Connected Health Lights Up Boston

Connected healthcare, from remote monitoring to greater connectivity among providers, encompasses a wide range of topics and it seemed that most of those topics were covered during last week’s ninth annual Connected Health Symposium in Boston. Gary L. Gottlieb, MD, MBA, president and CEO of Partners HealthCare System in Boston, said the challenges of healthcare reform present enormous opportunity for innovation. Healthcare reform is “a major commitment to society we need to take on together,” he told his audience. If the aging population, increase in those with chronic conditions and rising healthcare expenditures “goes unchecked, our accountability to society also goes unchecked.” There is potential for tremendous effects, he said. However, “the opportunity to do greater good could be diminished if we focus on cost alone.” Greater coordination will lead to more effective and more efficient care, Gottlieb said, citing the statistic that 30 percent of what we spend on healthcare is wasted. “We know that transactional fee-for-service medicine creates fragmentation. No coordination with other components will only use resources that appear to be near to home. Even with the most sophisticated EHRs, without connectedness between patients and families and providers and a series of other providers, we will fail.” And David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, former national coordinator of health IT and incoming president of the Commonwealth Fund, discussed the steps involved in creating a nationwide health information network, an effort he said that dwarfs just about all other human achievements. The technical requirements of a nationwide network include standards that work and are incorporated into EHRs. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) is making progress, he said, calling the latest standards issued in August “a major step forward.” But more regulations are required. Continuation of the Meaningful Use framework is important as well, said Blumenthal. “Meaningful Use is the number one force driving the incorporation of standards into electronic health information systems. It creates incentives and a mechanism for enforcing the incentive to put standards into EHRs and get providers to use those systems to exchange information.” Another issue impacting the creation of a nationwide health information network is the need for a more nimble and responsible, user-friendly approach to privacy and security. We’ve been hearing of the coming “big data deluge” and while it has the potential to help improve clinical care, that will take some time, according to the participants of a panel discussion. A lot of the big talk about big data is just talk. “Big data are 49 percent real and 51 percent hype,” said Michael Weintraub, MBA, president and CEO of Humedica. He estimated there were maybe 10 companies offering big data services a year ago and approximately 30 as of six months ago. “To those buying big data, buyer beware. Everyone has updated their PowerPoints to become a big data vendor.” The reality is that it will be a long time before big data turns into actionable information that clinicians can use to improve the care they provide, according to Charlie Baker, MBA, entrepreneur-in-residence at General Catalyst Partners in Cambridge, Mass. Right now, big data are of more use to researchers and policymakers funding research than to frontline providers. “Big data to most folks practicing medicine is a great idea, but not something they believe will help them improve quality in the short term.” Part of the reason it will take so long is because there is so much, but it’s also because the relationship between healthcare stakeholders is complex and “people are complicated,” as Chris Kryder, MD, CEO of D2Hawkeye in Jersey City, N.J., put it. Beth Walsh, Editor, CMIO TSH Editor's Comments: It is becoming more and more clear that the senior housing industry needs to understand that it is connected to a larger continuum, or spectrum of healthcare provider organizations. To achieve the level of care coordination that is forecasted we must adopt a new approach to technology and focus more on becoming interoperable with the rest of the spectrum. BB