Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1219854
34 CIO / HEALTH IT Dr. David Feinberg says 'we're super proud' of Project Nightingale with Ascension By Mackenzie Garrity G oogle Health leader David Feinberg, MD, continued to defend the compa- ny's partnership with St. Louis-based Ascension, nicknamed Project Nightingale, at the StartUp Health Festival, an event for biotech entrepreneurs, according to Forbes. "Despite what they say in the newspapers, we're super proud of it," Dr. Feinberg said. By partnering with Ascension, Google is amassing data on millions of patients to cre- ate a search engine for EHRs that will allow physicians to more easily look up patient re- cords, test results and provider notes. Per the agreement, Ascension has moved its EHR to the Google Cloud. Concerns were raised when Ascension em- ployees reported that patients and providers were not aware that data was being shared with Google. However, Dr. Feinberg said that only a limited number of Google employees have access to the patient data. "ink of it as a warehouse," he said, accord- ing to Forbes. "e only one that has the key to that record is Ascension." Google is allowed to collect data from As- cension through a business associate agree- ment, which follows HIPAA guidelines. To- day, Google only has access to patient data at two Ascension hospitals, "not three-quar- ters of the United States as e Wall Street Journal said," Dr. Feinberg reported, according to Forbes. "e press has made this into something that it's not," Dr. Feinberg said. "is is not us mining somebody's records to sell ads, to learn from it, to do machine learning, to develop products." e data Google employees are viewing is de-identified, and Dr. Feinberg con- firmed that all employees have undergone HIPAA training. n New Cerner patent hints at company's efforts to move beyond EHR products By Jackie Drees C erner Innovation, a subsidiary of the Kansas City, Mo.-based EHR ven- dor, was granted a patent on Jan. 7 for a device that identifies inad- equacies in blood samples before they get processed, Kansas City Business Journal reported. The blood sample detection patent was originally submitted Dec. 31, 2015. The device aims to address issues with automation, which the company claims has resulted in the failure to provide an accurate prescreening method for identifying defective blood samples. "…improperly labeled specimens, improperly collected specimens and speci- mens with various types of sample interference are commonly processed in cur- rent automated systems," Cerner stated in its patent, according to the U.S. Pat- ent and Trademark Office. "Accordingly, [the] current system often process[es] defective samples, resulting in sample errors and/or inaccurate results." The new patent is Cerner's latest move to diversify its portfolio from a strictly EHR-based company, according to the report. Last August, the company partnered with hospitality and senior living real estate company LifeCenters to develop centers for primary care, pharmacy and fitness opportunities for senior communities across the U.S. Cerner also recently expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services to create a dig- ital scribe that will help address EHR documentation burdens for clinicians. n Former Cerner employees sue company over retirement plan fees By Jackie Drees F our former Cerner employees filed a class-action complaint against the EHR vendor for allegedly mismanaging its retirement plan by maintain- ing expensive investment options that cost participants millions of dol- lars, according to court documents obtained by Bloomberg Law. The former employees claim that since January 2014 Cerner has failed to in- vestigate cheaper investment options for its $2 billion 401(k) plan and offered managed funds that carried "grossly excessive fees compared with compara- ble or superior alternatives," according to the filing. By failing to adequately review the investment portfolio, the plaintiffs alleged Cerner breached its responsibilities to the defined contribution retirement plan and its participants. Under the plan, both Cerner and its employees con- tribute and invest in funds over time while future benefits are determined by how the plan's investments perform. "Thus, the employer has no incentive to keep costs low or to closely monitor the plan to ensure every investment remains prudent, because all risks relat- ed to high fees and poorly performing investments are borne by the partici- pants," the lawsuit stated. The former employees are seeking that Cerner and certain members of its board restore all financial losses to the plan that were the result of the company's mismanagement. Cerner declined to comment per its policy on pending litigation. n