Welcome back! This week, things are going to go a little differently: rather than trying to include all of the best health tech articles, instead you’ll be presented with an analysis of the best-of-the-best articles we saw this past week, followed by an addendum of the still-important links that comprise “the rest” (and, for good measure, a small section devoted to industry awards given out last week).
We heard more about the American Medical Association’s (AMA) new healthcare technology platform (please refer to last week’s column for more information). Specifically, we heard about how it “seeks to encourage physician input on innovation.” By leveraging physician input, the AMA hopes to create “a future where digital health tools are evidence-based, validated, interoperable and actionable,” according to president Dr. David Barbe, MD.
Have you ever felt like your doctor was doing more tests than were necessary? Well, you might have been right—it turns out that too much physician input can sometimes be a bad thing. This article argues for what they call the “Prudent use of medicine for patient safety,” a summary of the findings of a “global consensus” that “‘overdiagnosis and overtreatment are legitimate areas of concern’ that need immediate attention.”The article goes on to point out that “at least 30 percent of tests ordered across all specialties are a waste of time and money”.
However, if we want to create a healthcare system for all patients, we must accept some inherent cost: despite many modern advances in medicine, trial-and-error still plays a role in diagnosis, and while we must address that, we must simultaneously ensure that a person’s status as a statistical outlier will never result in a lack of proper care in the name of fiscal efficiency.
Whether the diagnosis is lacking or exaggerated, the gravity of what is at stake is the same: both have the potential for dire consequences. Some organizations are already tackling problems caused by overdiagnosis—take, for instance, Northwell Health’s recent announcement that it will offer “state-of-the-art breast procedures for women undergoing a surgical breast biopsy or lumpectomy at 16 hospitals, surgical locations and outpatient radiology facilities on Long Island,” to make use of their technology that targets tumors with much greater precision than previously possible.
Another trend this week seemed to be teleconferencing and telemedicine. In Nebraska, a technology created by Children’s Hospital & Medical Center of Omaha called Project Echo “uses a collaborative ‘tele-mentoring’ model as a way to share the expertise of [CHMC’s] specialists and participating national experts with health care providers across the state and, in return, to collaborate with and learn from those providers.” CHMC of Omaha was given a $50,000 grant for this pursuit.
This news is especially interesting in light of the Forbes insights article, “Visual Disruption: How Education and Healthcare Are Being Transformed Via Video Conferencing {sic},” in which the author discusses how we might begin to “reimagine” healthcare as well as the “practicalities” involved in making the future we imagine a reality. There was even more coverage on telemedicine by U.S. News & World Reports, who called it “a crucial component of everyday care.”
A few states away, IDx, a diagnostics company “rooted at the University of Iowa,” “hope[s to] become ground zero for AI in medicine,” according to its founder Michael Abramoff. The company is “currently working on getting FDA approval for an AI-driven device that helps preserve vision in diabetic patients.” Mr. Abramoff traveled to Washington D.C. the previous week to “brief congressional leaders on his work,” and said the briefings had been made possible by the Science Coalition, an organization “committed to sustainable federal investment in scientific research.”
Newsweek featured a noteworthy piece entitled “How AI can Help Africa get Universal Health Care Before America,” which is actually rather reductive of the article, which manages to frame a number of problems facing Africa in a positive light relative to the state of near-complete impasse America has sadly reached on the subject. The author speaks of the “Silicon Lagoon,” the digitization of health records, and ways that machine learning might help prevent disease through data mining and more. This Newsweek article was almost perfectly complemented by a reliefweb article posted the same day, entitled “WHO and ITU to use digital technology to strengthen public health services in Africa,” which discusses some of the very same topics. An opinion piece out of South Africa the next day made the claim that the “three pillars of healthcare all have Information Technology at their core.”
There was still more news about the potential of AI and the “myriad ways” in which hospitals can use them. The article is as striking as its first example: only six months after implementing AI tech, the El Camino Hospital in Silicon Valley was able to reduce “the rate at which patients suffered dangerous falls” by 39 percent. Another potential application for AI arose with the announcement of technology that puts it to use on behalf of veterans. Within the next two years, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) plans to have rolled out AI healthcare technology to 35 percent of its hospitals, and to 50 within the next five years.
In the meantime, Google is looking to further the twin platforms of machine learning and AI through their LaunchPad Studio initiative. They announced the first four companies that will join LaunchPad Studio, one of which—BrainQ—is like “a research project concentrating on taking advances in neural networks and applying machine learning to signal processing to develop customized treatment protocols for people who cannot walk anymore….” The other three companies are not any less interesting.
As mentioned below in our awards section, Osso VR has even more radical ideas about moving the future of medical education and training into a digital simulacrum. Out of the Bronx came the news that a healthcare provider (Jacobi Medical) has begun training its employees to “deal with abuse involving technology,” which is also known as the growing problem of cyber abuse.
Meanwhile, The University of Pittsburgh granted a total of over $500,000 to three wearable healthcare technologies. And as far as the IoT is concerned this week, patrons of the Carolinas HealthCare System can now use Alexa “to locate the nearest urgent care and emergency room and get current wait times,” a technology that would no doubt be useful nationwide, but whose integration into any kind of national database will take time without a project specifically devoted to it.
- A conference in Buffalo, New York was the center of a panel on the future of healthcare, in which it “was widely agreed by the panel that the future lies in a change from fee-for-service medicine to value-based care models.” (Something else we’ve heard a bit about before). How exactly that happens is far less agreed upon, but the article examines it from the different points of view of those at the conference.
- A large group of different companies banded together in an effort called “Tech United for Independent Access to Healthcare,” whose aims are “to provide freelances and other gig workers with information on ACA enrollment.”
- If you’re looking for an engaging Q&A from last week, Shahzad Ahmad, Vice President of Cloud Operations and Delivery of NextGate Solutions, Inc., speaks with passion about the future of cloud-based technology for healthcare in an online publication.
- Last week also saw the World Medical Association “calling on national medical associations to encourage medical schools to develop quality assurance programs and support accreditation system that set medical education standards that align with the needs of patients.” The WMA’s new policy, however, will no doubt face a few setbacks and difficulties in this effort, but as the author notes, the policy was developed in partnership with the AMA, which should at least help establish the new standard here in America.
- There was a very short (but informative and good) piece in the Healthcare Analytics News entitled “How the FDA Pushes Medical Device Cybersecurity.”
- We also learned ofyet another mobile vendor, in this case Qualcomm, announcing a successful test of the 5G standard, and the author uses this as a platform from which to launch a discussion about (some of) the implications of 5G in general, as well as specifically for hospitals.
- Saint Luke’s of Kansas City’s Chief Information Officer opined that “the demand for access” is what “drives new health care tech,” and goes on to defend that point of view in this Kansas City Business Journal article.
- OCTANe, which was briefly mentioned in last week’s column, again deserves a note for having seen record attendance at their “Medical Technology Innovation Forum.”
- The Telegraph hopped on “the future is in smart devices” healthcare bandwagon with an article highlighting the ways in which they believe smart devices are already improving our quality of care.
- “Health Hack,” a series of three free events organized by Medtech Accelerator, will be “focused on delivering innovation within the NHS,” according to a short article on the subject.
- Siemens Healthineers is the Optimas Award Gold winner for Global Outlook
- PENTAX Medical Receives Innovative Technology Designation from Vizient for the ‘Slim Linear Ultrasound Endoscope’
- Osso VR, for capturing the top prize in the Department of Education’s EdSim Competition
That’s it for this week. ‘Til next time, happy reading!