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How To Improve Your Medical Research Business in 2016

The Healthcare Guys
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How To Improve Your Medical Research Business in 2016

The world of medical research plays a key role in our society and the bid towards greater health care and practices. If you are the owner of a company in this field, then you’ll know that it is a very rewarding arena to be involved in. On the other hand, you’ll also know that it poses many challenges.

All businesses should be keen to improve their operations. But this is particularly true when working in this environment. After all, the medical game is evolving at a rapid rate. Staying ahead of the game is the only way to stay relevant and continue to have a telling influence on the world.

The best way to improve your venture in 2016 is to remember that people are the central focus of everything. Heed this simple information, and the results will blow you away.

Invest in Better Staff

No business can be successful without a winning team behind it. That’s certainly true when dealing with the medical research team. Whether you’re producing vaccines or looking at other elements in the field doesn’t matter. A stronger team will leave you with a stronger team.

The recruitment process is one of the most important challenges you’ll ever face as a boss. The internet is a wonderful resource for finding the best candidates in the field of medicine and research. Alternatively, you can use hiring specialists to help you with the task.

Encourage their continued development through regular training, and you should see stunning results.

Invest in Better Equipment

The quality of equipment used throughout your business operations is crucial to the overall quality of your work. Medical research is a far too important area to be working with items that don’t satisfy your needs.

Beakers and caps for cell culture research and vaccine production need to provide reliability. After all, you cannot afford to be making mistakes. Likewise, you need to ensure that all equipment offers safety. It’s imperative that you pay attention to those health and safety elements with protective clothing and eyewear.

Meanwhile, you are likely to be in regular communication with outside companies. Utilising Skype and other modern tech systems can be crucial as you look to maintain those winning relationships. Besides, regular contact will ensure that you are updated with the latest information too.

Build A Better Environment

Working with important chemicals and medical items can be very stressful. You must make it your responsibility to ensure that those working environments are built to reduce the stress. This will encourage greater productivity.

Of course, cleanliness is a compulsory aspect. However, you also need to think about the security aspects. Protecting important data is vital at all times, especially if patients are involved. Great organisation will guarantee that the business premises remain in the best condition possible.

Finally, you need to ensure that employees enjoy good relationships. Arranging fun activities away from the stressful work arena can be very beneficial indeed. Appreciate their human needs, and you should see noticeable improvements throughout the company.

Essential Ways to Keep Your Employees Healthy

The Healthcare Guys
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Essential Ways to Keep Your Employees Healthy

Many employers might not give much thought to the health of their staff. The first time a lot of them think about it is when someone is too ill to come to work. But employers should be thinking about how they can help their employees be healthy. Healthy workers are more likely to come into work every day and to put more effort into their work. It’s important to treat your staff as people, and not just as cogs in a machine. You’re sure to want your employees to stick around for longer and to do their best while they work for you. If so, there are several things you should do.

Medical Insurance

If you employ fewer than 50 FTE employees, you might not offer medical insurance. You don’t have to pay fees if you choose not to provide adequate insurance coverage. However, avoiding the payment of fees isn’t the only reason for offering insurance. If you elect to provide them with medical insurance, you might be eligible for tax credits. Of course, providing adequate insurance if you do have more than 50 FTE employees means you get to avoid the penalties. Medical insurance for your staff will make it easier to hire and easier to get them to stick around. They’ll appreciate you more. And they’ll be in a better position to deal with any health issues that could hinder their work.

Employee Assistance Programmes

Both physical and mental health are important if you want your employees to do their best. One of the ways you can make sure you’re addressing them is by using employee assistance programme solutions. These schemes are designed to give your staff help with any problems that might impact their work. The issues could be at work or home, and could be affecting their health and well-being in different ways. The service provides support to your workers so that they have somewhere to go if they have any problems. You will usually receive educational literature and video information to get started. Many EAP companies also offer employee counseling.

Workout Clubs and Classes

Helping your employees be physically healthy benefits you. If they’re physically fit, they should be on form mentally too. Having the chance to move around at some point during the day can refresh bodies and minds. If your staff are falling asleep at their desks, you could offer something physical. Lunch is the perfect time to run yoga classes or a running club. It’s also an excellent opportunity for your staff to socialize with each other.

Discounted Gym Memberships

Some businesses can have gyms, but many smaller ones won’t find that possible. If you want to give your staff the benefit of using one, there’s another way. You could offer discounted or even free gym memberships for them to use. Not only does it keep them healthy, but it’s an attractive perk for potential hires. You could form a business relationship with a local gym. They might be happy to offer you discounted rates if you provide memberships to your whole staff.

Time to Get Well

When one of your employees has to take some time off, you understandably want them back as soon as possible. But pushing them to come back to work before they’re ready could be bad for you, them, and your other staff. For one thing, if someone comes to the office with a contagious illness, they could pass it to everyone else. You don’t want anyone forcing themselves to come to work with the flu. Secondly, no one is going to be performing at their best if they feel under the weather. Try to give everyone the time they need to get well by offering paid sick leave. You can, at least, leave them alone while they recover.

Vacation Time

Working for months and months without a break can be exhausting. Allowing your staff to take regular vacations will mean they can return to work refreshed and ready to work hard. Many countries around the world mandate four weeks or more of vacation every year. In the US, there is no requirement for a set number of days. Some sources say that the average American receives only 10 paid vacation days a year. If you want to look after your employees, make sure they get the time off they deserve. Offering vacation days as paid encourages your staff to take the time they need, as many won’t otherwise.

Employers need to take action if they want healthy and happy staff members who will do their best. Treat your employees well if you wish to improve staff retention.

The Biggest Ways Healthcare Has Changed In The Last Century

The Healthcare Guys
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The Biggest Ways Healthcare Has Changed In The Last Century

It’s no secret that the world of healthcare has changed over the last hundred years. Things have improved; new discoveries have been made. What was once thought of as impossible and unthinkable may have now even become the new norm. As technology constantly improves, it has affected all types of industries, including healthcare.

What used to take days, in terms of results and diagnostic tests, can now be completed within hours. Surgeries use more state-of-the-art machines and equipment. Diseases that were once untreatable are now considered common. These are only a few of the many changes that the healthcare industry has experienced.

Among all these, are there certain ways in which stuff has changed the most? This article tackles the three main ways that healthcare has changed in the last century.

Technology

Technology has had a huge impact on how healthcare solutions have changed over the last hundred years. Compare medical care right now, to one hundred years ago, and you’ll see so much technology has changed. In fact, compare it to the year 2000 and things are still dramatically different. Many of the medical gadgets that may have been in use before are already considered obsolete now.

The simple fact is, technology advances so quickly, and there are so many new things being created and discovered. As a result, industries will benefit, and things are going to change and improve. Healthcare is one of the industries that has benefited and changed the most.

There is technology in hospitals that were unheard of many moons ago. All you have to do is simply browse through photos and videos of hospitals in the past, and you’ll be left in awe wondering how they were even able to survive without the medical equipment that is present today.

Some of the common changes brought about by technology include:

Medical Equipment

  1. There are huge CT scan machines that take x-rays of the body from multiple angles. This is something that we take for granted now, but it’s such an important piece of tech that wasn’t present before. Without it, it would be harder to diagnose things or take longer to do so.
  2. Speaking of x-rays, there are now safer methods in place too. X-rays are less harmful, and the results are instant.
  3. The surgical technology that’s helping people save lives, such as breathing apparatus for better administration of medicine.
  4. Smaller pieces of medical equipment like spinal needles have been improved upon and made safer and more effective.

Communication

Communication has been improved because of technology.

  1. Hospitals can communicate with one another a lot better, and share medical records. Rather than keeping and transporting physical documents, which could take quite some time, files and results can now be sent through the e-mail and other digital means.
  2. Records are now stored online, so they’re safer and more secure. You don’t have to worry about files getting permanently lost due to fire and other hazards.
  3. Hospital booking systems have changed thanks to technology as well. It leaves the staff more organized and helps them cope with the workload.
  4. The communication process with various health insurance providers, like NY health insurance, has also improved drastically over the past few years that has been an issue in the past.

Everything was a mess, but now it’s more structured. A more structured hospital leads to better healthcare. Doctors and nurses will know what they have to do, and there won’t be as many disruptions. Overall, this provides better healthcare to patients.

Structured communication and patient care data handling also reduces the risk of HIPAA violations and charting errors that can trigger nursing and medical license disciplinary actions. Federal and state healthcare licensing boards have become more aggressive with initiating investigations that raise the risks of practicing medicine and making record handling errors.

Modern technologies have improved healthcare massively. Every bit of tech that hospitals use is used to good effect. Lives are being saved every day because of the strides made in medical technology. It’s remarkable to see how things have changed in the last sixteen years, let alone the last century. Often, because procedures are now less complicated, this can make the overall cost of procedures safer. In turn, patients are now better able to go for protecting yourself from care costs that are no longer necessary.

Anesthesia

During certain medical procedures, patients are given an anesthetic to numb the pain. Sometimes, it can be local, meaning only the operating area is numbed.

For example, doctors and dentists use injections to numb an area, but the patient will be able to feel other parts of their body.

This is different to years ago because they didn’t have the ability to do this. Instead, you either had no anesthesia or had to be completely put under. Obviously, having no anesthesia means you have the risk of being in great deals of pain.

Thankfully, we can now have local anesthetics for simple procedures that might cause pain. As a result of this, people are more comfortable having things done because they know they won’t feel the pain.

But, it’s not just local anesthesia that has changed, but the manner of administration as well. No, the way doctors are giving people anesthetics has also changed. These days, it’s done in a far safer manner than before. Going back a few decades, people were worried about the harmful effects of anesthesia. Medical people used gas that would knock outpatients, but it would leave them dazed for a few hours after. Nowadays, things are a lot safer, and more thought out.

The Central Infusion Alliance talk about something called anesthesia circuits. This is a method of safely giving people anesthetic gas, without worrying about causing further harm. It’s primarily used in situations where patients have to be knocked out for a long time. The way everything is done ensures that they stay under for as long as needed, without the risk of waking up.

The strides in the field of anesthesiology are very important. It’s led to a higher standard of healthcare and improved patient safety. To this day, people are still researching ways to make things better. In the field of dentistry, they’re thinking about using electric pulses as a local anesthetic. It’s interesting to think about how things are going to change within the next few decades.

Medical Research

The field of medical research has changed health care in so many ways. A century ago, we had very little research compared to what we have now. The scary thing is, back then, medical professionals thought they knew a lot. But, think about how many cures for diseases have been found in the last century? Or, think about how many new drugs and treatments have been developed thanks to clinical pharmacology. The biggest thing I can say is to look at the cancer survival rate. Cancer is one of the worst and most terrible diseases out there. There was a time where having cancer almost guaranteed that you would die. Now, more and more people are surviving each and every day. Some people are completely cured of cancer, and going on to live long and fruitful lives. The key to this is research. Medical research has allowed ways for doctors to spot early signs of cancer. If they catch it early, the chances of survival are increased. Plus, treatments have changed and been developed through research. There’s chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and other things too.

It’s not just cancer research that’s been improved; all other medical research has come on leaps and bounds too. There are way more prescription drugs on the market to help ease pain and treat problems. Some diseases were seen as untreatable a few decades ago; now they’re highly manageable. A big one that comes to mind is HIV; there used to be no ways to treat it, now there are! Pretty much everything has been improved as a result of research; there’s no disease that’s got worse because of it.

The great thing about medical research is that it never slows down. It’s impossible to discover everything, all at once. So, there will always be new discoveries, new ways to improve healthcare. There are people working in labs right this second pouring over research data. Every day there could be a discovery being made. We think things are good right now, but imagine what research can bring us in the future. There are certainly exciting times ahead in the medical research field.

Final Word

Of all the ways healthcare has changed over the years, these three things are the biggest. But, these are only the tip of the iceberg. Once you take a deeper look into the picture, there are so many ways in which healthcare has improved. Technology is the one responsible to thank for.

These positive changes have the largest impact on everyone involved. Patients are benefitting and so are the medical workers. These changes are also three things that look set to change, even more, and make healthcare better than it already is. The future is bright; it’s intriguing to predict how things will change again.

Healthcare Interoperability: Market-Driven Standards

Guy Esten
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Healthcare Interoperability: Market-Driven Standards

Healthcare data interoperability is heralded as the next great advancement in clinical care delivery… if achievable. The government frequently calls for it, as evidenced by Congressional and Executive mandates to the VA and DOD to make service members’ and veterans’ health data interoperable. The private sector claims to yearn for it among the plethora of proprietary EHRs.  Yet, we still don’t have it. Why?  What is truly needed as a catalyst to reaching critical mass where interoperability demand satisfaction is self-sustaining?

Inducing Healthcare Interoperability: What Hasn’t Worked?

Healthcare evolution has not produced satisfactory results in spite of various Government interventions, including:

Incentives:  Meaningful Use incentives did not have the desired effect in EHR adoption. The incentive became the value sought, instead of the value created by the incentivized change.  Efforts to meet exacting specifications about what constituted Meaningful Use missed the true intent and even resulted in fraud, such as the CFO in Texas who obtained $800K in incentives, through identity-theft-based attestations and fabricated data regarding EHR use.

Punitive sanctions:  These backfired on the VA when appointment wait times were addressed by tying wait-time metrics to performance evaluations and bonuses, without addressing the root causes of extended wait times. These measures were designed to invoke punitive actions of poor evaluations or lost bonuses for those that did not achieve the change-in-wait-time performance metrics. The end result was fabricated metric data and wait times that didn’t fundamentally improve.

Mandates: Congressional and Executive mandates foist upon the VA and DOD over 4 years ago are only now having an impact.

Standards: As in Meaningful Use, it is challenging for government entities to produce a set of standards that will have the desired result.  The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC ) Director recently told the Health Services Platform Consortium (HSPC) that the government should not be drafting such standards. Instead, more knowledgeable private sector organizations like HSPC should be. The challenge is the lack of “teeth” such non-profits have, in addition to the time it takes for large committees to arrive at solutions.

Market Demand

Free enterprise advocates maintain that the demand for Healthcare Interoperability will be met by market forces. Yet it hasn’t. Why? Shahid Shah said it best in his 2014 article lauding the efforts of the West Health Institute and ONC hosted “Health care Innovation Day, HCI-DC 2014: Igniting an Interoperable Health Care System” when he wrote:

  • Patients don’t really demand it — meaning they don’t switch providers who don’t give them access to their records
  • Healthcare providers don’t really demand it — meaning they don’t buy EHRs or systems because of their interoperability
  • Hospital CEOs and CIOs don’t really demand it — meaning they don’t punish EHR vendors or medical device manufactures that don’t have it by taking their business elsewhere
  • Government officials don’t really care about it — meaning they don’t incentivize it, they don’t regulate it, there are not statutes that require it
  • EHR and health IT vendors don’t really care about it — the buyers don’t demand it and the government doesn’t require it
  • Medical device manufacturers don’t really care about it — most devices remain analog and can’t communicate digitally and the buyers aren’t demanding it plus the government isn’t requiring it

True demand for interoperability would render these statements false.

Critical Mass of True Demand

True demand for Healthcare Interoperability will only be achieved when healthcare market forces can see and feel true value in it. There are certainly core believers who see that value and strive for it. Mandates, incentives, punitive mechanisms, and standards will not create the perception of value in interoperability that then creates widespread and true demand.

Successful examples with measurable results of healthcare interoperability will generate true demand. While seemingly a “chicken-or-the-egg” problem, where we need true demand to achieve interoperability, while we need examples of interoperability to achieve true demand, we can begin to move past that as small examples of healthcare interoperability occur more frequently.  At some point critical mass will be achieved and the value more universally accepted.  Then, true demand be achieved.

Market-Resolved Standards

Technology that satisfies smaller pockets of true demand will enable more successes, which will be the catalyst to more widespread demand. The technologies of those successes will drive the standards as others observe the value proposition and want in. Though wanting in, these others will not want to reinvent the wheel – they’ll want to ride the existing one. Interoperability standards will evolve from that marketplace just as they have for online retail sales, package tracking technology or a worldwide banking industry. If one wants to play in the healthcare interoperability realm, they will have to ensure their own compatibility with that burgeoning market. Associated standards will evolve in the marketplace.

The equation that models the spread of contagious disease, and the value of a network, is the same one that models the value of data interoperability.  As the number of entities on a network increases, the value of that network increases exponentially. Similarly, the more data that is accessible due to interoperability, the value of the technology and de-facto standards, as well as the perceived value of interoperability, also increase exponentially.

Avoiding the debate about data interoperability syntax, semantics, or even pragmatic interoperability, obtaining optimized usability is the clear objective. If the technology being employed by the VA achieves this, it may be the spark that’s needed to spur true demand for healthcare interoperability, and could begin to drive the adoption of de-facto standards that can help fuel successful markets. Examples like this will, over time, help achieve critical mass of true demand and the power of the market will resolve the issue.

The Underdog Markets: Your Web Based Financial Advisor

Mariam Askari
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The Underdog Markets: Your Web Based Financial Advisor

Google “bankruptcy because” and your search bar will go ahead and suggest “of medical billings”. Policy research on how to solve this issue is abundant, but how do you help the patients whose illnesses have already scorched a hole through their wallet?

The reality is that patients in the here and now need help to keep them from filing for bankruptcy because of healthcare costs (the #1 cause for bankruptcy filings). Cancer patients are 2.5 times more likely to go into bankruptcy than the average patient and Launch! contestant Vivor acts as an oncology financial advisor by matching patients to funds they qualify for. With their PAPnavigator product, a detailed patient profile is created and is tested against hundreds of assistance programs to find financial services they qualify for.

Another startup involved in a different area of financial security is True Link. After releasing a report revealing that seniors lose $36.48 billion each year due to elder financial abuse, they created the True Link prepaid debit card and monitoring system. The typical answer a bank will give to victims of elder financial abuse is to take away their checkbook, but this restricts them of their independence. True Link monitors card use and alerts family when necessary. A happy balance is found between the senior’s monetary freedom and the caregiver’s stress of potential financial abuse is alleviated.

With these new tools on the rise, caregivers and patients have the ability to safeguard their monetary safety and security.

Getting Ahead of the Learning Curve- The Path Ahead For EHRs

Pete Ransome
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Getting Ahead of the Learning Curve- The Path Ahead For EHRs

As we begin 2016, there are those in the healthcare community who are not in love with Electronic Health Records (EHRs) or Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). It’s not the idea itself that is causing distress mind you; instead, it’s in the application. Since President Obama’s mandate in 2009 that all healthcare providers – public and private – adopt and demonstrate “meaningful use” of EHRs by January 1, 2014 in order to maintain their existing Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement levels, the challenge has always been in finding ways to both adhere to the process and make it smoother. It’s not been easy, but things are getting better. Meaningful change is always a process.

As evidence of the virtue of patience, let me ask you a question. Who amongst us wouldn’t love to drive a Tesla? In addition to being electric, gorgeous to look at and super fun to drive, Teslas boast all sorts of innovative technology. Visit the company’s website, and you can read all about features like autopilot and autosteer. The car even lets you change lanes automatically. And acceleration? It goes from zero to 60 in 2.8 seconds. Wow. Now that’s progress.

It goes without saying, of course, that the path from the Model-T to the Tesla was not a straight line. It is very possible that something like the Tesla was what those early engineers may have dreamed about, but initially it certainly wasn’t something that was feasible. Even physicist Nikola Tesla himself (1856-1943) – certainly not an automotive engineer – could not have foreseen something quite as exquisite as the machine that Tesla Motors has produced.

The march of technology is an evolution. There may be revolutionary moments, but its flourishing happens slowly. Tesla the man was a visionary. An inventor and futurist, he accumulated more than 300 patents in his lifetime and spoke eight languages. In 1926, he said this about the future:

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things  being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face-to-face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.

Visions of a better future state are an important first step in getting there. The smart phone so startlingly predicted by Tesla above is today not just a reality but an essential part of many people’s lives.

The Path Ahead in 2016

Advances in technology have changed our lives. EMRs (designed for use within healthcare offices) and EHRs (more complete records, designed to be shared with patients and between different practices/specialists) are natural applications of this technology. In one place, physicians and specialists have access to a patient’s test results, medical history, record of medical correspondences, and notes. Converting all these things from existing paper records, however, can be overwhelming. In the quest to adhere to the president’s mandate, it can seem like a thankless task at times. Driven by compliance requirements and deadlines, it can sometimes feel as though a medical professional is working for the EHR or EMR and not the other way around.

It’s important to think about the development of EHRs and EMRs much as we might the development of the modern automobile. Just as we had to experience the Model-T and subsequent automotive innovations on the way to the Tesla, so must we live through the building blocks of electronic records. Now that everyone is more comfortable with the idea, software companies are learning from the real-world experiences of those who work with these records. As we move forward into 2016, there are some exciting things to which we can look forward!

Going Mobile – Today, 64% of Americans own smartphones, compared to just 35% in 2011. Always on the move, patients and medical professionals are demanding ready access to their medical records. They move across state lines, visit a range of different specialists, and are more health-conscious than in years past. Developers are making it easier to access necessary information online, anywhere. Even medical billing software and practice management software is going mobile.

The Cloud – It’s all about increasing security, providing limitless storage and offering improved access. On-site services take up space, can be expensive, and can be susceptible to intrusion. The cloud offers a solution to all of these challenges.

Pharmacy Link – More and more pharmacies are taking advantage of their affiliation with certain healthcare systems – and with each other – through e-networking. Patients have easier access to the prescription medication they need, and doctors can more safely ensure that their wishes are communicated and fulfilled.

Compliance – The introduction of ICD-10 coding has been a double-edged sword for medical professionals. While it provides added clarity in charting on the one hand, the added specificity adds an extra bit of pressure when it comes to compliance, insurance and the like. Software upgrades and e-sharing allow for the reduction of transcription errors resulting in improved patient safety.

Upgrades! – The road to EHR and EMR perfection is paved with the opinions and feedback of those who live and work with them every day. That includes doctors, nurses, patients, PAs, specialists, insurance professionals and staff. Every interested party knows the ultimate destination, but they also have their own ideas of how to best get there. Experienced input is already having an effect on software upgrades and will only improve.

ECM/BPO – Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) are two ways to help work through EHR/EMR integration and implementation. Linking all your systems together through ECM helps manage content and workflow processes. Outsourcing certain functions helps streamline those processes and increase productivity.

Improving quality. Engaging patients in their own healthcare. Empowering more people to help make a difference in the way healthcare is experienced overall. These are some of the real results of effective EHR/EMR management. As we move into another new year, why not resolve to being an open, willing partner in helping pave the way to a new kind of healthcare. Do so, and that feeling in the air? It’s downright electric.

Seeing the Gaps: Journey Mapping for Better Health Outcomes

Rebecca Lord
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Seeing the Gaps: Journey Mapping for Better Health Outcomes

This webinar offers a quick introduction to a key tool for gap analysis: customer journey mapping. A journey map is a tool that puts those of us who work in healthcare into the customer’s, member’s, or patient’s shoes — and then keeps us there throughout the story of an experience and associated resource touchpoints. By telling the story of an individual’s journey, a journey map allows us to assess the current state of our offerings and the gaps in those offerings — and then lets us begin to imagine a future state designed to improve population health outcomes in a systematic way.

The webinar provides a “how-to” for journey mapping in health care organizations, case studies, and guidelines as to how and when journey mapping can make a difference. “

Seeing the Gaps from Medullan Inc on Vimeo.

Big Data and Population Health: Interview With Neal Singh

Neal Singh
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Big Data and Population Health: Interview With Neal Singh

Big data is an overused term and is interpreted differently by many. Yet a common definition that has recently gained widespread acceptance is “Big data processes large data sets which cannot be handled by traditional databases or relational databases.” While some of the problems of how to extract value out of data remain the same between traditional and big data methods, the mechanics of how large data is processed, transformed and stored are different. Big data is gaining more widespread adoption and enabling population health scenarios. You may be interested in a blog I wrote on big data and healthcare last year which captures more details around big data scenarios in pop health: The Future of Big Data in Healthcare.

Big data processes large data sets which cannot be handled by traditional databases or relational databases

In this post, we interview Neal Singh from Caradigm to learn more about this topic. Neal has spent more than 22 years working in enterprise business applications and previously served as the general manager, global development, for Microsoft Dynamics AX. In this role, he was responsible for leading a globally distributed enterprise resource planning (ERP) engineering organization for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Neal joined Microsoft in 2001 as director of Development and has held many R&D leadership positions, including product unit manager, director of Engineering Services and general manager. Neal has a degree in electrical engineering from India and a master of business administration from Phillips University.

Do you think Big Data could have an impact on population health? How will that be?

Population Health requires a better understanding of your organization’s patient population, utilization, costs, quality, chronic conditions etc., across multiple systems. These systems extend beyond the EMR and outside your enterprise. Given the multiple systems involved, it is important to normalize and aggregate clinical, operational and financial data from systems across the community—including EMRs, billing systems, payers, pharmacy systems, labs, and HIEs—and deliver in timely manner, ideally within point of care workflows. Most of the data sets in the industry tend to be structured. We are now beginning to see early use unstructured data like provider notes. In addition, we are seeing more use of consumer, genomic, demographic and social data (e.g. fitness devices, purchasing history, Twitter, Facebook information) integrated into scenarios for population health. Big Data can have a significant impact on managing populations at an aggregate as well an individual level. Here are some scenarios:

  • A true longitudinal patient record – As a provider you can see patient data across all systems that cover the full continuum of care
  • Predictive models and machine learning: These concepts are excellent for building statistical models (e.g. Risk Stratification) and are especially effective with large data sets
  • Understand patient motivational factors – e.g. with clinical data you know what the patient was prescribed, but with the addition of claims data you can see if the patient actually filled the prescription
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP models can be used for analytics of unstructured data (observations, family history etc. from provider notes) and surface them at the point of care
  • Consumer purchasing data: If you were granted access to consumer purchasing data, you could see a diabetes patient visiting McDonalds 3 times a week and have appropriate conversations on diet management.
  • Social data: You could perform disease outbreak monitoring and sentiment mining via personal and news tweets

Does Big Data actually show positive results in real life, or is it still more academic and research oriented?

In population health, big data is transitioning from a more research oriented mode to a main stream agenda item in healthcare. At the same time, population health is still in the early adoption phases of Big Data.  Only a very few organizations are dealing with petabytes of data, which typically falls into the realm of Big Data.

Are there startups or large companies adopting Big Data in their work? When do you think this started?

Adoption of Big Data is picking up but still nascent. Adoption started about a couple of years ago.

What main issues do you think Big Data can solve in population health that other technologies might find it hard to solve?

Big Data will solve the problem of scale and lowering cost for processing large data sets. It will allow for data to be processed faster with closer to real time availability. Also given the speed of processing, Big Data will enable more scenarios such as correlating data sets, indexing data, and natural language processing.

How do you see the future of Big Data in the Digital Health industry?

It will become more main stream during the next 5-10 years. We will also start seeing more adoption by both vendors and enterprises. In addition, we will start seeing richer analytics as correlations and computations can run across larger and more diverse sets. The diversity of data will enhance to include genomic data sets, device generated data, and social data. We will also see greater adoption of publicly available data sets and anonymized datasets for benchmarking.

Big data consumption will also come with challenges. The obvious ones will include security, privacy and data governance. In addition EMRs are already considered burdensome by providers and take time away from delivering care. So Big Data does not equate to delivering more information to providers. Rather the goal is to perform all the analytics offline and deliver the minimal actionable data to meaningfully impact patient outcomes.

What recommendations would you like to give those interested in investing in Big Data for population health, or starting a startup in the field?

  • Start by identifying a few key scenario goals for your organization and then determine what data you want to acquire. Otherwise it is too easy to get overwhelmed with data acquisition and get lost in a sea of information.
  • Big Data talent is hard to find. So start small with key scenarios that will set you up for success.
  • Use existing technologies. There are excellent open source technologies (Hadoop, OpenNLP, R) that have matured over the last few years.
  • Use existing infrastructure. For example both Azure and AWS are good big data and cloud vendors. Building your own infrastructure is a losing proposition.
  • Keep security, privacy and data governance in your sights.

 

Tracelink and AWS Against Counterfeiting

Adnan Ahmed Siddiqui
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Tracelink and AWS Against Counterfeiting

Tracelink, launched in 2009 was found with a perspective to help other life science companies to fight against the giant problem of counterfeiting drugs. This is one of the biggest problems in the healthcare field and needs to be addressed.

Tracelink takes the responsibility of connecting, sharing information and collaborating on end-to-end production and supply-chain activities. Tracelink life science cloud has the capability to provide its customers with the fight against counterfeiting and diversion along with the maintenance of product’s quality.

There are so many pharmaceutical companies producing billions of products every year. These products give the rise of billions of transactions and hence terabytes of data. To keep this data and to extract the information from this data is really very difficult. Tracelink uses this data to help fight against the counterfeiting and to ensure compliance with regulations through complete drug traceability. Tracelink wanted a simple solution with the qualities of availability, scalability, agility along with support for full partner’s collaboration at minimized cost.

Tracelink took the services of AWS cloud computing to figure out the solution for their infrastructure demands. Based on the scenarios, different products were used to make the solution flexible and scalable. The architecture team of AWS suggested EC2 for the computing instances. The feed of data was from diversified sources, from large multinational pharmaceutical to small pharmacies and suppliers.  The content of the data was also diversified like manufacturing data, packaging data and many more records. The data was all distributed and the challenge was to make it available in an extremely secure way. Large distributed bulks of data were stored on S3 and for the backup and persistent storage purpose, EBS was used.

To manage diverse applications distribution and deployment, Elastic Load Balancing was used. This was to make multiple applications available for the customers at high traffic spike times at less cost and scalability. In order to make the access of the applications fast, Amazon Elasticache was deployed to cater for all the caching needs. Full text user search was ensured with the help of Amazon CloudSearch. In order to manage the access and role management Amazon Identity and Access management was used. For deployment of different applications and to make different template applications for the customers lying in the same space, CloudFormation was used. All these products together helped Tracelink achieve their goal towards highly distributed and diversified, yet highly secure and available environment at much less cost.

“We’re taking full advantage of the elastic nature of AWS by enabling increased capacity in fine-grained service layers and adding application instances and storage capacity as demand grows,” says Peter Spellman, TraceLink Senior Vice President of Product and Cloud Engineering. “We can add incremental application instances and storage capacity in minutes, minimizing cost, and maximizing responsiveness.” These words from the Tracelink’s top team lead refer to the fact that customers are highly satisfied with the services they have acquired from AWS.

Tracelink is now able to manage any kind of outsourced manufacturing performance by giving a single connection to the Life Science Cloud. It can save the customers 4 years of time in addition to more than $9 millions of integration cost. A company on average, manufacturing 50 million products a year can save $1 million per year for 330,000 transactions/day and 24 TB of overall storage. So at the end of the day, AWS cloud provided Tracelink with their desired solution which was highly secure for distributed and diverse environments. It helped the small companies to manage their infrastructure at less cost, and Tracelink to have more and more business opportunities. Apart from this, it has cut down continually the business operational cost which is a big plus for Tracelink. So collaboration of AWS and top life science companies proved to be a great success story.

Digitizing Women’s Health

Mariam Askari
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Digitizing Women’s Health

A major hot topic right now is the potential defunding of the non-profit reproductive health services, “Planned Parenthood”. The unfortunate truth is that this move, most recently passed by the Senate, undermines the agency women have on their own health choices. Fortunately, there are other companies that still strive to connect this population to the services they need, and some of these initiatives were alive and well at the fall Health 2.0 conference.

The start-up, nurx, had the opportunity to demo their product up during Launch competition, an online service that both prescribes and delivers birth control. For women, it’s all the ease of getting oral contraceptives without the hassle or (more importantly for some) the cost of going to go visit the doctor in person. Delivery is free and the pills themselves can be free depending on insurance, or you can just pay in cash.

Lexie Komisar, who works as an Associate Director at the Clinton Foundation, discussed programs being implemented as a part of the Clinton Health Matters Initiative. One such program pairs new tech companies looking to pilot their product with communities looking to incorporate digital health into their lives. In Northeast Florida, the Magnolia Project, another non-profit providing services for women’s reproductive health, pairs health tech company CareMessage with hard to reach and high risk female patients. CareMessage is a text based company, using interactive and illness specific text messages to reach low income families. They were connected to women who have had failed pregnancies in the past, women with mental illnesses, limited access to healthcare, or referred to by Child Protective Services.

Also to assist with pregnancy care is bloom’s newest product, belli, “the fitbit for pregnancy”. By wearing a sensor on your pregnant belly, belli is reading in data on uterine activity, stress, sleep, fetal movements while also acting as a pregnancy coach through educational materials they push to your screen.

Women’s health has come a long way in the past two decades, but barriers like socioeconomic status and lack of health education stifle continued success. It’s important for companies and programs like the ones mentioned, and future health and social entrepreneurs, to remember this as a focal point as they design and perfect their products if they are to be the most impactful. So not worrying about having to pay a $40 copay or having consistent mobile education can go a long way.

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