Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
For Months, Change Healthcare Doled Advice On How To Avoid Cyberattacks
In the months surrounding UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s $13 billion purchase of software company Change Healthcare Inc. in 2022, experts at Change published articles and policy papers extolling the need for cybersecurity measures in the health care industry. While it dished out that advice, one of Change’s web portals used to provide remote access was not equipped with one of the most basic cybersecurity features it extolled: multi-factor authentication. (Ratnam, 5/7)
In other technology and AI news —
The Apple Watch has secured a new qualification from the Food and Drug Administration that could make the smartwatch an appealing tool for medical device companies hoping to illustrate the benefits of a common heart procedure. (Aguilar and Lawrence, 5/8)
Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Forget Ringing The Button For The Nurse. Patients Now Stay Connected By Wearing One
Patients admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital get a monitoring device about the size of a half-dollar affixed to their chest — and an unwitting role in the expanding use of artificial intelligence in health care. The slender, battery-powered gadget, called a BioButton, records vital signs including heart and breathing rates, then wirelessly sends the readings to nurses sitting in a 24-hour control room elsewhere in the hospital or in their homes. (Galewitz, 5/8)
Artificial intelligence is touted as a way to ease clinicians' workload. A hospital in Dallas is using it to keep them safe. Parkland Memorial Hospital, the city's large safety-net hospital, is using AI to protect its doctors and nurses from violent patients. It joins a growing number of health systems deploying AI to tackle the pressing issue. (Perna, 5/7)
In one of the first studies to test whether artificial intelligence can help triage real-world emergency room patients, new UCSF research suggests AI could one day help doctors make one of the most critical decisions in medicine: who to give urgent medical care to first. The study, published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, found that an AI model can accurately prioritize the sickest patients 89% of the time. (Ho, 5/7)
When patients are dealing with a sexually transmitted infection, they don’t always get advice on whether they should come into the clinic in a timely fashion. So patient interface company Healthvana created a conversational AI chatbot to quickly answer some of their questions. It had two options: standard AI persona or a drag queen. (Trang, 5/7)
