Literature Review

UnitedHealth unplugs change healthcare information systems to contain cyber attackManaged Healthcare Executive, by Peter Wehrwein; 2/23/24UnitedHealth Group disconnected Change Healthcare's information system to contain a cyberattack that the company says is from an unnamed “nation-state associated cyber security threat actor.”

AI-generated clinical summaries require more than accuracyJAMA Network; by Katherine E. Goodman, JD, PhD; Paul H. Yi, MD; and Daniel J. Morgan, MD, MS; Originally published 1/29/24, redistributed 2/20/24 ... Currently, there are no comprehensive standards for LLM-generated [Large Language Model] clinical summaries beyond the general recognition that summaries should be consistently accurate and concise. Yet there are many ways to accurately summarize clinical information. Variations in summary length, organization, and tone could all nudge clinician interpretations and subsequent decisions either intentionally or unintentionally. To illustrate these challenges concretely, we prompted ChatGPT-4 to summarize a small sample of deidentified clinical documents. [Click on the title's link to view the example.]

Why the Tech Industry Won’t Disrupt Health CareHarvard Business Review, by John Glaser, Sara Vaezy, and Janet Guptill; 2/16/24Because health care delivery is heavily data-driven but lags in adopting new technologies, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that it is ripe for digital disruption. Indeed, it’s obvious that U.S. health care badly needs significant change: It costs too much, its quality isn’t what it could and should be, and as for access, millions of people live hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital and/or don’t have a primary care doctor. But does that mean that new tech-savvy entrants, armed with powerful digital tools and novel business models, could displace and demolish incumbent health systems with their better-fastercheaper ethos? They haven’t so far, and we don’t think that they will.Publisher's note: Thank you Ernesto Lopez, The Denver Hospice, for sharing this article with us.

Virtual reality is a tool for education, relaxation for nurses and patientsOncology Nursing News, by Darlene Dobkowski, MA; 2/13/24Simulated experiences using virtual reality (VR) can help oncology nurses alleviate a patient’s anxiety before undergoing treatment, provide comfort in palliative care settings, and serve as an educational tool for both nurses and patients.

MIDEO Systems Inc. secures contract with city of Austin for innovative end-of-life care solution BBN, by Waqas Arain; 2/13/24MIDEO Systems Inc., a groundbreaking platform offering video-based advance care planning services, has secured a contract with the City of Austin. The partnership aims to streamline and digitize the process of documenting patients' medical preferences, making it more accessible and understandable for medical professionals.

What primary care’s “Barnes & Noble moment” means for the future of digital healthMedcity, by Kyna Fong; 2/6/24Primary care is essential to living healthier lives, and we need all forms of it, from small local practices to big health systems and retail chains. Ultimately, it's going to be all primary care hands on deck, working together to make a lasting change for the health of Americans.

Healthcare data breaches set record in 2023Becker's Health IT, by Giles Bruce; 2/7/24Healthcare data breaches hit an all-time high in 2023 as cybersecurity concerns continue to plague the industry, HIPAA Journal reported. More than 133 million patient records were breached last year, more than double the number in 2022 (51.9 million), according to the publication's analysis of HHS data.

Mass General Brigham pilot: AI tool helped optimize palliative care utilizationFierce Healthcare, by Anastassia Gliadkovskaya; 2/2/24Artificial intelligence can help identify easy to miss patients who might be good candidates for a palliative or hospice care referral, a recent pilot at Mass General Brigham (MGB) revealed. ... Over the course of the pilot, 9% of 1,522 MSSP ACO patients were recommended for a consult by the tool, with 40 receiving inpatient palliative consults. An estimated 17 of those would have been missed without the Radial tool. 

Electronic visit verification will become industry standard in the near future, expert predictsMcKnights Home Care, by Adam Healy; 2/2/24As state Medicaid programs’ adoption of electronic visit verification (EVV) continues to grow, the technology is poised to become the norm for all of home-based care, a marketplace executive says. “For the first time in the history of this industry, you have real-time access to the caregiver in the home,” noted Stephen Vaccaro, president of home care software firm HHAeXchange, in an interview with McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse. “States are now starting to look at this and say, ‘What’s next?’”

VR relaxation therapy could be important tool for palliative care, study showsMcKnights Senior Living, by Aaron Dorman; 2/1/24Virtual reality has been gaining traction as an option for filling care and therapy gaps within senior living. But could VR even be a superior option for therapy, compared to “real-life” approaches? One new study makes this bold claim, and offers both normative and analytical evidence for why this may be the case.

Regulate Artificial Intelligence in health care by prioritizing patient outcomes JAMA, by John W. Ayers, PhD, MA; Nimit Desai, BS; Davey M. Smith, MD, MAS; 1/29/24Artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise to enhance the quality of health care. Despite the aim of health care regulations to ensure high-quality care, there are few regulations governing the use of AI in health care. This dearth will soon change because a White House executive order instructed the Department of Health and Human Services to develop new AI-specific regulatory strategies addressing equity, safety, privacy, and quality for AI in health care before April 27, 2024.

'Sky is the limit' for health information networks' SNF insightsMcKnights Senior Living, by Kimberly Marselas; 1/24/24An expanding health information exchange connecting 71 hospitals and almost 600 post-acute providers in New Jersey is exceeding expectations and providing staffing insights not necessarily envisioned when state officials launched a patient discharge initiative.