Lyle Berkowitz, MD, FACP, FHIMSS

Key trends and takeaways from HLTH 2024: 1. AI's Evolving Role: AI dominated discussions, with executives acknowledging its potential while also recognizing challenges in accuracy and clinician trust. There's a shift towards focusing on the practical applications of AI, with a call for partnerships to ensure reliable testing and implementation. 2. Infrastructure Focus: Beyond the glitzy AI tools, there's a growing emphasis on the "picks and shovels" needed for healthcare data accessibility, including infrastructure, compliance, and interoperability. Executives believe that improving data flow will facilitate the effective use of AI. 3. Middlemen Under Scrutiny: Pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) faced criticism for their role in rising drug costs, with discussions highlighting misaligned incentives and the need for transparency in healthcare pricing. 4. Women's Health Spotlight: Women's health initiatives gained attention, particularly following government funding announcements and personal stories shared by advocates. However, investment in women's health remains minimal compared to overall healthcare funding. 5. Interest in Psychedelic Medicine: The potential of psychedelics for treating mental health conditions garnered significant interest, with discussions about funding and research moving forward, especially within the Veterans Affairs system. Executive Takeaways: Leaders from various sectors emphasized the importance of consumer-focused strategies, collaboration, and the need for responsible AI usage. There was a consensus on the critical role of addressing healthcare accessibility, improving patient experiences, and fostering innovations that genuinely enhance care delivery.

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I’ve been given advice that the fastest way to monetize HER Heard without charging the end user (woman) is trackers and selling data. Instead, I’d like to build something more trustworthy. I don’t want to be in a headline like this. If you are not paying, then you are the product (you/your data are being sold). There are newer ways to deindentify data or even to aggregate things women search for that can be of interest to various stakeholders. In theory that could be okay to sell, but in a post-Roe world with laws encouraging bounty hunting, I am vetting the choices ahead. I am all for moving fast, without breaking things.

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Walmart closing 51 Health Centers over “Lack of Profitability!” Walmart Health Virtual Care (telemedicine) offerings will also end. Article by Daniella Alessandra Genovese Fox Business Network April 30, 2024 MY TAKE: · What does ‘lack of Profitability” really MEAN? o Is it meant that this service line is losing money – financially upside down? o Or does it mean that the line is not producing the “EXCESS PROFITS” that were envisioned - and that corporate leaders and shareholders demand?   ·    Healthcare delivery is NOT a simple business model, though increasingly we see corporate entities entering this arena, often envisioning large profits or - in the case of private equity - valuable ASSETS whose value can be accelerated over short periods - or at least sold off as value-added components.   ·    It has been said that the LURE of ‘excess profit’ invariably leads to GREED, and that in healthcare - greed invariable leads to worsening conditions within healthcare workplaces and worsening outcomes for patients! American Medical Association American Hospital Association American College of Emergency Physicians U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions Tennessee Medical Association Jesse Pines Chadd Kraus Lara Vanyo Rita Manfredi TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF EMERGENCY PHYSICIANS Timothy Wilson Ryan Stanton Gabe Kelen, Deidre McPhillips Mollie Pillman Alison Haddock, MD, FACEP Susan Morse mor Chelsea Torres Amy Feldman Jesse Ehrenfeld MD MPH Mel Cortez Larry Bucshon, M.D. Peter Stavros Fox article link - https://lnkd.in/gynsbScT

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Here’s your recap of last week’s health IT news 🗞️ 👇 Notable partnerships 🤝 • WakeMed will roll out AI clinician assistant Regard across three hospitals by the end of the year.    • Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute adopted Story Health to support patients with AFib.    • Cone Health, Sentara Health, and A Plus Family HealthCare, along with 2 others are partnering with TytoCare to deliver primary care in local school districts.    • Ballad Health is integrating with teleneurology provider Sevaro to provide stroke care in the ED.    • Sturdy Health is utilizing Notable for appointment scheduling, demographic and insurance verification, and pre-registration form completion.    • Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin has implemented the Epic-based virtual care platform KeyCare to provide virtual visits nationwide. Product updates 👩🏼‍💻 • Transcarent launched an AI-powered platform for patients to navigate benefits, clinical guidance, and care delivery.    • Epic announced it will launch a new patient data insight tool relying on its Cosmos database.    • LG Electronics released its hospital-at-home platform, PrimeFocus.    • athenahealth released two new specialty care solutions for women’s health and urgent care.    • SmarterDx announced a $50M Series B funding round.    • Kyruus Health has expanded its network to include virtual behavioral health providers.    • Laguna Health released a new performance dashboard that detects metrics such as burnout risk and empathy in patient interactions.    • Crosby Health, which aims to automate claim denial appeals, announced the launch of its large language model and $2.2M in pre-seed funding.    • Radiometer and Etiometry Inc. are partnering to enhance clinical decision making in acute care settings.    • TurningPoint Healthcare Solutions acquired the AI prior authorization vendor Fairway Health.    • Komodo Health announced updates to its MapEnhance product, adding SDoH insights, and two new specialty data partners, GeneDx and COTA. Posts we enjoyed 👏 • We’ve been watching much of the recent news on nurse strikes as well as the political back and forth on AI regulation, and really appreciated Sarah Gebauer, MD’s take on AI governance: https://lnkd.in/e7Jkb3NC    • We enjoyed Nikhil Krishnan of Out-Of-Pocket's take on AI in healthcare, including his thoughts on defensibility and AI's impact on costs: https://lnkd.in/eVtH4ShC --- Want to stay in the loop? Sign up for the Elion Briefing to get all of the latest healthcare tech news delivered to your inbox 📬 👉 https://bit.ly/49z6AUW

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Now that our HIT industry has spent nearly 40 years figuring out how to effectively pass data between sites, settings, and institutions of care (and while that journey isn't completely over, we're well on our way), we can finally turn and look farther down the road and consider what's next. In my view, advancing process consistency, agility, and change is that horizon. The BPM community is focused on that challenge, and having recently transitioned into HL7 as HL7 BPM, is squarely trying to take this on. With today's press release, HL7 is truly open-for-business in this space. Thanks to the OMG for nurturing this work along and for HL7 for having made our next home for this effort. So much to do! https://lnkd.in/dAF96g3n

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This is an interesting talk that challenges a basic assumption that more spending in healthcare leads to better outcomes. They defined health value by looking at mortality rates across 6 diaseases and healthcare spending per capital. Florida ranked 3rd and Vermont 46th. While healthcare spending was correlated with lower heart disease it was not correlated with opioid use disorder. This sheds light upon the fact that social determinants of health have a big impact on outcomes. #healthcare #healthspending

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Really exciting news out of the Oracle Healthcare Summit in the US this week. Oracle Healthcare is promising a new #EMR “built from the ground up” to be released in 2025 and embedding #AI across the entire clinical workflow. Seema Verma told the conference that the new platform was not “a refurbished EHR”, saying that “in this day and age, you can’t leverage modern technology by bolting new innovation to something built in the 1990s”. This is spot on and what many in the #digitalhealth community have been saying for some time. We need a #nextgenEMR designed to embed AI across the whole workflow with modern tools for automation, documentation, and tasking that uses conversational AI to navigate and create tasks and documentation, to drive down the #clinicianburnout. 100% agree with her statement: “One of today’s most important and widely used healthcare technologies, the EHR, has not lived up to its promise.'' Excited to see how this development from Oracle will disrupt the EMR market. Bruce Pedersen https://lnkd.in/gy5E9Cvv

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It seems that the government is serious about finally realizing the vision of true health data interoperability. The attached Point-of-Care Partners blog post describes the recently released HTI-2 Proposed Rule which is another step in the fruition of that vision. Point-of-Care Partners can help your healthcare organization stay ahead of the waves of regulatory activity around interoperability. Let me know if you are interested in learning how.

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Please see our Deloitte discussion on the evolution of the use of AI in our industry...building eventual trust is an increasingly important part of that puzzle.

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My recent Forbes article tells how Cleveland Clinic is applying data, analytics, and AI to innovate in healthcare. Thank you to Albert Marinez Ben Shahshahani & Rohit Chandra for sharing your incredible story. #Healthcare #Innovation #AI #AILeadership #data #dataleadership #chiefdataofficer #chiefAIofficer

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This is a great report from Mckinsey of what health system executives are prioritizing

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Fantastic Keynote this morning by G.T. Sweeney at the KLAS Research Digital Health Investment Symposium #DHIS. "Wringing out Inefficiencies in Healthcare" Transparency 🔸 "You can't have efficiency in a market without Transparency"   Platform Thinking 🔸 It's slower in healthcare compared to other industries. 🔸 A handful of platforms will emerge 🔸 With platforms the administrative burden of health care will melt away, so we can return our focus to clinical outcomes.   Collaboration 🔸 Find ways to collaborate with each other beyond what we have done in the past. Consolidation 🔸 We continue to see consolidation in health systems and in consumer tools   Value Based Care -"a network of networks" 🔸 There are elements of healthcare that should be addressed nationally (Ex: we should treat diabetes the same everywhere) 🔸 But much of our care is and should be hyper local. Delivery, care,   Customer-centered Care Coordination 🔸 It's still really, really hard. 🔸 Care plans are all different based on the involved stake holders (Payers recommend one thing, doctors another, etc) 🔸 We need a shared care plan in the cloud. 🔸 Show irrefutable facts of patients. (Bios, procedure dates, name, etc.) 🔸 Separate the facts from the recommended clinical actions. 🔸 But then create an eco-system of insights that makes it easier for patients AND clinicians   Cost Containment of subscription based services 🔸 Don’t require and bundle investment in services that are not needed.  

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John Kell's recent article in Fortune, "The best investment opportunities in AI for health care right now," provides incredible insights about the challenges of healthcare data and how it impacts the advancement of #ai. Three out of every four leading health care companies are experimenting with generative AI or attempting to scale it across their business. What are they creating and why? Venture capitalist Deena Shakir asks founders if they "are aiming to solve a technology problem or a clinical adoption problem". Solving existing problems will speed decision making and improve data quality. The Deloitte report:  “Navigating the Emergence of Generative AI in Health Care” shares some of the data challenge in health care. While boasting the largest source of raw data, 80% of the data are unstructured.  Simon Gisby, managing director and the global leader of life sciences and health care at Deloitte further expounds "But as an industry, we’re not surprisingly that good at analyzing and drawing correlations out of that" https://lnkd.in/gXE_HVG2 Read thus great article for use cases and examples from fertility and maternal health care to predicting adverse outcomes to drug development and immunotherapies. The future of health and #ai is the hope that we can provide value in health care data equal to the volume we produce Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/gTx6ic_b

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Shifting the financial model alone is not sufficient for the transition - the care delivery, workforce, and many other pieces of the ecosystem with which PCPs interact also need to adjust accordingly. Funding to allow for the startup costs of transformation must be made available. A comprehensive analysis from The Commonwealth Fund: To encourage participation, practitioners say upfront payments, investment in the primary care workforce, and less emphasis on simplistic quality measures are needed, as well as more support for practices to provide accessible, comprehensive care. #primarycare #integratedcare #teambasedcare #healthcare #healthcareonlinkedin

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For those interested in a credibly perspective on the current state and future of health tech, and the rapid emergence of a new category, see the attached research by one of the most reputable health tech venture investors in the market, Bessemer Venture Partners. Exciting news: Although "healthcare has traditionally lagged behind other industries in digital adoption - we believe AI Services-as-Software companies are well-positioned to change that narrative." Thank you Sofia Guerra and Steve Kraus for keeping apprised of market trends and where we are headed - to better healthcare! https://lnkd.in/eH_aag73

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Health systems are at a disadvantage in a consumer-focused world => Not true - leading health systems are investing in enhancing the patient experience, leveraging data/analytics, and delivering more personalized, value-based care. Health systems can't do tech is also misguided - the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, with health systems buying innovative solutions like telehealth, RPM and AI-powered pop health and clinical decision support. The key is for health systems to take a strategic, patient-centric approach focusing on value and revenue to technology adoption.

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🚀 Just listened to this incredible episode of #HLTHForward featuring Smriti Kirubanandan and Matthew Holt—a true deep dive into the raw realities of healthcare today! 🩺✨ Matthew’s insights as a healthcare veteran, mixed with Smriti’s strategic lens, made this conversation both eye-opening and thought-provoking. Catch the full episode here and join the conversation on what’s next in healthcare. ⬇️ #Healthcare #HealthTech #Podcast #Leadership

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A top down approach to tech adoption will never work in healthcare. While this approach may work in other industries where liability lies on the executive team, in healthcare liability more often rests with the clinician. At the end of the day we answer to the medical authorities which regulate our medical license. To be blunt, while painful its okay if I get fired because I do not adopt new technologies adopted by my institution. Its not okay and my entire medical career is in jeopardy if I do not follow the regulations set out by my provincial college of physician and surgeons. Part of which is to maintain the standard of care and follow a patient centric approach to healthcare. Technology adoption in healthcare requires a bottoms up approach to adoption. You need buy-in from clinicians and payors. Both are necessary and neither alone is sufficient. I realize I did not say you need buy-in from patients but I am assuming this is a given. #healthcare #technology #innovation #physician

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If health systems master the art of delivering a world-class consumer experience in urgent care, they can replicate this success across their entire operation, becoming market leaders and thriving in the long term. This is the core thesis of what we do at UCP Merchant Medicine. For nine years, UCP Merchant Medicine has partnered with 68 healthcare operators, most of whom are health systems, to create internal capabilities that allow them to thrive in consumer experience excellence. This isn’t just about having a world-class urgent care platform, this is about owning the future and the capabilities to expand these experiences across the broader health system. As healthcare shifts towards a consumer-driven model, the need for health systems to adapt is more critical than ever. Patients now have unprecedented freedom to choose their care providers, with 45% researching providers and costs before choosing a health plan, and 44% before making an appointment, according to McKinsey’s consumer Health Insights Survey. These improvements are not just numbers; they're about real people getting better access to the care they need when they need it in a way that they will love. This is what we stand for at UCP Merchant Medicine. Join us as we continue to innovate and lead the way in making healthcare more responsive, efficient, and patient-centric. Together, we can transform the future of healthcare! #HealthcareInnovation #PatientCare #UrgentCare #HealthcareLeadership #UCPMerchantMedicine Intellivisit Solutions

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