Becker's Hospital Review

112 CIO / HEALTH IT Harvard psychologist: AI fear-mongering is the Y2K of the 21st century By Jessica Kim Cohen S teven Pinker, PhD, a professor of psy- chology at Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard University, penned an op-ed in the Canadian newspaper e Globe and Mail Feb. 24 to encourage individuals to avoid a "doomsday" mentality about potential tech- nology threats. ere are a range of threats facing civilization today, including fears related to overpopula- tion, resource shortages, nuclear war and ar- tificial intelligence. However, not all of these fears of likely, or even probable, according to Dr. Pinker, meaning individuals need to think critically and prioritize which threats are most important to mitigate. "Some threats strike me as the 21st-century version of the Y2K bug," Dr. Pinker wrote, in reference to the 1990s-era concern com- puters would crash at the turn of the mil- lennium. "This includes the possibility that we will be annihilated by artificial intel- ligence, whether as direct targets of their will to power or as collateral damage of their single-mindedly pursuing some goal we give them." Dr. Pinker suggested these false alarms "dilute the sense of urgency" when considering future threats, since people bombarded with infor- mation will be unable to worry about every- thing. us, rather than triaging the problems at hand, people will fall victim to "moaning that we're doomed." "e Great Y2K Panic does not mean that all warnings of potential catastrophes are false alarms, but it reminds us that we are vulnera- ble to techno-apocalyptic delusions," he wrote. "ere are wise and foolish ways of dealing with the threats to our existence," he contin- ued. "Some threats turn out to be figments of cultural and historical pessimism. Others are genuine, but we must treat them not as apocalypses-in-waiting but as problems to be solved." n Epic's population health tool adds resources from Geisinger spinoff xG Health Solutions By Jessica Kim Cohen E pic made xG Health Solutions' care management content available within its population health management soft- ware, Epic Healthy Planet, earlier this year. Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System launched xG Health Solutions in 2013 to scale its care management processes and support providers and payers in streamlining their clinical and financial performance. The company now offers providers and payers solutions related to data analytics and decision support. Under the partnership with Epic, providers will be able to access xG Health Solutions clinical content — called xGContent, which is based on national practice guidelines and standards of care — from within the Health Planet module. xGContent offers pro- viders suggested care plans to assess patients on 60 common conditions. Several hospitals have signed agreements to use the xG Intel- ligent Care Management solution since it became available in Epic Healthy Planet, according to a Feb. 23 statement from xG Health Solutions. Hospitals that have licensed the content in- clude Colorado-based UCHealth, Rockville Centre, N.Y.-based Catholic Health Services of Long Island and Portland, Ore.-based Legacy Health. "xG has created content that will help ensure patients are re- ceiving appropriate care and case management services," Carl Dvorak, president of Epic, said in a February 2017 statement an- nouncing the initial partnership. "We hope our open platform will continue to encourage xG and others to expand their offer- ings to the Epic community." n KLAS: Epic, athenahealth offer most interoperable data-sharing networks By Jessica Kim Cohen E pic and athenahealth topped the list of high- ly interoperable EHR systems, according to a KLAS Research report. For the report, the health IT research firm conducted more than 500 interviews with providers about in- teroperability, with an emphasis on "plug-and-play" data sharing. Plug-and-play connectivity refers to an EHR vendor integrating their product into a single national network, which their clients are able to par- ticipate in and access data from — for example, athen- ahealth's network or Epic's Care Everywhere. KLAS Research assessed nine popular EHR vendors — Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Epic, GE Healthcare, Greenway Health, Meditech and NextGen Healthcare — on their interoperability capa- bilities when exchanging information between the same and different EHR vendors. Across the board, athenahealth stacked up as one of the most interop- erable health IT vendors. When considering data exchange between provid- ers using the same EHR vendor, Epic topped the list as the most interoperable vendor, followed by ath- enahealth and GE Healthcare. For data exchange be- tween providers using different EHR vendors, athen- ahealth ranked most interoperable, followed by GE Healthcare and Greenway Health. n

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