Points of Contention Between Hospitals and IT Companies Developing Algorithms
In a recent blog note about"big tech" knocking on hospital doors related to commercialization of diagnostic and predictive algorithms, I ended with the following statement (see:Big Tech Is Knocking on Hospital Doors; It's All About the Data). Regarding healthcare analytics in general and diagnostic analytics in particular, the development of these fields must take place in collaboration with the IT companies that have the special expertise to analyze the data using techniques such as deep learning, big data, and neural networks.Such a collaboration between these two parties will not be easy becaus...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 15, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Medical Consumerism Medical Research Pathology Informatics Surgical Pathology Source Type: blogs
Retail Drug Stores Emerging as Healthcare Hubs for First-Tier Primary Care
Two recent articles provide additional evidence that a new type of first-tier, healthcare hub is emerging. It consists of the following: (1) a retail drug store like CVS or Walgreens; (2) a walk-in healthcare clinic like MinuteClinic; (3) direct organizational and financial ties to a major health insurance company like Aetna; and (4) a reference laboratory patient service center (PSC) for blood draws provided by a company like LabCorp. Here's the first of the two articles (see:CVS Health and Aetna $69 Billion Merger Is Approved With Conditions) with an excerpt is below:The Justice Department ’s approval of the ...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 12, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Cost of Healthcare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Healthcare Insurance Lab Industry Trends Medical Consumerism Point-of-Care Testing Source Type: blogs
The Critical Role of Pathology Informatics in the Practice of Pathology
On October 3, 2018, I delivered a lecture at the ASCP Annual Meeting in Baltimore entitled:Using Informatics to Address Five Major Challenges in Pathology. You can view a PDF version of the lecture here. At the beginning of the lecture, I listed five major trends in healthcare. They are listed below:This is golden era of diagnostics, affecting primarily complex diseases like cancerDecentralization of healthcare away from hospitals& toward consumersRising tide of consumerism; patients will need to be treated more like customersComputer-driven analytics are changing the style and content of pathology reportsFor-pro...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 11, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Digital Imaging in Pathology Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology LIS Definitions and Strategy Pathology Informatics Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
Diagnostic Platform for Microbiology; Screens for All Pathogenic Bacteria
(see:Breakthrough test screens for all known bacterial infections)Scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) in the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health have developed the first diagnostic platform that can simultaneously screen for all known human pathogenic bacteria as well as markers for virulence and antibiotic resistance....."Once approved for clinical use, BacCapSeq will give physicians a powerful tool to quickly and precisely screen for all known pathogenic bacteria, including those that cause sepsis, the third leading cause of death in the United States," says first author .....
Source: Lab Soft News - October 11, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Source Type: blogs
Genomic Testing and Patients as " Perpetual " Lab and Hospital Clients
Dark Daily recently posted an article about how genetic testing results were being integrated into the EHRs of two major health systems and made more accessible for primary care (see: Genetic Testing as Part of Primary Care and Precision Medicine is Underway at NorthShore University HealthSystem and Geisinger Health). Below is an excerpt from the article:Clinical laboratories and pathology groups face a big challenge in how to get appropriate genetic and molecular data into electronic health record (EHR) systems in ways that are helpful for physicians.Precision medicine faces many barriers and this is one of the biggest. A...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 10, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Processes and Procedures Medical Consumerism Medical Research Pathology Informatics Preventive Medicine Source Type: blogs
Continuing Discussion about Lab Consultations with Test-Ordering Clinicians
I have posted two notes recently about how to improve communications between lab personnel and test-ordering health professionals (see:Need for Improved Communication Channels between Clinical Labs and Users; More on Lab Communication with Test-Ordering Physicians and Nurses). This last one prompted the following comment byJonathan Horan:This is really topical right now among the lab. At a lab executives' roundtable I arranged at the AACC this year, the issue of communication came up.We discussed the frustration of family doctors ordering tests that could be duplicate or inappropriate and how the lab might be mor...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 5, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Lab Processes and Procedures Medical Education Pathology Informat Source Type: blogs
More on Lab Communication with Test-Ordering Physicians and Nurses
In a recent note (see:Need for Improved Communication Channels between Clinical Labs and Users), I addressed the issue of optimizing lab communications with clinicians and the desirability of formally integrating such activities into the job descriptions of lab personnel. As a comment, Branko Perunovic, submitted the following:Thanks for the post, this is a relevant and often revisited topic.Our team at Laboratory Medicine atSheffield Teaching Hospitals, UK, is prototyping eConsult, in-house developed software bolt-on the electronic requesting and LIMS system that enables questions and successive answers in relation ...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 2, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Lab Processes and Procedures Pathology Informatics Source Type: blogs
Need for Improved Communication Channels between Clinical Labs and Users
Three days ago, I participated in awebinar sponsored by theAssociation for Pathology Informatics andSunquest Information Systems. The overarching topic addressed for this (and later sessions) was the challenge for pathology informaticians of working in large multi-hospital health systems. The first of the two subtopics covered in this first session by Dr. Brian Jackson ofARUP Laboratories was the need for effective communication in hospitals beyond the EHR and LIS. He quoted a survey of primary care practitioners indicating that they rarely consulted with lab personnel about test ordering and test result interp...
Source: Lab Soft News - September 28, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Lab Processes and Procedures Reference Labora Source Type: blogs
