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| From left, Dean Paranicas, Van Ly, Carl Scalzo and Emma Yamada participate in the NJBIZ August panel discussion: Health Care Technology in Somerset on Aug. 27. - KEN KICZALES |
Privacy, data security, data quality, mobile apps and wearables dominated a Health Care Technology panel discussion presented by NJBIZ on Tuesday at the Doubletree by Hilton Somerset Hotel.
Moderated by Dean Paranicas, president and chief executive officer of HealthCare Institute of New Jersey, a panel of experts discussed broad themes that impact providers, patients and insurance companies. They also addressed some of the challenges that technology poses for the health care industry.
When it comes to creating networks to share electronic medical records Van Ly, senior director of business development and programs technology at New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII), said that his experience working with providers indicates that privacy and security are top priorities when it comes to data sharing across networks.
“When it comes to what the individual practices deal with on a day-to-day basis besides clinical care, there is also the business side. In New Jersey, we represent small businesses in these provider offices and when you look at what the insurance companies are looking for about providing quality of care, they benefit from that,” said Ly.
Ly added that patients are receiving high quality of care and providers are motivated to share information across their practices because the patients themselves go across different practices.
However, at the same time, Ly said that keeping the information secure is essential.
Thank you for sharing?
Carl Scalzo, chief executive officer, Online Computers, said that the industry has moved to an open and transparent environment of sharing everything.“Everybody wants everything on his or her smart phone. They want to know their blood work, the moment the results are in, they want to know how they upload results and get another opinion. It becomes scary because the information that we are trying so hard to protect, we now have our consumers of the information willing to share it. How do we protect that information and how do we share it with our doctors?”
Scalzo pointed out that there are some people who genuinely do not care if some of their information is out there while there is another demographic of people who do not what anybody to know anything and in some cases, they even want to limit information that their doctor sees.
“They want be in control of the information. These things will play out over the next few years and we do not really know where it will end up.”
Emma Yamada, director of cognitive systems and data science at Holy Name Medical Center, said that it is crucial to learn from the mistakes of other industries.
“If our business is bringing all this data together, housing it as a hospital system, aggregating data beyond our individual health system and our individual providers, it is your responsibility to secure it and to make sure people understand how you are using it. It can be challenging from a health care perspective,” said Yamada.
Yamada added that distinctions should be made as to whether the information that is being collected is tied to an individual, or to general demographics.
“You don’t want anybody who is going to insure you to know your specific sleep patterns. But is their value, and can we create a distinction between collecting data somewhat anonymously – so if I know your age, race, zip code and I know your sleep patterns, is that enough for me to do something with it without compromising privacy.”
In past, Yamada noted, there were not good rules in other industries, so everybody collected everything and used it any way they liked.
“Some of those things are changing; new regulations are coming down the pike across industries. New regulations are going to be put in place. People are going to learn to do more with less and value privacy,” said Yamada.
When it comes to the quality of the data, the panel addressed various tools, screens, devices and protections out there that are used to verify quality.
Yamada said that Holy Name spends a lot of time doing data cleaning. Sorting the data and figuring out what is usable and what is not.
“If something is such an outlier or there was some kind of error, there are whole business lines of artificial intelligence dedicated to just cleaning data,” said Yamada.
“What we hope for is that as electronic medical records evolve, we move away from being billing systems to clinical documentation systems. As those evolutions happen, you hope to see the data quality improve. But you have to acknowledge that even with the best system, you still have a human operating that and there is still a chance that they input the wrong value into the wrong field,” Yamada said.
Information in-hand
From a patient perspective, there is evidence to indicate that technology is increasingly contributing to improving the quality of care.For Ly, it is about the patient having information in their hands.
“It starts with quality. When you talk about quality, you are talking about specific outcomes results that are driven now since we have data based on social factors. If I’m a diabetic and I’m not eating correctly, or exercising and not getting proper sleep based on my wearables, most likely I’m going to have an event at an earlier age than if I take care of myself,” said Ly who added that when it comes quality and technology it starts with self-awareness.
Ly said that he would like to see more of a community connection regarding technology.
For example with wearables Ly said that it would be beneficial if the technology allowed family members to monitor aging parents or grandparents and have access to their patient portal to see if they are being compliant with their medications for instance.
For Scalzo it is about the balance of the data.
“Sometimes having all the information at your fingertips is a little bit on the dangerous side. It can result in too much information and could it lead to self-diagnosis. Where are we on that road? We are empowering ourselves. That is great when you are buying bed or some commodity item, but where does it fall in with our health? It also can result in unnecessary communication with our doctor because we are second-guessing the expert. It is about finding that balance,” said Scalzo.
The panel concurred that technology’s role in health care is likely to increase.
What would they like to see going forward?
Yamada said that she would like to see universal health care blockchain.
“It would mean that everybody’s health care information is stored in one place and the patient is the ultimately decision maker in terms of who sees what and when. It would be a massive undertaking but would be huge for quality value and technology.”
Scalzo asserted that he would like to see more education.
“People leave a discussion more scared than when they walked in when it comes to health care. Educating more toward the positive. How can we do that? How can we educate toward the greater good.”
NIII’s Ly said that he would like to see an application that promotes education and in particular in young New Jerseyans starting in elementary school.
“I never learned about health technology. There is an opportunity to do that in school.”
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