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Feb 25, 2024·Beckers Hospital Review

CoxHealth moves IT operations in-house from Oracle Health aiming stronger synergies, better knowledge retention, and faster problem-solving. Contrary to popular trend of outsourcing, the move ensures better alignment within departments, conducive experience for all stakeholders, supporting their continued growth and success trend. Patrick Murfee, VP and CTO highlights the importance of retaining IT knowledge and speed in healthcare environment.

Feb 25, 2024·Healthcare Dive

Walgreens closing remaining VillageMD clinics in Florida, continues cost-cutting. VillageMD, exiting Florida—one of largest markets—lacks doctors, patients in smaller clinics. Despite $5.2 billion investment, U.S. Healthcare struggles to profit. In cost-cutting, Walgreens shuts 60 VillageMD clinics, 450 retail locations; layoffs. Company's stock drops 41% since January 2023. Walgreens explores selling specialty pharmacy Shields Health Solutions. Leadership turnover and opioid epidemic liabilities add to woes.

Feb 21, 2024·TechCrunch

US healthcare technology company, Change Healthcare, confirms cyberattack causing network interruption. Immediate action taken to prevent further impact. Login pages mostly inaccessible or offline, disruption expected to last all day. Local pharmacies experiencing outages due to the cyberattack, major issues processing prescriptions through patient insurance. Company merged with UnitedHealth Group and Optum in $7.8 billion deal in 2022.

Feb 21, 2024·The Hacker News

UK's NCA shut down LockBit ransomware operation through Operation Cronos, obtaining source code, arresting actors in Poland, Ukraine, freezing 200+ cryptocurrency accounts, and unsealing US indictments/sanctions against Russian nationals. LockBit, active since 2019, ran a ransomware-as-a-service scheme, deploying 'double' or 'triple extortion' tactics. The operation led to infiltration of LockBit's services, dismantling 34 servers, retrieving 1000+ decryption keys, and seizing a custom data exfiltration tool, StealBit. LockBit, affecting 2500+ global victims and earning $120m+ in illicit profits, is hampered, losing secrecy and anonymity.

Feb 21, 2024·BankInfoSecurity

EHRs vulnerable to cyberattacks; compromise affects patient data and care. Attacks increase hospital mortality rates, create regional impact. Multifactor authentication, robust logging, auditing among recommended protections. Ransomware attacks necessitate multi-layered security, frequent auditing for early suspicious activity identification. Cyberattackers exploit system weaknesses.

Feb 19, 2024·Ars Technica

FDA approves Omalizumab (Xolair) to reduce food allergy reactions. Effective in trial subjects with multiple allergies, blocks allergic responses by binding immunoglobulin E. Not universal cure, continued vigilance required. Long-term effectiveness and combination with oral immunotherapy being researched. Side effects include injection reactions, fever, potential pain, infections, malignancies.

Feb 19, 2024·New York Times

Ukrainian Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov pleads guilty in US court for leading two cyber attack schemes causing millions in losses and crippling Vermont hospital in 2020, says Justice Department. Scheme began in 2009, involving infecting corporation computers with malware, collecting online banking login details, acting as corporation employees to transfer money, causing millions in losses. Arrested in Switzerland in 2022, extradited to US in 2023.

Feb 16, 2024·HealthITSecurity

Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago suffers cyberattack, causing downtime of phone, email, and electronic systems for nearly three weeks. No timeline provided for recovery. Outages persist but hospital continues patient care. Cyber threats against healthcare facilities increasing, despite potential for heightened law enforcement attention. Ransomware groups predicted to continually target critical infrastructure sectors.

Feb 16, 2024·EY

COVID-19 has spurred digital transformations in healthcare with majority executives seeing tech investments worthwhile despite high initial costs. EY US's Health Pulse Survey reveals adaptation towards digital health tech enhancing operational efficiency and reducing patient care costs. 90% report more time for provider needs post-digital administrative shift. AI is emerging as transformative with 60% investing and 96% seeing time and cost reductions. Yet paradoxically, 70% haven't seen ROI on digital health investments due to difficult tech cost-value tracking. Reskilling for new tech is being prioritized, with digital knowledge boosting provider credibility. Future value in digital health tech lies in modernization and connectivity for better data access.

Feb 15, 2024·Healthcare IT News

Children's Hospital Los Angeles partners with Vital, using ERAdvisor AI tool to enhance patient-family experience with clear, predictable processes. This platform, accessed via the MyVisit portal, provides real-time updates on child's status and care changes. Vital’s ERAdvisor, employs machine learning to simplify medical notes, offering patient education, surveys, service requests, and more. Such AI tools may also improve emergency care when integrated with clinical decision-making support.

Feb 14, 2024·Meditech

Mile Bluff Medical Center employs MEDITECH's AI-powered Expanse powered by Google Health to improve workflow, efficiency for over 150 users across care network. Incorporated into Mile Bluff's Expanse EHR, the tool utilizes natural language processing to extract info from structured/unstructured data, providing clinicians with timely, comprehensive view of patients. It also minimizes time spent on patient data cleaning, resonates across all departments, enables quick search for discrete data, and proves effective for chart preparation and abstracting. This radical collaboration highlights AI's potential in patient care efficiency.

Feb 14, 2024·NBC News

Ransomware attack on Romanian hospitals leads to over 100 facilities offline. Hackers demanded nearly $170,000 in Bitcoin. Romania's cybersecurity agency advised against payment and local company Bitdefender assists with recovery efforts.

Feb 14, 2024·Oracle

Seema Verma, newly appointed executive VP and GM of Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences, plans a patient-centered approach to bridge clinical research and care, using technology including data science, AI and ML. Through the Cerner acquisition, Oracle gained technology to revolutionize healthcare systems and de-identified data from over 2,608 facilities across the U.S. Verma emphasizes the importance of interoperability in healthcare, predicting provider access to organized patient data, analytics, AI, and proactive interventions for disease prevention. Oracle aims to reduce clinical trial burdens, increase accessibility, eliminate manual data re-entry, meet regulatory demands, reduce administrative costs with technology, and align financial incentives with value-based care.

Feb 13, 2024·UC Davis Health

UC Davis Health introduces digital care program for post-Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) patients using UC-NOW text-messaging and Clinii for vital monitoring. CliniiMobile Technology enables direct data transmission to healthcare team for guidance. Aimed at optimizing recovery, reducing heart risks and enhancing patient well-being. Collaboration with Clinii expected to improve patient-provider interactions. Program supported by American College of Cardiology, Rosenfeld Foundation. UC Davis Health team to monitor 200 patients daily to prevent complications, reduce readmissions.

Feb 13, 2024·BleepingComputer

18 Romanian hospitals go offline due to ransomware attack on Hipocrate Information System, encrypting patient data and management system. National Cyber Security Directorate investigates, advises against disturbing IT teams. Unclear if patients' data stolen or which ransomware operation is responsible. Romanian Soft Company, software service provider for attacked system, hasn't publicly commented.

Feb 7, 2024·FierceHealthcare

Oracle appoints former Trump administration health policy leader Seema Verma to head Oracle Health and Cerner EHR business after acquiring Cerner in $28bn deal in 2022. Challenges in growing EHR business as Cerner drags Oracle's Q2 revenue. Oracle plans to modernize Cerner's EHR platform and transition it to the cloud. Oracle also adopted a massive IT project with the Department of Veterans Affairs through Cerner acquisition. Layoffs reported at Oracle Health.

Feb 7, 2024·San Diego Union Tribune

Apple's Vision Pro headset displays medical records, enhancing healthcare precision. Sharp HealthCare in San Diego tests its effectiveness in Spatial Computing Center of Excellence. Apple's device projects digital work widely, offering potentially improved data viewing. Sharp collaborates with Epic for healthcare exploration. Sharp will compare traditional directions with headset tasks. Possibilities include eye exams, patient monitoring and anesthesia data display. Virtual reality already enhances PTSD treatment and surgery, and could revolutionize patient record reviews and anatomy teaching.

Feb 6, 2024·BankInfoSecurity

2023 saw record health data breaches in US with 734 incidents, affecting 135.3 million individuals—over 40% of the population. Mostly due to hacks, with third-party business associates contributing significantly. Largest breach: 11.3 million people by HCA Healthcare. Increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats have experts predicting 2024 could be worse. To counter, entities urged to adopt robust, automated solutions, focusing on continuous monitoring of sensitive data. HHS suggests measures to defend against cyberattacks and safeguard ePHI. Reconnaissance necessary to keep up with evolving cybercriminal threats.

Feb 5, 2024·WGN TV

Lurie Children's Hospital experiencing outages due to unconfirmed cyberattack, frustrating parents and causing appointment cancellations. Previous data breach in Spring 2023 affected 2000 patients. Recovery could be lengthy despite backup data. No response from FBI Chicago.

Feb 4, 2024·Beckers Hospital Review

In 2018, former UnitedHealth Group CEO David Wichmann ruled out building or owning hospitals for Optum's growth strategy. Instead, the plan focused on managing administrative services for health systems for Optum Care's $100m goal by 2028. By 2024, Optum had signed nine partnerships, including Allina Health, and hired their employees to support the systems. Wichmann had also said Optum wouldn't buy post-acute care facilities, but the company now owns naviHealth, a post-acute management organization, and bought LHC Group, a home health provider, in 2023. Optum also plans to buy Amedisys, a home and hospice care provider, for $3.3 billion. Optum's revenue exceeded $226 billion in 2023, with Optum Health surpassing $95 billion.