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  Today in health it, I think one of the most important stories of 2021 in terms of healthcare it, and that is Apple ramps up health capabilities with new metrics and more importantly, sharing capabilities. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current.

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Just click on the subscribe button in the upper right hand corner. Or better yet, have your team subscribe and you guys can start discussing these stories on a daily basis. Alright, two things happened at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference this week. That are really important for healthcare. The first is an announcement, and the second is the non-participation of a major vendor and an Apple initiative.

So let's just go ahead and get to the story. This comes from, I tried to get a different source. This is ZD net. CD net.com Worldwide Developer Conference 2021. Apple ramps up health capabilities with new metrics and sharing capabilities. That's the title of the article. Here we go. Apple on Monday introduced a series of new health features that incorporates the technology brand deeper into users' everyday healthcare routine, as well as their professional care experience.

The new features and capabilities introduced during the WWDC keynote address include new ways to share private health data with doctors and loved ones. It also includes new ways to track your health. Include a first of its kind walking steadiness metric designed to prevent dangerous falls. Okay, so what's all this about?

Health has been a key area of focus for Apple in early 2019. Apple, CEO, Tim Cook said on CNBC. If you zoom out into the future and you look back and you ask the question, what was Apple's greatest contribution to mankind, it will be about health. And I believe he's right. And that's pretty amazing when you think of all the things that Apple has done and transformed in our lives.

I think he's right. And I think the biggest step that we have seen, which is a culmination of a lot of things that they've done, is this idea of new ways of sharing. Private health data with doctors and loved ones. Alright, let's go on. The iPhone already captures the way users walk. Now users can assess their risk of falling with walking.

Steadiness The metric uses built-in motion sensors to measure how fast and evenly you walk, the length of your steps and timing right down to how long you have your feet on the ground using real world data from the Apple Heart Study, apple has leveraged the largest data set ever used to create fall risk.

I. Okay, so that's one of the features that they put out there. The health app is also adding more context to lab results visible in the app. Users can also view lab results for information such as their cholesterol levels. Now they'll see information to help them understand that data. For instance, the app would tell you that LDL is bad cholesterol and whether your cholesterol is in the expected range.

The health app also now includes trends to deliver insight into long-term changes with respect to sleep steps, blood glucose, and more. Meanwhile, and I believe this is the real meat of this announcement, meanwhile, apple is now partnering with electronic health record companies, including Cerner and Meditech, to give users the ability to share their Apple Health data directly with healthcare providers.

Apple stress that the data is shared privately and that not even Apple will have access. To the information shared. Apple is also letting users share their health data with other individuals. A user may choose, for instance, to share their health data with their adult child. In this scenario, a user could see parents' health data and receive notifications such as high heart rate alerts and changes in mobility.

The data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and users have granular control over which types of data to share and with whom. These are great announcements. This is a great movement. I'll let me go into that first. Okay. The false feature is pretty cool though. The walking steadiness feature is pretty cool, and Apple continues to add features to their Apple Health solution set.

That makes me believe that Tim Cook really believes and is investing in doing healthcare. Right. And if we know anything about Apple, it is that they are a consumer company. They stopped trying to be a B2B company a long time ago, and they are all about the consumer and we have benefited greatly because of their singular focus.

But the single most important movement in healthcare and interoperability this year will be the announcement. To share records through Apple Health Record. Think about it. We've been unable to do this for decades as an industry, and we won't be able to do it really until we get to a single EHR, which some people hope for, and I believe will be the worst day in the history of the industry, or an intermediary with a fairly sizable user base, consumes the record.

Which Apple has 49% of the mobile phone market in the US creates a privacy framework around it, which they have done, cleans up the record, puts it in the palm of my hand, and then gives me the ability to share it with whomever I wish. That day has finally come, not the single EHR, but the day when Apple has finally set our healthcare data free.

Think about the use cases that are possible. Care circles. Some apps have them, but now Apple has unlocked this with a sizable amount of my potential record. The participating healthcare providers list is huge, and it includes any one of relevance in healthcare. I went to the . Apple support site and it, it is a significant list.

You know, I can create a care circle that includes my kids and my parents so that we can take care of one another. At that point, we can pull in our healthcare provider, our healthcare system, or even a fiduciary of some kind, a healthcare fiduciary, which we've talked about on the show before, which is just someone who helps me to figure things out and helps me to make the right moves in in my healthcare journey.

interoperability between health systems with disparity. HR is another use case, a simple use case that has alluded us. I know what you want to tell me right now that progress has been made and significant progress really has been made in this area, but it has taken two decades and I still can find more people with bad stories than good ones about their health record following them around the system.

What I hear from healthcare IT people is, hey, the record flows freely between Epic Health Systems. And I, I'm always caught off guard by that and I wanna say, is that enough? Can we take the victory lap at this point? Is that a mission complete moment? I can now be the carrier. I personally can be the carrier of my health record from one place to another.

Me the only constant at the point of care, it's not my health system and or even my primary care physician. It's me. Whether it's Telehealth or a visit to the ED while I'm on vacation, I'm there now. I get that record from them and I take it with me to the next location. Another use case, second opinions.

I wanna get a second opinion from the clinic in Miami. Send me your records. Okay, here you go. I. I recognize that we're not there yet. This will require the whole record, but I believe we are well on our way. What if I want to have a third party audit, my healthcare bills with the new 21st Century Cures Rules and the information blocking rules on payers, I can now see this being a possibility.

Get my information into my Apple Health record, and then share it with a service that is going to audit my healthcare bills. Okay. How about this one? I wanna have a backup of my records in case my health system has a ransomware attack. Okay. Done. I mean, there's a lot of great use cases and the list goes on and on, and quite frankly, I can't even imagine all the use cases because I'm only one man with one perspective.

There are thousands of ways this can be done. This will likely be the most important announcement in 2021. In healthcare. It is my greatest hope that healthcare embraces it. All right. Let's get to one thing, and I don't wanna step on this too hard, but why isn't Epic in this announcement? I, I, I, I, I'm just kind of surprised that they are not front and center.

We have Meditech and Cerner. So why is that? I'm hoping it's just timing, because if it isn't timing, it's just sheer arrogance. You know, it is the thing we hear often about Epic, at least behind their back. 'cause no one wants to say it out in the open. Epic believes they can do everything better and that they don't need any third parties and they have this not invented here mindset.

Whatever the phraseology you want to use. It comes back to one thing, which is arrogance. Who does your non-participation help? First? It helps Epic. Epic has a virtual monopoly on health data across the country, and they do it in the name of the patient. As most controlling organizations do, but in reality, it helps you.

It's about you and your role in controlling the patient experience. Second, the slow moving healthcare establishment. Not those that are truly innovating around the patient experience, but those worried about protecting their position in a fast moving world, it's too hard to adapt. So we look at Epic to protect us, to give us the appearance of customer centricity, while never really getting anywhere close to the actual customer centricity that is required.

And a hundred 50th on the list of people that it helps is the patient. Epic has communicated that they are the only ones that can protect the patient's data. So I guess I have to give them props by not sharing the data with anyone, but paying customers, they will likely protect the data. I liken this to the parent who's afraid to send their child to school.

They're ready to go to school. They will benefit from meeting other kids at kindergarten, that teachers will teach them things that they need to survive and thrive in life. Their progress will be stunted if they don't go to school. So what is the parent who doesn't send their school really about? It's about fear.

Fear of losing control. Yes, you have control, but use it in the best interest of the kid and send them to school. Overcome your fear. That's my message to Epic. It's time to stop acting out of your own fear and let me use my data as a patient for my health. Keep in mind, epic, I, the patient didn't choose you.

The health system did. I didn't ask for you to protect me, so give me my data and let me learn how to manage my own health. Okay? That's my rant for today. And it might be over the top. Maybe this is just a timing thing. Maybe Epic is, you know, right there. And it just wasn't ready for. The timing of the Worldwide Developer Conference.

I hope that is the case. I hope this isn't a, you know what, we can control it better than Apple. We need to keep this from happening. I. And that's my hope if it is, that I would ask all you epic clients and users to go to the confab up there in Madison and let them know that that's not acceptable. That's not what your health system's about anymore.

Your health system is about delivering the best care to your community and you believe. That in order to do that, that patients need to be empowered with their health data and to be engaged in their health with their health data, and this is one of the ways that you wanna make that happen. All right.

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