Healthcare IT Today Interviews

Healthcare has become a data-driven industry as the volume of data continues to grow and organizations are able to use that data to provide more personalized care. However, data alone won’t advance healthcare. New systems and processing power that can turn data into insights is the key to accelerating discoveries and improving care. At the HIMSS 2024 conference, we brought together an incredible panel hosted by AMD and Dell Technologies to discuss the ways high performance computing (HPC) is key to helping healthcare organizations solve the big challenges healthcare faces. Plus, we looked at how security has to be baked into these solutions and how the right platform can simplify your infrastructure management. Learn more about AMD: https://www.amd.com/en/campaigns/amd-and-dell Learn more about Dell Technologies: https://www.dell.com/en-us/lp/dt/industry-healthcare-it Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

According to Adeel Sarwar, Chief Technology Officer at CareCloud, doctors spend at least 20% of their clinical work time on administration. In this video interview, Sarwar and A. Hadi Chaudhry, Chief Executive Officer and President at CareCloud, talk about their use of AI, and now generative AI, to relieve doctors of this burden and achieve more face-to-face time with patients. Learn more about CareCloud: https://www.carecloud.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Healthcare has always relied on data. What's changed is the explosion of data in healthcare and the availability of this data to clinicians as well as a whole host of healthcare professionals. Bringing context and meaning to this vast amount of data including unstructured health data is going to be key for every healthcare organization. We sat down with Dr. Paulo Pinho, Chief Medical & Strategy Officer at Discern Health, and Dr. Tim O’Connell, Co-founder and CEO at emtelligent, to learn more about what they're doing to contextualize data and improve processes for providers, payers, and researchers across even the most complex use cases. Learn more about emtelligent: https://emtelligent.com/ Learn more about Discern Health: https://discernhealth.ai/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Many factors make revenue cycle management (RCM) a big headache for U.S. health care providers. Aakarsh Sethi, Senior Product Manager at Infinx, lists the forms of "fragmentation" in payments: not just many different payers, but different plans with different coverage at each payer, along with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and other third party managers, and rules that are constantly changing. Infinx (pronounced "in-fin-ex") works currently with more than 4,000 providers, applying machine learning to automate RCM. Stuart Newsome, VP of Marketing at Infinx, describes the company's "intelligent payer mapping," an LLM-based service that determines whether a procedure needs prior authorization, and then whether the patient's condition and symptoms meet payer guidelines. Infinx is taking a novel approach to mapping out a healthcare organization's payers to make sure the list of payers is updated properly. It's done with a multi-modal approach, where the system cascades through clearinghouse connections with payer portal automations to fill in the gaps. Learn more about Infinx Healthcare: https://www.infinx.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Tombot’s AI-powered robotic puppy companion is more than just an emotional support animal, through an array of sensors it can also remotely monitor patients. The company is planning to have a beta version available soon with full production later in 2024. There were many impressive technologies and digital solutions on display at #ViVE2024, but by far the more impressive (and cutest) was the one from a company called Tombot. They have an interactive, fully automated, emotional support animal that addresses the behavioral and psychological needs of patients with Dementia. Healthcare IT Today got a preview of their robot from Tombot’s CEO, Tom Stevens, who called it an “immortal puppy”. Learn more about Tombot at https://tombot.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The OpenNotes Lab will bring transparency, collaboration, and innovation to the intersection of healthcare AI and patient-centered care. The Lab builds on the organization’s 15 years of advocacy and research. The Lab will apply OpenNote’s expertise in research, advocacy, and innovation to an emerging area of healthcare – AI - to ensure it enhances patient care and is not a burden on clinicians. Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with Liz Salmi, Communications & Patient Initiatives Director at OpenNotes and Chethan Sarabu, MD, FAMIA, FAAP - Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine to learn more about OpenNotes and OpenNotes Lab. Learn more about OpenNotes at https://www.opennotes.org/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Health care payers, such as CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, traditionally have only billing data on their patients. That's why Mo Weitnauer, chief product officer at MRO, calls clinical data "the hottest commodity" in health care. Piyush Khanna, Vice President Clinical Services at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, would like to store all their data in a single repository and use it for "bidirectional conversations" between the payer and providers. This can provider doctors with data at the point where the clinical decisions are being made—for instance, to perform dialysis at-home or in the clinic. Being able to bridge the data gap between payer and providers can provide tremendous benefit to patients, providers, and payers. With the help of MRO, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield's repository covers 3,000 providers serving 1.2 members, and they think they can expand the number soon to 3.5 million. They have increased their STARS rating, and are seeking more operational efficiency by having data more quickly. Learn more about MRO: https://mrocorp.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Dan O’Connor, Vice President, Service Desk Delivery at HCTec, says that resolving a customer service call involves a lot more than fixing the problem that the customer bought. You have to leave the customer feeling that you cared about them. Conveying that sense of care might be more important than solving the problem. Furthermore, every call is about patient care, even if it’s helping a staff person use their computer. That’s because they are all ultimately serving a patient. In this video, O’Connor explores service desks with Audrius Polikaitis, Chief Information Officer at UI Health, which serves several campuses at the University of Illinois. Originally, UI Health assigned tasks to multiple departments—IT, facilities, etc.—but decided they needed a “single front door” for anyone needing help. They do ask callers to distinguish between regular service and the “clinical service desk,” which mostly helps people use the EPIC EHR. Learn more about University of Illinois Health: https://hospital.uillinois.edu/ Learn more about HCTEC: https://hctec.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

VBA offers numerous portals to payers and their clients (which include doctors, patients, brokers, and more)—"one-stop shopping" for a large range of services. To ease the user experience with these services, the company has started using generative AI for training on their platform through a tool called VBA Assist. President and CEO Mike Clayton cites their mission to "make the health care experience better for everyone" and explains some of their services: 24/7 self-service for patients, real-time chat, notifications for picking up meds or scheduling visits, risk modeling and more. Learn more about VBA: https://vbasoftware.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

[Sponsored] Healthcare organizations are increasingly reliant on mobile devices for daily operations. The proliferation of devices brings new challenges including loss, security risks, and a strain on IT resources. Managing those devices not only reduces risk, but also improves workflow efficiency says Dr. Daniel Siegel, CEO of NavvSystems, a company that offers a mobile device management platform. Healthcare IT Today sat down with Dr. Daniel Siegel to discuss the challenges of managing mobile devices in healthcare. Learn more about NavvSystems at https://www.navvtrack.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The ambient voice solution at Medvise.AI focuses on the revenue cycle. According to CEO Gautamdev Chowdary, they have trained their voice-to-text transcription on medical input and made it extremely accurate with full automation. They have also achieved 100% accuracy in billing through a few extra features. If the conversation did not provide enough information to assign the best ICD or CPT codes, the service asks a few simple questions of the doctor after the visit. The codes can then be assigned and stored in the medical record within 30 seconds. COO Sean Ross says that a doctor who does not want to take time to review the note can also request a human scribe at Medvise.AI to do the final check. He says that their goal is to "eliminate data entry." Learn more about Medvise.ai: https://medvise.ai/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

It's reasonable for a company like MRO to have a chief interoperability officer. According to their chief interoperability officer, Anthony Murray, the company has spent 22 years building tools to "exchange data seamlessly" in health care. This includes much of the healthcare data that's been locked up in free text data in many healthcare systems. In our interview with Murray, he shares some of the main challenges that healthcare has with achieving interoperability in today's environment. This includes an important focus area of MRO to be able to share data between providers and payers. Murray shares some of the solutions MRO has put in place to navigate around these challenges. Plus, he shares how healthcare standards are impacting these efforts. Murray says, standardization is improving. Learn more about MRO: https://mrocorp.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Paulo Pinho, MD, Chief Medical and Strategy Officer at Discern Health, highlighted to us that analytics have to be explainable to be trusted. It's not enough to show a correlation, but to demonstrate that the clinical intervention was responsible for the improved patient outcome. Patients as well as clinicians demand explainability (also known as transparency and accountability). Ben Hsieh, Vice President of Product, says that Discern Health works with payers, providers, and Health Information Exchanges (HIE). Their service concentrates currently on care management for value-based care. Learn more about Discern Health: https://discernhealth.ai/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Today marks a pretty significant milestone for our team: 500 episodes of the Healthcare IT Today Interview series! To celebrate we have a special treat for you, a chat with John Lynn, Colin Hung, and Brittany Quemby. What started as a blog based largely around articles and our founder John Lynn's experience in the healthcare IT industry, has grown into a vast array of knowledge provided by experts from across the industry and the world, as well as a few of our own experts using a variety of media to include articles, videos, and podcasts. Listen to learn more about the history of the podcast, some of John, Colin, and Brittany's favorite memories, the impact they have seen from the interviews, and some teasers of what the future may hold for the podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

MediQuant has been providing health data management and active archiving since 1999. In this video, CEO Jim Jacobs describes how they seek “one patient, one record” so that providers have complete and accurate data for the patients they serve. In addition to fulfilling organizational needs such as compliance and enhanced patient care, Jacobs believes that preserving data from legacy systems has wide-reaching benefits. For instance, one customer is using AI to process ten years’ worth of data to prove that a denial of treatment was unwarranted. But providers struggle because many have more than a thousand systems holding data, and find themselves with even more redundant systems after mergers or acquisitions. Decommissioning systems is a complex task, while systems that are overlooked are at risk of breaches. Learn more about MediQuant: https://www.mediquant.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

In this intriguing video, important advances in transparency of health care prices are explained by Mark Galvin, Founder, President and CEO at TALON at the HCAA conference in Las Vegas. Two “watershed moments” have been overlooked by most people, while media coverage focuses on other things such as the No Surprises Act. Learn more about TALON: https://talonhealthtech.com/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

One of the hottest topics in healthcare and particularly at the HIMSS 2024 conference is ambient clinical voice. We haven't seen this much universal interest in a health IT product since the government offered $36 billion in stimulus money for EHR software. However, this feels very different since healthcare organizations are evaluating ambient clinical voice solutions on their merit versus chasing government money. They're doing this because the benefits of this technology are so impactful on doctors and patients. While at the conference, I had a chance to sit down with Saurabh Singh, VP of Sunoh, and Rakhee Langer, VP of Sunoh.ai, to learn more about how Sunoh.ai has progressed since we last did an overview video of their solution. They share with us some interesting perspectives on how ambient listening is changing the healthcare landscape. Plus, they share some great stories from their end users who are using the product including one where a doctor is able to get home early to their family. These stories illustrate the impact of this solution. Learn more about Sunoh: https://sunoh.ai/ Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Interoperability is not just about exchanging clinical data from an EHR; it is a potential game-changer for the financial side of healthcare too. A seamless transfer of data in the revenue cycle process results in optimal reimbursement, reduced administration costs, and fewer surprises for patients. Healthcare IT Today sat down with Juli Forde Smith, Director of Strategic Partnerships at ZOLL Data Systems and Erica Gregory, Senior Vice President at Netsmart to discuss interoperability for revenue cycle management (RCM). Learn more about ZOLL Data at https://www.zolldata.com/ Learn more about Netsmart at https://www.ntst.com/ Learn more about Inovalon at https://www.inovalon.com/ Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

We've written a number of articles on the Nuance DAX (now called Nuance DAX Copilot aligning with Microsoft's Copilot) ambient clinical voice solution. Nuance and Microsoft recently announced that DAX Copilot was going to be fully embedded in Epic's Haiku and Hyperdrive to provide Epic users easy access to the DAX copilot solution. Peter Durlach, who was with Nuance a long time and is now CVP, chief strategy officer, Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, describes the benefits of the integration in this video, with a focus on their integration and partnership with Epic. Learn more about Nuance: https://www.nuance.com/healthcare.html Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Many of us look forward to digital interactions in health care that work as simply as a retail sale or airline reservation. Don Rucker, MD, chief strategy officer at 1upHealth, shows us in this video how current regulations and FHIR standards will actually make that happen. In a fast-paced exchanged with John Lynn of Healthcare IT Today, Rucker covers regulations and evolving data exchange standards that foster interoperability and data analytics. “The real point of interoperability is continuous, real-time computing,” according to Rucker. He points out that not just payers, but some employers, are demanding access to claims information in order to run analytics. Learn more about 1upHealth: https://1up.health/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/