< + > Bonus Features – March 26, 2023 – Epic sees “tremendous potential” for GPT, more than 90% of patients want self-scheduling, and more

Welcome to the weekly edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features. This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.

News

In a Microsoft press release announcing the availability of GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service, Epic’s Seth Hain, Senior Vice President of Research and Development, said the EHR vendor sees “tremendous potential” for the latest version of the multimodal large language model. According to Hain, “We’ll use it to help physicians and nurses spend less time at the keyboard and to help them investigate data in more conversational, easy-to-use ways.” (Hat tip to Katie Link for point this out.)

HHS recently proposed standards for electronic signatures for transactions that require attachments – and the HIMSS EHR Association has some concerns. In a letter to HHS, the group requested clarification on two points: Whether current processes using HL7 v2 standards would be adequate, and whether the digital signature would apply to the specific claim or prior authorization request (and wouldn’t impact upstream clinical processes).

Studies

• Research firm Eliciting Insights found that more than 92% of patients would use self-scheduling tools if offered to them, with nearly all Millennial (99%) and Gen X (97%) patients endorsing the technology. Among patients who used self-scheduling tools, 92% would do it again.
• A Holon Solutions survey found that 77% of healthcare workers are experiencing burnout, with staffing issues and patient loads being the biggest contributors to burnout. Those in patient-facing roles spend half their time seeing patients, with 34% of time devoted to administrative work.
• Meanwhile, the latest State of Locum Tenens Report from CHG Healthcare found an 88% increase since 2015 in the number of physicians taking on at least one short-term assignment each year. The largest segment of the workforce taking on such assignments is those over the age of 45.
• The latest Physician Compensation Report from Doximity reported a 26% gender pay gap among physicians, which amounted to men making more than $110,000 more per year than women. Among all physicians, pay actually decreased 2.4% from 2021 to 2022.
• Malware attacks targeting cloud-based applications (as opposed to the web) increased from 38% of all attacks in March 2022 to 42% in February 2023 – albeit down from a high of 50% in November – according to the latest Netskope Threat Labs Report.
• More than 90% of U.S. adults would prefer to know they’re at risk of developing Alzheimer’s as soon as possible, according to a survey conducted by Linus Health.
• Patients are feeling the pain of prescription renewals, according to a DrFirst survey of 400 consumers; 44% worry about the health impact of running out of medication, while 24% considered changing doctors (or did change) because of prescription renewal delays.
• Machine learning can identify providers that overbill insurers, according to a paper from Carnegie Mellon University and Boston University. Researchers detected behavior consistent with fraud and abuse by identifying excess expenditures in hospitalization claims from 2017 and validated their methods based on Department of Justice data.

Partnerships

• Castle Connolly Top Doctors has integrated ZocDoc‘s appointment booking features into select doctors’ profiles.
• Digital therapeutic DarioHealth is teaming with Amwell to offer a cardiometabolic program.
• Mobile care management company MedArrive is partnering with Ouma Health, a maternity telehealth service, to expand access to care to expectant mothers covered by Medicaid.
• Digital surgical platform Proximie is partnering with Smith&Nephew on advanced robotics and sports medicine training resources.
• Connected device security company Ordr joined the ServiceNow Service Graph Connector Program.

Products

• Interoperability platform Particle Health launched Particle FOCUS, a data product suite that provides comprehensive patient health information across seven chronic disease states.
• athenahealth updated the athenahealth Marketplace and announced that 71% of its customers have adopted at least one partner product from the Marketplace.
• Virtual care experience platform Carium implemented Care Pathways to automate workflows for patient adherence, task management, and other steps in the care journey.
• Ribbon Health upgraded its provider scheduling platform through integrations with Firefly Health and other partners.
• Capacity management vendor LeanTaas launched Perioperative Transformation as a Service with an emphasis on eight key surgical operations outcomes.
• Health Gorilla received HITRUST certification for its Health Interoperability Platform.
• NVIDIA unveiled numerous products at its GTC developer conference; the most interesting for healthcare include BioNeMo, a generative AI tool for faster drug discovery, and a collaboration with Medtronic on AI-assisted colonoscopy.

Sales

• South Florida’s Memorial Rehabilitation Institute chose Luna for outpatient, in-home physical therapy services.
• Potomac Urology is transitioning to eClinicalWorks Cloud and healow. In addition, New Mexico-based primary clinic Satori Healing is implemting eCW EHR and RCM products.
• University of Rochester Medical Center selected DexCare for on-demand virtual visits.
• New York’s Advanced Health Network IPA and Recovery Health Solutions IPA chose Unite Us to integrate behavioral health and social care services.
• Nova Scotia Health chose MDclone to enable the use of synthetic health data for research.
• California-based Desert Oasis Healthcare implemented Rimidi’s new Respiratory Module, which uses Teva’s Digihaler family of digital inhalers to feed data into the Rimidi platform.

Awards

• Noze received a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to use its AI platform to build a breathalyzer to detect breath biomarkers.
• Israel-based Olive Diagnostics joined the Google for Startups Growth Academy. The company has developed an optical device to analyze urine.
• Senior care technology company Connect America’s Chief Health Informatics Officer Rosemary Kennedy is one of three finalists for The Dr. Martin L. Block Award for Innovation & Excellence from RISE.

People

• Health plan quality improvement analytics vendor Reveleer announced three executive appointments: Sunil Chandran as Chief Technology Officer, David Meyer as Chief AI and Data Officer, and Barbara Allen as Executive Vice President of Operations.
• Telehealth vendor Caregility made two executive appointments: Paul Oliver as Chief Revenue Officer and Kedar Ganta as Chief Product and Engineering Officer.
• Patient insight platform Patient Discovery named Julie Stern as Chief Technology Officer.
• Member and patient engagement firm Carenet Health named Robin Peloquin as Vice President for Training and Development.
• Spacially Health named Michael Ward as VP of Sales; the company provides geospatial analytics and location intelligence to assess SDOH.
• RCM vendor Advata hired Kevin Long as VP of Business Development and Karen Dillard and Bill Scott as Regional Sales Directors.
• Point-of-care real-world evidence firm Atropos Health announced a Clinical Advisory Board with 10 representatives from providers, medical schools, and digital health companies.

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