Becker's Hospital Review

31 CIO / HEALTH IT Cerner CEO unveils next layer of Amazon partnership By Jackie Drees A s part of its collaboration with Ama- zon Web Services, Cerner is develop- ing technology to target healthcare issues including high hospital readmission rates and clinical documentation burdens, according to the EHR vendor's CEO and Chairman Brent Shafer. Mr. Shafer highlighted Cerner's ongoing work with AWS during the 2019 AWS re:Invent con- ference in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2019. e Kan- sas City, Mo.-based EHR vendor selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider in July 2019. Three things to know about Cerner's part- nership with AWS, according to Mr. Shafer: 1. To help reduce financial waste and patient readmissions, Cerner is using de-identified patient data to determine what factors cause return hospitalizations. The company re- cently applied machine learning to its histor- ical data migrated to AWS to create a model that allows clients to identify patients at risk for readmission. 2. Cerner recently used the model to help one of its post-acute healthcare provider clients predict patients at risk for readmission from a rehabilitation facility back to the hospital. Aer using the model, the health system achieved its lowest readmission rate in more than 10 years. 3. Cerner and AWS are creating a digital virtual scribe to help reduce the amount of time physicians spend on documenting patient information. "Working with AWS will allow us to capture doctor-patient interaction and integrate it directly into the electronic workflow of the physician," said Mr. Shafer. "is new advance- ment will help doctors and providers spend less time filling out forms and more quality time with their patients." Cerner also created a new platform on AWS that aims to support data scientists in develop- ing and managing machine-learning models. n Older IT workers passed over despite job surplus, workforce shortage By Andrea Park R egardless of the record-high numbers of IT job openings and a shrink- ing pool of qualified applicants, workers over the age of 45 are com- monly passed over for IT jobs, The Wall Street Journal reported. Across all occupations at U.S. companies, employees 45 and older comprise 44 percent of employees, according to CompTIA data cited by WSJ, while the same age group makes up only 38 percent of IT employees. Younger workers are disproportionately represented in the IT sector: Those ages 22 to 44 account for more than 60 percent of those jobs, compared to 49 per- cent of the entire American workforce. The disparity can reportedly be attributed to a stagnancy in older tech work- ers' technical skills and their desire for compensation packages that match their number of years in the industry. "More and more hiring managers associate technology innovation with youth," Martha Heller, CEO of tech recruiting firm Heller Search Associates, told WSJ. "Age bias is alive and well in technology recruiting." In the current job market, companies searching for IT talent cannot afford to overlook older workers. Furthermore, hiring older employees can boost an organization's work in other, more qualitative ways: "A multigeneration- al technology team has often proven to be extremely valuable, as varying levels of experience only enhance their ability to problem solve and inno- vate," John Reed, executive vice president at staffing company Robert Half International, told WSJ. n Amazon has free access to NHS data By Mackenzie Garrity I n its deal with Amazon, the United Kingdom's National Health Service has provided the online retail and technology giant with free access to health- care information, according to The Guardian. The NHS partnered with Amazon to allow Alexa devices to offer health advice from certified physicians and pharmacists. With the partnership, Amazon is col- lecting healthcare information to develop, advertise and sell its own products. Though Amazon is barred from collecting patient information, documents show the company has access to data on symptoms, causes and definitions of conditions, reported The Guardian. Amazon said that the information it is gathering can be found on the NHS website. "Amazon does not build customer health profiles based on interactions with nhs.uk content or use such requests for marketing purposes," the company said in a statement to The Guardian. A spokesperson for NHS said, "No patient data is being provided to this company by the NHS, which takes data privacy extremely seriously and has put appropriate safeguards in place to ensure information is used correctly," according to The Guardian. n

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