Although some places in the U.S. saw as much as a foot of snow this week, skies were fair and news was plentiful in the Health TechZone. Before you start celebrating Cinco de Mayo, let's take a look at this week's news.
Although a study from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council found that the health of Americans ranked below that of citizens of 16 other developed countries, America spent more on healthcare than any other nation in the world. According to experts like Neal Patterson, CEO of Cerner Corporation, healthcare IT is poised to change all of that, particularly in the areas of cloud computing, big data and mobile healthcare.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, along with HIPAA, stipulate that the healthcare industry has to migrate patient records into the cloud by 2015. Scott Goode, who is IaaS product manager at Saavisdirect, says that cloud services are specifically tailoring offerings that will allow medical providers to maintain HIPAA compliance. He also points out that cloud providers are just as liable for HIPAA compliance as the organizations that they serve.
Cloud services provide benefits beyond just security for medical providers. Since providers have to keep medical data for at least six years, they need solutions that are more scalable than on-premises solutions. They also need solutions that foster mobile healthcare for both doctors and patients. Healthcare industry cloud computing revenue, therefore, may grow to as much as $6.79 billion by 2018.
Big data has received a boost in Europe for pharmaceutical companies. In a recent ruling, the European Medicines Agency has decided to open all studies submitted for approval to the public. The decision has the potential to speed up drug development, but it also opens up companies' valuable research data to their competitors. Naysayers also express concern that publicly available data could place study participants' confidentiality at risk and that they could allow pharmaceutical companies to sidestep regulators.
In the mobile world, the Department of Health and Human Services chose a winner for its mobile app challenge: MyFamily, an iOS app by Lyfechannel. People who download the app can enter different family members into MyFamily. MyFamily will then create preventive health programs for each family member based on age, gender and other factors. Additionally, families can find more information about services offered under the Affordable Care Act, and they can create reminders for routine appointments like checkups and vaccinations.
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