While public opinion on AI is still evolving, knowledge about the technology also determines patients’ hesitance levels.
Patients who said they have heard little or nothing about AI were more likely to be uncomfortable with their provider using them than those who said they had heard about them, the survey found.
Ultimately 75% of respondents said they are worried their providers are moving too fast, implementing the tools without fully knowing the risks, compared to just 23% who said they are moving too slow.
Some 38% of respondents said using AI in healthcare settings would lead to better health outcomes while 33% said it would make them worse, and 27% said it wouldn’t make much of a difference, the survey found.
Ultimately, men, younger people and those with higher education levels were the most open to their providers using AI.
A proposed bill would end the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation and revert live sites back to VistA. From FCW Jan 2023
House bill would scrap VA’s $20 billion-plus electronic health record program
Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), who was the top Republican on a subcommittee conducting oversight of technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs, introduced a bill Friday that would aim to scrap the VA’s $20 billion-plus program to modernize the electronic health records system used by 9 million veterans.
The bill is titled: “To terminate the Electronic Health Record Modernization Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Full text has not been published online but the aim of the bill has echoes in comments from Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, who warned in July 2022 about possibly pulling the plug on the technology contract “if there isn’t major progress by early next year.”
Bost is a cosponsor of the legislation, which has been referred to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
FCW emailed Rosendale’s office and the committee for the full content of the bill but did not obtain the text.
The bill landed days after the pilot site of the VA’s Oracle Cerner system in Spokane, Wash. suffered a service interruption because of updates being made to the overall system by the Department of Defense.
The VA contracted with Cerner on a sole-source basis in 2018 to supply the same commercial electronic health record that was being deployed by the Department of Defense to support record sharing and collaboration between DOD’s medical services and VA. The program was initially budgeted at $16 billion over 10 years, with $10 billion for Cerner and the remainder for infrastructure updates and program management.
Cerner was acquired by Oracle for $28.3 billion in a deal that closed in June 2022.
But the implementation and migration of health records were soon hobbled by software outages and technical issues, complicated further by the onset of the pandemic. Various oversight bodies have estimated that VA has more than $20 billion on the books for the program.
A July 2022 report by the VA’s Office of Inspector General found that the health record software sent 11,000 clinical orders to a queue assigned for requests with incomplete routing information and failed to alert clinicians that the orders didn’t reach their intended destination.
As a result, the report noted that the error “placed patients at risk for incomplete care, and caused multiple events of patient harm” to nearly 150 veterans.
VA officials postponed further rollouts until January, but Rosendale said last July that the department might be better off sticking with the legacy system.
Elotouch has a wide variety of solutions for the healthcare space. For major EHR systems Elo supports Epic Welcome Kiosk and their entire EHR system plus Cerner (now Oracle).
Below are some of the solution packages.
Create collaborative experiences in the patient room across the care journey.
Elo’s software agnostic solutions make it easy to integrate your electronic health records platform such as Epic Systems and Cerner, to better engage patients and streamline care.
Enhance clinical review with medical grade monitors with DICOM Part 14.
Boost patient experience with bedside infotainment.
Add an interactive platform to view educational content and explore entertainment applications to keep patients connected and informed during the course of their treatment.
Improve pharmacy operations with intuitive touchscreen displays.
Because accuracy is essential for patient safety, a touch interface is the fastest, easiest way for pharmacists to receive, fill and double-check orders against electronic medical record (EMR systems) before medications are dispensed.
Drive efficiency with interactive displays at every nurse station.
Medical touch monitors provide easy-to-use platforms for accessing and updating electronic health record (EHR systems), managing patient requests and enabling better collaboration amongst interprofessional healthcare teams.
Add interactive displays to support visitors and provide tailored solutions for critical healthcare needs.
Engage doctors and patients with digital whiteboards.
Replace your whiteboard with a modern interactive information hub capable of communicating care plans, staff assignments, electronic medical records (EMR system), lab results, imaging and more – unifying key patient care components in one solution.
Connect to visitors with interactive digital signage.
Implement wayfinding and point of information touchscreens to make it easier for people to find what they need and where they are going.
Improve capacity management with touchscreen solutions.
By introducing interactive technologies to support capacity management, healthcare providers can streamline staffing and better plan for patient admissions, discharges and transfers as well as improve efficiency by reducing the turnover time between cases.
Support your patients with digital front door healthcare kiosk solutions.
Elevate patient self-service with digital front door kiosks that make it easy to check-in, manage account information, update electronic medical record (EMR systems), make payments, complete telehealth appointments and simply checkout at the cafeteria.
Wait long enough and natural fit companies eventually partner, even after deliberately not partnering anymore.
Google Cloud and Epic, one of the largest medical records software companies in the U.S., inked an infrastructure agreement to enable hospital customers to run their Epic workloads on the tech giant’s cloud technology. From Fiercehealthcare– Epic’s agreement with Google is a major pivot from two years ago when the EHR vendor said it would no longer pursue integrations with Google Cloud. (Google)
Excerpt
New Jersey-based Hackensack Meridian Health plans to move its Epic workloads to Google Cloud, the health system announced this week. The health system aims to accelerate digital transformations by moving to the cloud. The 17-hospital system also plans to leverage technology like analytics and AI to improve patient outcomes while benefiting from enhanced security.
“Our mission to innovate requires accessible, cutting-edge technology,” said Robert Garrett, CEO for Hackensack Meridian Health, in a statement. “With our Epic EHR on Google Cloud, we’ll be able to innovate faster, and benefit from a more efficient and secure cloud environment.”
“We expect running Epic on Google Cloud will be simpler for our IT and developers, and will allow them to focus more on uncovering creative ways to improve patient care,” said Kash Patel, executive vice president and chief digital information officer for Hackensack Meridian Health, in a statement. “Having everything with Google Cloud will provide a huge opportunity for discoveries. For example, data from our AI Avatar for natural language processing will already be in Google Cloud, ready for us to ask questions. This will speed up our work and make information more accessible.”
Oracle, Cerner and the VA get taken to the woodshed in this article. Visually impaired users are virtually shut out of the systems. From Kaiser Health News via USAToday Oct. 2022
In Brief Summary
Lack of magnification capability
incompatible screen reader for text-to-voice
Struggle to log in
Struggle to enter basic information
Oracle insists all fixes can be done “in short order”
Situation first identified in 2015
Multiple high resolution monitors required to display single record and that technology not often available
Hayes said the problems described by these complaints don’t prevent employees and patients with disabilities from using the system. The complaints — 469 of which have been assigned to Oracle Cerner to fix, he said — mean that users’ disabilities make it more difficult, to the point of requiring mitigation.
More big hospitals are looking to integrate into a single EHR and EPIC seems to be the preferred option to do that. The uncertainty from Oracle, a traditional SQL database company, migrating its backend to Cerner might be one factor. A benevolent dictatorship is better than a dictatorship was one quote. Allscripts has suffered. Worth noting Cerner still is the leader internationally. From Becker October 2022 Contact [email protected] for more info.
Excerpt
Two large health systems — Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare and Houston-based Memorial Hermann — recently switched their EHRs from Oracle Cerner to Epic, continuing a trend of bigger hospital groups moving to the Verona, Wis.-based software giant.
Several health system CIOs and other IT leaders told Becker’s the reasons for this include the desire to consolidate to one EHR from multiple vendors, with Epic being the most dominant player, while others said not to put too much stock in the name of the companies as the EHRs are fairly similar and depend on what your patients and clinicians are looking for.
“When you’ve seen one health system, you’ve seen one health system,” said Aaron Miri, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer of Jacksonville, Fla.-based Baptist Health.
But he said Baptist Health went to Epic, a transition completed July 30, to integrate into a single EHR.
Review finds more problems and thus they have decided to delay until they are fixed. Related news is Oracle, Cerner and VA under fire for accessibility issues. From the Federal News Network – October 2022
The Department of Veterans Affairs is further delaying the rollout of its new Electronic Health Record to additional sites, as it troubleshoots problems that have led to patient harm and frustrated its health care workforce.
The VA is also sending letters to every veteran who may have been impacted by problems with the EHR currently running at five VA locations across the U.S.
Next week is the Epic UGM in Wisconsin at the Epic campus. Midnight Museum is the theme for 2022. The cool stuff ahead looks interesting to us.
UGM is in-person at Epic’s campus in Verona, Wisconsin. For those who cannot attend in-person, the General Session: Executive Address & Cool Stuff Ahead will be livestreamed on Tuesday, August 23 from 8:45-noon central. Sign up here to register for the live stream. Additionally, session materials and recordings for most sessions will be available on the Session Archive site post-UGM.
In additional news related to Epic KeyCare Expands Nation’s Only Virtual-First Care Platform Built with Epic via $24M Series A Investment [press release].
Excerpt:
CHICAGO, Aug. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — KeyCare, Inc., the nation’s only virtual-first care platform built with Epic, today announced the closing of $24 million in series A funding backed by 8VC, LRVHealth, Bold Capital, and Spectrum Health Ventures.
KeyCare offers health systems the ability to easily augment their care teams, optimize capacity, and widen their digital front doors by partnering with a nationwide network of virtual care groups. Patients can schedule appointments with a variety of Virtualists via their own health system’s MyChart portal or call center. Virtualists then complete the encounter on KeyCare’s Epic platform, thus ensuring a seamless experience and interoperable records.
Gather for a grand exhibition of the year’s achievements and new initiatives in the Epic community. R&D leaders present a gallery of new and future innovations, sharing their vision for the history-making breakthroughs beyond the horizon.
