< + > CIO Podcast – Episode 85: Epic Cloud Migration with Tim Calahan

For the 85th episode of the CIO podcast hosted by Healthcare IT Today, we are talking about migrating Epic to the cloud with this episode’s special guest, Tim Calahan, MS, MBA, DBA, Chief Technology Officer at Michigan Medicine and CEO of EHC Consulting! We kick this episode off by discussing why migrating Epic to the cloud should be a key priority for hospitals. Transitioning from on-prem Epic hosting to the cloud can be difficult though, so we then talk about the keys to making your transition seamless. Next, we take a look into what a CIO should be doing to prep their organization internally for the move to the cloud. Calahan then shares how he approached the various cloud options such as AWS, Azure, Epic, and Third Party. Next, we discuss the real-world benefits to patients and staff with Epic in the public cloud. We conclude this episode with Calahan passing along the best piece of advice he’s gotten in his career.

Here’s a look at the questions and topics we discuss in this episode:

• Why should migrating Epic to the cloud be a key priority for hospitals?
• What are the keys to a seamless transition to the cloud from on-prem Epic hosting?
• What should a CIO be doing to prep the organization internally for the move to the cloud?
• How did you approach the various cloud options: AWS vs Azure vs Epic vs Third Party?
• What’s the real-world benefit of Epic in the public cloud to patients and hospital staff?
• What’s the best piece of advice you’ve gotten in your career?

Now, without further ado, we’re excited to share with you the next episode of the CIO Podcast by Healthcare IT Today.

We release a new CIO Podcast every ~2 weeks. You can also subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today podcast on any of the following platforms:

NOTE: We’ll be updating the links below as the various podcasting platforms approve the new podcast.  Check back soon to be able to subscribe on your favorite podcast application.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Stitcher Podcast Radio
• TuneIn
• Spotify
• iHeartRadio

Thanks for listening to the CIO Podcast on Healthcare IT Today and if you enjoy the content we’re sharing, please rate the podcast on your favorite podcasting platform.

Along with the popular podcasting platforms above, you can Subscribe to Healthcare IT Today on YouTube.  Plus, all of the audio and video versions will be made available to stream on HealthcareITToday.com.

We’d love to hear what you think of the podcast and if there are other healthcare CIO you’d like to see us have on the program. Feel free to share your thoughts and perspectives in the comments of this post with @techguy on Twitter, or privately on our Contact Us page.

We appreciate you listening!

Listen to the Latest Episodes

< + > CHOP makes available its AI model that can enhance tumor analysis

The new deep learning model outperforms biomedical imaging analysis in understanding disease progression, pediatrics researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia say. 

< + > Combing Technology and Tradition to Transform Indigenous/Indian Healthcare

The resourceful and caring team at Reno Sparks Tribal Health Center (RSTHC) has been leveraging technology from NextGen Healthcare (NextGen) to deliver quality care to the American Indians in their community. Now, with the recent CMS announcement, they will be able to add traditional medicine.

Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with Angie Wilson, Tribal Health Director at RSTHC while she was attending the 2024 NextGen User Group Meeting (#NextGenUGM24). We wanted to find out more about their use of NextGen’s EHR and how the announcement from CMS will affect how they deliver care.

Key Takeaways

1. EHR is the central nervous system. RSTHC uses NextGen’s EHR system to streamline operations, improve patient engagement, and reduce clinician burnout. It is their “central nervous system”.
2. Addition of traditional medicine will improve care. Adding culturally appropriate care will encourage more people to seek care from the community. It will also give patients more choice in the care they receive.
3. NextGen helped with emergency preparedness. Because the NextGen EHR held up-to-date patient contact information, during a recent wildfire, RSTHC was able to quickly identify and assist hundreds of evacuated patients.

Leveraging NextGen’s EHR as the Central Nervous System

In northern Nevada, the Reno Sparks Tribal Health Center (RSTHC) serves over 6,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives with a full range of services, from primary care and behavioral health to optometry and specialized diabetes care.

At the heart of RSTHC’s operational success is NextGen’s electronic health record (EHR) system, which Wilson describes as the “central nervous system”.

Since adopting the platform in 2015, RSTHC has utilized tools like population health analytics and AI-powered charting to enhance efficiency and reduce clinician burnout. These advancements have not only improved face-to-face patient interactions but have also led to remarkable operational success including doubling clinic revenue in just two years through a combination of optimized workflows and proactive patient engagement.

“The population health capability is phenomenal,” said Wilson. “It gives me all the tools that I need as a tribal health administrator to look at the decisions I make and how to drive the clinic forward. I can see how my decisions will impact revenue, pre-visit planning, and preventative patient outreach. Population health

Inclusion of Traditional Medicine is Transformative

The recent CMS approval of traditional medicine in four states, including neighboring California and Oregon, marks a transformative moment for Indigenous communities.

“It is a very exciting time for us here in the United States and Indian country,” stated Wilson. “I sit on the CMS Tribal Technical Advisory Group, and I can tell you this is a groundbreaking and historic time. We will be able to incorporate cultural values and practices in traditional ways into the primary care practice.”

Combing Western with Traditional medicine could break down barriers to care by fostering trust and encouraging more individuals to seek medical attention.

“It’s about giving patients healthcare that aligns with their cultural values,” Wilson added.

Innovative Use of NextGen EHR During a Wildfire

RSTHC’s innovative use of technology had an unexpected benefit. During recent wildfires, population health analytics enabled the center to identify and reach out to over 200 evacuated patients in minutes. This capability not only ensured continuity of care during a crisis but also reinforced trust within the community.

“The beautiful thing was that NextGen’s population health analytics solution has geospatial data,” explained Wilson. “We were able to plug in the zip codes and able to get a patient list of everybody that was evacuated. It took seconds. Being able to do targeted outreach to them in an emergency situation was phenomenal.”

According to Wilson, even the Nevada State Emergency Service was impressed.

“We are proud of this system,” said Wilson. “I am really proud of the work that we have put in to showcase it and have it be what we need it to be to meet our overall goals in the community.”

Learn more about Reno Sparks Tribal Health Center at https://www.rsic.org/186/Health-Center

Learn more about NextGen at https://www.nextgen.com/

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.

Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.

< + > Three Steps to Unlock the Power of AI for Healthcare Transformation

The following is a guest article by Emmanuelle Hose, Global Vice President of Industry Solutions at Rimini Street

The use of AI in the healthcare market is booming, having reached $22,449.3 million in 2023 and is expected to grow 37.5% annually through 2030. From enhancing patient care and streamlining administrative processes to aiding in medical research and diagnostics, AI is revolutionizing healthcare. Yet, this promise comes with challenges that healthcare leaders must navigate to fully realize AI’s benefits and avoid potential pitfalls.

Healthcare organizations are increasingly pressured to innovate and adapt, all while still managing IT costs. As cloud costs increase and AI’s implementation becomes increasingly complex, succeeding with this technology requires having a dynamic, flexible IT strategy. This article explores three key steps to help healthcare CIOs and IT leaders unlock AI’s full potential without compromising security, regulatory compliance, or budget integrity.

Prioritize Data Quality for AI Success

High-quality data is the cornerstone of effective AI solutions. But for healthcare organizations, ensuring data quality isn’t just about improving AI outcomes – it’s also vital for patient safety and care. This means clean, accurate, and complete data is fundamental to operational efficiency, improving patient care, and clinical decision-making.

For this reason, healthcare organizations must assess their data systems to ensure they have centralized, safe, and compliant repositories. These key questions can help in the assessment:

• Are processes in place to validate and clean data before it’s used in AI processing?
• Are there standardized protocols for data collection that ensure compliance with regulations such as HIPAA?
• Is the infrastructure in place to continuously monitor data quality over time and ensure seamless data integration across various platforms and systems?

As healthcare leaders integrate advanced AI solutions within their enterprise, ensuring data integrity from the outset is a critical step in successful AI implementation.

Ensure Security and Regulatory Compliance

In healthcare, data security is paramount. In fact, 14 million patients in the US healthcare sector were affected by security breaches in 2024. Integrating AI without proper security measures can expose organizations to vulnerabilities, risking both patient data and business operations. The rise of AI in healthcare has introduced new attack vectors, making robust cybersecurity essential. 

Implementing AI responsibly requires adopting a proactive approach to security and implementing robust data governance practices. To help safeguard AI deployment and build trust in AI technologies, healthcare IT leaders must ensure that new investments won’t compromise security and will be used safely and ethically across the organization. 

Meeting compliance and regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA or GDPR, is critical for healthcare organizations. And with regulatory measures continually evolving at local, national, and global levels, healthcare leaders also face the ongoing challenge of maintaining compliance. Achieving this requires AI tools to be deployed in ways that are both legally compliant and aligned with best practices for data protection and patient care.

Optimize ERP for AI Integration

Large-scale AI implementations, especially those tied to extensive ERP upgrades pushed by software vendors, can be costly and disruptive. This can be especially disruptive for healthcare companies operating on systems that are highly customized to fit their specific needs. 

Instead of opting for vendor-imposed overhauls, healthcare organizations can adopt a “composable ERP” approach and innovate around the edges of their infrastructure. This empowers them to maximize their existing IT investments and, by integrating best-of-breed AI technologies into their current enterprise systems, organizations can quickly benefit from AI capabilities tailored to their specific needs. 

With a composable ERP strategy, IT leaders reduce reliance on vendor-driven upgrades and maintain control over technology decisions. Collaborating with third-party IT support professionals – instead of marching to the beat of software vendors – can further extend the value of current ERP systems while accelerating AI adoption and helping ensure flexibility and long-term adaptability.

Realizing the Benefits of AI: A Strategic and Sustainable Approach

A critical component to AI success in the healthcare industry’s current digital landscape lies in an adaptable, secure, and patient-centric approach to AI deployment. 

Healthcare IT leaders must focus on building a solid foundation of high-quality data, implementing robust security and compliance protocols, and utilizing flexible IT support strategies that help enable them to maximize existing investments while enabling AI integration.

By taking these steps, healthcare organizations can harness the transformative power of AI to drive efficiencies, enhance patient care, and achieve sustainable growth, all while avoiding unnecessary costs and disruptions to the organization.

About Emmanuelle Hose

Emmanuelle Hose has over 25 years of proven experience in the IT industry, leading enterprise software sales, service, and development operations across 3 continents: Europe, North America, and Oceania. After serving in several executive roles with global software companies, Ms. Hose was recently leading Rimini Street business operations across Australia and New Zealand, delivering exceptional service to our clients, accelerating sales growth, and extending the leadership position of Rimini Street in the software support market across the region.

< + > HealthEx Raises $14M Led by General Catalyst to Empower Patients and Health Systems to Do More with Health Data

HealthEx’s AI-Driven Preference and Consent Platform Simplifies Patient Experience, Automates Security and Compliance for Healthcare Organizations, Unlocking how Data can be Used for Good

HealthEx, a team of healthcare and technology veterans building a global consumer preference and consent platform for healthcare to unlock data access, launched today and announced $14M in Seed and Series A funding. The company’s financing round is led by General Catalyst, with participation by Electric Capital.

HealthEx’s latest funding will accelerate the expansion of its AI-powered platform. The company will scale development to simplify integrating the patient voice across all healthcare activities, while simultaneously automating the manual burden of security and compliance processes needed in the increasingly complex landscape of health data access.

The HealthEx solution is one of the first AI platforms that enables healthcare organizations to easily create, collect, and enforce patient consent and preferences, and allow health systems to fulfill their roles as trusted stewards of patient data. Healthcare organizations can enhance the patient experience, boost operational efficiency, increase compliance, and unlock new data licensing opportunities.

“As health systems embark on a new era of AI-driven care, one area ripe for disruption is analog consent and data access processes that leave consumers unsure of their choices and health systems open to security and compliance risks,” said Stephen Klasko, MD, Special Advisor at General Catalyst and former CEO at Thomas Jefferson Health. “By enabling ethical access to proprietary health data, HealthEx can help organizations maintain patient trust and transform their operations to generate greater value through their health data.”

Healthcare organizations face new complexities in data use and licensing. Patients and healthcare organizations need a more streamlined, transparent approach to ensure trust and compliance in today’s data-driven landscape. Built-in collaboration with leading health systems, the HealthEx solution will help manage massive amounts of unstructured content in lengthy consents, legal contracts, and other policy documents governing data access and transform this content into automated, enforceable workflows.

HealthEx transforms consent from a one-dimensional process that patients find confusing, and healthcare organizations struggle to granularly enforce, into a comprehensive platform offering. AI agents help clinical staff generate consents for different use cases during the care journey to reduce manual effort. Data and compliance administrators can programmatically enforce granular consents and leverage AI-assisted risk assessments of existing consents, giving them confidence that preferences and all sources of data policy are followed through via HealthEx’s APIs, gateways, and secure data vaults.

“As healthcare organizations face new complexities in data use and licensing, it’s clear that both patients and providers need a more streamlined, transparent solution to ensure trust and compliance in today’s data-driven landscape,” said Priyanka Agarwal, MD, MBA, Co-Founder and CEO at HealthEx and a healthcare veteran with experience in clinical medicine, digital health, and the life sciences. “We allow healthcare organizations to manage this data effectively while giving patients more control over their healthcare decisions and creating a more transparent process. Our vision is to manage patient preferences and consent for individuals across every healthcare touchpoint with a unified experience for preferences, consent, and data access management.”

HealthEx complements national efforts in health data interoperability to allow greater patient input in data movement, including TEFCA’s individual access services. Demonstrating the company’s commitment to interoperability, HealthEx makes patient and health system data preferences and policies available to ecosystem collaborators in formats compatible with emerging HL7 Consent FHIR standards.

HealthEx was hatched by General Catalyst and is deeply integrated with the VC firm’s Health Assurance network. The HealthEx solution is available today. For more information on HealthEx’s offering and its unique patient preference and consent management platform, visit healthex.io.

About HealthEx

Founded in 2022, HealthEx is a leader in patient preference and consent management for healthcare. Its AI-powered platform enables healthcare organizations to efficiently collect, manage, and enforce patient consent and preferences, improving both patient trust and operational efficiency. HealthEx empowers patients to take control of their healthcare decisions while helping health systems navigate complex data environments.

HealthEx was founded by Priyanka Agarwal, MD, MBA, who was previously at UCSF and MyoKardia, acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb, and Anand Raghavan, who was previously part of the founding team and VP of Engineering at BlueJeans, acquired by Verizon. Their team is composed of leading technologists and healthcare professionals. For more information, visit healthex.io.

About General Catalyst

General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures — for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people, and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, New York City, London, Berlin, Bangalore, and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as Airbnb, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, Hubspot, Illumio, Lemonade, Livongo, Oscar, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. For more, visit generalcatalyst.com.

Originally announced October 21st, 2024

< + > Te Whatu Ora proposes to ax a third of data, digital roles

This could impact ongoing health system IT modernisation efforts, says New Zealand’s largest trade union, Public Service Association.

< + > Bonus Features – December 1, 2024 – TEFCA v2.1 released, IBX adopts Epic Payer Platform, plus 7 other stories

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

• HHS released TEFCA Version 2.1 a couple days before Thanksgiving. The agency noted two key changes from the v2.0 release in January. One outlines how ASTP (formerly ONC) will help resolve disputes among QHINs about use of exchange purposes. The other establishes a framework for assessing organizations planning to participate in TEFCA.
• With help from the Symani Surgical System, physicians at NYU’s Perlmutter Cancer Center performed physician-directed microsurgery on a prostate cancer patient. Previously, patients in this position needed their bladder removed.

Partnerships

• Independence Blue Cross implemented the Epic Payer Platform and announced four initial health system partners: Drexel Medicine, Jefferson Health, Main Line Health, and Penn Medicine.
• AI-powered value-based care platform Navina joined FLAACOs, the Florida Association of Accountable Care Organizations, as a business partner.

Sales and Company News

• Clinical trial optimization company PhaseV announced seven global pharma companies are using its machine learning platform for drug development.
• Northern Minnesota’s Arrowhead EMS Association is implementing Avel eCare’s EMS telemedicine services in 20 ambulances through a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
• California-based intellectual and developmental disability care provider Catalight is deploying Nabla’s ambient AI assistant to support note-taking for in-person and virtual appointments.
• Teladoc Health added AI capabilities to its Virtual Sitter product, which can now visually detect patient movement and enable interventions to prevent falls.
• Patient access and RCM vendor Infinx appointed Ninad Chavda as Chief Financial Officer, as well as Donald Barrett, Jr. as Global Senior Vice President of Sales for the Acute Care Division.

If you have news that you’d like us to consider for a future edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features, please submit them on this page. Please include any relevant links and let us know if news is under embargo. Note that submissions received after the close of business on Thursday may not be included in Bonus Features until the following week.

 

ASTP/ONC, Avel eCare, Donald Barrett, HHS, Independence Blue Cross, Infinx, Nabla, Navina, Ninad Chavda, PhaseV, Symani, TEFCA, Teladoc Health,

@Avel_eCare @HHS_TechPolicy @IBX @Infinxinc @mmimicro_inc @nabla_ai @Navina_ai @TeladocHealth