Your Daily digest for Health Tech | Fierce Healthcare Daily Digest (Unofficial)

Thu Jul 25 10:31:44 PDT 2024

Health Tech | Fierce Healthcare Daily Digest (Unofficial)

(https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/regulatory/onc-national-health-it-office-now-called-astponc-expands-responsibilities) HHS' ONC gets a new name and a bigger role with data, AI
Jul 25th 2024, 13:31

This is a breaking story and will be updated. 
The Officer of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has been renamed and restructured, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced this morning. The restructuring will affect technology, cybersecurity, data and artificial intelligence strategy and policy functions. 
The agency will be renamed the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP/ONC).

Head of ONC, Micky Tripathi, will hold the new title of assistant secretary for technology policy in addition to his title of national coordinator for health IT.
"In addition to our ongoing work in health IT, we will now lead HHS technology and data policy and strategy to help ensure that our complex and multi-faceted department continues to be more than the sum of its parts," Tripathi wrote in a (https://www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog/health-it/oncs-next-chapter) blog post published on Thursday.
Under ASTP, there will be an Office of Policy, an Office of Technology, an Office of Standards, Cerification and Analysis and an Office of the Chief Operating Officer. 
The offices will carry out the implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the 21st Century Cures Act as well as interoperability efforts spearheaded by ONC and health information technology initiatives. 

The Office of the National Coordinator will be expanded to establish an Office of the Chief Technology Officer which will include a chief AI officer, a chief data officer and a new Office of Digital Services. A press release says the positions will oversee HHS-wide data governance, technology and cybersecurity. 
The announcement follows a call for senior technology, cybersecurity and AI executives to fill open positions at HHS, which ONC employees announced on LinkedIn last week. ONC will hold a (https://www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_HyKwXML0T06QCH40KRXqbQ#/registration) webinar on the open positions on Aug. 1. 

The release says ASTP/ONC will have “increased responsibilities.” It will pull together responsibilities from various agencies including Assistant Secretary for Administration (ASA), and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). ASA formerly held responsibility for oversight of technology, data and AI policy and strategy, the press release says. 
“Cybersecurity, data, and artificial intelligence are some of the most pressing issues facing the health care space today. As a Department, HHS must be agile, accountable, and strategic to meet the needs of this moment,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in a statement. “For decades, HHS has worked across the organization to ensure appropriate and safe use of technology, data, and AI to advance the health and well-being of the American people. This reorganization builds on that success and prepares the Department for the challenges that lie ahead.”

(https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/qventus-ai-discharge-planning-solution-saved-ohio-health-17-mil-matter-months) Ohio Health saved $1.7M with Qventus' AI discharge planning
Jul 25th 2024, 13:31

As artificial intelligence makes inroads in healthcare, one health tech company is focused on automating health system operations to increase hospitals' bed capacity and reduce length of stay. Qventus says its AI solution is helping healthcare facilities save hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess patient days.
The solution provider launched on Thursday the third generation of its solution, which has been tested as a beta version at Columbus, Ohio-based Ohio Health for the last year. 
Phase one of the tech launched in late March 2024, and phase two launched in June. In the first month of deployment, the health system saved nearly $500,000. To date, the health system has saved nearly $1.7 million. 

Qventus developed technology that automates care operations in both OR and inpatient settings. Its platform leverages generative AI, machine learning and behavioral science to predict operational bottlenecks, recommend remedies and automate processes. In March 2022, the company (https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/qventus-grabs-50m-automate-care-operations-ai) snagged a $50 million growth investment to roll out its tech in more hospitals and health systems. 
Qventus' Q hospital inpatient solution provides recommendations to care teams to increase efficiency of the patient discharge process, which is often mired in preventable hold-ups and lack of team coordination. Qventus also has perioperative, command center and emergency department solutions.
“Patients [require] a lot of coordination as they get closer to the end of their stay before they leave the hospital,” Mudit Garg, co-founder and CEO of Qventus, told Fierce Healthcare. “And that coordination is complex. There's many different pieces required, skilled nursing facility, physical therapy, MRI has been done, all of those pieces that need to get coordinated.”
With the labor shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic, Garg said hospitals’ traditional way of coordinating end-of-stay care, usually a standup meeting, wasn’t working for care teams. 

Scott Estep, system vice president of nursing operations and capacity management at Ohio Health, said that even when the health system was trying to increase efficiency on its own, the problem was too large of an issue. They needed an outside partner. 
“Working on throughput has been a journey of several, several years,” Estep said. “You know, it's a problem that has persisted, not only in Ohio Health, but in healthcare in general. And you know, healthcare is complicated. Patients are complicated. No one patient is the same. When you're looking at a large, complex health system like Ohio Health, eight plus hospitals, 35,000 associates, there's a lot of moving pieces and parts, and it's a matter of logistics.”

There are approximately 34 million patient excess days each year, according to Qventus. Qventus’ third-generation AI solution helps coordinate end-of-stay care and fully integrates with the care team’s electronic health record. The newest version of the solution can also automate nearly twice as many decisions as previous generations of the technology could, Garg said.
“We saw a series of relatively consistent practices, not entirely surprising, by the way, where patients who early on had a plan … the more that plan was kept up to date and accurate, the better. It also showed that the more you actively managed barriers to that plan, the better you would be,” Garg said. 
Through Q's prompting, staff can get started on a patient’s precertification process for a skilled nursing facility, coordinate transportation for the patient to be able to leave the hospital, or get them bumped up on the MRI list—which they need before they go home—to be able to free up a hospital inpatient bed. 
The model also learns over time about community resource availability, such as the number of patients who are able to be placed in a skilled nursing facility, and can make recommendations based on its additional lessons. 
Clinicians are able to disagree with and override Q’s recommendations, and physicians get the final say in the patient’s release. 
“Ultimately, our care teams, our providers and our nurses still make decisions,” Estep said. “They still have the ability to override … They can change what we call the estimated date of discharge, which we require all of our providers to document. Or they can say, 'You know what, I think I can beat Q, regardless, Q is going to be in the background, learning, and so over time, let's just say we continually beat Q. Q is going to start to get better and learn.'”
Phoenix-based Banner Health, one of the largest nonprofit healthcare systems with 132 operating rooms across its network, is working with Qventus to (https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/banner-health-doubles-down-ai-powered-automation-tech-modernize-its-or) deploy its perioperative solution to maximize OR access.

(https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/humana-partners-google-cloud-invest-deeper-cloud-gen-ai-technologies) Humana taps Google for cloud, generative AI technologies
Jul 25th 2024, 13:31

Humana inked a new multiyear agreement with Google Cloud to modernize its cloud infrastructure and build out generative AI solutions.
The two companies tout the potential to use advanced technologies to reduce costs and improve the member experience.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The agreement builds on an ongoing collaboration between the two companies to co-develop solutions focused on population health and advance the use of AI technologies and product for Humana members and patients, the organizations said.

Google Cloud and Humana are also exploring potential opportunities to develop new solutions for members.
The companies didn't offer specifics on the type of solutions they would work on together.
Jim Rechtin, Humana's CEO, said the health insurer planned to use Google Cloud's capabilities to "make it easier for our members and patients to have affordable access to the right care at the right time."
He cited the potential to use cloud and AI technologies to make its contact centers more responsive and its provider networks easier to navigate. The use of the technologies also could help make healthcare coverage easier to understand and primary care better tailored to individual needs, Rechtin said in a press release.

"By combining Humana's deep understanding of healthcare with Google Cloud's cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies, Humana can unlock new possibilities for operational efficiency, clinical insights, and personalized care,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, in a statement. “This collaboration will empower Humana to further improve the well-being of their members and transform the delivery of healthcare."
Generative AI continues to be a big buzzword in 2024 as tech companies see the potential to use the technology to increase efficiency, offer a better consumer experience and alleviate administrative burden.

Google is using its tech muscle to build out generative AI and cloud capabilities for healthcare and life sciences companies and has made big strides in developing medically tuned large language models (LLMs). It rolled out Med-PaLM, an LLM designed to provide answers to medical questions, in 2022. In December, the tech giant unveiled MedLM, a family of foundation models designed for healthcare industry use cases and available through Google Cloud.

Googel Health also is fine-tuning its Gemini model for the medical domain, building a personal health LLM that can power personalized health and wellness features in the Fitbit mobile app, developing AI models to help with early disease detection and researching ways generative AI can assist with medical reasoning and clinical conversations, executives said in March.
Humana emphasized that it is committed to the ethical use of AI and using technology to improve patient experiences, quality of care and health outcomes. The company has a policy of maintaining a human-in-the-loop whenever AI is utilized in cases of clinical decision-making, executives said.
Google Cloud’s customers retain control over their data. In healthcare settings, access and use of patient data is protected through the implementation of Google Cloud’s infrastructure and data storage that support the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act compliance, along with each customer’s security, privacy controls, and processes, the company said.

Forwarded by:
Michael Reeder LCPC
Baltimore, MD

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