healthcare

CIO Feature: AI’s Healthcare Promise Will Serve Patients

Published: 27 February 2020
Written by Brian E. Thomas
Categories: News

CIO.com official logo from IDGBrian was recently featured in a crowd-sourced article on CIO.com about “AI’s Healthcare Promise Will Serve Patients – And More“.

“From early disease detection, improved patient safety, reduced or eliminated repeatable/mundane tasks and human errors, and more accurate medical billing, AI will play an expanding role in healthcare”, says Brian E. Thomas, Healthcare CIO. “Simply put, implementing a set of processes that combines both machines and humans will reap the most benefits.”

AI’s healthcare promise

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry and significantly improve patient outcomes. With its ability to process large amounts of data quickly and accurately, AI can help healthcare providers to make more informed decisions, improve patient care, and streamline operations.

One of the biggest promises of AI in healthcare is its ability to help diagnose and treat diseases more accurately and efficiently. With the vast amounts of patient data being generated every day, AI can analyze this information and identify patterns that may not be noticeable to the human eye. This can help healthcare providers to make more accurate diagnoses, predict potential health issues, and develop individualized treatment plans. AI can also help to identify patients who are at high risk of developing certain conditions and intervene early, reducing the likelihood of serious health problems.

Medical research

Another area where AI has the potential to significantly improve healthcare is in medical research and drug development. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data from clinical trials, medical literature, and patient records, identifying potential treatments and therapeutic targets. This can speed up the development of new drugs and treatments, improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare costs.

Moreover, AI’s healthcare promise will help to streamline administrative and operational tasks, freeing up time and resources for healthcare providers to focus on patient care. AI-powered chatbots, for example, can provide patients with 24/7 access to healthcare information and assist with scheduling appointments, while automating administrative tasks such as appointment scheduling, claims processing, and record-keeping can reduce errors and increase efficiency.

Conclusion

The potential of AI in healthcare is vast and holds tremendous promise for improving patient outcomes. From improving diagnoses and treatments to streamlining operations, AI has the potential to transform healthcare delivery and provide patients with better, more accessible, and more personalized care. It’s important that healthcare providers embrace this technology and work to harness its potential for the benefit of patients everywhere. And so, AI’s healthcare promise will serve patients.

Why Artificial Intelligence is Important in Healthcare

Published: 28 March 2017
Written by Brian E. Thomas
Categories: Brian's Blog

We know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic right now, yet on the flip side there has been criticism around its hype, especially at HIMSS17 this year. However, we need to continue to invest into AI Research and Development so we can maximize the benefits, such as lower healthcare costs, improved provider efficiency, more accurate billing, and safer patient care. There are so many reasons why Artificial Intelligence is important in healthcare.

Will Robots Replace Us?

It’s unlikely that robots and computers will totally take the place of doctors and nurses, but AI can’t be ignored in its efforts to revolutionize the healthcare industry. Not only does it predict outcomes and improve diagnostics, it changes the way healthcare providers think about how they provide care, says Forbes. The future possibilities are endless: industry analysts say that 30 percent of providers will use cognitive analytics with patient data by 2018.

Access to big data is essential. Think about how we grew up with the Dewey Decimal system. A trip to the library could take hours as we pored through the stacks trying to find what we wanted. Today, our kids are astonished that we didn’t have Google at our fingertips to learn anything we wanted to know. With the advent of AI quickly taking over the horizon, our kids’ kids will be the ones shocked that all their parents had to learn information was a simple computer and search engine. Just like that, the future takes hold even when we can’t comprehend the next step.

The Reach of AI

There are many ways artificial intelligence is predicted to impact the field of healthcare. Personalized medicine is one major benefit. AI is part of a far-reaching, continually growing, adaptive connected digital infrastructure. However, access is limited because there is just so much information out there. With the help of AI, it will become easier than ever to process, analyze and bring up research, publications, studies and more than can put accurate, timely information into the hands of the user. Healthcare providers now have the ability to use this information as a tool to compare, compile and analyze patient files in order to come up with an accurate diagnosis.

In addition to quick access, precision is a critical piece of the puzzle as well. Because AI has the ability to tap into huge databases that contain information on anything from symptoms and analysis results to family history and similar diagnoses of other patients around the world. The evolution of pathology and possible treatments has suddenly been made precise. While AI can’t prevent all errors — at least not yet anyway — it can drastically reduce them. This in turn will reduce operating room mix-ups, mis-diagnoses, and more.

Artificial Intelligence is Important

That leads us to the next important component of artificial intelligence: prevention. With the focus being on preventive and predictive medicine, it’s possible with AI to avoid injury and disease altogether.

The value of virtual assistants has already been explored and used within other industries, such as SEM and retail. The goal there is to put more power in the hands of the consumer. Why not empower patients in the same way?

Understandably, advances in big data and AI pose ethical debates, especially within the healthcare sector (think personnel shortages, legal responsibilities, privacy issues, potential misuse of the system, etc.). However, there are so many more benefits that can revolutionize the way we practice medicine, treat patients, and indeed view our entire medical future. Artificial Intelligence is important to move healthcare forward.

Wearables and Your Health: Where Do They Intersect?

Published: 29 January 2017
Written by Brian E. Thomas
Categories: Brian's Blog

Both sides of the health technology debate

In our last article, we talked about what to watch for in the way of wearable technology this year. Now we’ll discuss how this innovative form of technology can be used to promote a healthier population. We all know that health insurance payers give out incentives to providers for healthy patients; to obtain these incentives, healthcare providers must gather more data, communicate more effectively with their patients, and get them engaged in managing their own health. Why not use technology to automatically gather this data and send it back to the patient’s medical record? This method ensures accuracy, efficiency, timeliness, and accountability — things that can be sorely lacking in today’s healthcare management system. Wearables and your health intersect at awareness and healthy lifestyle planning.

The use of wearables, once a practice driven solely by individuals hopping on the “cool” factor of a FitBit, is now moving into the realm of employer- driven incentive as part of their health and wellness programs. Research has calculated a clear ROI on those who use wearables vs. those who do not. In fact, as part of a study conducted by Springbuk, employees using wearable technology cost $1,000 less on average for a company than those who didn’t. 

Undoubtedly, wearables are ideal for tracking and monitoring ongoing health and daily fitness activities. In fact, many companies are already boasting they can achieve this (you may have heard about Apple’s recent announcement of a patent for a device that can gather and process electrocardiographic measurements; or perhaps you’ve heard of wearable pregnancy trackers).

Wearable devices, along with mobile health apps, have made health data collection extremely convenient because they integrate with patients’ daily activities and reflect that activity in a quantifiable way. The information that can be collected from patients can play a critical role in how the world of medical advancement will look in the future, with wearables allowing both patients and care givers to measure a variety of indicators and generate feedback on anything from everyday health to specific markers for disease.

This can also aid in medical research; in effect, future generations can benefit from information gathered directly from users today. Healthcare professionals can gain insight into how diseases progress, which treatments are effective, how symptoms improve with certain treatments, etc. The availability and capability of the data that can be collected is mind numbing if you stop to think about it all.

Bridging the Gap

However, just because the technology is here doesn’t mean there aren’t other issues or obstacles that can stonewall the real-world integration of these technologies to the Electronic Health Record, such as:

  • Device weight
  • Cost
  • Security issues
  • Privacy concerns
  • Validity
  • Reliability
  • Regulations
  • Vendor bureaucracy

In addition to all that, there are ethical, legal, and social implications that make many healthcare professionals a bit reluctant to welcome wearable data into the electronic medical record, points out Forbes. Of course, there is always the possibility that a physician could be sued, for example, if a patient’s exercise pattern changed over time and the doctor failed to address it. Other concerns doctors may have include: How accurate is the wearable on any given day? What if there is a malfunction? What will each doctor do with the mountains of health information received? Is there a quantifiable way to document it all and make sense of it? Will this add to a workload that is already over stressed?

As you can see, many things still stand in the way of achieving a seamless connection between wearables and integration into patient records. It’s starting, though. With 274 million wearable electronic devices sold worldwide in 2016 alone, there’s no stopping the evolution of a simple fitness tracker into something much more helpful and potentially life saving. Novant Health, for instance, led the way in 2015 when it introduced its electronic patient portal, MyChart, so patients could share data from their fitness tracker with their doctors. This form of patient engagement represents the future of wearable technology integration.


Bringing Wearables into the Main Stream Health Community

With so many questions as to the security, accuracy and regulation of wearable technology and patient records, is it possible to develop standards for what data can be used and validated? Yes. The technology is there, it just has to be paired with policies that will protect patients’ rights. Once this happens, though, we can make wearables mainstream to help improve our populations’ chronic diseases. Looking ahead to what’s on the horizon, it’s certainly possible that such wearables can take this all one step further and alert or prevent the consumer from making unhealthy choices during the day. Hey, if Amazon and Maytag can automatically tell you when you are low on a product or an appliance needs service, certainly we can make this commonplace with our wearables. This is were wearables and your health intersect!

Population Health vs. Public Health: Rising Significance of Pop Health

Published: 20 December 2016
Written by Brian E. Thomas
Categories: Brian's Blog

Amidst growing concern over the health of the population as a whole, a shift is underway to focus less on individual care and more on managing the population’s health. First, let’s define what population health is. The term population health first emerged in 2003 after David Kindig and Greg Stoddart defined it as “the health outcome of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group,” according to HealthcareITNews. Population health refers to the health incomes of a group of individuals, which can be divided not only according to geographic ties such as communities and countries, but also on a smaller scale as well, such as employees, prisoners, disabled people, and ethnic groups.

Population Health Importance

Policy makers are looking to the importance of the population’s overall health as it regards to the distribution of health. Let’s put it this way: marks for overall health could be very high IF most of the population is healthy, which underscores the fact that a small minority is less healthy in an effort to drastically reduce that gap. Many factors can influence health, from an individual’s behavior and genetics to social and physical environments. Medical care systems also play a large role. Population health outcomes rely on the impacts of these factors as a whole.

Now what about public health? This is defined as the efforts of state and local public health departments to treat individual health through prevention of epidemics, the containment of environmental hazards and the encouragement of healthy behaviors. Public health encompasses what we do as a society to assure people in that society can be healthy. However, a gap exists here that does not account for major population health determinants like health care, education, and income, which are traditionally outside the scope of public health authority and responsibility, says Improving Pop Health.

Problem is, with the traditional model, the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group, are largely ignored. That’s where pop health comes in, to focus on the interrelated conditions influencing health populations over the course of lifetimes where systematic variations and patterns are taken into account in order to create policies that improve the well-being of populations over time.

A Fundamental Shift in Healthcare

That being said, there is certainly an overlap of sorts where population health and public health meet in the middle, combining forces of population health activities within general practices, public health activities with the community, and leadership efforts in policy development. The goal of population health is to broaden the responsibility of policy makers to think outside the box rather than simply focus on a single sector or for advocacy groups to single out a specific disease. With the average American living much longer thanks to improved health care and healthy awareness initiatives, it becomes more important than ever to identify population health trends that will ensure the well being of large groups of people across various demographic, social and community ties.

A fundamental shift in our way of thinking about healthcare is underway — not just in who it affects but how it is delivered as well. The traditional healthcare model is slowly but surely giving way toward a different way of thinking, a different way of approaching population trends that are transforming the world in major ways. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says it best: a focus on pop health can help us improve the biomedical, economic, and behavioral issues that affect the universal human experience.

Teresa Collins – Chief Nursing Officer

Published: 17 March 2015
Written by Brian E. Thomas
Categories: References

Teresa CollinsI have had the pleasure and opportunity to work with Brian as a peer on our Executive Team.  As a leader, he is superb at pulling resources together on a moment’s notice to address crucial customer or patient related matters.  His ability to come up with both short-term solutions and long-term strategies for the organization is extraordinary.  Not only does he possess a high level of technical knowledge, but is very clear when he communicates to the business on business matters.  His compassion, customer service, responsiveness, and commitment are truly second-to-none.  Brian is one of the easiest people to work with and is very accountable. He would complement any team or organization. I would enjoy the opportunity to work with him again, and have tried a few times to recruit him to some of my new teams. ~ Teresa Collins

Teresa Collins has a illustrious career in Healthcare in and around the Kansas City area. Most notably as a Chief Nursing Officer for 20 years.  Most recently, she joined Cabe Consulting, who took over Rock Regional Hospital as the new management team for the hospital and the group then installed Teresa Collins as interim CEO at Rock Regional effective April 6, 2020.

Since those changes went into effect in early April, a major focus for both Collins and the new management group has been working out the Derby hospital’s current financial situation – relating both to COVID-19 and overall operations.

Cabe Consulting CEO Kevin Hicks reached out to Collins given their previous work history, as Collins noted she spent four years as a Chief Nursing Officer reporting to Hicks and has known him for 20 years. Most recently, Collins – who has 39 years in the health care industry and 33 as a registered nurse – served as President of the St. Luke’s Community hospitals in Kansas City.

Scott Kashman, FACHE – Healthcare Executive

Published: 9 March 2015
Written by Brian E. Thomas
Categories: References

Scott Kashman, FACHEBrian and I worked together at Ascension Health’s subsidiary, Carondelet Health in Kansas City. Brian’s strong leadership played a key role on our Information Systems department. Brian was responsible for implementing and integrating new technology. One major conversion stands out where Brian led the effort every step of the way including serving as our Incident Commander through the process. His communication skills are superb and he has a great strength in physician and staff relations.

Brian and I continue to stay in touch and he is invaluable guiding me with technology and social media communication integration.

Brian’s strong leadership skills, physician relationships, understanding of organizational processes and technology served our organization well.  ~Scott Kashman

Currently, Scott Kashman, MHA, FACHE, is the market president for St. Dominic Health Services and CEO of St. Dominic Hospital.

Scott brings a tremendous depth of experience in healthcare operations, notably in building high performing teams within integrated health systems. He is a proven leader in Catholic healthcare recognizing its unique opportunities as a ministry of the Church and community contributor. His sensitivities to the needs of Mississippi families inform his leadership for prioritizing sustainability and community impact, while his authenticity in physician relationships is instrumental to achieving quality and experience goals.

Scott Kashman served as the chief officer of hospital operations and system ancillary services for Lee Health in Florida, overseeing the four acute care hospitals. His nearly three-decade career reflects increasing responsibilities in ambulatory and acute operational roles including senior executive positions with Cape Coral Hospital and St. Joseph Medical Center. As an executive leader in both Ascension and Mercy Health, he helped strengthen overall performance while growing market presence for the integrated operations of acute care and multi-specialty physician enterprise activities.

A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, Scott began his career in healthcare as a psychiatric counselor. His interest in helping others joined with his business acumen and strategy led him to complete his Master of Health Administration from Tulane University. He is an Ethics Fellow, Center for Disability Ethics: Northwestern University School of Medicine and co-author of the book, Mindful Healthcare: Healthy Team, Healthy Business.