Digital Health Thoughts

In one of my visits to the hospital where our EHR system was being deployed the chief doctor turned to me and said: "My experience allows me to predict exactly what will be the patient's condition in the next few hours just by glancing at him, however, I am not able to pass this skill to my young doctors. What I need from you, software engineering people is to help me solve that problem". That sounded to me like a classic problem for computers to crack and bring value: to “connect the dots” between so many unrelated data points simultaneously in real time, in order to detect small anomalies indicating that a patient begins to fail, elusive even from a careful human observer. The year was 1998 and although predictive analytic has been a hot topic over the years and the vast improvement in computational power, predictive analytic products are not widely being used by health delivery organizations and are still being considered by many as gadgets. Treatment decisions ...

We all hear those stories every now and then about the outrages amounts of money that health organizations spend on buying a piece of software. There are no secrets in the healthcare industry about which software vendors are the ones lifting the expenditure bar. The majority of them are US-based companies looking to expand internationally after they have pretty much exhausted their opportunity in their home territory, leaving it with almost twice the health expenditure per capita from the runner up in the world. In any other industry, private companies generating large profits deserve nothing but applause. However, when it comes to the healthcare industry one cannot overlook the fact that money that was allocated to improve patients’ health is being transferred to wealthy businessmen. It will be naive to think that when it comes to the healthcare industry executives and shareholders will abandoned their playbook for the good of their society. Therefore, with that in mi...

PAA stands for Patient Admission App. In a nutshell it is a platform in which the hospital can communicate with its patients and their relatives before, during and after their stay in  the hospital. A patient's encounter with a hospital is often a traumatic event to both the patient and his family. A lack of  proper communication between the parties can have major implications on the hospital efficiency and the patient's experience which research shows has a critical impact on the quality of care. From red tape to red carpet  A PAA should accompany the patient throughout his journey by keeping him informed and engaged. This starts prior to the actual admission when the patient feels scared, anxious and confused. A PAA should provide the patient with all the information related to his upcoming treatment. This can include treatment reminders such as not to eat x hours before a planned anesthesia, orientation map, etc. It should also handle in...

Patient engagement is currently considered the cornerstone of the health care system revolution for its positive impact on health outcomes and health care costs. There is a growing body of evidence supporting that the association between better patient experience and health care quality. A recent article published in JAMA Internal Medicine demonstrates this association. The research compares the patient experience as measured by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) star ratings and higher quality of care in hospitals in the United States. The study found that a higher CMS star rating was associated with lower patient mortality and readmission's. The US National Library of Medicine (PMC) conducted a systematic review of the literature analyzing the impact of information technology on patient engagement and health behavior change. The PMC research reviewed in detail a total of 170 articles. Overall, 88.8% (151/170) of studies showed a positive impact on pati...

It is breathtaking to read the statistics highlighting the sheer growth of data that is being captured globally. For example, every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of time until 2003; over 90% of all the data in the world was created over the past two years; if we burn all the data created in just one day onto CD-ROMs we could stack them on top of each other and reach the moon twice. Although traditionally the healthcare industry has lagged behind other industries in implementing technology, there is no reason to think that it will not embrace this trend of data explosion. We are seeing new medical devices collecting high-resolution data being introduced to the market and wearable devices promising disruptive breakthroughs. This year there will be over 1.2 billon smartphones in the world which are stuffed full of sensors and data collection features. Another trend that has been already discussed at length is that of the ageing population. ...

As a technologist, I am always skeptical when hearing about a brand new technology that is going to solve all of our current problems. I feel it is my responsibility to warn people about these types of promises. Claims of “solving all healthcare information exchange (HIE) problems” are often being made about the emerging HL7 FHIR standard. According to Gartner’s hype cycle, the standard is at the “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” which I view as a stage where wishful thinking fills the gap created by a lack of knowledge and understanding. FHIR, which stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, is a draft standard from HL7 International. This standard is designed to be easier to implement, more open and more extensible than its predecessors, V2 and V3 standards. So what’s the big deal here? Aren’t we simply replacing one transport protocol with another? FHIR claims to bring a change in paradigm to the way health information can be accessed and consumed. Since FHIR is ...