Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1092388
78 CIO / HEALTH IT Amazon, Microsoft urge federal regulation for facial recognition technology: 5 notes By Jessica Kim Cohen T echnology giants are increas- ingly calling for regulation of facial recognition technologies, according to Wired. Five notes: 1. There's a growing trend of law en- forcement using facial recognition technology — for example, in Ore- gon's Washington County, sheriff's deputies can send photos of suspects to Amazon's cloud computing ser- vice, which checks the suspects' faces against a database of mugshots. The use of facial recognition by law en- forcement is mostly unregulated. 2. Technology developers have pushed back against this trend amid scrutiny from researchers, lawmak- ers and civil liberties groups. Recent research suggests Amazon's image analysis service — Rekognition — is less accurate for black people, although the e-commerce giant has disputed these claims. 3. Michael Punke, vice president of global public policy at Amazon Web Services, wrote in a blog post that the company "supports the creation of a national legislative framework covering facial recognition through video and photographic monitoring on public or commercial premises," including legislation that "protects in- dividual civil rights and ensures that governments are transparent in their use of facial recognition technology." 4. Amazon's move echos another call to action Microsoft made in Decem- ber, according to Wired. In late 2018, Microsoft President Brad Smith urged the federal government to regulate the technology to curb issues related to privacy and discrimination, stating that the company believes "the only way to protect against this race to the bottom is to build a floor of respon- sibility that supports healthy market competition." 5. Neither Amazon nor Microsoft are major suppliers of facial recognition technology to law enforcement and government agencies, according to ac- ademic sources who spoke with Wired, making their calls for regulation unlike- ly to affect their revenue. n Email fraud in healthcare up 473%: 6 things to know By Mackenzie Garrity H ospitals and health systems re- ceived an influx of fraudulent emails last year — a persistent problem that has cost healthcare organiza- tions $12.5 billion since the end of 2013, a Proofpoint study found. e cybersecurity provider analyzed more than 160 billion emails sent across 150 countries in 2017 and 2018 to iden- tify the prevalence of email fraud at 450 healthcare organizations. Six things to know: 1. In the fourth quarter of 2018, healthcare organizations were the targets of 96 email fraud attacks, a 473 percent increase com- pared to the first quarter of 2017. 2. e most common type of email fraud in 2018 was wire-transfer. 3. For the average targeted organization, 65 staff members were attacked in the fourth quarter of 2018. e email fraud attacks were most likely to occur on weekdays be- tween 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. 4. e majority of healthcare organizations — 95 percent — were targeted through their own trusted domains, which were spoofed to target patients and fellow busi- ness partners. 5. Of all the emails sent from health- care-owned organizations, 45 percent ap- peared suspicious during the fourth quarter of 2018. e suspicious emails were most oen sent to employees (65 percent), fol- lowed by patients (42 percent) and business partners (15 percent). 6. Proofpoint suggests that healthcare or- ganizations adopt the following to protect themselves from email fraud: • Email authentication • Machine learning and policy enforce- ment • Domain monitoring n How CMS' newest innovation model will change telehealth payments By Emily Rappleye C MS' new, five-year Emergency Triage, Treat and Transport Model will re- imburse ambulance service providers for providing telehealth treatment for Medicare beneficiaries. The ET3 model, released by the CMS innovation center Feb. 14, aims to give ambulance care teams more flexibility in how they triage emergencies, partic- ularly low-acuity emergencies that may not require a trip to the hospital. Under the new model, Medicare will reimburse for transport to a primary care office or urgent care site, or for providing care in place or using telehealth. Medicare currently covers ground ambulance transport to hospitals, critical access hospi- tals, skilled nursing facilities and dialysis centers, and most patients are brought to hospitals. The goal of ET3 is to reduce costs and improve care quality by reducing unnecessary hospital visits. Local governments will be responsible for creating medical triage lines for their 911 dispatch systems, while ambulance providers will oversee connected tele- health services. Healthcare practitioners that partner with the ambulance teams for telehealth will be reimbursed as usual under Medicare for services. n