Becker's Hospital Review

78 CIO / HEALTH IT Analysis: Amazon's Healthcare Move Could Benefit Telehealth Companies By Julie Spitzer T hough the details of the healthcare group Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway formed Jan. 30 are vague, some analysts are speculating telehealth, EHRs and the real-time tracking of health data may be the sectors it tackles first, Todd Campbell, an analyst at e Motley Fool, wrote in an op-ed. e idea behind the collaboration is to leverage technologies that would drive down healthcare costs. About 20 percent of the $3.3 trillion the U.S. spends annually on healthcare goes to phy- sicians and clinical services. According to Mr. Campbell, this implies that "any effort to control healthcare costs will include reforming access to primary care, urgent care and specialists" — namely, through telehealth. Telehealth companies like Teladoc could ben- efit most from the collaboration. The virtual care business plays a pivotal role in expanding access to care, particularly for rural patients, even though many people aren't aware the ser- vices exist. In fact, Mr. Campbell suggests the new three-company collaboration could team up with Teladoc. Teladoc's 75 percent market share is three times bigger than its next three compet- itors combined, he writes, adding that Teladoc's acquisition of Best Doctors, a service that con- nects patients to specialists, makes it even more appealing. "If Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan team up with Teladoc to transition more pa- tients to the cloud, it could relieve bottlenecks associated with access to care —particularly in rural areas — and reduce costs by cutting down on unnecessary [emergency room] visits and testing," Mr. Campbell wrote. "Given that Tela- doc is already serving 300 of the Fortune 1,000 companies, I think it makes sense that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan would turn to them if their solution includes telehealth." n How Healthcare Is Using Machine Learning: 7 Things to Know By Julie Spitzer M achine learning is infiltrating healthcare and demonstrating improve- ments in medical imaging, according to a Reaction Data survey. The research firm sought feedback from a range of imaging professionals, in- cluding administrators, technicians and directors, at primarily acute care facilities. Here are seven survey insights. 1. About 16 percent of respondents ranked machine learning as not that im- portant, while 25 percent of respondents said machine learning was extremely important. 2. Imaging directors and chiefs of radiology were more likely to view machine learning as important. 3. Most respondents said they weren't that familiar with machine learning — only 9 percent claimed to be extremely familiar. 4. Roughly 25 percent of respondents said their organization was about three years away from adopting machine learning, while 16 percent of medical imaging profes- sionals said they have no plans to adopt machine learning. 5. Of those not planning to adopt machine learning, 46 percent said they were unsure of its usefulness right now. 6. According to respondents, the top machine learning vendors are Hologic (25 percent), GE Healthcare (17 percent) and Google (13 percent). 7. Providers are currently using, or plan to use, machine learning for breast im- aging (68 percent), lung imaging (61 percent) and chest x-rays (58 percent). n Athenahealth Releases FY 2018 Financial Outlook: 4 Things to Know By Jessica Kim Cohen A thenahealth discussed the company's financial outlook for fiscal year 2018 during its 2018 Investor Summit on Feb. 15. Here are four things to know about athenahealth's financial outlook. 1. The company posted $1.22 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2017, up 13 percent from $1.08 billion in 2016, according to 2017 earnings results the company released Feb. 1. Athen- ahealth also reported $70.6 million in operating income during 2017, up 165 percent from $26.6 million last year. 2. Athenahealth management ex- pects to achieve total revenue in the range of $1.31 billion to $1.38 bil- lion in 2018. The management team expects the company's operating in- come to be in the range of $108 mil- lion to $152 million in 2018. 3. The company expects to invest in research and development, improve efficiency and increase scale across business sectors, and drive revenue growth and progress in core and net- work services as part of its 2018 per- formance growth, according to a Feb. 14 athenahealth statement. 4. Marc Levine, CFO of athenahealth, said in the statement, "We have made significant progress on our strategic initiatives to create a more focused and efficient company. In the year ahead, we plan to build on this suc- cess as we work to create healthcare's first true platform." n

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