Becker's Hospital Review

117 CIO / HEALTH IT Allscripts introduces Avenel, a machine learning- powered EHR By Julie Spitzer A llscripts is launching the indus- try's first EHR equipped with ma- chine learning, dubbed Avenel, the vendor announced March 6 at the an- nual Healthcare Information and Manage- ment Systems Society conference. Avenel is a mobile-first, cloud-based solu- tion hosted on Microso's cloud com- puting platform, Azure. Avenel creates a communitywide shared patient record and deploys machine learning to streamline clinical documentation, getting "smarter with every use." "is new solution is not simply an iter- ation of legacy systems," said Jim Hewitt, executive vice president of solutions devel- opment for Allscripts. "It is an entirely new approach to the EHR. Our objective with Avenel is to get the technology out of the way, so clinicians can focus on the patient." e new EHR integrates clinicians' treat- ment patterns and automatically cues up their preferences to ease documentation and decision making. Avenel produces a secure shared record to improve care co- ordination across the continuum, and it features analytics at both the individual patient and population level. "We wanted to create a solution that drove a stake into the heart of clini- cians' frustrations about EHRs," added Allscripts CEO Paul Black. "We spent a great deal of time meeting with clients and industry leaders to better under- stand why providers have been so un- happy with the first wave of EHRs. They want technology that works like they work, and thinks like they think." n Andy Slavitt: We need to discuss 'real human problems' in healthcare By Alyssa Rege A ndy Slavitt, a former United Healthcare executive and CMS administrator during the Obama administration, said during an interview with CNBC healthcare entrepreneurs should stop investing in wearables and calo- rie-tracking devices and instead innovate for people with chronic conditions. Mr. Slavitt, who recently launched his nonprofit, United States of Care, spoke with CNBC's Christina Farr about his change in mentality after visiting various cities across the U.S. He discovered one of the biggest health concerns affecting Ameri- cans is chronic disease, and urged entrepreneurs to invest in startups whose goal is to solve "real human problems." "We need to stop investing in the third Fitbit for the 50-year-old upper-class person and start innovating for people who have common diseases and conditions, but live in communities with low access to care," he said. "We need to talk about real human problems." According to Mr. Slavitt, entrepreneurs need to change the way they think about healthcare and treat health and human services as one entity, because socioeco- nomic factors — poverty, substance abuse and poor nutrition, for example — are all deeply intertwined and contribute to an individual's overall health. Sending a patient home with several prescription medications isn't going to improve their health, Mr. Slavitt told CNBC. "If you can help a hospital take care of a patient in the community, everyone saves money and everyone wins," he said. n Nearly half of consumers would use AI virtual physicians: 5 findings By Megan Knowles N early half of health consumers (47 percent) said they would use an artificially in- telligent virtual physician provided by their health service because it is available whenever they need it, according to a survey released by Accenture. As part of its 2018 Consumer Survey on Digital Health report, Accenture surveyed 2,301 U.S. consumers ages 18 and older to evaluate their attitudes toward healthcare technology, modernization and service innovation. Here are five findings from the survey. 1. Twenty-nine percent of consumers said they prefer visiting their physician in person. 2. Over one-fourth of consumers (26 percent) said they do not sufficiently understand how AI works. 3. When asked to imagine a scenario where they required spinal surgery to fix chronic back pain from degenerative disc disease, about one in three consumers said they would prefer AI-assisted surgery and surgery planning over traditional approaches. 4. More than half of consumers (56 percent) said they would prefer AI-assisted surgery after learning about benefits, which were based on real clinical data. 5. The survey found younger people are more receptive to robot-assisted surgery, with 46 percent of those aged 18 to 44 reporting they would prefer this kind of surgery before being informed of its benefits. n

• Cover