| | | |  By Casey Ross, Katie Palmer, Mario Aguilar, and Mohana Ravindranath | | | Interop gets a rebrand at HIMSS HIMSS is underway in Orlando this week, and the issue of interoperability has been front and center. ONC’s Micky Tripathi gave a dispatch on efforts in Washington, noting that the agency is fielding roughly one information blocking complaint a day, and reminding attendees of an upcoming requirement that health records vendors and developers make an expanded set of personal health data available starting in October of this year. And Daniel Jernigan, CDC’s director for public health science and surveillance, described interoperability roadblocks hobbling the agency’s efforts to modernize its public health IT — namely lack of integration between states’ public health systems, which largely operate separately from hospitals’ data systems.
“We’re having to work pretty hard to get [public health IT] back into the health care ecosystem,” he said. Health software companies, meanwhile, are working hard to get buy-in for new data sharing tech to support interoperability, Mohana reports from the show floor. Attendees can tour the annual “interoperability showcase,” a series of theatre-like sets and demonstrations designed to depict the benefits of seamless communication between doctors, payers, caregivers and patients. It’s part of a renewed effort by trade groups and health records giants like Epic and Cerner to show providers what they can achieve with new data sharing features, should they choose to buy them.
Epic’s Matt Doyle said part of the goal is to show provider customers how to get the most out of their health records software, especially after federal data sharing rules mandated common standards. “I want them to know this exists so they go to their vendors and ask for it,” he said. | Health care’s Google Translate problem It’s a ubiquitous — if formally frowned-upon — aspect of patient care: Using Google Translate when in-person or telephone interpretation services aren’t available. Though the practice is discouraged by health systems and state registration boards, Google Translate is still used as a backstop — even though its services aren’t vetted for the sensitive task of health care communication. Katie reports that there’s a growing push to change that by studying Google Translate and more broadly, building better machine translation tools for doctors and their patients. | The persistence of telemental health care  The lasting impact of the pandemic on telehealth adoption remains a topic of debate, but one sector where it’s likely to persist is in mental health care, which is uniquely suited to the virtual realm. A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of data from Epic shows that the share of outpatient mental health visits done over telehealth persists at near pandemic levels of 35-40%. The data also suggest that rural populations are much more likely to be receiving telemental health, and that the trends broadly translate across mental health diagnoses. | Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience improves clinician satisfaction and patient experiences Leveraging the power of Microsoft Azure and the continuous learning capabilities of Nuance ambient technology, Nuance DAX boosts physician satisfaction by streamlining the clinical documentation process and relieving physicians of the widely-recognized documentation burden — a primary source of fatigue and burnout in healthcare today. Nuance DAX allows patients and physicians to interact naturally during visits without the distraction of computer screens or keyboards. Learn more. | Writing the AI rules of the road Using AI in health care comes with great risk if it’s not done with care, as evidenced by Casey’s recent collaboration with MIT that showed how “dataset shift” can cause a tool’s accuracy to wane over time. Following over a year of work, experts from academia, industry, and government have proposed a series of AI guardrails, detailed in a new STAT First Opinion by Mayo Clinic’s John Halamka, Stanford’s Nigam Shah, and Suchi Saria of Bayesian Health and Johns Hopkins. The conversation will continue in a series of virtual conferences over the next few months followed by an in-person meeting before the guidelines are finalized for journal publication. | A handful of DTx deals -
Happify Health announced a deal with Zuellig Pharma to commercialize its products in Asia. The deal includes Ensemble, Happify’s prescription digital therapeutic treatment for both generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. The company launched the product in the U.S. last year under FDA rules loosened under the pandemic and hopes to seek regulatory clearance. The deal also includes Happify PDT for chronic insomnia, which hasn't been detailed yet. We're told it's an 8-week treatment based on CBT and other techniques. -
Speaking of pharma deals, Woebot Health announced a $9.5 million strategic infusion from Leaps by Bayer, an investment arm of the German pharma giant. - Better Therapeutics, which went public via a SPAC merger last year, released some data from its 669 person pivotal trial for BT-001, its investigational PDT that treats type 2 diabetes with nutritional cognitive behavioral therapy. Among participants in the experimental group — which received BT-001 and standard of care — 42% saw a meaningful reduction in A1C, compared to 25% who received just standard of care. The company will complete the pivotal study next quarter and plans to submit for de novo marketing clearance later this year.
| Partnerships and other news -
Alphabet life-science company Verily and digital pathology company Lumea announced a development partnership to use Verily’s AI and Lumea’s platform to create products around prostate cancer detection and treatment. -
Evidation and the Department of Veterans Affairs are teaming up to provide a heart health program for former members of the armed services. -
AliveCor, which makes FDA-cleared home cardiac monitoring tools, announced a new partnership to integrate data from its KardiaMobile 6L ECG into the GE Healthcare Muse Cardiac Management System used in many hospitals, addressing a common complaint that data captured by consumer devices doesn’t integrate into existing health care IT systems seamlessly enough. -
Carrot Fertility, which provides fertility benefits to employers and health plans, announced a new service to provide support for people experiencing menopause or low testosterone. | | | Thanks for reading! More next week,  | | | | Have a news tip or comment? Email Us | |
No comments