of doing conversions and enabling applications—a process they call application rationalization—taking into account priorities such as highest ROI and highest risk. Compliance, risk, interoperability, and integrating ambulatory care with hospitals are all considered. Learn more about MediQuant: https://www.mediquant.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

ModMed has been offering their cloud-based EHR for 15 years, so they have built up a database on more than 600 million unstructured texts in real-life clinical use. Therefore, now that they are adopting AI, their ambient listening tool can generate specific, highly accurate structured data from a patient interview. They don’t need a Large Language Model (LLM) the same way other ambient clinical voice companies need them, according to Cofounder and Co-CEO Dan Cane, so they can avoid the errors and lack of transparency found in LLM-based solutions. Listen to the video for more details about ModMed and their AI efforts. Learn more about ModMed: https://www.modmed.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Goel Jasper is the winner of the 2021 Medigy HITMC Award for Marketer of the Year (Agency).  Learn how is helping MedTech start-ups in Israel (and all over the world), is so inspired by Health Innovation & how he created a successful annual virtual summit by taking cues from Saturday Night Live.    

Connect with Goel Jasper:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/goel-jasper-63a2551/ 

Join the HITMC community: https://www.hitmc.com/

It is hard to picture Robotic Process Automation (RPA). There is nothing physical or tangible. There is no user interface that users interact with on a regular basis. In fact, when RPA is properly implemented, it works completely in the background without anyone noticing. That’s why the term RPA is nebulous for many people. What is it? How have organizations successfully deployed it?  

Tidewater Physicians Multispecialty Group (TPMG), a network of over 220 physicians and advanced clinicians in over 85 offices across the Tidewater and surrounding areas, has successfully implemented RPA. The ROI was almost immediate, and their staff are pleased with the technology. RPA has made their revenue process much more efficient and effective.  

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Dinesh Pai, Chief Revenue Officer at TPMG and Nicholas Frenette, Executive Director of Product and Solutions Engineering at AGS Health to find out more about this successful RPA implementation.  

 Learn more about TPMG at https://www.mytpmg.com/  

Learn more about AGS Health at https://www.agshealth.com/

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

As the number of COVID-19 cases begin to decline, healthcare leaders are finally able to take a step back and assess the gaps that the pandemic has exposed in their operations. When they do, workforce management, should be on their list of key areas to address, according to Nanne Finis, Chief Nurse Executive at Kronos.

Watch the full interview with Finis to learn more about:

* How COVID-19 has broadened the pool of available nurses  

* Why managing healthcare workforces is complex  

* Scenarios where poor staffing can lead to poor clinical outcomes 

* “Primary” versus “team” nursing and its implications in patient care 

* How complexity in care calls for more sophisticated and tailored staffing models 

* A new angle on the “nursing shortage” we face - is it really a shortage after all?

Learn more about Kronos: https://www.kronos.com/industry-solutions/health-systems

Many healthcare organizations have set their sights on Amazon as the exemplar to strive towards. They are held as the best practice when it comes to consumer experience, convenience and operations. While there are many things that healthcare can learn from Amazon, emulating their website isn't one of them according to Brian Q Davis, Executive Vice President at Scorpion Healthcare. In fact, Davis believes that making your hospital's website just like Amazon's is a waste of resources. Watch this interview to hear why.   

Learn more about Scorpion Healthcare: https://www.scorpion.co/hospitals/ 

Learn more about the HITMC healthcare marketing community: https://www.hitmc.com/

Milwaukee County is at the forefront of addressing racial inequity. During the COVID-19 pandemic they cross referenced vaccination rates with the CDC’s social vulnerability index and plotted the results using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. Armed with this powerful insight, the County was able to increase vaccinations in populations that needed them the most and by doing so increased the safety of the entire County. They are now incorporating an equity lens into other areas of public health.   

Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity recently to sit down with Zachary Swingen, Lead GIS Coordinator at Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management. We wanted to learn more about their pioneering work combining health equity and GIS technology.   

Learn more about Milwaukee County: https://county.milwaukee.gov/EN 

Learn more about Esri: https://esri.com/health

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

To better understand what’s really causing burnout in physicians, I had a chance to interview Dr. Eve Bloomgarden, MD, COO at IMPACT and CDO of Women in Medicine, Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, MD, CEO & Founder at CareAlign and Hospitalist at Penn Medicine, and Shane Danaher, COO at Divurgent.  They each dive into the nitty gritty details of the causes of burnout that many of us don’t even recognize as issues.  

Learn more about Divurgent: https://www.divurgent.com/ 

Learn more about CareAlign: https://carealign.ai/ 

Learn more about Women in Medicine: https://www.womeninmedicinesummit.org/ 

Find more great Health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Legacy applications have served Healthcare organizations for years; however, these applications are causing problems executives must address. Some of these issues include licensing, support and reliability, enhanced data retention requirements and security problems.  Sunsetting these applications is not simple and straightforward though and several factors must be considered when identifying which applications and supporting infrastructure must be updated.  

Learn more about Dell Technologies: http://delltechnologies.com/healthcare 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

When most of us think of modular buildings, we picture those trailer-like structures on construction sites – the ones with panel walls and the electrical wire that dangles outside. Modern modular buildings are a far cry from those flimsy seventies-era trailers. Modern modular buildings are marvels of technology and engineering. To learn more, Healthcare IT Today went to visit Fero International, a company that fabricates advanced modular buildings for the healthcare, education and municipal markets. We sat down with Fero’s CEO, Sabrina Fiorellino to learn more. Learn more about Fero International at: https://ferointl.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/ Disclosure: Colin Hung advises Fero International through ventureLAB, a non-profit Canadian innovation hub.

In this video Dr. Yossi Bahagon, Co-founder and Chairman of Sweetch, discusses the deeply holistic approach they take to helping people with diabetes adopt healthy behaviors.   

Whereas conventional systems for connected health deliver cold, generic instructions (“walk another 4,000 steps”;  “take your medication now”), Sweetch intensely personalizes messages: “Why don’t you take an umbrella and walk just nine minutes through the rain to your favorite coffee shop.”   

Learn more about Sweetch: https://www.sweetch.com/  

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In a recent conversation with Zafar Chaudry, MD, MS, MIS, MBA, Sr. Vice President – Chief Digital & Information Officer at Seattle Children’s, and Sunita Pradhan, VP Customer Success Hospital and Health Systems at ELLKAY, it was impressed upon me how important a healthcare organization’s work in data management is to an organization and more importantly their patients.  Doing it wrong can have major negative consequences on both those in the organization and the patients it serves.  

Learn more about ELLKAY: https://ellkay.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The Digital Front Door of healthcare is changing and how we integrate virtual care is going to have a big impact on every healthcare organization.  In this virtual meetup hosted by Dell Technologies, we led a discussion on how to know which patients to engage in virtual care, the best way to engage with patients, and how to measure the effectiveness of the engagement.  

Thanks to our panelists: 

* Steven Lazer, Global Healthcare CTO at Dell Technologies 

* Pete Stevenson, President and COO/CSO at eCare21 

* Gail Zahtz, Vice President Continuum of Care at Centers Health Care 

* Jamey Edwards, CEO and Co-Founder at Cloudbreak Health 

* John Lynn, Founder and Chief Editor at Healthcare IT Today  

Learn more about Dell Technologies: https://delltechnologies.com/Healthcare

At the recent MEDITECH Live conference, I had a chance to meet hundreds of members of the MEDITECH community and hear from many of the top executives.  In case you missed it, be sure to check out my summary of some of the key insights at MEDITECH Live.  There's always a lot to take in at a user conference, but the best part is to hear the firsthand experiences from the healthcare leaders attending the conference. Two leaders who stood out to me at the conference were Mike Elder, CIO and Vice President, and Kelsey Reed, DNP, MHA, MSN, FNPC, Director, Patient Care at Phoebe Putney Health System.  I sat down with them to learn more about Phoebe Putney and their work implementing MEDITECH Expanse at their organization.  They shared details of their implementation experience and the benefits they are receiving from the upgrade.  It was particularly great to hear the nurse perspective from Reed. Learn more about Phoebe Putney Health System: https://phoebehealth.com/ Learn more about MEDITECH: https://ehr.meditech.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

There is a growth-hacking approach to marketing that calls for getting your solution to market as quickly as possible. Once there you iterate quickly and eventually arrive at a good fit (features AND marketing message). A more methodical approach, however, can be equally, if not more effective in healthcare. Proscia invested time and effort to plan their market entry. The result: market acceptance and steady growth.  

We sat down with Jon Cohen, Head of Corporate Marketing at Proscia to learn more about their go-to-market journey and their keys to success.

Learn more about Proscia at https://proscia.com/

Learn more about StudioNorth at https://www.studionorth.com/

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Managing health data is no longer as simple as archiving it for the odd retrieval by a clinician down the road. Today, health data is a strategic asset. Mining that data can lead to critical operational and clinical insights. Plus the data itself is critical to the creation of AI engines and machine learning algorithms. To manage health data properly, healthcare organizations need to think differently about data storage. Healthcare IT Today recently sat down with Josh Gluck, VP of Global Vertical Alliances & Solutions at Pure Storage and Jon Kimerle, Global Healthcare Alliances at Pure Storage. We discussed the changing requirements for data storage in healthcare and how risky it can be to leave it in passive legacy archive systems. Learn more about Pure Storage at: https://www.purestorage.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Health care is not one single system, but multiple systems offering a bewildering variety of diagnostic and treatment options, backed by a plethora of payment systems that vary from patient. According to Krisi Hutson, Senior Director of Solutions at Availity, AI can help administrative staff from the front desk to the billing office negotiate the maze. Hutson points out that the average turnover of clinical administrative staff is 12-18 months. In this video, she lays out a typical scenario where a patient arrives for treatment and wants to know what the likely payment is. How can you expect an administrator to collect and analyze all the necessary information. That is where Availity helps. Learn more about Availity: https://www.availity.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Christopher Frenz, AVP of IT Security at Mount Sinai South Nassau and Brian Russell, Co-Chair, Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Internet of Things (IoT) Working Group have released a new Medical Device Security Incident Response playbook through the Cloud Security Alliance.  

To better know how healthcare organizations can use this playbook, I sat down with Frenz to talk about the medical device security landscape and common cases where medical devices are compromised.  Plus, Frenz shares the thinking behind the playbook and how a healthcare organization can use it to improve their medical device security and response.  

If you want to know more about the medical device security threats your organization faces and how to better manage them, you'll enjoy this interview with Christopher Frenz.  

Download the playbook here: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/artifacts/csa-medical-device-incident-response-playbook/ 

Find more great Health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The term “digital front door” is defined differently by each healthcare organization. Some see it as everything up to the point where a patient books an appointment. Others extend the definition to include all the post-appointment interactions. Swaay.Health sat down with Jeff Stewart, Vice President of Strategic Marketing at CHRISTUS Health to explore various aspects of the digital front door, including how they define that term, what Marketing’s role should be, and which technologies should be considered. Learn more about CHRISTUS Health at https://www.christushealth.org/ Find more healthcare marketing stories at https://swaay.health

As a major differentiator from other AI-based ambient voice scribes, Health Note integrates pre-visit information into the note, shortening visits sometimes for 30 minutes. Pre-visit information is obtained from patients by sending them a text message several days before they show up for their visit. The information gathered is far more detailed and sophisticated than a standard intake, because it asks many questions a doctor would normally ask at the start of the visit. Through this pre-visit documentation, Health Note might write up to 90% of the doctor's note, according to Dr. Joshua Reischer, Co-Founder & CEO. The information typically includes the history of the present illness, a review of systems, demographics, social and family history, allergies, and more. Learn more about Health Note: https://www.healthnote.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

I recently sat down with Kevin Bridges, VP of Marketing and Business Development, and Marc LaFleur, VP of New Customer Development at Enovate Medical, to talk over all the various EHR documentation workstation options available today and how healthcare organizations should navigate them.  They share the latest options and the explosion of peripherals that are needed with the workstations.  They also talk about whether workstations need to be mobile or not and the evolution we've seen when it comes to mobility.  

If you want to understand some of the latest insights into how to better manage your healthcare workstations, you'll enjoy this interview.  

Learn more about Enovate Medical: https://www.enovatemedical.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Tombot’s AI-powered robotic puppy companion is more than just an emotional support animal, through an array of sensors it can also remotely monitor patients. The company is planning to have a beta version available soon with full production later in 2024. There were many impressive technologies and digital solutions on display at #ViVE2024, but by far the more impressive (and cutest) was the one from a company called Tombot. They have an interactive, fully automated, emotional support animal that addresses the behavioral and psychological needs of patients with Dementia. Healthcare IT Today got a preview of their robot from Tombot’s CEO, Tom Stevens, who called it an “immortal puppy”. Learn more about Tombot at https://tombot.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives and addressing the workforce challenge in healthcare are not mutually exclusive. In fact, improving DE&I may be one of the quickest ways to alleviate the pressure of finding and keeping healthcare talent. How? Indigenous groups, visible minorities, and women are underutilized talent pools. With encouragement and training they could be a great source of healthcare staff.   

Shanil Ebrahim, a Partner and the National Life Sciences & Healthcare Consulting Leader at Deloitte Canada, is a firm believer that strategies designed to improve the diversity of healthcare workforces will ultimately lead to better outcomes for patients, more pools of talent, and stronger relationships between healthcare organizations and the communities they serve.   

Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to do a deep dive into DE&I and healthcare’s workforce challenge with Ebrahim.   

Learn more about Deloitte Canada at: https://www2.deloitte.com/ca/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/home.html 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Given my passion for trying to understand how we can reduce the clinician documentation burden, I sat down with Punit Soni, CEO of Suki, to talk about their approach to this problem.  Given Soni's work previously at Google and then an e-commerce giant in India, he brings a unique outsider perspective to the problem with some great technical skill.  

In the interview, Soni shares what the workflow would look like for a doctor that uses Suki.  We also dive into EHR integration and how deeply Suki is integrated with EHR software.  Plus, we discuss how it handles things like granular data and whether that granular data is available to be used granularly in the EHR.  Finally, we ask Soni how Suki compares to other ambient clinical voice solutions out there.  He does a great job describing the challenges that ambient clinical voice faces.  

Learn more about Suki: https://www.suki.ai/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

NextGen Healthcare is taking a methodical approach to AI and deploying it in places based on customer demand and where it will have maximum positive impact. Right now, that means using ambient clinical voice to generate SOAP notes. The company is also delivering more mobile capability to enable street medicine. In an exclusive interview with Healthcare IT, David Sides, Chief Executive Officer and Dr. Robert (Bob) Murry, Chief Medical Officer at NextGen Healthcare (NextGen) sat down to explain their AI strategy, their view on AI in healthcare, and their plans to support customers with street medicine programs. We caught up with them at their 2023 User Group Meeting (#NextGenUGM23) in Orlando Florida. Learn more about NextGen at https://www.nextgen.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The healow suite of apps from eClinicalWorks opens up many common healthcare tasks to patients. In our recent video interview at the eClinicalWorks Enterprise Summit, Ben Broseke, IT Director at Orthopaedic Institute of Ohio, Inc., describes the dramatic improvements in payments they go by deploying healow Pay. healow Pay is an online payments service that enables patients to pay their bill quickly online. The Orthopaedic Institute of Ohio has saved about 25% in costs by using healow Pay in place of paper billing, although some patients still prefer paper. While many wonder if online payments will work with their older population, the online services turned out to be popular across all demographics, including older patients.  Broseke didn't see any demographic issues with patients being able to pay online. Learn more about Orthopaedic Institute of Ohio, Inc: https://www.orthoohio.com/ Learn more about eClinicalWorks: https://www.eclinicalworks.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/ eClinical Works is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

Greenway Health’s CEO, Pratap Sarker, made several bold statements at the company’s annual user group meeting and has set the organization on an aggressive path forward. One of his promises was that all future innovations from Greenway would be based on AI. Learn more. Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with Sarker shortly after his opening keynote address at the company’s annual user group meeting in Arlington, TX to dive deeper into the promises he made. Learn more about Greenway Health at https://www.greenwayhealth.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Journey maps are powerful marketing tools. They can bring clarity to complex cross-departmental campaigns, help identify gaps, and get stakeholders aligned. Having a well-defined journey map even helps organizations maximize their precious marketing budgets. Journey maps take effort to build, but are worth the investment.  

We sat down with presenters Caroline DeVore, Executive Director of Strategy and Lorraine McMeekin, Senior Marketing Strategist from StudioNorth to get a preview.  

Learn more about StudioNorth at: https://www.studionorth.com/

Find more great health marketing content: https://www.hitmc.com/

System availability not uptime is critical for patient care. Cyberattacks have a significant negative impact on availability. No single security solution will prevent attacks, so a layered approach is needed. One tool that is overlooked is packet monitoring which can be used to detect attacks early, find infrastructure vulnerabilities, and improve availability.   

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Ken Czekaj from NETSCOUT to talk about the latest cybersecurity trends, including extortion attacks, and how packet monitoring can help.  

Learn more about NETSCOUT: https://www.netscout.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Engaging websites in healthcare require a delicate balance between what organizations want to convey and what patients want to access as well as between privacy compliance and collecting enough information to provide a personalized experience. Here are three tips to achieve that balance. Swaay.Health sat down with Drew Veach, Senior Account Manager at BizStream – a digital agency specializing in branding, web design, web development, digital strategy, consulting, CMS platform selection, and more – to discuss the latest trends and challenges with healthcare websites. Learn more about BizStream at https://www.bizstream.com/ Find more healthcare marketing stories at https://swaay.health

At some point in our lives—perhaps many points—we will pass through a long-term or post-acute care (LTPAC) facility. But these facilities are afterthoughts in our health care system, and were excluded in particular from the huge digitization of health care triggered in the United States by the 2009 HITECH act and 2010 Affordable Care Act.  

In this video, you can hear about the technologies and regulations needed in LTPAC from Bill Charnetski, Executive Vice President, Health System Solutions and Government Affairs at PointClickCare.  

Learn more about PointClickCare: https://pointclickcare.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Two out of five HIMSS members live outside the United States now. This represents tremendous growth in the international reach of HIMSS, which is the subject of this interview with President and CEO Hal Wolf. The interview was held at HIMSS Europe, where HIMSS has a growing presence and a global office in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Wolf says that the problems faced by clinicians are worldwide in scope: aging populations, workforce shortages, etc. Europe, however, is “taking the lead” in two areas of regulation: AI and “data space.” These initiatives have impacts on the U.S. and other countries, who will probably follow along with their own regulations. Plus, along with talking about HIMSS Europe and other international efforts, we also took the opportunity to ask Wolf about the acquisitionof the HIMSS conference by Informa. And we asked if there’s a chance that the HIMSS conference may go to locations like San Diego or New Orleans again. Learn more about HIMSS: https://www.himss.org/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

I recently sat down with Heather Hudnall, BSN, RN, Director of Connected Industry, Healthcare at NTT, and Heather Haugen, PhD, VP of Healthcare Practice, Digital Advisory, and Innovation at NTT, to learn what they are hearing from customers when it comes to the impact of connectivity on nurses, doctors, and patients. Learn more about NTT: https://www.global.ntt/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In our ongoing series of interviews with EHR vendors about how they're approaching telehealth, we dive in to the telehealth product, features, and functions.  Plus, we talk with them about how they look at third party telehealth vendors.  In this interview we sit down with Juan Molina, Division President at CareCloud, an operating division of MTBC.  

Learn more about CareCloud: https://www.carecloud.com/ 

Find the full EHR Telehealth Series: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/tag/ehr-telehealth-interviews/

Ambience Healthcare just came out of stealth mode with what they describe as fully automated AI medical scribes.  I hopped on camera with Mike Ng, Co-Founder & CEO, and Nikhil Buduma, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at Ambience Healthcare to learn more about how they're approaching this EHR documentation burden problem.  

In the video interview they share about Ambience Healthcare and how their solution fits between things like Human Scribes, Ambient Clinical Voice, and EHR templates.  They also share what the workflow looks like for a clinician using their product and how much of the backend technology is done by humans versus technology (Spoiler Alert: It's all Technology done in real time).  We also talk about whether a clinician has to change the way they talk in the exam room for this solution to work and how they approach building trust with clinicians in the accuracy of the notes that are generated.  

It's still early in the life of Ambience Healthcare since they just came out of stealth mode, but I think many will be interested to check out a demo and see if it can solve some of the issues I identify above.  Check out the video interview to learn more about Ambience Healthcare's solution.  

Learn more about Ambience Healthcare: https://ambiencehealthcare.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

As healthcare organizations continue to consolidate, one of the big challenges these healthcare organizations face is what to do with the data from all of these systems.  One of the most important pieces of data you have to ensure is handled properly is medication history.  No one wants to check multiple systems for medication history and consolidating patients' medication history across multiple systems is a real challenge.  However, doing so in a trusted manner is essential to ensure proper continuity of care for patients.  

This is the problem Dr. Robert Lackey Chief Medical Information Officer at WellSpan Health faced after acquisitions left them with three different EHRs.  At the HIMSS conference, we sat down with Dr. Lackey to learn more about this problem and what he and his team at WellSpan Health did to consolidate medication history across multiple EHRs.  

Learn more about DrFirst: https://drfirst.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

One of the questions we get asked a lot by new digital health entrepreneurs here at Healthcare IT Today is whether building on top of FHIR will mean a solution will be interoperable. The answer, sadly, is no. Healthcare remains a mishmash of data formats. Andrea Kowalski, Chief Product Officer at 1upHealth, shares this pragmatic view on the state of interoperability. While the promise of FHIR as a universal data standard is enticing, Kowalski recommends digital health companies accommodate multiple data formats (including FHIR) so that their solutions can be adopted by healthcare providers TODAY. Kowalski also shared how 1upHealth’s platform simplifies the complex work of interoperability, enabling startups and healthcare organizations to focus on innovation rather than the intricacies of data exchange. Learn more about 1upHealth at https://1up.health/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

To dive into what patterns healthcare organizations are seeing with patients as we work through COVID-19 and to share some lessons learned, we sat down with Sarah Bennight, Director, Marketing at Stericycle Communication Solutions.  Stericycle is on the front lines of this as they provide a mix of live voice, automated patient communication, and patient self scheduling solutions to healthcare institutions.  

Along with discussing the impacts of COVID-19 on healthcare organizations, Bennight also shares what she thinks some of the costs of delayed care are going to be.  Plus, she provides a great insight on the need to overcommunicate during challenging times even though many organizations often react by under communicating.  Then, we ask Sarah to share what she thinks the new virtual waiting room will look like.  

Learn more about Stericycle Communication Solutions: https://stericyclecommunications.com/

When doctors first see output from Regard’s AI analytics, they often say, “This is what I imagined the electronic medical record would be like when I heard about it for the first time.” Regard scans the patient’s medical records to find buried data that might be relevant to current treatment, and prepares a doctor’s note with that information. According to Eli Ben-Joseph, CEO and co-founder at Regard, their tool “amplifies and empowers doctors and nurses who use it to be the best they can be.” Learn more about Regard: https://withregard.com/ Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

When transitioning to a new EHR, it's important to really understand what's required to appropriately convert your data from your old system to the new system or an appropriate archiving option.  As more and more organizations move to MEDITECH's latest EHR, Expanse, they're experiencing this challenge first hand.    

In order to better understand how to navigate data conversions of legacy systems as you move to MEDITECH Expanse, we sat down with Taylor Mawyer, Managing Consultant at Galen Healthcare Solutions and Jay Dering, Director, Conversions at MEDITECH.  

Learn more about Galen Healthcare Solutions: http://www.galenhealthcare.com/

Moving healthcare infrastructure to the cloud is an effective way to keep IT infrastructure costs in check AND to improve recovery after a cybersecurity incident. These are two reasons why Canadian healthcare organizations, which have limited budgets, are turning to Pure Storage. Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to speak to Bill Bryer, Pure Storage’s Canadian Healthcare Lead about their work in Canada. We wanted to know why the company is enjoying success in the budget-constrained Canadian healthcare market. Learn more about Pure Storage at https://www.purestorage.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

State and local governments, along with non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and healthcare organizations are teaming up in Texas to tackle youth mental health. The Texas Child Mental Health Consortium is a unique collaboration between stakeholders across the state that provides access to mental health resources no matter where the child may be. The Consortium’s success is due to efficient processes, a data-driven approach backed by a technology platform, and a shared sense of purpose. Healthcare IT Today recently had the chance to learn more from Dr. Laurel Williams Medical Director for the Centralized Operational Support Hub for the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium (TCMHCC) and Malekeh Amini, Founder & CEO at Trayt Health. Learn more about TMHCCC at https://tcmhcc.utsystem.edu/ Learn more about Trayt Health at https://trayt.health/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Healthcare IT Today recently sat down with Justin A. Diehl, CHCIO, MBA, PMP, Vice President – Epic Services at CereCore to learn more about what he saw EHR experts do to manage the COVID-19 crisis.  Plus, we talk about the lasting impact for good and bad that these changes will have on healthcare organizations.  Then, we ask him where EHR software wasn’t ready for COVID-19 and what things EHR vendors need to do to better prepare for future crisis.  

Also, coming from an EHR consulting company, we ask him how COVID-19 has impacted the EHR consulting business and how some of the EHR optimization and implementation delays are going to impact healthcare.  Then, we ask Diehl to look into what the next couple years will look like for EHR projects within the hospital and the EHR consulting business.  

Learn more about CereCore: https://cerecore.net/

For Rishi Sarna, MD, Chief Clinical Officer at Backline, communication is central. He points out that communications have lagged behind everything else in medicine, and are holding back progress in patient care and the physician experience. In the video interview below, we sat down with Dr. Sarna and Jackie Rice, VP and CIO at Frederick Health, to discuss these challenges and Frederick Health’s work with the Backline team to address them. Learn more about Frederick Health: https://www.frederickhealth.org/ Learn more about Backline: https://backlinehealth.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

During the COVID-19 shutdown, when many providers lost sstaff or even closed, Pioneer Physicians Network, Inc. actually grew. This Ohio primary care practiced acquired three practices and added five physicians to its existing sites. In this video, Leanne Knight, Director of Health Informatics, explains how they streamlined their organization to achieve this success, They created a central office to take the burden of general services such as referrals and document management off of their 18 treat locations, so that the staff at those sites could focus on patient care. The cloud-based eClinicalWorks service made this possible. Learn more about Pioneer Physicians Network, Inc: https://www.pioneerphysicians.com/ Learn more about eClinicalWorks: https://www.eclinicalworks.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/ eClinical Works is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

Healthcare cloud solutions have become much more sophisticated, reliable, and easier to connect. Gone are the days of a single cloud instance that can support all your needs. However, managing the various cloud options can be challenging if you don’t have a thoughtful approach to it and work with great partners. At the HIMSS 2024 conference, we moderated a panel hosted by Rackspace Technology and Dell Technologies with healthcare multicloud experts and former CIOs who shared the benefits and challenges of implementing and integrating multicloud solutions in healthcare. Plus, they discussed how these models can evolve and adapt as the needs of healthcare change over time including how you can simplify your efforts to support multicloud and all of the AI solutions coming to healthcare. Learn more about Rackspace Technology: https://www.rackspace.com/strategic-alliances/dell-technologies Learn more about Dell Technologies: https://dell.com/Healthcare Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Will governments regulate the use of AI in healthcare? And if they do, what restrictions or guardrails would likely be put into place? Caleb Williamson, State Public Policy Counsel at the Connected Health Initiative gives us the inside scoop. Learn more about the Connected Health Initiative at https://connectedhi.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Nuance recently announced DAX Express and I had to learn more about it and dive into the details of what Nuance is planning to offer.  I sat down with Diana Nole, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Nuance Healthcare, where she shared more details about DAX Express, how it differs from DAX Ambient Solution, and what the workflow looks like for this new product.  We also ask her if there are any humans in the loop in this new "fully automated" solution (Spoiler Alert: There's not...other than the doctors it listens to). Nole shared more about how they're planning to integrate GPT-4 into the product and how this will work with the various EHR platforms.  She also talked about when the product will be available for users and what the roll out strategy will look like. Learn more about Nuance Healthcare: https://www.nuance.com/ Find more great Health IT Content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

According to Rich Steinle, CEO of Carium, many healthcare organizations haven't created a culture of "my health is every day" even though many of the DIY approaches to health like wearables are being fully embraced by patients.  This type of proactive monitoring of their health indicates that patients want to be more engaged and involved in their care.  In fact, trends like these indicate that patients want to shift away from the model of care where care is confined to the four walls of a clinic or hospital.  Instead, they want to use advanced virtual care technologies that can support their health on a daily basis.  This is particularly true for patients with chronic illnesses. In this video, Steinle and CTO Scott Pradels discuss the barriers to remote patient monitoring technology adoption among both clinicians and patients. They explain that Carium is meant to be installed and adopted easily, not to be a "big IT project" or require consultants. Plus, as you'd imagine, Carium is thoughtfully using AI in their platform for things such as risk stratification which helps doctors better care for their patients remotely at scale. Learn more about Carium: https://www.go.carium.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The Health Management Academy is a hidden gem. For years they have been bringing together leaders from healthcare providers and industry innovators in small group meetings. The smaller event setting makes it easier to share ideas, exchange best practices, and transfer knowledge. The Academy now runs 65+ focused meetings each year and operates a Center for Transformation to help its clients. Healthcare IT Today had the rare opportunity to sit down with Renee DeSilva, Chief Executive Officer at The Health Management Academy (THMA). We wanted to learn more about the work THMA is doing, what their plans are for the next 12 months, and what trends they are hearing + seeing from their clients. Learn more about The Health Management Academy at: https://hmacademy.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Graves Gilbert Clinic, a 200 provider group located in Bowling Green KY, was one of only 54 Best Performers identified by MGMA in their 2020 Performance and Practices of Successful Medical Groups Report. Healthcare IT Today sits down with their CFO, Steven Sinclair, to find out what it takes to be a Best Performer and the impact their smooth operations has on their clinicians and patients.   

Learn more about MGMA's Best Performers at: https://www.mgma.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

DeepScribe is dedicated to creating medical notes that are not just accurate, but have a human feel that reflects the individual physician’s style. Matthew Ko, cofounder and president, COO, explains in this video how they developed a highly customizable and accurate ambient voice solution. Learn more about DeepScribe: https://www.deepscribe.ai/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

From AI scribes to mobile access to advanced data analytics, Neighborhood Health is pushing the envelop as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). By leveraging technology in innovative ways, they are serving their growing community in a more efficient and caring manner while increasing access at the same time. In this insightful interview, Tony Villanueva, CIO at Neighborhood Health share how they’re leveraging NextGen’s innovative solutions to improve patient care. Dr. Bob Murry, Chief Medical Officer at NextGen Healthcare also offers his perspective. From mobile tools revolutionizing street medicine to AI reducing provider burnout and improving patient access, this conversation dives into the real-world impact of technology on efficiency, care quality, and community outreach. Learn more about Neighborhood Health at https://www.neighborhoodhealthtn.org/ Learn more about NextGen at https://www.nextgen.com/

There is little doubt that the top challenge facing healthcare in 2022 is staffing. Healthcare organizations around the country are feeling the effects of shortages and workforce instability with both frontline workers and administrative staff. Ironically, organizations are looking to artificial intelligence to help with the situation - a technology once loathed because of fears of job loss.  

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Greg Goodale, Vice President of Marketing and Jason Barnhouse, National Director of Enterprise Solutions at CorroHealth to discuss AI and how it can help with the staffing challenge in healthcare – particularly in revenue cycle management. .  

Learn more about CorroHealth: https://corrohealth.com/   

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

For Suncoast Community Health Centers, moving to a cloud-based EHR was a no-brainer. Not only did it save them money, but it also reduced staff frustration and stress. The move also helped improve the organization’s resilience through better redundancy and disaster recovery. With careful planning, cross-department collaboration, and help from their EHR partner, eClinicalWorks, the migration to the cloud was seamless. Healthcare IT Today sat down with Dorrie Paquin-Brown, Director of Special Projects at Suncoast Community Health Centers (SCHC) and Edward Martinbor, CIO at SCHC to learn more about their impetus to move to the cloud and the benefits they have realized. Learn more about Suncoast Community Health Centers at https://suncoast-chc.org/ Learn more about eClinicalWorks at https://www.eclinicalworks.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/ eClinicalWorks is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene

Mountain Park Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving the Phoenix Metro area, cleverly used a QR code to help staff and patients adopt a new technology. Internal champions collaborated with their EHR partner, eClinicalWorks, to double the use of their new patient portal in just twelve months. To find out more, Healthcare IT Today caught up with Amy Nunez, IT Director - Clinical Applications at Mountain Park Health Center (MPHC) at eClnicalWorks’ Health Center Summit held in Boston, MA. The Health Center Summit is an event that is tailored specifically for eClinicalWorks’ community health and federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) customers. Learn more about Mountain Park Health Center at https://mountainparkhealth.org/ Learn more about eClinicalWorks at https://www.eclinicalworks.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In a recent discussion with Gerry Blass, President & CEO of ComplyAssistant, he pointed out a number of things about ransomware that make it a unique challenge for healthcare organizations from a disaster recovery and business continuity perspective.  Not the least of which is that any healthcare organization could be hit by ransomware.  Plus, unlike many other disaster recovery situations, how much downtime you’ll have from ransomware is undetermined and may last for a long time.  

In the video below, you can learn more about how the world of disaster recovery and business continuity (DRBC) has been changing and what’s needed in healthcare organizations today.  Plus, Blass shares some of the common issues he sees in healthcare organizations DRBC plans.  

We also dive into whether healthcare organizations should pay the ransom and some of the challenges a healthcare organization will need to consider if they do want to pay the ransom (ie. $20k per day limit on buying bitcoin).  Blass also shares his thoughts on when to involve local police and the FBI and the benefits of doing so. Plus, he offers some good first steps that healthcare organizations can take to make sure they’re better prepared for disasters.  

Check out the interview below for more info on disaster recovery and business continuity and how ransomware has changed both of these important efforts.  

Learn more about ComplyAssistant: https://www.complyassistant.com/ 

Find more great Health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In this video interview, Navin Jain, Practice Administrator at Cookeville, described how they put in place the key parts of an improved workflow. They streamline their forms and allow patients to fill out information at home.  Plus, they automated most of the check-in process for patients. As a result, the staff have less work, the clinic can prepare for the patient's visit in advance, and the clinicians can give the patient more face-to-face attention.  

This is done through their use of CareCognitics and its deep integration with athenahealth. Because CareCognitics is responsive, changes requested by the clinic can be made in a couple hours or a couple days. Cookeville has been able to eliminate some vendors and simplify operations.  

Learn more about CareCognitics: https://carecognitics.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In these days of tightened payments and higher costs, organizations need to "do more with less" by finding better prices for their purchases while maximizing reimbursements—and above all, by making sure that technology improves ROI, according to Jeff Tennant, EVP of Healthcare IT Strategy & Services at ROI Healthcare Solutions.  Tennant and his colleagues, Diana Van Blaricom, VP of ERP Strategy, and Melissa Ursi, COO of ROI Healthcare Solutions and Managing Partner at ROI International, sat down with Healthcare IT Today to share how ROI (Return on Investment) is core to the culture of the work they do with healthcare organizations. Learn more about ROI Healthcare Solutions: https://roihs.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

At HIMSS, we sat down to talk with CommonWell Health Alliance to learn about their passion for interoperability and some of the latest happenings with the CommonWell community. This included an update on CommonWell’s new technical service provider, ELLKAY and their recent designation by the federal government as a Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN). CommonWell was formed 11 years from a consortium of major EHR vendors to carry out the mandate for interoperable data exchange in the HITECH and Affordable Care acts. As Executive Director Paul L Wilder points out, they are a “switchboard” through which clients can find patient data, but CommonWell doesn’t maintain any patient data itself (unlike, for instance, many health information exchanges). Along with these important updates, we also asked Liz Buckle, Director of Product at CommonWell Health Alliance, to talk about their work on CommonWell 2.0 and their journey to TEFCA. Plus, Buckle shares with us a bit about how they’re approaching FHIR and what role that’s going to play for CommonWell going forward. Learn more about CommonWell Health Alliance: https://www.commonwellalliance.org/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Another area where we haven't enabled pharmacists has to do with pharmacy interoperability.  While almost every pharmacy out there now supports ePrescribing, the healthcare industry has fallen short when it comes to ensuring that pharmacists have full access to all of the prescriptions that have been filled for a patient.  This puts patients into the untenable position of filling all their prescriptions at one location which can mean paying more for the same prescriptions or patients filling their prescriptions at multiple locations and the pharmacist doesn't know about all the prescriptions a patient has filled. This was one of the many important topics I discussed with Cam Deemer, CEO at DrFirst, and Pooja Babbrah, Practice Lead, Pharmacy & PBM Services at Point of Care Partners, in a recent interview with Healthcare IT Today.  In our discussion, we talk about early approaches to ePrescribing and how those efforts have led us to where we are at today including pharmacy interoperability (or lack thereof).  Babbrah and Deemer have been on the front lines of these efforts and share important perspectives on what is changing now that has them hopeful for the future of ePrescribing and pharmacy interoperability. Babbrah had also just attended the ONC Annual meeting and shares with us how ONC's interoperability and efforts to stop information blocking are going to impact medication sharing.  She pointed out that ONC choosing to include a session on pharmacy interoperability and the fact that it was well attended were good steps forward in recognizing the importance of sharing medication data including with the pharmacy. Learn more about DrFirst: https://drfirst.com/ Learn more about Point of Care Partners: https://www.pocp.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

To get a look at what some of the leaders in healthcare are doing with IoT, we sat down with Dave Wilson, Managing Director of IoT Global Sales at Cisco, to talk about where IoT is really being used in healthcare and what value is being derived from their efforts.  Plus, we talk about how a healthcare organization needs to approach managing 1000s of devices and how they're going to pay for it.  

Along with an IoT discussion, we also discuss the implications of 5G and learn more about the coming Wi-Fi 6 and how it will impact healthcare.  Then, we ask Wilson what is still holding back IoT in healthcare.  If you're interested in learning more about where IoT is working in healthcare now and where it is headed, you'll enjoy this interview.  

Learn more about Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/industries/healthcare.html

Anyone that’s been involved in patient care understands how valuable it is for patients to have a well done Advanced Care Plan (ACP) that’s been communicated to their family and caregivers. Trying to do advanced care planning in the heat of the moment is challenging and fraught with all sorts of problems for the patient and the clinician. This is why it is so valuable for patients to have a well documented ACP that’s been shared with their clinician and their loved ones. And yet, far too many patients do not have one. To learn more about the ACP and how to improve collection of them, we sat down with Dr. Brian Yeaman, MD, Primary Care Physician and Healthcare Technologist, and Aaron Bull, VP Strategic Programs at Backline by DrFirst. They share about their decade long journey to improve the number of advanced care plans they have on file including what works and what challenges you face when working to have an ACP on file for your patients. Learn more about Backline by DrFirst: https://backlinehealth.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Prior Authorizations are the bane of doctors existence and they affect the patient as well. Recently, I was able to sit down with Joe Anstine, CEO, and co-founder of PriorAuthNow , a company that is working to ease the tensions and difficulties of prior authorizations, to dive into this topic.  

Learn more about PriorAuthNow: https://www.priorauthnow.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In my interview with Sara Gallo, PA-C, VP of Clinical Services at Care on Location, she shares her experience with telehealth and remote patient monitoring and the impact this effort has had on disadvantaged communities.  Plus, she shares what would help her to be able to do this more effectively.  She also shares the unique solution that Care on Location has created that helps them remotely care for their patients even when patients may not have the technology themselves.  

Learn more about Care on Location: https://careonlocation.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Setting up a modern healthcare technology environment spanning on-premise and multicloud locations requires a comprehensive strategy that takes time, needs to be application-based, and allows for an on-ramp to move entire ecosystems of applications. Due to the proliferation of attacks – which are disproportionately target healthcare and life sciences organizations, becoming more frequent, increasingly sophisticated, and their consequences more dire – the inescapable conclusion is that it is no longer a matter of if these organizations will be breached, it is now a matter of when. To stay ahead of the constantly changing threat landscape and sophisticated cyber criminals, it is imperative that organizations have a well-defined strategy in place to ensure that they can recover these complicated environments with confidence as revenue and businesses are hard to get back. Plus, we’ll discuss how these breaches and downtime can really impact your workforce that’s already burnt out. In today’s hybrid era, it is also important to have Return To Office (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in preparation of potential cyberattacks as it’s difficult to staff up in short order and staff in modern hospitals are not used to using manual processes. The panel discussed how healthcare organizations can increase their cyber resiliency and gain peace of mind against cyberattacks and move beyond data recovery to cyber recovery when these breaches do occur. Panelists: Amanda Heidemann MD, FAAFP | CMIO, CMO | KeyCare Heather Hudnall, BSN, RN | Chief Nursing Informatics Officer | NTT Sandeep Misra | Head of Global Sales – Healthcare | Rackspace Technology George Morris | Global Healthcare CIO | Dell Technologies John Lynn | Founder and Chief Editor | Healthcare IT Today Learn more about Dell Technologies: http://delltechnologies.com/healthcare Find more great Health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

During the COVID-19 pandemic consumers turned to their healthcare providers as a trusted source of information. Those that had the right educational content ready to meet that demand saw an increase in patient loyalty. Eric Silberman, CEO at True North Custom talks about the unique opportunity healthcare has to build on that trust in a transparent way.   

Learn more about True North Custom: https://truenorthcustom.com/ 

Learn more about HITMC: https://www.hitmc.com/

At the HIMSS conference, I had a chance to interview Pouria Sanae, Co-founder and CEO at ixlayer, to learn about their solution to the problem of at home lab testing.  ixlayer provides a white labeled at home lab testing solution for provider organizations, biopharma, governments, employers, and population health programs.  Sanae shared with us how the challenge of lab testing in the home has been a problem for a long time and how much work it took for ixlayer to be able to scale their testing infrastructure to work across all 50 states.  Plus, they had to make sure the their solution dealt with the complexities of collecting and delivering the lab results where they needed to go.  

Learn more about ixlayer: https://ixlayer.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Epic started out as a rather inert data repository, but decades of use and growth have allowed it to look beyond the EHR itself. According to Project Manager Erika Koch, they have taken on the pressing challenges of health care: making doctors' work lives easier, reducing costs, and improving the patient experience. Work with genomics and rare diseases is underway. Seth Hain, Senior Vice President of R&D, talked about how they are integrating generative AI, in collaboration with Microsoft's Azure AI. The tool can be used for something as simple as categorizing inbox messages, or on a higher level to draft a response to a patient that the doctor uses as a starting point for a personal message. This is inline with all the talk about ChatGPT that happened at HIMSS 2023. Learn more about Epic: https://www.epic.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

One of the big challenges for health IT companies is onboarding new customers for something like payments.  Turns out, a bank we all probably know, KeyBank, acquired a company called XUP Payments to address this problem and the challenges of collecting payments in healthcare.  

I had a chance to sit down with Pete Wheeler, SVP, Group Lead, Healthcare and Insurance Payments at KeyBank, and Jeff Gill, Healthcare Go-To-Market Lead at XUP Payments, to learn about how they're helping healthcare organizations when it comes to payments.  They shared with us some of the major pain points they see and hear about in the healthcare industry and then they talk about what can be done to address these challenges.  

Learn more about XUP Payments: https://xuppay.com/ 

Find great Health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

AI and automation are all the buzz in healthcare technology right now.  There's a feeling that if you're not doing it, then you're doing something wrong.  The challenge for healthcare IT leaders is that they aren't sure the best ways to leverage AI and automation.  Plus, they're asking which are real and which aren't truly tested on healthcare problems. To learn more about this topic, we sat down with Chris House, CTO at HealthAxis, to talk about some of the ways they're seeing AI and automation used in healthcare to drive efficiency and empower staff.  We start off the interview talking about AI and how HealthAxis is using it to optimize call center operations.  Plus, he shares some of the key improvements these AI-driven tools have brought to the customer interactions.  This included things like reduced average handle time (AHT) and improved agent productivity. Learn more about HealthAxis: https://healthaxis.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Equipped with NextGen Healthcare’s mobile application and other tech, Neighborhood Health, an FQHC in Nashville TN, is bringing care to the streets of the city - literally. Learn more about this grassroots approach to meeting patients where they are. Healthcare IT Today caught up with Anthony Villanueva, the CIO of Neighborhood Health after he presented at the NextGen User conference. Together with Dr. Ebony Funches from Venice Family Clinic, Villanueva shared insights and strategies for street medicine programs. Learn more about Neighborhood Health at https://www.neighborhoodhealthtn.org/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In this interview, we sit down with Tim Suther, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Data Solutions at Change Healthcare to discuss their newly announce SDoH solution.  We talk about the data sets available, the problems it looks to solve, and where they plan to take the solution next.  If you're looking at how SDoH impact your patients, you'll enjoy this interview.  

Learn more about Change Healthcare: https://www.changehealthcare.com/ 

Find more great Health IT Content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Concord Technologies, which started in 1996, focuses on secure document exchange, counting three of the world's five largest healthcare payers as customers. In this video at the DirectTrust conference, we hear about the use of AI and what the company calls straight-through processing from Chike Okeke, JR, Chief Information Security Officer, and Mike Stover, Director of Product Management. Stover said that Concord's AI tools can examine in an incoming document, whether digitized or fax, and extract data to support classification, delivery to the appropriate workflow, and storage into appropriate record. It is useful for both clinical and revenue management. Thus, Concord solves administrative needs such as patient acquisition and enrollment, prior authorization, and referral and intake management. One client reported a 25% improvement in document scan rate. Learn more about Concord Technologies: https://concord.net/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Coming out of the HIMSS conference, one of the top topics at the conference was cybersecurity.  Maybe it was the lingering impact and effects on ransomware incidents that hit so many healthcare organizations or maybe it was the growing complexity of IT systems that are being deployed, but cybersecurity seemed to be on everyone’s mind.  

Troy Ament, Healthcare Field CISO at Fortinet, was certainly right in the middle of these conversations at the show and we were lucky to sit down with him to hear what he was seeing and hearing from healthcare organizations.  

Reach out to Fortinet directly with any specific questions or for healthcare specific security help at: healthcare@Fortinet.com  

Learn more about Fortinet: https://www.fortinet.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Data sharing and interoperability are spreading too slowly in health care, and even if a doctor manages to get all the data, its varied formats make it hard to draw insights from. eClinicalWorks has tackled the problem with a product called PRISMA, which can search across multiple providers and provide a unified view of recent visits, test results, etc. In this brief video, Jose M. Rocha, Director of the Corporate Business Office at First Choice Neurology, explains how such integration can produce better care. Learn more about First Choice Neurology: https://www.fcneurology.net/ Learn more about eClinicalWorks: https://www.eclinicalworks.com/ Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/ eClinicalWorks is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene

As part of our ongoing series of telehealth interviews with EHR vendors, we’re excited to share our interview with Patric Edmondson, Chief Technology Officer and Dr. Andrew Rosenthal, Medical Director of Plastic Surgery at Modernizing Medicine.  In this series, we talk with an EHR vendors to better understand how they’re approaching telehealth.  Are they developing teleahealth in house or are they relying on partners?  If they have their own in-house telehealth solution, what features does it include?  How are they approaching integrating telehealth into their EHR and how will they handle this with partners?  

Check out the interview below to learn more about how Modernizing Medicine is approaching telehealth across both the EMA EHR and gMed EHR solutions and how they approach working with outside telehealth companies.  

Learn more about Modernizing Medicine: https://www.modmed.com/

In this interview, I sat down with Carl Smith, CIO at King's Daughters Medical Center (KDMC), Dessiree Paoli, Sr. Manager, Solution Marketing at Interlace Health, and Maggie Peña, Vice President of Client Services at Interlace Health to talk about their project that converted and consolidated 2,500 paper forms to 1,000 digital forms.  

They share why forms are frequently overlooked and Smith shares the impact this project had on his organization.  He also shares the importance of having the forms integrated with his MEDITECH EHR and how the process of integration went for them. (Check out the full details of how Interlace Health & MEDITECH helped digitize KDMC’s informed consent process in this case study)  

Smith also shares how forms optimization never stops which goes contrary to many people's idea that we've already figured out forms and can move on.  Forms are not a one and done project, and Peña highlights how the relationship between Interlace Health and KDMC is ever-evolving as part of this continuous effort to improve the experience for both patients and staff.  

Finally, we wrap up the interview talking about a stat they shared in their HIMSS presentation that 52% of healthcare leaders ranked patient engagement as their biggest focus.  Plus, Smith shares what's top of mind for him and what he's most excited about going forward.  

Learn more about Interlace Health: https://interlacehealth.com/ 

Learn more about King's Daughters Medical Center: https://kdmc.org/

When the pandemic hit, healthcare organizations went through a period where it was a challenge for some to get the cash they needed to run their operations.  While many market sources of cash were closed, banks remained open and provided a much needed source of cash.  To learn more about how COVID has impacted healthcare organizations financially, we sat down with Bret Schiller, Head of Healthcare for Corporate Client Banking and Specialized Industries at J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking, to hear what he saw happening with healthcare organizations during COVID.  We also dive into what strategies healthcare organizations should be using to ensure they're prepared for future challenges.  Schiller also shares a look at where healthcare organizations are at today compared to the start of the pandemic.  

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

What does patient-centered mean for a radiology practice? For Raleigh Radiology it means providing patients with the convenience, control, and access they are expecting. Their team chose PocketHealth to accelerate their patient-centricity efforts. Healthcare IT Today sat down with Frank Manole, Chief Operating Officer at Raleigh Radiology and Rishi Nayyar, Co-Founder & CEO of PocketHealth to learn more about their collaboration and how they are improving the patient journey. Learn more about Raleigh Radiology at https://www.raleighrad.com/ Learn more about PocketHealth at https://www.pockethealth.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Stephanie Lahr, MD, CHCIO and president of Artisight, envisions a future where every hospital room hosts a camera and speaker in order to support two-way video. Hospitals are using Artisight's capabilities for remote support of nurses, but they are expanding to other disciplines as well. When you leverage nurses at the bedside and others watching over video, each can focus on different aspects of care. The physically present nurse has more time to spend with the patient. Although this practice may seem like it requires more staff, Lahr says they've found that splitting the work saves time. Learn more about Artisight: https://artisight.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In the complex world of patient care delivery, “cloud” can mean anything from public cloud to private cloud on-premise and everything in-between. Different workloads call for different solutions – e.g. the latency and service delivery requirements for advanced medical imaging is vastly different from that of modern EMR databases. As a result, most organizations operate in multiple clouds – experiencing amplified complexity and risks due to the resultant disparate tools and security postures.  

In today’s environment, healthcare providers need agility for changing business and clinical requirements and tools to map when and where their data and applications should reside on the cloud to provide a consistent experience for end users. In order to better understand what considerations should go into designing a hybrid multi-cloud strategy to support a data-first, patient-centric health IT ecosystem, we sat down with the following experts: 

* Justin T. Collier, MD, Chief Healthcare Advisor at World Wide Technology (WWT) 

* David Sarson, Global Alliance Manager, Healthcare Multi-Cloud at Dell Technologies  

Learn more about Dell Technologies: https://delltechnologies.com/Healthcare  

Learn more about WWT: http://wwt.com/healthcare

COVID-19 has put an enormous financial strain on physician practices.  Many had to shut down or severely restrict the number of patient visits. Although telehealth did help, it also introduced new billing and claims processing complexities. Having good revenue cycle management (RCM) processes will be key as healthcare recovers from the pandemic. We sit down with David Cohen from Greenway to talk about the importance of RCM.   

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Advocating for our own health or the health of our loved ones starts with gaining access to and a better understanding of health information. The AHIMA Foundation, the non-profit arm of the American Health Information Management Association, launched an initiative to help increase the level of health literacy in the US. We sat down with Anisa Tootla, Executive Director at AHIMA Foundation sat down with us to share more about the need for this initiative and the resources that they are making available to the public.   

Learn more about the AHIMA Foundation: https://ahimafoundation.org/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Seems like a week doesn’t go by with at least one or multiple healthcare systems being compromised by hackers.  As we talk with hundreds of healthcare organizations, they’re all in universal agreement that healthcare organizations are under attack by hackers more now than they’ve ever been before and that trend seems likely to continue.  Understanding all of the various ways your healthcare organization is being attacked today is the first step and then you can work to combat against it.  

To get a better understanding of how healthcare institutions are being attacked and how to combat these attacks, we sat down with the following panel of cybersecurity experts in a discussion hosted by Proofpoint: * Chris Baldwin- Chief Information Security Officer at Hartford HealthCare * Ryan Witt – Managing Director, Healthcare Industry Practice at Proofpoint  

Learn more about Proofpoint: https://www.proofpoint.com/

The Mayo Clinic Platform is chasing the perennial technology promise: of boosting innovation from a wide range of sources by reducing the burdens of development, testing, integration, and administrative management. Jeff Wu, Vice President of Technology describes their platform as allowing "rapid iteration at early stages with non-production data" to "build trust over time." They include a "distributed data network" that collects data "from participants across the globe." Learn more about Mayo Clinic Platform: https://www.mayoclinicplatform.org/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Healthcare organizations never had enough resources to manage the myriad of systems that were deployed in their organizations, even before the current workforce challenge. There are many systems still running at hospitals, health systems, and clinics that are never accessed (aka "technology debt"). Some of these systems are kept simply to ensure the data within them is available should the need arise.   

With fewer staff, managing these legacy systems is difficult. These systems also pose a risk for healthcare organizations. Healthcare IT Today caught up with Tom Liddell, CEO of Harmony Healthcare IT to discuss the growing legacy debt and how they are helping organizations address it.   

Learn more about Harmony Healthcare IT https://www.harmonyhit.com/ 

Find more great health IT content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Heidi Health automates note-taking with a high degree of customization: Clinicians can create highly detailed templates to capture the measures needed in their disciplines, or enlist the help of the Heidi team to create templates. Clinicians can add extra information after the patient interview. Different levels (brief versus detailed) can be chosen. Heidi is so confident in the value of their customizations that basic, vanilla note-taking is offered for free as part of their ambient AI scribe offering. In this extensive video, Tom Kelly, MD, Founder & CEO, explores many aspects of automating clinical administrative tasks. He lays out the value of automated note-taking in four specific areas. Learn more about Heidi Health: https://www.heidihealth.com/ Check out our list of ambient AI scribes: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/ambient-clinical-voice-companies/

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the normal operating procedure for many Health IT companies. Carefully crafted product roadmaps set out the beginning of 2020 are no longer valid. Companies like FollowMyHealth (part of Allscripts) have embraced the chaos and adapted their product and development processes to the new reality. In this interview Healthcare IT Today speaks with Kim Franks Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Health at Allscripts to learn more about the behind-the-scenes changes.   

Learn more at: https://about.followmyhealth.com/

Cyber attacks in healthcare are on the rise and as more organizations adopt new connected devices and systems, the points of vulnerability are multiplying. On top of that, clinicians and staff are busier than ever. The last thing they want to do is jump through extra security hoops to access the information they need. So how can healthcare be more secure when this is the reality? Healthcare IT Today sits down with Thomas Pace, VP of Global Enterprise Solutions at Blackberry Cylance to find out.   

Find more great health it content: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

According to Adeel Sarwar, Chief Technology Officer at CareCloud, doctors spend at least 20% of their clinical work time on administration. In this video interview, Sarwar and A. Hadi Chaudhry, Chief Executive Officer and President at CareCloud, talk about their use of AI, and now generative AI, to relieve doctors of this burden and achieve more face-to-face time with patients. Learn more about CareCloud: https://www.carecloud.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

If you've worked in health IT for any reasonable amount of time, you've no doubt heard of Marc Probst.  Probst recently retired as CIO for Intermountain, has been on a number of health IT government committees and recently received the John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year award.  As I've found with a number of CIOs, their idea of "retirement" is a little different than most and the same is true with Probst who was recently announced as the new CIO of ELLKAY.  

Enjoy this interview with Marc Probst where we talk about his work at Intermountain, his transition to ELLKAY, and advice he has for healthcare CIOs.  

Learn more about ELLKAY: https://www.ellkay.com/

In her role at Hackensack Meridian Health, Pam Landis brings together IT, Communications and Operations to craft digital solutions that meet the needs of staff as well as patients. Hear her share some amazing projects from 2020 and tips on how to forge a successful career in marketing & IT.  

Learn more about HITMC: https://www.hitmc.com/