Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1362166
43 CIO / HEALTH IT 4 updates from Judy Faulkner on Epic's software upgrade plans By Jackie Drees E pic is working on improvements to its artificial intel- ligence-powered voice assistant to deliver clinicians a hands-free note taking experience within the EHR, according founder and CEO Judy Faulkner. During an online seminar in late February with Nash- ville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Department of Biomedical Informatics, Ms. Faulkner shared updates about the EHR giant's projects and what initiatives it has in store. Four updates: 1. Ms. Faulkner said Epic is still at least two years away from launching an AI component that can listen in on the con- versation between the clinician and patient and then draft orders, place a plan of care and close the visit. 2. The company's voice assistant offering lets clinicians use their voice within the EHR to search a patient's medical his- tory and place orders. 3. Despite HHS' interoperability rules, Epic has no plans to reprogram its patient portal, MyChart, to let patients selec- tively turn off or delay notifications for things like test results. 4. Information from the Epic Health Research Network has helped improve care of critically ill COVID-19 patients, with specific instances including influencing clinicians to place patients on their sides and delay putting them on ventilators. n Change Healthcare, Amazon team up on health data research offering for vulnerable patient populations By Jackie Drees C hange Healthcare and Amazon Web Services announced March 9 they are launching a data science as a service offering that provides de-identi- fied claims data integrated with social determinants of health for more robust data analytics and research on vulnerable patient populations. The Nashville, Tenn.-based data analyt- ics firm will use AWS' cloud platform to pre-integrate patient data and deploy au- tomated software that continuously moni- tors healthcare organizations' privacy and compliance obligations. The Duke Univer- sity School of Medicine in Durham, N.C., is using the data offering to analyze dif- ferences in COVID-19 disease progression as a function of pre-existing conditions and interventions for different ethnic and socio-economic groups. With the offering, Change Healthcare and AWS aim to better examine and improve the effectiveness of healthcare treatments and therapies, particularly for underserved and vulnerable populations. "Providing secure access to comprehensive, linked healthcare datasets will enable life sciences organizations to personalize the pa- tient experiences, support, and enable pow- erful population-level comparative research to improve precision medicine and person- alized care, such as medication adherence, around the world," said Wilson To, head of worldwide healthcare business development at AWS, according to a news release. n Ransomware attack exposed info of 210,000 MultiCare patients, providers, workers By Jackie Drees M ore than 200,000 patients, providers and em- ployees of Tacoma, Wash.-based MultiCare were notified their personal information had been exposed in a ransomware attack, according to a March 9 news release from MultiCare's medical practice management company. Woodcreek Provider Services contracts with tech ser- vices vendor Netgain Technology, which was hit by ransomware on or about Dec. 2. The attackers had ac- cess to personal and/or protected health information of Woodcreek Provider Services employees, providers, ap- plicants, contractors and patients who received services from MultiCare and/or Woodcreek Healthcare, accord- ing to the news release. Information exposed by the ransomware attack includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers, medical re- cord numbers, bank account numbers and medical re- cord disclosure logs. In a Feb. 17 letter to Washington's state attorney gen- eral, Woodcreek Provider Services' external counsel said the organization will provide notification of the HIPAA breach incident to about 210,000 individuals who were affected. The Ramsey County government in Minnesota was also affected by the Netgain Technology ransomware attack and began notifying 8,700 clients of its family health di- vision on Jan. 29 that their data had been exposed. n