Category: Latest News

EHR-based SDOH Screening Accuracy Falls Short for Housing Instability

EHR-based SDOH Screening Accuracy Falls Short for Housing Instability

DistilINFO Hospital IT

– EHR-based social determinant of health (SDOH) screening questionnaires under identified patients with housing instability and financial strain compared to single-domain screening tools, according to a study published in JAMA. Public health, healthcare delivery organizations, federal agencies, and researchers have advocated for better collection of patient SDOH data. Social factors can influence referrals to community partners, increase awareness of patient needs, measure population health, and improve risk prediction models. Popular EHR platforms include multidomain screening questionnaires assessing SDOH. Researchers evaluated the accuracy of EHR-based questionnaires using single-domain questionnaires on food insecurity, housing instability, and financial strain as external standards. The study…

Continue Reading
How Spiritual Care Impacts the Mental Health of Family Caregivers

How Spiritual Care Impacts the Mental Health of Family Caregivers

DistilINFO Hospital IT

– Acting as a family caregiver, who often takes on the role of surrogate decision-maker, can lead to elevated stress and anxiety caused by the patient prognosis and complex medical decisions needed to be made. According to a recent Regenstrief Institute study, spiritual care interventions can effectively support the mental health and well-being of family caregivers. Family caregivers in the intensive care unit (ICU) will make critical healthcare decisions on behalf of patients who may be incapacitated or critically ill and unable to make their own decisions. The study, published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, examined the well-being…

Continue Reading
How Technology Is Improving Healthcare

How Technology Is Improving Healthcare

The Healthcare Guys

The world of healthcare is rapidly changing, and technology is playing an increasingly important role in the industry. From smart devices that can detect symptoms early on to remote patient monitoring, technology is allowing healthcare professionals to provide better care than ever before. Let’s take a look at some of how technology is revolutionizing healthcare today.
Healthcare and Smart Technology
Smart technology for healthcare has made it easier for doctors and patients to communicate and monitor health conditions more closely. Smartwatches and wristbands can now track vital signs like heart rate, oxygen levels, sleep patterns, and more. This information can be…

Continue Reading
How Technology Integration Supports Precision Medicine

How Technology Integration Supports Precision Medicine

HealthTech Magazine

Precision Health Can Be Applied to All DisciplinesThe University of California, Irvine, has integrated its technology to create targeted health and wellness strategies for patients. In February 2022, the university launched the Institute for Precision Health, an interdisciplinary campuswide initiative to develop solutions in precision medicine. A future brick-and-mortar home for IPH will let data scientists collaborate with clinicians to develop analytics tools.
“Precision health is truly an amalgamation of multiple critical pillars. Understanding the multidisciplinary nature of this work is really how IPH came about,” says Dr. Peter Chang, ­assistant professor in residence at UCI’s Department of Radiological Sciences. He formed…

Continue Reading
Healthcare systems could face new DPRK ransomware tactics

Healthcare systems could face new DPRK ransomware tactics

Healthcare IT news

Government agencies from the United States and the Republic of Korea are highlighting new ransomware tactics they’ve seen, which they say are used to conceal the affiliation of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea hackers working to stage attacks against U.S. and South Korean healthcare organizations and critical infrastructure.WHY IT MATTERS
The new cybersecurity advisory, Ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure fund DPRK malicious cyber activities, details both North Korea’s historically and recently observed tactics, techniques and procedures and indicators of compromise.
The additional observed TTPs “span phases from acquiring and purchasing infrastructure to concealing DPRK affiliation,” according to the United States National Security Agency, the Federal…

Continue Reading
CDS Coalition requests FDA rescind final decision support guidance

CDS Coalition requests FDA rescind final decision support guidance

Healthcare IT news

The CDS Coalition is asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to pull back on its clinical decision support guidance in order to ensure that the agency better balances its regulatory oversight with the healthcare sector’s need for innovation, while comporting with the statutory language of the 21st Century Cures Act. ‘Flagrant’ disregard for Congressional law and intent
The coalition’s stakeholders – clinical decision support software developers, patient advocacy organizations, clinical societies, healthcare providers and healthcare payers – say the FDA’s guidance exceeds Congress’s statutory definitions of what is considered CDS and threatens to undermine lawmakers’ goals.
“The Office of the National Coordinator for…

Continue Reading
Why NLP can only succeed in healthcare if it caters to caregivers

Why NLP can only succeed in healthcare if it caters to caregivers

Healthcare IT news

Natural language processing, or NLP, is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables machine understanding of human language. In recent years, NLP has become part of consumer products and performs with a sometimes surprising degree of accuracy.Virtual assistants use NLP to understand spoken questions like, “What’s the weather like today?” They can contextualize the meaning of the question, and then use data from online sources to reply with a meaningful response.
Medical NLP has long been a topic of research and development, since it contains significant potential for uncovering meaningful insights from unstructured medical text. This presents huge opportunities for healthcare providers, clinical…

Continue Reading
How Technology Streamlines Referral Management, Specialty Care Access

How Technology Streamlines Referral Management, Specialty Care Access

DistilINFO Hospital IT

– On paper, the patient referral process can sound almost like a prescription. One biopsy. One second opinion. One visit to a specialist. In reality, referral management is a logistical and patient experience challenge, one that requires streamlined care coordination from start to finish. Getting a referral isn’t uncommon. According to a 2018 report from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the National Patient Safety Foundation, there are nearly 100 million subspecialty referral requests made from ambulatory centers each year. Despite referrals being common, they can still be jarring for the patient. Patients receiving referrals for mammograms might not be focused…

Continue Reading
Community Clinics Look to EHR Implementation to up Patient Experience

Community Clinics Look to EHR Implementation to up Patient Experience

DistilINFO Hospital IT

– Texas-based Legacy Community Health Clinic has announced it will transition from its outdated legacy system and move forward with an EHR implementation that will drive the patient experience while improving patient data access. The project, funded by a $1 million federal grant, will connect the health clinic’s 55 locations through one system and provide over 200,000 patients with continual data access. Providing patients access to their medical records was challenging for the community health providers, who previously had to fax health information. Faxed patient health data often sits on the fax machine for hours or even days before it gets…

Continue Reading