HIMSS17 Kicks Off with Major Product Launches from Cisco, IBM, and Orion Health Amid U.S. Healthcare Policy Uncertainty

On February 19, local time in the United States, HIMSS17, the world’s largest annual conference on healthcare information and technology, officially opened. According to official data released by HIMSS, approximately 40,000 attendees had registered by noon that day.

The biggest highlight of the HIMSS 2017 Annual Conference is undoubtedly the direction of healthcare reform under the current U.S. political and economic climate. As healthcare reform policies face significant volatility, the related medical and health regulatory systems will encounter substantial uncertainty, particularly regarding changes in the health insurance payment system.

Clearly, the HIMSS17 Annual Conference will identify future opportunities amidst significant uncertainty. The so-called uncertainty refers to the newly inaugurated President Trump’s announcement that he would abandon the healthcare reform plan of his predecessor, President Obama. As for future trends,The uniqueness of HIMSS lies in its construction of a robust ecosystem, wherein nearly all participants and stakeholders related to Health Information Technology (HIT) can find their own entry points for engagement and make their voices heard.

U.S. Healthcare Is at a Tipping Point for Change.Supported by U.S. federal policies, the fundamental models of healthcare reimbursement are shifting from traditional fee-for-service and cost-based payment to value-based payment. Over the past decade, the focus was on adopting systems and data collection; now, the emphasis is on optimizing these systems to unlock their potential and maximize the value of data.The current healthcare environment is constrained by policy regulations and IT systems involved in data collection operations. Physicians must find ways to unlock the value of the systems they use and transform reimbursement models through initiatives aimed at improving outcomes.

The AMDIS/HIMSS Physicians’ Executive IT Symposium, held on February 19, provided a platform for intellectual exchange among physicians and hospital leaders. The organizers aimed to drive the development of healthcare institutions by leveraging a range of medical informatics and health technology tools. Topics discussed included current and future regulatory issues, the growing need for data protection, interoperability, emerging data sources, patient engagement, personalized medicine, and experts’ perspectives on the future of healthcare.

The focus of this seminar is on the development prospects and challenges of value-based payment models. With the inauguration of President Trump, it remains unpredictable how the Republican-controlled Congress will shape the future of the U.S. healthcare system. However, regardless of the extent of health-related legislation passed in the coming months, the value-based healthcare model proposed by the Democrats as part of their healthcare reform agenda is expected to continue its rollout.

The shift toward value-based payment has transformed the traditional model of healthcare payment and reimbursement, prompting healthcare providers to change their approach to medical insurance. Instead of being reimbursed based on the number of patient visits, hospital admissions, and tests performed (fee-for-service), providers are compensated based on the value of the care they deliver (value-based care).

This shift is quite exciting, as it drives improvements in healthcare delivery by mandating better outcomes at lower costs. However, for healthcare providers and health systems that fail to achieve the required scores, financial penalties and reduced reimbursements can impose a substantial fiscal burden. While methods for measuring value are still evolving, risk sharing, assessment of population health, and care coordination to enhance efficiency and reduce total costs of care are fundamental prerequisites for establishing this new landscape.

There is a growing trend toward organized healthcare delivery networks, whether within integrated centers or in local community practices (though owned by or affiliated with larger, established institutions). The capital requirements and the reallocation of personnel are typically beyond the reach of smaller institutions.

Judging from the hot topics discussed on the first day of HIMSS17, there is no significant difference in the direction of discussions between U.S. HIT peers and their Chinese counterparts; however, the breadth of participant engagement and the depth of operational implementation in the U.S. are far more comprehensive than in China. This disparity is determined by the relatively mature and developed healthcare service regulatory system in the United States. Let us examine the major initiatives undertaken by these large enterprises.

1. Cisco's Multiple Innovative Products

Cisco will continue to showcase a range of new products and services at HIMSS17 this year, announcing new digital healthcare technologies and innovations as part of Cisco’s Healthcare Digital Roadmap. Barbara Casey, Cisco’s Global Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences, stated, “We will support healthcare providers in their digital transformation.”

The digital blueprint drives investment value and returns across the industry, transcending traditional financial ROI in healthcare to deliver improved care services. Cisco will also focus on technologies that enable innovative patient care, streamline clinical team workflows, optimize clinical and business operations, and enhance security and compliance.

Cisco also announced an expansion of its FlashStack storage solution, enabling continuous data access during storage updates and scaling to achieve capacity upgrades without downtime. This cloud-like solution ensures uninterrupted access to data across the entire organization, allowing IT staff to shift their focus from infrastructure management to innovation.

Cisco is also customizing its cloud security platform, Cisco Umbrella, for the healthcare sector to provide a first line of defense against malware and other cyber threats. Delivered from the cloud, this solution can protect all users within a system in minutes.

“Cisco Secure Umbrella provides the first line of defense against ransomware and other malware, protecting users at all times,” said Casey. “Incidents, including ransomware attacks and other cyber threats, have reached record highs in the healthcare sector. Cisco’s security solutions combine network-level intelligence with industry-leading products to deliver unparalleled protection.”

2. IBM Data Analytics and Cognitive Products

Ms. Ginni Rometty, Chairwoman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IBM, will deliver the opening keynote address titled “Cognitive Systems and the Future of Healthcare: How Data Analytics and Cognitive Computing Are Transforming Medicine and Driving the Personalized Medicine Revolution.” Ms. Rometty will discuss cognitive systems and the future of healthcare, with a focus on how data, analytics, and cognitive computing are transforming medical care and revolutionizing personalized medicine.

In terms of products, Merge Healthcare, the medical imaging company acquired by IBM for $1 billion, plans to launch IBM Watson Imaging Clinical Review and highlight the latest advancements in the Merge Healthcare iConnect Suite.

IBM Watson Imaging Clinical Review is a peer-review tool designed to reconcile discrepancies between patients’ clinical diagnoses and administrative records, ultimately providing more accurate patient documentation. Essentially, it reads structured and unstructured data, interprets the data, extracts clinically meaningful information, and compares clinical data with problem lists in electronic medical records (EMRs) and medical coding, thereby delivering accurate information to users.

Merge also plans to showcase a second cognitive product, codenamed “Gaborone,” which provides an overview of relevant patient data to assist in the clinical decision-making process. Watson will extract this information from multiple sources, including EMRs, as well as structured and unstructured sources such as patients’ prior clinical reports.

Merge will showcase the new iConnect Enterprise Workflow, which can aggregate resources from multiple Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) into a single worklist. The iConnect Enterprise Workflow platform enables radiology groups to automatically assign orders to specific physicians, launch and control applications for multiple radiologists, and gather business intelligence across the organization.

Furthermore, these two cognitive products will provide insights to determine the optimal course of action for patients. For instance, discrepancies between a cardiologist’s report (indicating aortic valve stenosis) and the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR)—where the physician’s diagnosis was not documented or captured—may result in the patient not receiving instructions for further testing or treatment. Clearly, the iConnect suite completes patient records by breaking down EMR data silos, enabling clinicians to make more informed decisions based on a more comprehensive view of patient records. Additionally, the iConnect suite supports the information-sharing requirements outlined by MACRA.

“Data has become the world’s most valuable new natural resource, transforming industries and society at an unprecedented pace. This transformation is equally evident in medicine and healthcare. It is being driven by various factors—including the integration of technology and intelligence into all products and processes, the surge in mobile devices and social media, and rising expectations for digitally empowered individuals. Importantly, new cognitive systems are enhancing human capabilities to understand and constructively engage with complex healthcare systems, thereby accelerating the advancement of evidence-based personalized medicine,” said Ginni Rometty.

3. Orion Health Launches Update to Amadeus Precision Medicine Platform

Orion Health will launch an update to its Amadeus platform, a tool for acquiring, measuring, analyzing, and displaying actionable clinical data. The platform is designed to support population health management and alternative payment models.

Suzanne Cogan, Vice President of Orion Health, stated, “One of our core product offerings is the Amadeus platform for population health management, which has evolved into a precision medicine platform. By integrating existing technologies such as the Cassandra NoSQL database, Amadeus can further extract new data types, including genomics and social determinants of health. This enables healthcare organizations in advanced stages of development to leverage machine learning on their data to gain deeper insights.”

In fact, Orion Health’s Amadeus precision medicine big data platform has been successfully implemented in a project in California, USA, where it is used for medical data analysis covering a local population of 10 million. Funded by two insurance giants, the project aims to precisely analyze, evaluate, and predict the health status and healthcare costs of patient populations, thereby enabling targeted health predictions for different groups during insurance underwriting. The focus is on reducing disease incidence and suffering, lowering insurance premiums, and providing benefits to both healthcare institutions and individuals.

References:

【1】http://www.hit180.com/24579.html

【2】http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ibm-merge-announce-watson-imaging-clinical-review-himss17