Consortium News

Apr 15, 2019 |Wicked Local Concord from a submission by Emerson Hospital.

A coalition of 10 independent Massachusetts health systems, including 14 community hospitals, have formed the Massachusetts Value Alliance to enhance their efforts in delivering high-quality, patient-centered and cost-effective care to their communities.

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April 13, 2019 | Bob Salsberg, The Associated Press

State Rep. Jon Santiago, an emergency room doctor in Boston, recalled an elderly patient named Mike who recently came to the hospital with life-threatening complications from diabetes. Conversations with the man's family revealed he had not been keeping up with his insulin — it was too expensive.

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April 10, 2019 | Anicka Slachta | AI in Healthcare

Boston-based medical network Partners HealthCare will be rolling out new software and support services over the next 12 months with the goal of involving more physicians and health experts in AI research.

The effort, announced April 8 at the World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston, aims to “put AI in the toolbox of every researcher and clinician,” according to a release. 

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Makenzie Holland | TechTarget | April 10, 2019

For Arthur Harvey, the role of healthcare CIO is multifaceted, from traffic cop to innovator. He talks about challenges, tech trends and the criticality of governance in this Q&A.

Arthur Harvey's whole career has been health IT. Today, he leads initiatives and technology strategies as CIO at Boston Medical Center, a 567-bed academic healthcare organization.

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April 09, 2019 | Anicka Slachta | Connected Care

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker issued a piece of cautionary advice to healthcare executives April 8, urging them to take the recent rise of AI with a grain of salt, the Boston Business Journal reported.

Baker, a former health insurance executive and health and human services chief under Gov. William Weld, warned attendees of the Partners HealthCare World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston that while AI can certainly contribute to better health outcomes, researchers need to be careful in the way they roll out the tech.

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COMMONWEALTH | Apr 8, 2019

Community health centers often have a strong grassroots connection to the neighborhoods they serve. But no center may proclaim that more loudly through its leadership than the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center. Its president and CEO, Manny Lopes, is a native son of Eastie whose first job after high school was as an 18-year-old field researcher at the nonprofit health care center.

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HIMSS | April 05 2019

There’s been a lot of hype about blockchain, but now there are potential use cases on the horizon this year, says John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. For example, the Synaptic Health Alliance will enable payers to put verified provider demographic data so it can be widely accessed; blockchain as an API can help ensure data integrity in records; and to assist the consent process to share data.

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Jessica Kim Cohen | Modern Healthcare | April 4, 2019

A new, invite-only program from Amazon allows select healthcare groups—including hospitals and health insurers—to develop HIPAA-compliant skills for its voice assistant, Alexa.

Developers who participate in the program, including HIPAA-covered entities and their business associates, are able to build voice skills that transmit protected health information in Amazon Alexa's HIPAA-eligible environment.

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By Jessica Bartlett | Boston Business Journal | April 4, 2019

Boston Children’s Hospital patients and their parents can now use Alexa to access information in their medical record, with the hospital announcing Thursday that it had launched a new secure function with the software.

The rollout is the first time Amazon has enabled health systems to create functions that tie into a patient's medical record, in compliance with the federal government's health privacy rule known as the "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act."

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DEFINITIVE HEALTHCARE | Apr 3, 2019

As reported in SouthCoast Today, the Southcoast Health System, which consists of Charlton Memorial Hospital, St. Luke’s Hospital and Tobey Hospital, was named to Newsweek’s list of the World’s Best Hospitals 2019.

Southcoast Health ranked 162 out of the 250 U.S. hospitals that made the list. Newsweek’s inaugural World’s Best Hospitals 2019, calculated in partnership with Statista Inc., recognizes the best 1000 hospitals across 11 countries: USA, Canada, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Israel.

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