The X Prize Foundation announced a new $10 million contest to develop a portable device that can diagnose a wide range of diseases with the same accuracy as a panel of board-certified physicians. The details of the contest are still being worked out, but the goal is likely to be a device that can perform a number of diagnostic tests and combine these with artificial intelligence to determine whether a subject has a particular malady. Such a device could help those who lack access to traditional medical services—and streamline access to specialty care in traditional medical treatment. "Imagine a world where people get funneled to the right part of a complex health system at the right time," says Eileen Bartholomew, a senior director at the X Prize Foundation. Bartholomew is working on designing the exact parameters for the prize, which will be launched in 2012.
For many years, service members who were leaving the military have had to worry about whether their medical records would be properly transferred from one vast computer network in the Defense Department to another in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Now, the two departments have agreed to develop a joint computerized system for health care records that could provide a single source of data on a veteran's health from enlistment through death, officials said. The move is one of several that suggest the two departments are moving closer to unifying parts of their sprawling health care systems, which handle more than 15 million active-duty troops, retirees, veterans and their families. The agreement comes after a February report by the Government Accountability Office found that the departments were lagging in developing a shared system for electronic records. That report said both departments had spent billions of dollars upgrading their data systems in ways that did not increase coordination between their systems, and it recommended that they improve their "joint strategic planning."
As the drive to design a workable accountable care organization model gets under way, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced several Affordable Care Act initiatives that require a robust health IT infrastructure to support doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers in improving care with Medicare through ACOs. The new ACO models could save Medicare up to $430 million, CMS said. Among the initiatives introduced is the Pioneer ACO Model, an ACO model that will be available to providers this summer and is designed for advanced organizations ready to participate in shared savings. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation will support this model, CMS said. The Innovation Center released a request for applications last week for the Pioneer ACO Model, which provides a faster path for mature ACOs that have already begun coordinating care for patients and are ready to move forward.
A teaching method that allows novice med students to instantly move with the same dexterity as the world's most seasoned surgeons sounds like the kind of science fiction quackery that'd get patients killed. But it's real. Acting as a virtual master surgeon, an advanced software program called HoST (Hands on surgical training) can use a robotic surgical simulator to physically guide the hands of novice surgeons in the exact same movements utilized by experienced surgeons to perform extremely complex operations. The RoSS (Robotic Surgical Simulator) simulates the operations of the only robotic surgical system in existence, the da Vinci, and the new HoST software takes it to the next level by using augmented reality based real-time operative scenarios and a form of haptic feedback to help the trainee "feel" the movements made by an experienced surgeon.
The latest digital issue of InformationWeek Healthcare featured an article suggesting that some of my ideas regarding evidence-based medicine are a source of animosity between CIOs and their physician stakeholders--physicians whom the author believes consider information technology "the enemy" of good medicine. His article touches on several key issues that should be top of mind for every physician leader and CIO today. But is IT really the enemy of good medicine? At the heart of the article is a very old debate: Is medicine an art or a science? I've never understood why it can't be both.
Increasingly, doctors are using mobile apps to access patient information. Hard data is scarce. For instance, the annual market for mobile monitoring devices is estimated to be a $7.7 billion to $43 billion industry, as cited by a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, "Healthcare Unwired," released in September 2010. But the trend is clear. "This level of adoption is unprecedented. Things are changing very quickly," said healthcare innovation analyst Chris Wasden of PricewaterhouseCoopers. According to a Manhattan Research study released this month, 75% of U.S. physicians own some form of Apple mobile device, whether it's an iPad, iPhone or iPod. The iPhone is the top smartphone choice for doctors, according to the study. About 30% have an iPad, and another 28% say they plan to buy one within six months. Apple's popularity, says the study, is largely driven by the increasing number of apps providing access to electronic medical records.