Health Datapalooza 2015: more data, better health

June 10, 2015 | by

Guest columnist and data analytics whiz Sarianne Gruber (@subtleimpact) sat in on the Health Data Consortium’s 2015 edition of Health Datapalooza last week in Washington, DC. It was all about the data that Medicare has been diligently harvesting. Also see the US-UK connection on obesity.

Health Datapalooza 2015, now in its sixth year, welcomed more than 2,000 innovators, healthcare industry executives, policymakers, venture capitalists, startups, developers, researchers, providers, consumers and patient advocates. Health Datapalooza brings together stakeholders to discuss how best to work the advance health and healthcare,” said Susan Dentzer, senior policy adviser to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a member of the Health Data Consortium. The Consortium promotes health data best practices and information sharing; and works with businesses, entrepreneurs, and academia to help them understand how to use data to develop new products, services, apps and research insights. This year’s conference was held on May 31 through June 3 in Washington, DC. And how best to celebrate is with the gift of more data!

New Medicare Data Means More Transparency
The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its third annual update to the Medicare hospital inpatient and outpatient charge data on June 1, 2013. (more…)

The leaky roof of healthcare data (in)security–DARPA to the rescue?

June 4, 2015 | by

This week’s priceless quote:

“A lot of the response was, ‘We live in a cornfield in the middle of Minnesota,’” he said. “’Who wants to hurt us? Who can even find us here?’”–Jim Nelms, Mayo Clinic’s first chief information security officer, 

We know where you are and what you do! The precarious state of healthcare data security at facilities and with insurers, plus increased external threats from hacking has been getting noticed by Congress–when you see it in POLITICO, you know finally it’s made it into the Rotunda. It was over the horizon late last summer with the FBI alert and legislators in high dudgeon over the Community Health Systems China hack [TTA 22 Aug 14]. It’s a roof that leaks, that costs a lot to fix, doesn’t have immediate benefit (cost avoidance never does) but when it does leak it’s disastrous.

This article rounds up much of what these pages have pointed out for several years, including the Ponemon Institute/IBM study from earlier this week, the Chinese/Russian connections behind Big Hacks not only for selling data, but also IP [TTA 26 Aug 14] and how decidedly easy it is to hack devices and equipment [TTA 10 May 14]. Acknowledgement that healthcare data security is about 20 years behind finance and defense deserves a ‘hooray!’, but when you realize that on average only 3 percent of HIT spend is on security when it should be a minimum of 10 percent (HIMSS) or higher…yet the choice may be better security or uncompensated patient care particularly in rural areas, what will it be for many healthcare organizations?

The article also doesn’t go far enough in the devil’s dilemma–that the Federal Government with Medicare, HITECH, meaningful use, rural telehealth and programs like Medicare Shared Savings demand more and more data tracking, sharing and response mechanisms, stretching HIT 15 ways from sundown. At the cutely named Health Datapalooza presently going on in Washington DC, data sharing is It for Quality Care, or else. Yet the costs to smaller healthcare providers to prevent that ER readmission scenario through new care models such as PCMHs and ACOs is stunning. And the consequences may be more consolidated, less available healthcare. We are already seeing merger rumors in the insurer area and scaledowns/shutdowns/buyouts of community health organizations including smaller hospitals and clinics. Also iHealthBeat.

DARPA to the rescue? The folks who brought you the Internet may develop a solution, but it won’t be tomorrow or even the day after. The Brandeis Program is a several stage project over 4.5 years to determine how “to enable information systems that would allow individuals, enterprises and U.S. government agencies to keep personal and/or proprietary information private.” It discards the current methodology of filtering data (de-identification) or trusting third-parties to secure. Armed With Science  FedBizOpps has the broad agency announcement in addition to vendor solicitation information.

US, UK agreement on HIT

January 25, 2014 | by

Edited from the HHS release. US Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and UK Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt on Thursday 23 January signed a bi-lateral agreement for the use and sharing of health IT information and tools. The agreement strengthens efforts to cultivate and increase the use of health IT tools and information designed to help improve the quality and efficiency of the delivery of health care in both countries.  The two Secretaries signed the agreement at the Annual Meeting of the HHS Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology. It concentrates on four key areas identified at the joint June 2013 summit:

  • Sharing Quality Indicators
  • Liberating Data and Putting It to Work
  • Adopting Digital Health Record Systems
  • Priming the Health IT Market

Collaboration efforts will be showcased at the Health Innovation Expo conference at Manchester Central 3-4 March (two weeks before HC2014) and the Health Datapalooza on 1-3 June in Washington, DC. A possible good sign for telehealth as there’s a great deal of mention of ‘preventive interventions’, ‘accessing and sharing data’ and the ‘health IT marketplace’.

Full memorandum of understanding text here. Also iHealthBeat.