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Tag: healthcare innovation

Get rid of avoidable re-admissions!

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Hospital Readmissions Monitoring

Did you see this headline last month in Healthcare IT News? RPM brings 30-day mortality rate to almost zero for heart bypass procedure. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) offers to extend the reach of care and allow clinical teams to respond faster to changing patient conditions and reduce re-admissions for chronic conditions and post-operative care. While the article references a single site for the results of this RPM program, there have been numerous other studies and reports citing the promising results of these types of programs. Perhaps not a total elimination, but significant reductions are achievable.

There are a variety of companies out there trying to capitalize on utilizing various forms of RPM to capture early changes in the physiologic status of patients. Apple Watch and afib detection/monitoring is probably the most widely known out there of late. But remote monitoring or in-home monitoring devices have been around for decades, with a variety of connections, from dial-up to wifi to cellular. In addition to companies offering remote monitoring devices, there are a variety of companies offering to do the remote monitoring, hiring clinical teams to monitor patient connections. Often these companies can offer the benefit of scale to manage a smaller group of patients that would otherwise be an overwhelming administrative burden.

So what’s the catch? We know there’s always a catch! Remote monitoring sounds like a simple thing to do, and by and large the technology and FDA approvals already exist to make it happen. But as with anything data-related in healthcare, the data flows are a big pain point.

More connected devices from one ecosystem to another. There’s a lot of those in healthcare. Adding another tech burden for clinical teams to trouble shoot and figure out what happened can quickly render an RPM program ineffective. Even the most savvy clinical team and 100% compliant patients can be undone by connections that aren’t talking.

Whether the decision is to outsource and RPM program or handle it in-house, connections need to be reliable to get the right data to the right person at the right time. Anything less can result in a patient heading to an ER or Urgent Care for something that could’ve, and should’ve, been handled in the comfort of their own home. Not only is this detrimental to the patient, but it can also have a negative impact on reimbursement.

Reliable feeds and early notification of problems can keep clinical teams operating smoothly, ensuring patients receive timely care and interventions. Not only does this keep your teams working for the health of your patients, but it also gives patients confidence that your systems are working just as effectively as your clinical teams keeping them healthy.

Automated applications and integration monitoring can help quickly identify and resolve issues to minimize any downtime impact. For over 10 years Tido Inc. has been partnering with health systems to help maximize their IT systems and quickly resolve issues as they arise, often before the end user even notices. Contact us today so we can talk about how we can help you keep your systems working for you clinical teams and patients.

Rise of the [Diagnostic] AI Machines!

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Radiologist reviewing diagnostic imaging

Are we ready to welcome our AI overlords into healthcare yet? Will we welcome a fully autonomous Dr. Crusher? We’re not likely ready to completely abandon our human healers, but there have been a variety of algorithms and machine learning applications that have been creeping their way into our clinical specialties for many years now. The first AI algorithm was approved by the FDA in 1995, in the beginning of 2023 there are 520. The specialty with the largest number? Radiology! Check out this article from HealthExec, it provides some more detail on the approval and advantages of AI in imaging.

Radiology, and similar specialties that utilize imaging, have long embraced computer systems to improve quality, productivity, and sharing. The complexity behind the scenes of these systems can be quite surprising. Once an image is captured it may still go through multiple systems just to be viewed, PAC Systems, VNA, Dicom viewers, the route is anything but direct. If we want to add another step in the process to have the image analyzed, we are faced with yet another connection.

In a previous blog post we pointed out the challenges that staff face when one of these systems aren’t communicating, these certainly impact our physicians as well. As we add more diagnostic solutions to aid our physicians in treating patients, we want to ensure that their time is actually spent doing what they are trained for. The average radiologist makes roughly $300,000 per year, if we assume that radiologist works 40 hours per week, that’s about $144 per hour.

What happens when the machines stop talking? Likely the radiologist calls the help desk… 5 minutes on hold ($12), they will take 3 minutes to explain the problem to the help desk person ($7.20), who will then transfer them to a specialist where they take another 5 minutes talking over the problem ($12). Helpdesk will then forward the issue to multiple analysts and integration team. At-least 2 different analysts getting pulled into diagnosing the issue. Typically, integration and system analysts make 90k-130k per year or on average $50 per hour. These 2 analysts will work on this issue for about 30min ($100) to diagnose the issue. $131.20 may not seem like a significant amount, but now that radiologist may not be reviewing images, may not be discussing treatments with patients, they may not be doing what they’ve been trained to do. If the radiologist is only 50% as productive without this solution, every hour of outage costs $132…  That’s just for one Radiologist. And typically system issues affect all users. So once you multiply the outage costs for all radiologists and other team members it really adds up fast. There can also be significant downstream impacts to other services waiting on imaging as well that become harder to calculate.

Moving beyond the frustration of the healthcare teams, there can be a detrimental impact to patient satisfaction as well. As results are delayed and the team gets backed up, every hour of delay adds to the patient’s anxiety and fear. Anxiety and fear are not feelings we want our patients to experience, we want them to have confidence in our teams and systems.

Automated applications and integration monitoring can help quickly resolve these problems. With early notifications to the right team in a timely manner, problems can be quickly resolved to minimize downtime impacts. For over 10 years Tido Inc. has been partnering with health systems to help maximize their IT systems and quickly resolve issues as they arise, often before the end user even notices. Contact us today and so we can talk about how we can help you keep your systems working for your clinical teams.

Are your charges still floating in the clouds?

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Health System lost charges

How long did it take for those charges to drop? Was it halfway through the cycle? When did you find out they didn’t? Billing is seldom a simple process, with a variety of different systems required to communicate in order to get reports from the procedure to the billing department. Missing reports can prevent the charges from dropping, wreaking havoc on your revenue cycle.

Reconciliation can catch this, but how often is this done? Once a month? Once a week? 7 days and up to 4 weeks is way too long to find a problem. When you consider how long payment cycles can drag on, delaying them further can be problematic.

I’ve written often on the problems network breaks can cause on clinical teams. Broken networks can cause frustration for every department, not just the clinical teams. Billing is connected to almost every system in the hospital or practice, it’s even more vulnerable to these problems, relying on all these systems working to get an accurate picture of the supplies and time. If the report from Radiology didn’t cross over from the PACS to the VNA to the EHR, will it ever show as completed? If it shows as completed, is the report actually there and available to the billing department?

There are dozens of systems with dozens of different tech stacks, from reporting to supplies to pharmacy, getting a hand on each one to make sure they’re talking can be difficult. With most identification of issues coming from the end user, you often won’t know there’s a problem until its too late. Automated applications and integration monitoring can avoid many of these delays. Notifying the right teams early so problems can be addressed quickly, often before the end users even notice, can keep these teams working and the revenue cycling.

Tido Inc. can help you avoid these costly delays. How confident are we in this? Quite, confident. We have over 10 years of experience partnering with health systems and hospitals on their technology needs, from application monitoring to a variety of digital packages to support their operations.

Need more convincing? Contact us! We’re happy to talk about our processes and some of the results we’ve achieved. In fact, we’re willing to give you 3 months free to try it out, but there’s a catch… Only if you mention the song hinted at in this blog! Check out the next This Week in Health Tech podcast with Vik Patel and I’ll reveal the song!

We know convincing our colleagues in the finance office of the value of this service can be challenging just on the say-so of the vendor, so we’ll help you show the results with a free trial before you have to go and ask for a bigger slice of that pie.

Harnessing that free energy in healthcare.

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healthcare free employee time

This isn’t about powering your data center with solar cells on the helipad. It’s actually about capturing the creativity and time that you’re already paying for. Clinical staff inside hospitals are powerhouses of innovation and creativity. Have you seen what a nurse can do with a roll of 3M transpore tape?!

I only half kid about the tape, but anyone who has tried to introduce new solutions and technology into a clinical workspace has undoubtedly been met with skepticism. Anyone who has gone back to see how those systems and tools are actually used, has undoubtedly been surprised to see how and if they were used.

Are those tablets waterproof? They make great trays for carrying medications and water.

Giving clinical staff back time to focus on their patients and get creative with solutions for systems, processes, and technology innovation can be invaluable. In a time when doctors, nurses and technologists are leaving the bedside and joining tech companies, it can be more important than ever to retain that staff and capture those ideas. Many of these ideas are not large scale changes to the macro environment, they are small and relatively simple ideas that make interactions and workflows easier that can lead to better engagement.

How do you give back time? When we think of the time wasted on inefficient processes, especially when it comes to inefficient IT systems, there is a large opportunity to free up time. In previous posts I’ve written about the inefficiency of reporting application and integration outages and how early notification can save clinical time.

How do you harness that “free” energy? Since you’re already paying for it, it’s not really free, maybe it’s more akin to installing a co-generation plant. When you alleviate the burden of reporting IT issues by clinical staff, they are free to focus on their patients, to address their patient’s needs, concerns, and monitor for their safety. Time and attention lead to fewer safety incidents and better outcomes. Beyond that when clinical staff have time to consider their workflows and systems interactions they will come up with better ideas.

Consider all the money spent on “solutions” and upgrades that do not yield expected results. When a new solution is proposed how much engagement are clinical staff able to give before a purchase? How much time and energy are they able to spend making the new solution work? How much thought are they able to give to iterating and improving EHR user interfaces and workflows? All of these things take time, and if they don’t have time, all these solutions will seldom achieve their full potential.

Leveraging IT assets to their fullest potential will improve the ROI, in addition to improving margins. For over 10 years Tido Inc. has been partnering with hospitals and healthcare organizations to leverage the most from their IT infrastructure. Automated applications and interfaces monitoring and alerts, application integration, and assisting with digital strategy. Contact us today to see how we can help capture some of that energy!

I wonder if solar panels on a helipad would work? I think I’ve found today’s rabbit hole!

Have the holidays driven us crazy? Crazy about AI maybe!

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AI in Healthcare

Have you heard all the rage in AI? ChatGPT was making the rounds last few weeks as it was open to the public to play around with. The website is pretty cool, but it did take me a few days to get on it to play around due to traffic. For last week’s blog post I decided to hop on the bandwagon and see if Artificial Intelligence could replace a content writer’s Human Intelligence (insert sarcastic comment). Don’t tell the boss I did this though, AI doesn’t have bills to pay. Seriously though, the other blog post last week was written by ChatGPT.

Whether AI, ML, or other letter combination when it comes to advanced computing, there is no doubt that language processing will find it’s way more and more into healthcare. How do I know this? Because AI told me so, go read the other post!

Integrating AI effectively into the clinical space can help nursing in a variety of ways. It can be used to aggregate information on a single patient about their current visit and past visits to help guide interventions. It can also be used to effectively aggregate patient data from large populations to help study the effectiveness of new interventions vs past interventions.

Maybe we use the AI to write custom discharge instructions that are patient specific and relevant to their care? Starting off with a basic template this can be really powerful to drive better engagement and adherence to instructions. Current discharge instructions are often pages long with information dispersed throughout a large packet, providing a succinct summary can make it much easier for patients.

ChatGPT was initially devised as a chat bot, often rudimentary forms of chatbots can be found for patient intake for medical practices, urgent care, or to guide patients toward specialists. If we can better aggregate these sessions into a basic medical history or offer guidance toward potential diagnosis, then there can be significant time savings just on the nursing triage.

Pretty cool stuff that has the potential to really improve healthcare by helping the clinician and the patient alike.

With integrating any computer process automation there are several concerns that arise.

What is the reference source material? In the case of ChatGPT it uses large databases of published material, this can include unverified sources or opinion pieces. With any AI/ML, knowing the referenced source will be important.

Is the output relevant? AI can be confused, just like me, but we often use slang terms that AI may not recognize, this can lead to some weird output. The output definitely needs to be reviewed by professionals.  In the other post there are number of inaccuracies when it comes to the semantics, but they do matter.

How will it be integrated? Is it clear to patients when they are interacting with AI vs. a real human? If not it can be upsetting and cause patients to lose faith in the care system.

How much do we rely on AI? FDA regulations are starting to address this in terms of decision support, but how far AI goes into making patient care and treatment decisions that may fall into a gray area that can be difficult to navigate and ultimately requires a trained professional to adjudicate.

Tido Inc can help your organization answer these questions and help to integrate or develop applications so your organization can effectively leverage AI and ML to help improve clinical workflows and experience.  Now let’s see how much Holiday shopping has messed with my Amazon algorithms!

AI will revolutionize nursing! – Written by AI

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AI in Healthcare

As we continue to advance in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), it’s becoming increasingly clear that this technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach healthcare, including the field of nursing. In the next few years, we can expect to see AI being used in a wide range of applications, from improving the accuracy of medical diagnoses to helping nurses manage their workloads more effectively.

One of the most exciting ways that AI is set to transform nursing is through its ability to improve the accuracy of medical diagnoses. AI algorithms are capable of analyzing vast amounts of data, including medical images and test results, to identify patterns and make predictions about a patient’s condition. This can help nurses to make more accurate diagnoses, and it can also help to identify potential health problems before they become more serious.

In addition to improving diagnostic accuracy, AI can also be used to help nurses manage their workloads more effectively. By analyzing data on patient visits and treatment outcomes, AI algorithms can help to identify trends and patterns that can be used to improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery. This can help to reduce wait times and improve patient outcomes, while also allowing nurses to focus on the patients who need their help the most.

Another way that AI is set to transform nursing is through its ability to improve the effectiveness of certain treatments. AI algorithms can be used to analyze the data from clinical trials and other studies to identify the most effective treatments for specific conditions. This can help nurses to make more informed decisions about which treatments to prescribe to their patients, which can lead to better health outcomes.

Overall, the potential of AI to transform nursing is enormous. As we continue to develop and refine these technologies, we can expect to see a wide range of benefits for both patients and nurses. Whether it’s improving diagnostic accuracy, helping nurses manage their workloads, or identifying the most effective treatments for specific conditions, AI has the potential to make a huge impact on the field of nursing.

**This blog post written by AI, I was busy and had holiday shopping to do.  Here was the request:  “Write a 500 word blog post on how AI will transform nursing in the style of Johnathan Klaus”

Tido Inc. can help with digital strategy and custom applications!

Tido’s Trailblazing Tech Bulletin – Issue #1 Digital Transformations

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health care applicationsIssue #1—Digital Transformations

April 20 2022

Hello everyone! We’re pleased to welcome you to the very first issue of Trailblazing Tech from Tido. 

From now on, you’ll receive exciting monthly updates that dig into cutting-edge health tech topics, such as: the future of digital health, innovative interoperability, mobile and web apps, automated monitoring services, and—of course—some juicy tidbits about what’s new at Tido.

So, from the bottom of our digital hearts, thank you for embarking on this journey with us. Wishing you all an amazing April, and a splendid spring season! And we hope you enjoy Tido’s insights on extraordinary technologies that are revolutionizing the healthcare industry.

 

End-users are actually superior to healthcare professionals at rooting out application and integration issues. Why are we passing the buck to them? We can do better!

As it turns out, 95% of integration issues in hospital applications are manually identified by end-users. On average, it takes 35 frustrating minutes for end-users to identify and report issues to the IT help desk—and a gruelling 55 minutes for staff members or vendors to initiate a fix for the issue. 

That’s why we’re working with healthcare teams to use Azure Monitor for automated system monitoring, transforming their digital services to drastically reduce reliance on manual reporting, while also significantly improving customer service. The positive feedback we’ve received is truly incredible!

 

Digital transformation is accelerating in healthcare, but don’t worry—you can keep up! How to provide the best user experience in web and mobile applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in every major sector, vastly increasing our reliance on technology to meet many of our daily needs. And healthcare is no exception! 

Our health systems have greatly expanded their digital footprint to better serve our patients, empowering them to perform routine tasks without leaving the comfort of their home—such as paying bills, requesting medication refills, and even receiving personal health updates digitally.

But the process of fine-tuning the user experience has been—to put it mildly—quite complicated. To help other healthcare providers to navigate this important issue, Baptist Health’s team reveals how they’re using web and mobile test automation as a key part of their ongoing digital transformation.

 

The gift of health tech for your healthy ears! Check out this lively, illuminating new episode of our podcast: This Week in Health Tech.

In this jam-packed episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy have an incredible chat with Dr. Brett Oliver (Chief Medical Information Officer, Baptist Health) to dive into several fascinating topics, such as the future of telehealth, digital transformation, interoperability, cultural change across the industry, and much more.

 

Global Health Tech Buzz:

  1. Chatbot Technology Still Has a Long Way to Go
  2. Meditech and Google Health to collaborate on clinical search in Expanse EHR 
  3. Top takeaways from HIMSS22: What CIOs need to know 

 

That’s all from Tido for now. Thanks for reading! Stay tuned next month for Issue. Subscribe Here.

What is FHIR and what is the impact on health system? Free webinar for health systems with Q&A session.

This webinar is for health system CIOs, CMIOs, Directors, and Managers. 20 min presentation and 10 min Q&A.

Things you will learn:

  • Basics of FHIR
  • How FHIR enables digital transformation for health systems?
  • How FHIR enables healthcare technology innovations?
  • Real world examples of FHIR used in health system

Book your free spot:

Speakers:

COO Vik Patel, COO, Tido Inc.

Vik started out working for a health system and has more than 15 years experience working in the health technology industry. As part of Tido Inc., Vik works with health systems in US and Canada, and manages Tido’s integration and digital teams.