Stay ahead of the headlines

Oct 3, 2023·JAMA Network

Increased interest in using large language models (LLMs) in medicine could yield benefits, but their development must be shaped by relevant training data, verified benefits, and real-world evaluations. Medical LLMs can be trained on medical codes or documents, providing useful capabilities in language manipulation like summarization and translation. Evaluations should also verify purported benefits using practical, real-world situations. This professional shaping can avoid potential disruption and improve patient care.

Oct 3, 2023·Beckers Hospital Review

Healthcare systems upping spending on revenue management, clinical workflow, patient engagement; 80% increased tech spend last year. Boost in IT expenditure expected for emerging tech, labor shortages, cost pressure reduction.

Oct 3, 2023·Healthcare IT News

AHA urges OCR to withdraw regulation of online tracking tools, alleging the rules impede hospitals' ability to assess patient web usage and access to health info, violating HIPAA and impairing public health. Persisting HIPAA rules maintain effective patient info sharing, and should not face major revisions, argues AHA.

Oct 3, 2023·Futurism

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman views Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) replacing "median human" workers. Experts caution against the dehumanizing connotation and oversimplification of human intelligence. Altman's definition of equitably benefiting from AI involves reducing majority of humans to replaceable "median" figures.

Oct 3, 2023·Beckers Hospital Review

Hospital leader, Stephen Leffler, informs Congress 2021 ransomware attack on Vermont Medical Center was tougher than pandemic, costing $65 million and disrupting EHR for 28 days. Attack also interrupted the internet, affecting patient management. Despite challenges, managed to safely execute all operations.

Oct 3, 2023·MobiHealthNews

Intuition Robotics, creator of AI-powered senior care companion ElliQ, secured $25M funding including $20M venture capital. Led by Woven Capital and including OurCrowd and Toyota Ventures, round brings new director, Nicole LeBlanc. ElliQ uses voice-command interaction for daily health-checks, activity support, and social connection. Funds for improving generative AI, LLM capabilities, and meeting healthcare and government agency demand. Collaboration with New York State Office for the Aging provided ElliQ to 800+ seniors, reducing loneliness.

Oct 3, 2023·LinkedIn

Healthcare's digital transformation overhauls patient interaction and operational optimization. Technologies integrate into healthcare services, with AI, big data, telehealth, and IoT enhancing diagnosis accuracy, treatment personalization, accessibility, and real-time patient monitoring. Telemedicine's significance illuminates in rural areas, providing accessible remote consultations reducing traditional facility burden. IoT wearable devices provide crucial real-time patient data. Digital transformation faces challenges like old systems, data integration, regulation compliance, resistance to change and digital literacy. Strategy directs technology adoption towards organization objectives and effective change management. Successful strategy incorporates suitable technology selection, focus on interoperability, and robust patient data protection. Future technologies predict disease progressions and suggest interventions, necessitating healthcare's vital digital transformation.

Oct 3, 2023·PR Newswire

Notable, a healthcare automation platform, launches "Notable Assistant", an AI-based healthcare assistant that uses large language models to broaden healthcare access and services. The assistant can perform administrative tasks such as appointment scheduling, locating service providers, and bill settlements. Customizable to match brand guidelines, Notable Assistant supports over 130 languages, learns from patient feedback, and is HITRUST certified.

Oct 2, 2023·The Record

Progress Software discloses vulnerabilities in WS_FTP Server, urging immediate patching. Notably exploited MOVEit developer now faces potential backlash and lawsuits over exploitations. Eight vulnerabilities affect all WS_FTP Server versions, hotfixes provided. Severe issues CVE-2023-40044 and CVE-2023-42657 remediated by full installer upgrade. Clop ransomware gang previously exploited vulnerabilities in MOVEit and others, exposing sensitive data of tens of millions. File transfer tools remain key hacker targets.

Oct 1, 2023·VentureBeat

McKinsey Company introduces Lilli, an AI chat tool for employees, aiding information access, insights, data, plans and internal consultation. Developed by McKinsey's ClienTech team, Lilli uses 100,000+ documents and interview transcripts for recommendations. In use by nearly 7,000 employees, Lilli has trimmed research and planning work from weeks to minutes and fielded 50,000 questions in two weeks with 66% users returning weekly. McKinsey anticipates consultants utilising Lilli throughout client interaction from initial research to project planning. Experimentation ongoing to allow secure, private analysis of client information and documentation on McKinsey servers with possibilities of extending Lilli's use to outside organisations.

Sep 30, 2023·CIO

CIOs should ask 8 questions to prepare their businesses for gen AI: choose a foundation model; make models accessible; adapt models to proprietary data; assess enterprise readiness; evaluate carbon footprint; industrialize gen AI app development; handle gen AI operations at scale; guide set direction. 99% of executives plan to increase investments in gen AI. Meanwhile, 67% of senior tech leaders view tech-fluency lack as a major barrier for tech integration into strategy development. Integrating AI effectively requires setting clear business value-defining objectives. Building a robust foundational architecture is essential first on organizations' journey to enterprise readiness.

Sep 30, 2023·CRN

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike surprises with Falcon for IT, expanding into broader IT category for asset inventory, CPU utilization tasks. The product bridges the gap between cybersecurity and IT, generating strong interest even at early stages. Falcon for IT consolidates security and IT in a single platform, potentially displacing existing remote monitoring, management tools. Initial release expected in early 2024.

Sep 30, 2023·LinkedIn

Launched National Independent Provider Ecosystem; forms contracts with top health systems/providers for better patient experience, improved outcomes, competitive pricing. Ecosystem expected to expand with high-quality organizations. Partnerships ensure benefits for employers/employees and health systems. Worked with CareJourney to develop comprehensive provider quality evaluation. Focus is easy access to high-quality care and information, affordability. Health systems rewarded upon care delivery; incentive for preferred patient access and quality care design. Plans for One Place for Care: quick care access, Pharmacy Marketplace, home-based care, surgery care, and complex care pathways. Partnerships with employers, employees, health systems and payers for easily accessible, high-quality, affordable care.

Sep 30, 2023·Forbes

Healthcare needs to address root of the Prior Authorization (PA) problem by utilizing a dedicated network platform rather than just technical standards or AI solutions. A PA-network could solve data variation issues while providing necessary tech support, oversight and transaction efficiency. Platforms like Surescripts have seen billions in savings through such a strategy. A PA-platform can also improve trust, transparency, efficiency and benefits all parties involved.

Sep 30, 2023·MedCity News

Hospitals must emulate Netflix and Amazon and know their patients better for successful digital transformation, says Providence’s chief strategy and digital officer Sara Vaezy. Arguing the need to consider patient behavior and preferences as healthcare consumer uses multiple brands, she suggests personalizing care and innovating at value chain ends. Recognizing privacy concerns, she recommends responsibly collecting more patient data to facilitate effective engagement strategies. Providence has started collecting online data from its patients using their own trackers, ensuring informed consent.

Sep 30, 2023·Becker's Hospital Review

Hospitals and health systems nationwide are increasingly rejecting Medicare Advantage plans, citing high authorization denial rates, slow insurer payments, and billing fraud allegations. San Diego's Scripps Health, facing a $75 million loss from MA contracts, is terminating contracts impacting 30,000 seniors. St. Charles Health System is encouraging seniors to avoid private Medicare plans. Many other hospitals are also terminating contracts or considering alternatives to Medicare Advantage plans.

Sep 30, 2023·Nuance

Nuance Communications, a Microsoft Company, has announced the availability of Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Copilot, an AI solution for automated clinical documentation aiming to improve healthcare efficiency and reduce clinician burnout. The application creates draft clinical summaries and enables more time for patient care. The expected surge in AI investment in healthcare could alleviate the increasing rate of clinician burnout. DAX Copilot's use resulted in a 70% reduction in burnout and fatigue and 50% less time spent on documentation.

Sep 29, 2023·Beckers Hospital Review

Beacon Health uses Nuance's AI tool, Dax, improving patient visits and reducing staff burdens. The technology enhances physicians' patient connections and reduces cognitive load.

Sep 28, 2023·LinkedIn

In the evolving B2B2C health tech landscape, Sharecare has been replaced by Castlight Health due to its superior ecosystem scale of 37 solutions. Among key movements, the Virgin Pulse recently announced its middle-market-focused $3B merger. It is also notable that Morgan Health has invested in this deal while also backing apree health, Castlight Health's parent company. Additional ecosystem ratings place UHC Hub solutions at 18, followed by Evernorth at 14, and CVS Health at 11.

Sep 28, 2023·National CIO Review

Amazon invests $4bn into AI firm Anthropic, competing with Google, Microsoft in AI race. Attains minority ownership, promotes generative AI development, propels Anthropic's competition with ChatGPT's developer OpenAI. Anthropic selects AWS as primary cloud provider, plans customer-first access to select model customization, fine-tuning features. Investment pushes Amazon alongside Microsoft, Google's AI investments. AWS customers can build on Anthropic models with Amazon Bedrock. Agreement makes Amazon Anthropic's custom chip source for training, deploying unique AI systems, advancing against Nvidia.