Becker's Hospital Review

36 CIO / HEALTH IT Amazon unveils cloud, voice initiatives to address opioid addiction By Jessica Kim Cohen A mazon unveiled a slate of initiatives targeted toward supporting patients with opioid use disorder Oct. 24, shortly aer President Donald Trump signed the opioid bill into law. President Trump signed the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act Oct. 24 to increase the country's opioid crisis response efforts. e bill aims to improve patient ac- cess to treatment services by removing var- ious restrictions on Medicaid and Medicare and to encourage government authorities to research non-addictive drugs for patient pain management, among other efforts. e White House invited 21 private sector and nonprofit partners to the bill signing — including Amazon — all of which pledged to help solve the national opioid crisis. Brian Huseman, vice president of public policy at Amazon, attended the bill signing on be- half of the e-commerce giant's AWS Opioid Crisis Council. One of Amazon's commitments is to use its cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services, to help first responders "more efficiently" access patients' medical re- cords when appropriate, according to Mr. Huseman. Amazon will also use its cloud- based analytics tools to identify fraudulent data stored in interstate prescription drug monitoring programs. Amazon didn't specify how it would achieve this vision, but said it would continue to facil- itate "ongoing dialogue between some of the brightest minds in healthcare, and through accountability of outcomes and proposed solu- tions" through the AWS Opioid Crisis Council. In fact, these initial approaches to address the opioid crisis emerged from the inau- gural AWS Opioid Crisis Council meeting in August, where AWS convened a panel of healthcare and public health experts to dis- cuss factors that contribute to the epidemic and how the company's data accessibility services could help to address these issues. In a move focused on the patient population, Amazon also said it has partnered with the Ad Council — a producer and distributor of public service announcements — and the Truth Campaign — a national anti-tobacco campaign — to program its voice assistant Alexa to answer users' questions about the opioid epidemic, such as how to access treat- ment and recovery services. n Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Biden Cancer Initiative form nonprofit By Jessica Kim Cohen F our leading academic institutions and philanthropies have teamed up to launch a cancer research nonprofit, dubbed Count Me In. The philanthropy Emerson Collective, Cambridge, Mass.-based Broad In- stitute of MIT and Harvard, the Biden Cancer Initiative and Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute will lead the organization's effort to recruit more than 100,000 cancer patients from the U.S. and Canada to share their medical records and tumor, blood and saliva samples. Count Me In will de-identify this patient data and subsequently make it available to biomedical researchers worldwide through public da- tabases — such as the National Cancer Institute's Genomic Data Com- mons — to drive advancements in cancer research. A cornerstone of the program is maintaining a working relationship between patients and researchers, who will communicate via online groups. More than 5,700 patients have participated in Count Me In's proj- ects to date. The organization's four current projects focus on meta- static breast cancer, angiosarcoma, metastatic prostate cancer and gastroesophageal cancer. In the next few years, Count Me In plans to launch additional projects on all major cancer types, along with some rare cancers. Count Me In, which was conceived by the Emerson Collective and the Broad Institute, said it is supported by philanthropy and does not sell patient information. n Allscripts adds drug pricing tool to EHR By Anuja Vaidya A llscripts is adding RxBenefit Clarity, a real-time benefit checking tool, to its EHR platforms. The RxBenefit Clarity solution, offered by CoverMyMeds and RelayHealth Pharmacy Solutions, offers users accurate out-of-pock- et patient payment details for prescriptions. It displays coverage information based on the patient's health plan and includes features such as helping address prior authorization requirements. Allscripts and CoverMyMeds have a long- standing partnership and are focused on integrating RxBenefit Clarity with Allscripts Prescription Price Transparency in Allscripts ePrescribe, Allscripts Professional EHR and Allscripts TouchWorks EHR. "In combination with our other partners, Rx- Benefit Clarity can enable Allscripts' providers to quickly and easily identify the true out-of- pocket medication cost, specific to each pa- tient's pharmacy benefit and their pharmacy of choice," said Tom Langan, CEO of payer and life sciences at Allscripts. n

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