Technology vendors announced some new tools and insights this week to help hospitals and health systems meet the rigorous data-protection demands of cybersecurity, while putting that data to work for better patient care. 

Akamai: Speed up microsegmentation

A new Akamai report on overcoming deployment obstacles in segmentation offers healthcare organizations a blueprint for zero-trust architecture that can thwart debilitating cyberattacks. 

Healthcare and e-commerce organizations are the most likely to suffer financial losses after a cybersecurity attack – 43% and 42%, respectively – according to a Global State of Segmentation report that Akamai released Tuesday.

The company surveyed healthcare and life sciences organizations across the United States, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and AsiaPacific, finding that they overwhelmingly agree on the effectiveness of segmentation in keeping assets protected.

In the report, Akamai shared learnings and key takeaways that it said can help solve microsegmentation challenges and overcome deployment obstacles to protect critical healthcare and life sciences systems.

"Within the healthcare sector, the percentage of organizations with segmented business-critical applications/data rose 20% and segmented servers rose 18% from 2021 to 2023," the Akamai researchers said.

"The healthcare industry is most likely to have had an office-based employee/user be the reason/source of an attacker gaining network access (47%, compared to 26% overall), and this is more than double other such compliance-critical industries such as financial services and energy (both 19%)," they said.

Key vulnerabilities mean segmentation rates must accelerate, especially in healthcare, because cyberattacks can be minimized.

“Like a submarine, if one compartment is breached, it doesn’t risk the whole boat because you can limit the flooding by closing the bulkheads," Richard Meeus, director of security technology and strategy of EMEA, at Akamai said in the report announcement.

"Unfortunately, suffering a cyberattack is a matter of when, not if, so getting everything water-tight is much better than sinking to the depths."

Suki: Premier adds AI documentation

Meanwhile, Premier has added the Suki artificial intelligence scribe to its network of hospitals and providers.

Suki announced Tuesday that Premier, a digital health alliance with 4,350 U.S. hospitals and 300,000 other providers, will extend the company's genAI ambient listening and documentation tool to empower healthcare providers at the point of care.

Suki automatically generates clinical notes following patient-clinician conversations and manages other tasks, like ICD-10 and HCC coding. 

Integrated into electronic health records – Epic, Cerner, Meditech and Athena – the tool syncs clinical documentation in real time, allowing clinicians to pre-chart in the EHR and finish the note with Suki, or pull data from the EHR into the scribe, the company said.

Premier, which works with collaboratives, supply chain solutions, consulting and other services, is leveraging AI, including natural language processing and machine learning, to diversify data, work with unstructured data, analyze imaging, and more.

"It was important to us to figure out how we could work with our health systems and the health plans to identify patients that are eligible, along with the appropriate clinical indications to authorize the procedure in real-time," Angela Lanning, chief operating officer within Premier's healthcare informatics division, said during a virtual congressional briefing the company held in 2023.

OM1: CDS predicts treatment outcomes

OM1 this week launched a new clinical decision-support tool that leverages phenotyping models to help close gaps in patient care and precision medicine.

The new platform, called Lyra, uses artificial intelligence to examine data and provide clinical insights that guide providers and patients in choosing the most effective treatment options, the company said in an announcement Monday.

By generating and stratifying predictions around diagnosis, treatment and risk, providers can use the AI-driven platform to offer patients personalized medicine at the point of care, the company says. 

Relevant and actionable insights are gleaned by translating population-level patterns to the patient through disease and treatment-specific phenotypes.

The technology can identify patients to reveal hidden characteristics and predict outcomes, according to Joseph Zabinski, vice president and head of commercial strategy and AI at OM1.

"There is a tremendous untapped opportunity to synthesize data sources to better understand patient journeys and treatment decisions, which we've learned to address with our digital phenotyping technology," he said in a statement.

These predictive population-level insights can help improve treatment efficacy and deliver better care, added Shawn Bates, chief commercial officer at OM1.

"Our leadership in this space aims to strengthen the relationship between a patient and their provider while improving the standard of care," he said.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.