Articles

Feeding the Dinosaurs

Posted in Articles on Dec 11, 2016

As scholars, researchers, or innovators, we cannot assume that major US healthcare legislation, such as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2015, is altruistic or benevolent, and will or should continue on a forward trajectory from its historical path. It is appropriate that we be skeptical and objectively examine this and its premise.

How For-Profit Medicine Chills Disruptive Health Information Technologies

Posted in Articles on Oct 12, 2016

Recently, someone asked what struck me as an insightful question on Quora: "what incentives do hospital-providers have for patient-engagement investments?" The questioner went on to comment that "purely from a revenue perspective, if patient engagement leads to patients staying away from hospitals (read healthy), what's in it for the hospitals?"

Changing Cancer Care

Posted in Articles on Sep 12, 2016

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cancer is now the leading cause of death worldwide, with approximately 14 million new cases and 8.2 million fatalities annually, which is predicted to grow by 70% over the next 20 years. (World Health Organization , 2015) Four problems profoundly impact cancer clinical outcomes in the world today: (1) non-adherence, because of increasing use of oral cancer agents; (2) coordinating care, because cancer care is team-based across disparate providers (poly-pharmacy & poly-provider); (3) drug-drug interactions, because at least 2.24 million cancer p...

Personalized Medicine Will Drive Cloud Computing Over the 60% Adoption Ceiling in Healthcare Organizations

Posted in Articles on Aug 25, 2016

The colloquialism of “cloud computing” is so broad as to often mean different things to different people; however, generally refers to the tectonic shift that has occurred in information technology in the last 10 years from predominantly client-server or private network-based systems, to software-as-a-service (SaaS) that is delivered via the Internet. The broad range of IT and related services that can be included in “cloud computing” include, but are not limited to, email providers (e.g., Gmail), software applications (e.g., Microsoft 365), phones systems and voice mails (e.g., Cisco), colla...

Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) Rescues Healthcare

Posted in Articles on Aug 01, 2016

According to research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 95% of all persistent data in the world is now in digital form, and it is growing exponentially. According to Computer Sciences Corporation, 44 times more data will be produced in 2020 than was in 2009.[1] Data volume, variety, and velocity – the dimensions by which Big Data is typically described – is proliferating via the use of Smartphones and tablets as data creators. Moreover, the adoption of fitness trackers, Smart watches, the Internet-of-Things, and other remote sensors with a focus on user or consumer health...

Breaking the "Iron Triangle" of Healthcare

Posted in Articles on Jul 30, 2016

As applied to the modern American health care system, the iron triangle is a model that inter-locks health patient access, costs, and care quality in a directly inverse and reactionary way such that changes in any one have an opposite change in the other two. (Lehman, 2015)

The “access corner” or third of the triangle relates to whether patients are able to consult with a health care provider. Traditionally, this meant in-person in a hospital or ambulatory care center. Moreover, a lack of access has traditionally been presumed to be because of unaffordability because of a lack of medical insur...

Artificial Intelligence Solutions to Medication Non-Adherence & Pharmacovigilance

Posted in Articles on Jul 15, 2016

One way health information technology (HIT) can improve quality, access, and cost for patients, providers, and payers in the confluence of MNA and pharmacovigilance is by applying a type of artificial intelligence (AI) known as complex event processing (CEP). By using an operational intelligence (OI) cloud-based platform accessible via any Internet-enabled device, patients can have their drug regimens pre-screened for interactions, their behaviors and reactions can be tracked in near-real time, and providers can be notified when they need to know and how to modify patients’ behaviors, and coor...

The Unintended Consequences of Government’s Efforts to Improve the Value of Healthcare

Posted in Articles on Jun 07, 2016

Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, often considered one of the most advanced minds of our time, recently opined that among humanity’s greatest threats were its own goals. (Shukman, 2016) In other words, it is the unintended and unforeseen adverse outcomes of our own ill-understood initiatives to “improve” that often cause great harm. The US government’s public health initiatives to improve quality and reduce the costs of health care delivery are similar.

Value-based-purchasing (VBP), also known as pay-for-performance (P4P), has been increasingly implemented by the government over ...