CHICAGO—The Fierce Healthcare editorial team is on the ground in the Windy City this week for the annual Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society Global Conference.
Check back here throughout the week for the latest news, trends and developments at one of the industry's largest health tech conferences.
Friday, April 21, at 10 a.m. ET
TripleBlind launches three new products for automated data de-identification
Data privacy solution TripleBlind rolled out three new healthcare-focused product offerings this week. The new products provide secure accessibility to sensitive data, allowing healthcare users to gain detailed insights while maintaining privacy and compliance, according to the company.
The TripleBlind Privacy Suite enables organizations to use sensitive data with mathematically enforced privacy guarantees, ensuring that medical advancements no longer have to wait for lengthy manual de-identification processes or sacrifice patient privacy.
The new suite consists of three new products – Privacy Builder, Privacy Fortress and Privacy Network – each designed for organizations to create a customized solution for their unique needs with data.
“Most modern organizations collect data, but they're unable to leverage it in a meaningful way while also maintaining privacy and compliance. Because of this, the true potential of data has yet to be seen, but the possibilities are huge: From improving healthcare outcomes, to predicting banking trends, to streamlining pharmaceutical trials,” said Riddhiman Das, TripleBlind’s co-founder and CEO in a statement.
“Our product suite provides the tools needed to gain insights from data while maintaining privacy and compliance across the globe. With the TripleBlind Privacy Suite, the products are built to fulfill various needs depending on the type of organization so they are able to drive insights in the way that works best for them," Das said.
Thursday, April 20 at 9 am ET
Athenahealth rolls out new tool to measure how well patients engage with digital health
The SaaS-based healthcare technology provider announced a new tool called the patient digital engagement index. Athena's index is designed to give providers insight into how their patients use digital tools when receiving care. See full story.
Horizon Healthcare Services partners with Cognizant to support its government healthcare programs
The oldest and largest health insurer in New Jersey Horizon Healthcare Services announced a collaboration with Cognizant to support Horizon's government healthcare programs.
As a part of a 7-year renewal agreement, Cognizant will manage Horizon’s claims processing, encounters submissions to the state, provider configuration and enrollment services for its 1.2 million Medicaid and Dual Eligible Special Needs Plan members.
Cognizant will utilize its TriZetto healthcare products suite to support Horizon in hosting operations on its Facets platform. The software provider plans to help Horizon speed up payment processes while promising accuracy.
"Working together since 2016, Cognizant has streamlined Horizon's operations and improved the quality of services for Horizon's growing membership," said Sanjay Subramanian, Cognizant head of healthcare payer services, in a press release. "During the pandemic, Cognizant was able to quickly scale its services to accommodate Horizon's member enrollment growing from 850k to 1.2m members. We are proud to continue our work with Horizon and support their government healthcare programs with reliable, efficient, and accurate healthcare technology."
Cognizant's TriZetto enterprise portfolio includes 347 thousand healthcare providers, 8 thousand health insurance payers and 2.6 billion annual transactions on its Facets and QNXT platforms.
Wednesday, April 19 at 11 am ET
HIMSS launches the non-profit's new non-acute care roadmap and healthcare IT academy
President and CEO of the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society Hal Wolf spoke with reporters about the global health advocate's launching of a novel non-acute care roadmap and healthcare IT academy. Wolf also addressed HIMSS' consideration of expansion into global emerging markets.
The Community Care Outcomes Maturity Model (C-COMM) will measure digital maturity of care delivery across primary care, virtual care, maternal and mental health while helping define a path to patient-centric care. C-COMM is a modernized iteration of the Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model used to measure digital maturity in outpatient clinics.
The healthcare IT academy for clinicians and professionals at HIMSS is slated to launch in late summer 2023 with a 9-month program for aspiring chief information officers. Future programs will offer training for other positions within digital health ecosystems.
When asked about the organization's slow move to emerging global markets, Wolf stated that HIMSS has prioritized expansion into Latin America before 2020 but was forced to put plans on hold until after the pandemic had waned. Wolf emphasized that HIMSS is reviewing those markets and developing plans for expansion.
"My concern coming in as CEO was that we need to go to South American markets with a strong commitment," Wolf said. "It's not enough to go in and just have an event and leave. We're now at work. We're now back after the pandemic. America's advisory board is now pushing in the same way and we're going to be working through the rest of this year, putting that strategy together for execution in '24-'25."
Wolf estimated that 35,000 attendees visited the 2023 HIMSS Global Conference in Chicago this week. The conference is slated to move to warmer waters March 2024 in Miami.
Tuesday, April 18 at 11 am ET
RevSpring reveals advancements in its Engage IQ platform
Payer solution provider RevSpring announced innovations in its EHR-integrated Engage IQ platform
PayPlanIQ is being added to RevSpring's PersonaPay payment platform in order to optimize payment options for patients. Other EHR-integrated offerings include Insights and Optimizations bringing AI-informed patient engagement tips placed to the company's OmniBrain analytics product. Self-scheduling capabilities will also be expanded.
“We are seeing more customers look to consolidate their vendor experience in tandem with the patient experience,” said Valerie Mondelli, chief commercial officer at RevSpring, in a press release. “With the introduction of Engage IQ, RevSpring is taking the burden of consistency off of the provider and using intelligence and technology to connect the patient experience, which reduces staff effort, IT resources and cost.”
The company's 2023 Voice of the Patient Survey of 1,000 patients reported that two-thirds of respondents would be somewhat or very likely to switch healthcare providers if they experienced poor communication during the pre-care or billing process. RevSpring claims that its PayPlanIQ offering will optimize patient ability to pay medical bills.
RevSpring is exhibiting at HIMSS at booth #2248.
Tuesday, April 18 at 1:45 pm ET
Digital patient engagement technology company TeleVox, rolled out Iris, an AI-driven virtual agent.
Iris is accessible via web, voice and SMS interactions and embedded into TeleVox's HouseCalls Pro patient engagement workflows, according to the company. Utilizing Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service with its large-scale, generative AI models and other chat technology, Iris provides patients with quick access to information and easy completion of common tasks, improving patient access and self-service. Iris enables call deflection and reduces operational burden and costs for health systems, TeleVox said.
TeleVox developed Iris to set a new standard for conversational virtual assistants by surpassing current basic chatbots that utilize limited content, require extensive training, and lack an EHR-integrated, omnichannel experience. The company developed the virtual assistant to have dvanced AI capabilities and access to a vast range of published content so it can provide immediate responses to a wide range of patient queries.
By integrating voice, web chat and SMS capabilities into a single omnichannel experience, healthcare providers can offer self-service options to patients for a variety of common activities, reducing the burden on staff and increasing patient acquisition. Iris can be easily integrated with existing EHRs or deployed as a standalone solution, the company said.
Iris can provide easy access to information and provide automated self-service scheduling options. TeleVox plans to add other capabilities including bill-pay, prescription refill, provider search, patient education, symptom checker and procedure eligibility services.
Vik Krishnan, president of TeleVox, called Iris a "new generation of AI-enabled patient-provider communication."
"It marks a significant milestone in the evolution of patient engagement technology. The platform enables health systems to deliver the self-service experience that consumers expect today, and it integrates a full range of communication technologies, providing patients with the flexibility to engage with healthcare providers on their own terms. Healthcare organizations can also easily incorporate their website and other content into the automated system, providing patients with customized and easy-to-understand 'FAQ' content in natural language," Krishnan said.
Tuesday, April 18 at 7 am ET
eClinicalWorks introduces ChatGPT to EHRs and practice management solutions
Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT back in November and now there seems to be a tidal wave of AI-based innovation at health IT companies.
eClincalWorks, the developer of ambulatory electronic health record software, is integrating its EHR and practice management solutions with ChatGPT, cognitive services, and machine learning models from Azure OpenAI Service to enhance its technology offerings.
The company recently committed $100 million to Microsoft Azure cloud services. This significant investment gives eClinicalWorks access to the latest innovations available with Microsoft Cloud, the company said.
The news follows an announcement from Epic that it is stepping up its collaboration with Microsoft to run generative AI solutions like GPT-4 through Microsoft's OpenAI Azure Service.
The AI-enhanced offerings will deliver a conversational EHR that enables users to gather relevant patient information by asking the EHR questions in natural language, according to executives. Embedded cognitive services in the eClinicalWorks document management system will automate administrative tasks, such as document identification, auto-assignment, and document routing.
The new eClinicalWorks EHR copilot summarizes patient provider interactions to reduce administrative burdens and physician burnout. With eClinicalWorks’ AI-based dictation service, Scribe, practices are saving an estimated hour each day. The eClinicalWorks EHR copilot will further enhance physician satisfaction and decrease time spent on administrative tasks, according to the company.
ClinicalWorks is exhibiting at HIMSS at booth #1267.
Monday, April 17 at 10 am ET
Symplr launches product suites in Connected Enterprise initiative
The healthcare operations software provider symplr today launches four product suites and announced the latest version of the company's Midas Care Management solution.
Symplr's four suites will be released as a part of its Connected Enterprise initiative to create efficiencies for health systems addressing staff retention, burnout, compliance and rising supply chain costs.
Symplr's Workforce Suite is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution designed to manage patient-centered approaches. The software company's Supply Chain Suite enforces product policies and ensures credentialing compliance. The company claims that its Quality Suite improved operational and clinical performance while its Credentialing Suite combines automated credentialing software with NCQA-accredited credentials verification organization services.
“The healthcare industry continues to face financial, workforce, and competitive pressures. The latest innovations to our software will help hospitals, health systems and other care delivery organizations optimize operations so that they can continue to excel, avoiding costly inefficiencies that waste precious resources,” said Brian Fugere, Chief Product Officer of symplr, in a press release. “We’re committed to helping our customer partners accelerate mission-critical outcomes including providing the best quality patient care.”
The Houston, Texas-based company boasts an API Gateway including electronic health record integration and a common set of service to integrate workflows across solutions.
Monday, April 17 at 9 am ET
Philips, AWS partner to bring imaging tech to the cloud
Imaging tech company Royal Philips' HealthSuite Imaging solution is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The two companies also plan to accelerate the development of cloud-based generative AI applications that will provide clinical decision support, help enable more accurate diagnoses and automate administrative tasks.
Philips executives say the availability of the HealthSuite Imaging solution on AWS is a new addition to the company's broad capabilities in enterprise informatics, enabling improved image access speeds, reliability and data orchestration for radiologists and clinicians across the entire imaging workflow – from diagnosis to therapy selection, treatment and follow-up.
“With healthcare systems under increasing pressure, the focus of clinicians’ has shifted from technical specifications towards more efficient workflows that lead to accurate diagnoses – and that’s what we are delivering here,” said Shez Partovi, Philips' chief innovation and strategy officer and business leader enterprise information, in a press release. “By shifting from on-premises to the cloud, we can leverage the security, reliability, and unmatched breadth and depth of AWS to support healthcare organizations in their mission to deliver high-quality care while easing the burden on their staff.”
Philips HealthSuite Imaging will use Amazon HealthLake Imaging to increase scale, deliver fast time to first image, enable easy re-use of images for machine learning and research and reduce medical imaging costs, the companies said.
Philips will also use Amazon Bedrock as part of its efforts to develop generative AI applications to advance PACS image processing capabilities and simplify clinical workflows and voice recognition. Amazon Bedrock will enable Philips to develop machine learning-based applications quickly and reduce model development costs versus building foundational models (FMs) from scratch or running multiple task-specific model development efforts.
Innovaccer unveils self-serve conversational AI assistant
Innovaccer, a Big Data company focused on value-based care, unveiled a conversational AI assistant and other new solutions aimed at providers at HIMSS23. See full story.
Amazon launches new features for hospitals using Alexa devices
At HIMSS23 on Monday, Amazon announced a new suite of features tailored for providers using Alexa-enabled experiences at scale for hospitals.
The features are part of Alexa Smart Properties (ASP) for Healthcare, which provides device fleet management of Alexa-enabled devices to help reduce administrative burdens at hospitals. See full story.
Monday, April 17 at 8 am ET
Orion Health launches scalable 'intelligent' data platform
Software company Orion Health kicks off HIMSS23 by unveiling its new Orchestral health intelligence platform, what is calls the first "out-of-the-box health-specific" data platform.
The health data solution can be cloud or on-premise hosted, and features include built-in machine learning, natural language processing, data de-identification, terminology service, patient indexing, data integration, elastically scalable, data analytics capabilities and zero downtime upgrades, according to the company.
Orion Health global CEO Brad Porter says the Orchestral solution sunsets the need for customers to cobble together multiple point solutions and components from different vendors, often built on antiquated technology. Orchestral provides a hub for all data, applications and services in a health system.
“This has all been made possible by utilizing modern tech such as Spark, Jupyter, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, Elastic Search, Postgres, microservice API’s, and much more. Orchestral is the most scalable intelligent data platform on the market, being not only able to store data for hundreds of millions of patients in the cloud but also able to scale right down to a MacBook or even a Raspberry Pi cluster," Porter said.
Orchestral is one of the three arms of Orion Health’s Unified Healthcare Platform. The company provides a digital care record or HIE as an integrated platform that consolidates patient data across care settings. These are used throughout multiple global health systems including 10 statewide health information exchanges in the U.S., according to the company.
Orion Health also provides a consumer engagement platform that integrates data, tools and services for end-to-end healthcare navigation and management.
Artificial intelligence is baked into Orchestral, allowing for out-of-the-box machine learning, natural language processing and algorithm management. The platform allows for simple viewing of the data and also the ability to integrate into other applications. Orchestral can ingest and store every type of data related to individual patients, healthcare providers. This includes structured and unstructured data from HL7 and FHIR standards, social determinants of health, genomics, environmental and behavioral health, executives said.
“Orchestral is the culmination of 30 years of Orion Health working with healthcare data and interoperability, handling hundreds of millions of patient’s records and on the journey to provide a truly intelligent health data platform for the future,” Porter said.