September 25, 2019
Maverick’s Update
Only What Matters on Health Information Policy
A panel of policy experts discussed the AEI-Brookings bipartisan plan for health reform this week. The first recommendation is to make data on prices and patient outcomes more easily accessible.
It is National Health IT Week, an annual event that HIMSS started in 2006. The focus is on supporting healthy communities across the U.S. through the application of information and technology solutions. An impressive number of “partners” participate.
Humana is making news with its digital health hub in Boston, and there are others doing interesting work here. Health IT hubs can differ in their purpose -- sometimes the term refers to a geographic region that has an inordinate amount of health tech-related entrepreneurs, as described here by the Nashville Healthcare Council.
One Thoughtful Paragraph
As Congressional Democrats and Republicans spend time tearing each other apart over an impeachment inquiry, it is good to know that private sector organizations are working together to improve access to health data. Arizona’s Medicaid population is the focus of a collaboration between Equality Health and Signify Health to integrate clinical and social care providers with technology and data tools. CAQH Core and HL7 are collaborating to address interoperability issues between administrative and clinical systems. A group of healthcare organizations and technology providers launched an open-source initiative titled CommonHealth to let Android-powered device users gain access to medical records. Allscripts is partnering with Apple to enable patients from hospitals using the Allscripts platform to access their records on smartphones. Mayo Clinic is partnering with Google to store patient data in the cloud and build products using artificial intelligence and other technologies to improve care. Health care innovation will continue to be a collaborative endeavor -- hopefully political discourse will find its way back to this process too.