Optum

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A Bid to Make Massachussetts Hub of Digital Health World

Priyanka Dayal McCluskey and Deirdre Fernandes | Boston Globe | January 7, 2016

Political and business leaders on Thursday launched a partnership to create a digital health care hub in Massachusetts, in the hopes of cornering an estimated $32 billion market. The goal is to create an environment that will foster and attract companies which use information technology to improve health care, from electronic health records to wearable monitoring devices to software that tracks and crunches huge amounts of patient data.

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AVIA Names Andy Slavitt as Senior Advisor

Press Release | AVIA | May 10, 2017

AVIA, the nation's leading network for health systems seeking to innovate and transform, announced that Andy Slavitt will join as a Senior Advisor. Slavitt brings to AVIA over two decades of private and public sector leadership in healthcare and technology. Slavitt previously served as the Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Obama. There, he oversaw the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace...

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Black Book Releases Research on "The Interoperability Tangle"...HIE Replacements, Middleware and FHIR

Press Release | Black Book Research | April 7, 2016

2,012 provider HIE users and 2,300 payer HIE users, as well as 4,100 prospective HIE users of all user types were polled to understand the importance of interoperability in their strategic planning initiatives, as well as their ongoing and new challenges in areas such as connectivity and data exchange. Between Q3 2015 and Q1 2016, the survey recorded growing HIE user frustration over the lack of standardization and readiness of unprepared providers and payers...“Every stakeholder in the healthcare delivery process cannot establish the infrastructure needed to support interoperability, as evidenced by 83% of physician practices responding and 40% of hospitals, that currently admit they are still in the planning and catch up stages of sending and sharing secure, relevant data, “ said Doug Brown, Managing Partner of Black Book.

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Blue Button Codeathon: Unlocking Data And Empowering Patients

Maya Uppaluru | Health IT Buzz | November 8, 2013

Anyone who has struggled to remember the name of their medication or the date of their child’s vaccination, while juggling multiple doctor appointments for family members, knows firsthand how important it is that patients have access to their health information. We think our Blue Button initiative can help. Read More »

CFOs Stress Need for Next Generation RCM Tools but Hefty MU Investments Deplete Many Hospital’s Cash Reserves, Black Book Survey Reports

Press Release | Black Book | November 3, 2014

Seventy-nine percent of hospital CFOs running outdated financial systems say they nervously face the coming year without evolved Revenue Cycle tools. Continued meaningful use expenses for EHR, HIE, analytics, portals and mobile apps are hitting hospitals hard as changes in payment models based on patient compliance, pricing transparency, and population health demand even more capital...

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College Students Tackle PTSD at First DC Hackathon

More than 50 college students from across the world gathered this previous weekend at HackDC 2015, the first Hackathon dedicated to crowdsourcing innovative ways to address the serious problem of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by creating mobile applications and solutions. The event, which started on Friday, went through Sunday afternoon. Held at the Richard J. Ernst Community Cultural Center in the Annandale Campus of the Northern Virginia Community Colleges (NVCC), HackDC 2015 provided the participants with access to food, sleeping facilities, and showers so that they could work straight through the weekend. 

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DirectTrust Delivers Interoperable Messaging To Healthcare

Alison Diana | Information Week | November 24, 2014

The nonprofit industry alliance DirectTrust hopes its voluntary accreditation and audit program, digital certificates, and relationship with the federal government will encourage more health information service providers (HISPs) to join its expanding program...

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Financially Overwhelmed Hospitals Ditching Fragmented RCM Solutions Says Latest Black Book Poll

Press Release | Black Book | November 19, 2014

Responding to the demand for consolidated revenue cycle management outsourcing options, a sundry of small niche vendors, from eligibility experts to patient bill estimators, are seeking shelter under larger RCM organizations as reimbursement reforms and value-based models currently being carved out will make it more difficult for many marginalized RCM solutions to survive without joint ventures or acquisition. Black Book Market Research’s annual Satisfaction Survey of all RCM stakeholders discovered that nearly half (45%) of the nation’s struggling hospitals plan on diving deep into full RCM outsourcing...

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HIMSS17 - Open Health Guide to the HIMSS Conference in Orlando

The HIMSS17 Conference taking place in Orlando, FL, is clearly the turning point for open source in the healthcare information technology industry. Although the label "open source" is barely mentioned in the program, the fact is the majority of the presentations at the conference are either based directly on open source technologies or open health concepts. These include the large number of presentations on interoperability, FHIR, and the open/modular Medicaid IT revolution.

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IBM Pitched Its Watson Supercomputer as a Revolution in Cancer Care. It’s Nowhere Close

Casey Ross | STAT | September 5, 2017

It was an audacious undertaking, even for one of the most storied American companies: With a single machine, IBM would tackle humanity’s most vexing diseases and revolutionize medicine. Breathlessly promoting its signature brand — Watson — IBM sought to capture the world’s imagination, and it quickly zeroed in on a high-profile target: cancer. But three years after IBM began selling Watson to recommend the best cancer treatments to doctors around the world, a STAT investigation has found that the supercomputer isn’t living up to the lofty expectations IBM created for it. It is still struggling with the basic step of learning about different forms of cancer...

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Optum

Optum is a leading health services and innovation company dedicated to helping make the health system work better for everyone. With more than 94,000 people worldwide, Optum combines technology, data and expertise to improve the delivery, quality and efficiency of health care. Optum uniquely collaborates with all participants in health care, connecting them with a shared focus on creating a healthier world.

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Population Health Management Becoming a Priority for Providers, but Many Struggle With Stop-Gap Solutions and Lack of Infrastructure, Says Latest Black Book Survey

Press Release | Black Book Market Research | January 30, 2017

Black Book’s most recent report on the state of population health management (PHM) reveals that it is among the fastest-growing areas in the healthcare IT space and several effective end-to-end solutions emerging. Record PHM spending underscores its increasing importance with a reported $8B invested in digital health in sum in 2016, with the majority going to population health and patient experience tools. But even as PHM solutions are quickly becoming a priority for healthcare organizations, in Q1 2017, 81% of providers are tackling population health projects without a strategic technology purchase that meets all their needs...

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Rise of Drones for Medical Supply Delivery

This is not going to all be about getting your books, or your socks, or even your new HD television faster. It is going to impact many industries -- including health care. And that impact has already started to happen. Zipline International, for example, is already delivering medical supplies by drone in Rwanda. They deliver directly to isolated clinics despite any intervening "challenging terrain and gaps in infrastructure." They plan to limit themselves to medical supplies, but not only in developing countries; they see rural areas in the U.S. as potential opportunities as well. Last fall they raised $25 million in Series B funding. Drones are also being considered for medical supply delivery in Guyana, Haiti, and the Philippines...

South Carolina Awards BIS Contract: the First Multimillion-Dollar Opportunity of Many

On December 30th, the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS) indicated its intent to award the SAS institute with a substantial contract to furnish a new Business Intelligence System (BIS). The contract, finalized on January 10th, represents a $45 million dollar, seven-year commitment on behalf of South Carolina. Other bidders on the contract included Truven Health Analytics, Deloitte, Optum, and Elder Research. James Samimi-Farr. This business intelligence platform constitutes part of South Carolina’s overall Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) replacement project.

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Strengthening Protection of Patient Medical Data

Adam Tanner | The Century Foundation | January 10, 2017

Americans seeking medical care expect a certain level of privacy. Indeed, the need for patient privacy is a principle dating back to antiquity, and is codified in U.S. law, most notably the Privacy Rule of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which establishes standards that work toward protecting patient health information. But the world of information is rapidly changing, and in this environment, U.S. rules fall precariously short in protecting our medical data...

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