Today we have Dr. Collier Griffin, Product Manager at Synapse Health. She has a fascinating, diverse background, and we’re touching base on how to transition into product management, the Web 3 in healthcare, building successful teams, and working with offshore teams. As a registered general practitioner, she left the medical profession to work in marketing digital products because she felt she could improve the lives of average patients more effectively this way.
Bridging Medicine, Technology, and Business
It all started with the transition from paper cards to EMRs. Product management is the best way to set up business processes to connect medicine, technology, and business. There are more than a million doctors and lawyers in the U.S., but no more than 50,000 product managers. But if you have a degree in medicine and skills in business, you have to take advantage of that because it’s a great combination.
According to Collier, you should encourage people to hire people with a medical background who know the intricacies of this world. Because when you know how things work, you ask better questions, get better answers, create better products, and spend less time. So it’s a win-win if you know how to transfer your medical expertise into product management.
When you know your target audience, you’re not creating something for the sake of creating something good but for the sake of actually using it. And the user kept coming back and wanting to use it because it made their life easier.
Doctors and Product Managers in Data Processing
Dr. Griffin makes the interesting point that a doctor’s job, like a product manager’s, involves processing a lot of data and looking for patterns.
In the startup world, you wear many hats, so you can be a product owner, a scrum master, a UX/UI designer, and a project manager.
I love a good brainstorming session, and it’s important for everyone to feel like they’ve given something to that project. That goes to basic human psychology.
Collier has worked with teams from other countries, and she emphasizes the importance of finding common ground – you have different languages, different cultures, and different perspectives on life… In her opinion, it is important to outline and present as much of the project as possible ahead of time because most people are visual and absorb information better that way.
Regarding the medical data storage system, Dr. Griffin compares the systems in the U.S. and Switzerland. Waiting times for appointments are strikingly different and not in favor of the first country. There are a lot of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals because of such gaps. But Collier has a solution:
My greatest hope is that there becomes a private blockchain for the government where everyone can keep their medical records for privacy and security. No matter what doctor you visit, it is connected to every EMR. You can instantly pull up patient records in real time and see exactly what’s going on.
Building trust and efficiency in Healthtech
Most Americans don’t have a medical mindset, meaning they just verbally tell this or that doctor what procedures they’ve had before. But it would be much more convenient if they had it all in one place, safe and sound.
You can’t get emotionally attached to a product because by getting feedback that is not the most positive, you can become a wall in defense of what you’re doing instead of hearing critics’ arguments. I have to put my voice aside, even when it comes to what I think the button should look like, and how it will work best for the user, no matter what my opinion is.
Collier also shared her view of SMM strategy – when it comes to health tech, I haven’t seen any company that uses social media to the extent that other companies in other industries might use it. You don’t have to put up silly memes and Tik Tock in health tech. At the same time, it’s not enough to just have a social media presence, especially when it comes to new technologies like Web 3. Not every company needs a metaverse. Just because you have web3 doesn’t mean you have to have a metaverse and doesn’t mean you have to have NFTs, but being able to use social media is important.
For users to come back and keep using technology, they need to know that there is good intent behind the data they provide to the company.
Collier notes that her career path is not the most common, but there are nurses who have moved on to software developers, and there are pharmacists who have moved on to UX-UI designers. It’s important to start somewhere:
Go through LinkedIn, find someone who works in a field that interests you, and send a couple of people a message saying, “Hey, can you chat for 15 minutes?” You’ll be surprised how many conversations you can have just by asking because the answer is always known until you ask. So build your network and find people who are potentially in that field.
The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.
Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?
Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels.
Listen to our podcast to get some useful tips on your next startup.
During this episode of our Careminds podcast, we discuss the complexities of product management and go-to-market strategies with our guest, Donna Cichani. Donna has a background in product management, A/B testing, and data analysis, and has worked with notable organizations such as Johns Hopkins Medicine, KPMG US, and JP Morgan. Currently, she is the lead product manager at Heal.
Our conversation with Donna covers topics like data analysis and strategic product planning, the differing mindsets between 0 to 1 and one to end product development, and methods to increase user engagement and product optimization. Drawing from her diverse experience in industries like healthcare, technology, banking, and finance, Donna shares her thoughts on the importance of strategic planning in product management.
Defining Success Criteria for Product Stages
When determining the success of a product, you consider both the user perspective and the business perspective. Using the example of an RPM solution called Pulse, designed for chronic disease management at Heal, we can explore the key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that matter most.
Firstly, there are patient-centric KPIs that focus on adoption and usage. Monitoring how often users engage with the solution to record their vitals and biometrics is crucial. The main goal is to encourage patients to stay proactive in managing their chronic conditions by using the solution more frequently.
User centricity is key, focusing on how you are improving life and the experience for the end user.
Secondly, clinical outcomes are also important. By tracking improvements in specific health measures, such as A1C levels for diabetic patients or maintaining healthy blood pressure ranges for hypertensive patients, we can gauge the effectiveness of the solution in promoting better health.
Also, business KPIs, such as attribution, play a significant role. For the RPM solution, it is important to know what percentage of patients using the solution are attributed to Heal for their primary care doctors.
Defining the best approach for optimizing a product depends on the specific product and its maturity curve. Take, for example, the RPM solution mentioned earlier. The primary goal of any RPM solution is to encourage users to engage with it consistently and measure their biometrics routinely.
At one point, the team behind the RPM solution considered expanding its features to include medication refill reminders, envisioning a more comprehensive ecosystem for patient monitoring. However, they quickly recognized the importance of perfecting their core RPM capabilities before adding secondary features. By maintaining focus on their core competency, they ensured they wouldn’t dilute the solution’s main purpose.
Optimization often involves considering the user experience, especially when it comes to healthcare solutions. In the case of the RPM solution, refining its core features contributed significantly to increased patient engagement. This example highlights the importance of prioritizing the optimization of a product’s primary functions before expanding its scope.
When to Focus on New Features or Enhancements in Product Development
You should invest heavily in user research as it’s crucial for driving customer adoption and engagement. During the discovery phase, our team spent considerable time observing patients in their natural environments, using existing products like glucometers, and capturing their day-to-day experiences. This research also included understanding how nurses, doctors, and other providers utilized data points during home visits.
By conducting ethnography studies, user research, and interviews, we were able to identify key pain points, which we then translated into enhancements and feature opportunities to drive engagement. To ensure customer adoption, it’s essential to focus on understanding users’ pain points, observe their interactions with your product or similar products, and avoid relying solely on secondary sources or high-level questions.
I don’t think that user research for usability testing ends during the discovery phase.
It’s important to note that user research and usability testing don’t end during the discovery phase. After creating our first prototype, we went through two additional rounds of usability testing to validate our assumptions, identify any flaws in our user flow, and refine the solution iteratively. This process continued up until the launch of the minimum viable product (MVP).
The ability of product managers to remain detached from their original plans, even after investing significant time and effort, is fascinating. When real data no longer supports the initial plan, it’s crucial to let it go, find a new direction, and create a better product that serves users more effectively. This adaptability is an essential aspect of successful product management.
Effective Optimization Techniques & The Best Ways to Apply Them
Optimization techniques focus on understanding existing processes, examining them through the lens of various stakeholders involved in the end-to-end flow, and identifying opportunities for efficiencies. For instance, by analyzing a process that takes 10 days and involves five stakeholders, you can uncover ways to reduce the number of stakeholders or the time each takes to complete their part.
Process mapping, a technique that visually represents the steps involved in a process, helps identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and areas for improvement. A/B testing is another valuable technique, where two different versions of a feature or product are tested with the target audience to determine which performs better.
In my experience, one of the keys to successful optimization is to involve the entire team in the process.
Involving the entire team, including product, engineering, design, sales, and marketing, leads to a more holistic view of challenges and opportunities, ultimately driving better optimization decisions. Keeping the end user in mind is crucial, as the goal is to enhance their experience.
It’s important to acknowledge that the rapid growth of product management as a career has led to a mix of undisputed go-to practices and those still being defined through trial and error. Sharing experiences and learning from others in the community can help navigate this evolving field and contribute to its development.
What Drives a Product Manager: The Exciting Facets of a PM’s Career
Effective management in product management involves three key aspects. First, tailor your approach to the needs of each individual on your team, recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Second, invest in the long-term career growth of your team members, extending beyond the scope of your organization, by providing mentorship and opportunities for personal and professional development.
The third aspect involves being able to oversee the work of your team without micromanaging, while still being prepared to jump in and help when necessary. Balancing trust and autonomy with support is essential for successful management.
It’s an exciting time for all the PMs because we are focusing on doing good and building impactful products and services that can make people’s lives better.
In terms of current excitement in the field, AI and machine learning are opening many doors in product management. There’s a rewarding shift in focus in both healthcare and fintech industries. In fintech, increased emphasis on financial literacy and access to banking products for the unbanked population is driving positive change. Meanwhile, healthcare is moving towards value-based care, focusing on preventative measures and overall population health, which reduces costs and the burden on the healthcare system. This is an exciting time for product managers as they work on building impactful products and services that improve people’s lives.
As product managers continue to navigate this rapidly evolving field, learning from industry experts like Donna and sharing experiences within the community will be invaluable in driving growth and creating impactful products that make a difference in people’s lives. Key takeaways from our conversation include:
Defining success criteria for product stages: It’s crucial to consider both user and business perspectives when determining the success of a product.
Focusing on core competencies in optimization: Prioritize optimizing a product’s primary functions before expanding its scope or adding new features.
Conducting user research and embracing adaptability: Engage in user research, usability testing, and iterate on your product based on data and feedback, and remain open to change when necessary.
Effective management and exciting developments in the field: Tailor your approach to individual team members, invest in their long-term career growth, and maintain a balance between autonomy and support. Embrace the exciting opportunities in AI, machine learning, and the shifting focus of various industries.
The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.
Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?
Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels.
Listen to our podcast to get some useful tips on your next startup.
Today’s Careminds series features a special conversation with Russell Taff, the former head of product at Ready. Russell, with his wide range of experience and in-depth understanding, shared his perspectives on the healthtech industry. We had discussions spanning from the granular details to broader insights, as we tracked his journey from being a software developer to ascending to the role of VP of product. The narrative is rich with pointers that could help new engineers pave their path to success. Let’s dive right in.
Choosing Product Development: The Story Behind the Decision
From his formative years at General Assembly in New York, Russell first cut his teeth on web development. His initial technical background was broadened significantly during an apprenticeship at an early-stage EdTech startup, where Russell learned valuable lessons about product management, including the importance of clear communication, vision, and capacity planning.
Russell’s career took a decisive turn when he transitioned into roles as a support engineer and solutions architect at a Series B startup. He found himself at the forefront of the company’s relationship with its user base, effectively translating complex technical concepts into business cases. His experiences there amplified his growing interest in product management.
His first significant role as a product manager was at Rocket Wagon, an IoT consulting firm. A mentor, Alex Casts, provided him with invaluable guidance on incorporating data at the core of their operations. Casts also introduced Russell to powerful project management principles that have since become part of his professional toolkit.
When Russell eventually joined health tech firm Ready, as Director of Product Operations, his key focus was to enhance the product’s scalability and make product feedback more effective. Following a promotion to Vice President of Product at Ready, Russell faced the challenge of steering the company in a new direction as COVID-related demands began to recede. He needed to have both a grand vision for the company’s future and a clear plan for how to get there, requiring precise financial management, astute risk assessment, and a high degree of focused execution.
Transitioning into Product Management: What Qualities Do You Need?
Firstly, having a sense of compassion is key. Having had firsthand experience at the frontline, I’ve developed empathy for users. It’s essential to understand the reasons behind users’ requests for new features or bug fixes. Don’t just see these as new tasks; delve into the core of why these requests are being made. Trust me, this understanding will build trust and create a powerful dialogue with users.
Always be open to learning. Learn from everyone – those above you, those below you. Never shy away from saying, “I don’t quite understand this, could you explain further?” Embrace every teachable moment that comes your way.
Keep your hands dirty. It’s vital to be involved in every step of product development. Before using a new template or an existing one in a new project, test it out yourself. Ensure it’s the right fit. Don’t just try to make things work; ensure they’re the right tools for the job.
Don’t forget to include visual representations of your ideas. It’s not just about words on paper; your ideas need to come to life visually. This approach fosters collaboration and opens up opportunities for feedback.
How Software Engineers Can Get Better at Business Documentation
Trust-building is a must in any work relationship. Be clear about why you’re questioning anything to prevent any misunderstanding about your intentions. It’s all too easy for stakeholders to feel their ideas are being dismissed when they hear “no,” even when the real issue is limited resources.
Communicating with stakeholders to understand their perspective is vital. Gathering insights and helping justify requests ensures a shared understanding.
Cultivate trust by clearly articulating your reasoning, explaining the “whys” and “why nots,” and showing how an idea might work now or in the future. Displaying vulnerability and a readiness to learn can also help create a collaborative environment where everyone feels comfortable admitting when they don’t understand something.
As a leader, it’s vital to create a space where vulnerability is welcome. This kind of open communication can strengthen teams by fostering mutual respect and encouraging learning from each other. Conversely, if communication isn’t transparent, teams can start to fragment.
Product managers need to also demonstrate active listening and meaningful engagement with people’s ideas. Always question and understand the reasoning behind all actions – big or small. This strategy drives progress and helps prevent the team from losing sight of the collective goal.
Consumer Preferences Matter: Why Some Products Win and Others Don’t
In the dynamics of an organization, there can often be misconceptions about the technical or product teams. Particularly among stakeholders, both internal and external, the word “no” is heard frequently. This occurrence is not due to any mistrust or disbelief in the merit of an idea but often arises from the constraints of finite resources and decision-making capacity.
So, it still boils down to trust. Explain why you’re challenging something, so people understand it’s not a distrust in their ideas, but rather a consideration of priorities. Being upfront about your “whys” or “why nots” can help build this trust and foster a collaborative environment.
There needs to be a space where people feel safe to express their doubts, fostering an atmosphere of learning. It’s when communication breaks down and feelings are kept hidden that teams start to falter.
More importantly, you should listen. Understand the essence of people’s ideas, continually questioning why we’re doing what we’re doing. This mindset keeps us focused on our collective goals.
An interesting example from the healthcare sector illustrates how behavioral economics influence consumer decisions. The ‘left digit bias’ concept, where even a slight price difference, like choosing between gas priced at 4.99 and 5.01, impacts choices.
Pre-pandemic, healthcare choices were frequently based on value and accessibility rather than exhaustive comparisons. However, in the post-pandemic world, factors like convenience, safety, and trust in service providers have become paramount. By understanding what elicits positive or negative experiences, we can craft solutions that resonate more effectively with users.
Adding or Improving: When Is the Right Time to Shift Focus in Product Development?
We frequently see companies rush to release new features or products without putting enough thought into tracking their performance or visibility. This common shortcoming can lead to missed signals that are critical to various stakeholders within the organization. It’s crucial to align on the data with all parties involved, ensuring the agreed-upon success metrics are clearly defined and measurable for each project.
Moreover, understanding your audience also helps, whether that’s internal users navigating workflows or external customers engaging with your product. Each product or feature released should cater to a specific cohort and encourage them to perform a well-defined action. This could vary from clicking a sign-up button to entering their insurance information into a workflow. The key is to clearly define these aspects, understand them, and engage in targeted personalization and segmentation to encourage action.
Having a clear vision and articulating it effectively is crucial. Each feature we’re working on must contribute to the meaningful future of the company.
While the idea of testing might conjure images of lengthy processes with numerous steps, the reality is much simpler. By having a defined cohort and a clear action, you can execute simple tests even at the point of release. Changes to words or colors, A/B testing in production, and other modifications can yield insightful data about how to move your target audience over the action line effectively.
This understanding of growth and goal-setting is crucial. Good product management also requires keeping an eye on environmental factors such as economic conditions and current events, which may affect your product or its marketing strategy. For instance, in the healthcare sector, the news cycle can greatly influence public perception. By aligning your message with the current sentiment, you can tap into these fluctuations and use them to your advantage.
Additionally, timing should align with communication, especially in value-based care workflows. The comprehension of environmental factors and patient lifestyles contributes to more meaningful communication.
The 80/20 principle advises focusing 80% of your time on the most crucial 20% of the work. This strategy guides prioritization and ensures that important tasks get the attention they need.
If you understand your patients or users’ routines, you can communicate effectively at the most opportune times. While it’s essential to grasp the difference between correlation and causation, hypothesizing about potential correlations and reducing noise as much as possible can help you master your data rather than always playing catch-up.
What Are the Essentials of Building a Successful Product Development Team?
The concept of collective ownership is something product managers should be passionate about and strive to bring to each project. Rusell believes that including everyone in the team, from ideation through to solution, cultivates a greater sense of ownership and responsibility. This shared ownership fosters team unity, enhances motivation, and ultimately results in a product that everyone is more emotionally invested in.
For every new project, it’s essential to include everyone in the team from the initial ideation phase through to solution. This approach fosters a sense of collective ownership.
The impact of this approach is significant because teams that feel a sense of ownership, rather than just contribution, are more likely to be driven by empathy for the end-user. This empathy can lead to more user-centric solutions, as team members feel more compelled to question and improve upon aspects of the product that may not provide an optimal user experience, even if they adhere to the original specifications.
Further, incorporating input from stakeholders at all levels and across different teams can strengthen the overall solution. For instance, involving customer service in brainstorming sessions can provide valuable insights from a unique perspective. Such inclusive collaboration not only drives motivation but also ensures a richer understanding of the problem and the proposed solution.
Taking the concept of collective ownership a step further, it’s important to consider the positive habits and associations we want to foster with what we’re building. Using BJ Fogg’s behavior model, which posits that behavior is a product of motivation, ability, and a prompt, we can create solutions that users will find genuinely beneficial and become habitual users of.
A practical application of this model can be seen in the telehealth space, where functionality has been transformative, particularly for those with limited access to healthcare services, such as individuals in rural areas. These tools are especially vital for mental health services, which might be scarce in these regions.
However, while these advancements are promising, caution must be exercised to avoid pitfalls such as overprescribing. In this regard, technology can provide a solution by utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze comprehensive patient data. Such insights can lead to personalized treatment plans, thereby reducing the risk of unnecessary prescriptions.
Wrapping Up
In our engaging podcast with Russell Taff, we gleaned vital insights for burgeoning engineers and product managers. Here are three distilled points:
Product Management Transition: Embrace user empathy, effective communication, and continuous learning when shifting from software development to product management.
Engineering-Business Documentation: Foster trust and collaboration with clear, concise communication that encourages openness among stakeholders.
Consumer-Centric Product Development: Understand consumer behavior and needs, incorporate data-driven strategies, and establish clear success metrics for impactful product development.
Collective Ownership in Teams: Create a sense of shared responsibility to enhance motivation and create more user-centric solutions.
Behavioral Economics in Healthcare: Consider behavioral economics and adapt to shifting consumer preferences, particularly in light of significant industry changes, such as those induced by the pandemic.
The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.
Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?
Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels.
Listen to our podcast to get some useful tips on your next startup.
Isn’t it strange that despite all the talk about data security in healthcare, often there’s little action taken? Imagine finding out about a data breach only after losing valuable information! This was the reality for Professional Finance Company, a healthcare debt collector in Colorado. They experienced a cyberattack that affected nearly 2 million people. Although no misuse of private information was found, the final outcome remains uncertain.
But the risk doesn’t stop at late detection. Data breaches can be expensive, sometimes even forcing businesses to shut down or pay massive fines. If you’re in the medical field dealing with patient information, securing that data isn’t just important—it’s absolutely vital. However, the complexity of data security can lead teams to take shortcuts. In this article, we’re going to discuss how to overcome the challenges of keeping health data safe.
Healthcare data security means protecting patient information. This could be personal details, medical history, or financial facts. The aim is to prevent unauthorized access, modification, or destruction of this data.
Let’s illustrate this with a scenario: a patient is moving to a new city and needs to transfer their medical records to a new doctor. In this situation, data security becomes vital. It ensures that the patient’s information remains safe during the transfer.
But how does this information move around in a healthcare ecosystem? Let’s break it down into steps:
Both doctors must use secure ways to send the patient’s records. It stops others from peeking in.
The new specialist must check who’s sending the records. This ensures it’s coming from the right place.
Only people allowed to see the records should have access. You can do this by setting clear rules on who can see what.
The patient’s details must stay the same during the move. Checks are used to make sure nothing’s been changed.
Once the new doctor gets the records, they must store them safely. This keeps the data risk-proof both while it’s being sent and when it’s arrived.
We’ll kick off with a few statistics to appreciate the value of data-proof strategies in healthcare.
How Often Does Data Get Stolen?
Reports say the number of information thefts each year has tripled. It went from nearly 200 in 2010 to over 700 in 2022. In 2022 alone, more than 52 million people had their health information stolen in these breaches.
What’s the Cost?
According to a 2022 survey, the average cost of a healthcare data breach has hit double digits for the first time. It’s jumped to a record high of $10.1 million. That’s 9.4% more than in 2021 and 41.6% more than in 2020.
While these figures may seem overwhelming, they also highlight the urgent need for improved safety. Recognizing the benefits of data protection can inspire proactive steps towards enhancement. Here’s what a secure strategy can offer you:
Trust is key between patients and doctors. Good data security means patients feel safe sharing their information. This leads to better care.
Secure and up-to-date patient data helps doctors make better decisions. It lets them give personalized care and reduces mistakes.
Medical organizations have to follow data protection rules. For example, Americans have HIPAA, and Europe, the GDPR. These rules need strict data security to keep patient info safe. By keeping data safe, your company can meet the demands and avoid legal problems.
The healthcare sector is a common target for cyberattacks. Good data security helps protect patient info from theft and fraud.
Data breaches can cost a lot of money and harm an organization’s reputation. Prioritizing data security can help protect against these losses.
Techniques for Ensuring Healthcare Data Protection
You might be wondering about the best practices to protect information. Here’s what you should do:
One key aspect is robust access keys. They allow employees to see only the data they need for their job, which helps reduce unauthorized access. Unique passwords that change frequently, combined with multi-factor authentication, also offer additional layers of security.
Encryption plays a role in protecting data, both when it’s stored and during transfer. Using encryption protocols like AES or RSA makes stored data unreadable to unauthorized users. To protect data from being intercepted while being sent, secure communication protocols like HTTPS or SSL/TLS come in handy.
Update Systems and Apply Patches Regularly
Systems upgrades and applying can help fix known security issues and make systems safer. A vulnerability management program can help find and fix security risks.
How frequently do you check your network to identify weaknesses and gaps? Creating action plans allows addressing risks and enhancing data security. A backup and disaster recovery plan safeguards information from loss during system failures or attacks. With regular backups and a well-designed disaster recovery plan, we can restore systems and details quickly after problems occur.
Another key step is setting up intrusion detection systems. Recent stats are concerning. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports 80% of healthcare breaches come from hacking. Unauthorized access makes up another 15%. You can find and stop unauthorized access attempts timely. Meanwhile, auditing access logs helps spot and investigate suspicious activities.
Negligent employees are a big problem. They cause 61% of healthcare data breach threats. Luckily, healthcare groups are improving. They’re getting better at spotting insider breaches. They’re also better at reporting these to the Office for Civil Rights. What kinds of incidents are we talking about? Employee errors, carelessness, spying on medical records, and even data theft by bad insiders. You can provide all-inclusive training about HIPAA and security standards. Technologies that monitor access to medical records also reduce these breaches.
Healthcare Data Security: Obstacles and Mitigation Tips
A report by Singapore-based Cyber Risk Management (CyRiM) highlights healthcare as a sector greatly affected by cybercrimes. Hackers usually target healthcare and finance industries, with 15% and 10% of attacks respectively. In the last two years, the healthcare sector lost $25 billion.
It’s obvious that medical firms face critical data security challenges. Below are a few of them and how to curb them.
Interconnected systems, such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), often interface with third-party applications. While this integration enhances functionality, it can also inadvertently create vulnerabilities and expose sensitive information.
Solution: Maintain an inventory of connected devices, conduct vulnerability assessments, and implement network segmentation.
Even in the best of workplaces, disgruntled employees are a reality. This can potentially lead to insider threats, endangering the company’s security and potentially compromising sensitive details.
Solution: Remove previous staff from all your networks and educate current ones about the costly implications of leaking data.
Establishing a robust defense system can be a costly endeavor, often beyond the financial reach of smaller hospitals. Consequently, these institutions may find themselves lacking the necessary resources and expertise to ensure adequate IT security.
Solution: Use managed security services or collaborate with cybersecurity partners. Prioritize security investments based on risk assessments.
With the advancement of technology, cyber attacks are also evolving. Actors continually adopt new strategies to compromise healthcare information, making the digital landscape an ever-changing battlefield.
Solution: Create a proactive cybersecurity program with threat intelligence, penetration testing, and incident response planning. Stay informed about emerging threats and best practices.
Conclusion
The root of the problem lies in the foundation. If you’re developing medical software and don’t prioritize IT security, you could run into major issues. The choice of the vendor matters! How well do they understand healthcare systems? Do they comply with HIPAA rules? These aren’t questions to take lightly. At The APP Solutions, security is our top priority. We leverage AI and machine learning to create the safest networks possible.
Are you tired of unpredictable security? Do you want to nip potential threats in the bud? If so, get in touch with us.
In this episode, we had a chat with Rany El Diwany, who’s the Director, Product Management at Athena Health, about handling payments from patients and dealing with insurance issues.
Rany told us about how problem-solving and managing products are related. He also talked about the usual hurdles he comes across in his job managing products.
The article below presents a summary of our conversation.
Companies’ Endless Pursuit of Solutions without Problem Clarity
In product management, the focus is not solely on building software but rather on solving business problems. As a product manager, your role is to lead a team in understanding and addressing these key problems. One effective approach is to explain the problem in a simplified manner, ensuring everyone involved shares a common understanding of the issue.
“Always start by making sure you have a full understanding of the problem before even getting to the very first solution that you want to think through.”
Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health
However, it is crucial to remember that before jumping into solutions, you must thoroughly understand the problem. Take a step back and examine the problem from different angles, exploring its nuances and complexities. This is where the double diamond principle comes into play.
Exploring the Double Diamond Principle
The double diamond principle is a framework that consists of two diamonds, each representing a specific phase: discovery and definition.
The first diamond, the discovery phase, involves gathering a wide range of qualitative and quantitative information. You’ll want to collect customer feedback, stay informed about industry trends, and analyze relevant data. This phase aims to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the problem space.
During the discovery phase, patterns and recurring themes will emerge from the gathered information. These indications of convergence signal that you are getting closer to identifying the core aspects of the problem. It’s important to pay attention to these signals as they will guide your next steps.
Convergence leads you into the second diamond, the definition phase. At this point, you organize the collected information into different work streams, horizons, or categories. With a clearer picture of the problem, you can begin prioritizing the identified areas. Prioritization is especially critical in complex domains like healthcare, where limited resources must be allocated effectively.
Once you’ve prioritized the areas, you transition from the discovery phase to the definition phase. You select the highest priority item for further analysis and solution development during this stage. While other areas are temporarily set aside, they remain in your peripheral vision for future consideration.
“If you haven’t aligned with what you’re trying to solve and agreed on what the definition of success is to start, you’re certainly gonna arrive at an end state where not everyone is happy.”
Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health
Mr. Diwany understands the significance of grasping and aligning with the problem at hand. He believes that measuring success and achieving alignment among team members heavily relies on a solid understanding of the problem being solved. Moving forward as a cohesive unit is challenging without a shared comprehension of the problem and its definition.
At Athena, Rany‘s preferred method for building alignment is by utilizing pitch decks. These decks serve as comprehensive presentations that outline the why, how, and overall plan for addressing a specific problem. They provide a foundation for sharing information and conducting readouts with stakeholders, including leadership, customers, and partners.
In Mr. Diwany‘s view, alignment is not a one-time event but an ongoing effort throughout the product development journey. Regular check-ins, discussions, and feedback loops are essential to maintaining alignment and adjusting the course if needed. By continuously revisiting and refining the understanding of the problem, the product team can stay on track and adapt as necessary to ensure that their solutions effectively address the needs of the business and its stakeholders.
By thoroughly understanding the problem space before diving into solutions, you establish a solid foundation for your work as a product manager. This approach allows for a more focused and effective product development process. You can confidently explore solutions, knowing that you clearly understand the problem you’re trying to solve. This ultimately increases your chances of developing a successful product that addresses the needs of your customers and your business.
Strategies for Analyzing and Understanding Complex Problems
From Mr. Diwany‘s perspective, objectivity is a key principle when making decisions. Emotions should not drive choices; rather, data should be the guiding force. To achieve this, asking the right questions and gathering qualitative and quantitative data is crucial.
Identifying the broad categories of the problem is only the initial step. Delving deeper and analyzing the underlying layers is equally important. This can be achieved by utilizing well-known practices such as the “five whys” technique, which helps uncover the root causes and significance of the problem. Product managers can gain a clearer perspective by breaking down complex issues into simpler components and developing an intimate understanding of the problem’s intricacies.
Effective communication is paramount throughout this process. As a product manager, you are responsible for conveying the problem to various stakeholders, including customers, leaders, and team members such as engineers and UX professionals. The goal is to ensure everyone involved shares a common understanding of the problem. Any misalignment in problem perception can lead to challenges and hinder efforts to solve the problem effectively.
Product managers should actively evangelize their comprehension of the problem space to promote a shared understanding. Even in their absence, others discussing the initiatives should be able to explain them consistently and accurately. Ron emphasizes the importance of maintaining a shared language and perception, as it ensures everyone is on the same page and facilitates effective collaboration in solving the problem.
How to Unravel Bias and Build Effective Roadmaps
“Your roadmap should be problem-focused and not solution-focused, especially because you don’t know what you’re going to learn between now and something that you might have queued up.”
Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health
Maintaining a problem-focused approach is crucial once the discovery and definition phases are complete and pitch decks and roadmaps are being developed. Ron believes that roadmaps should revolve around the problems that need to be addressed rather than being fixated on specific solutions. This is because, throughout product development, new learnings and insights may emerge, potentially rendering previously planned solutions obsolete.
While it is possible to anticipate future problem areas and prioritize them in the roadmap, the exact solutions may not be known at that stage. As the work progresses and solutions are developed, Mr. Diwany emphasizes the importance of measuring their impact and assessing if they effectively address the critical aspects of the initiative. Defining appropriate metrics to validate the impact and success of the solutions becomes crucial in this context.
“Human bias is there, and it’s easy to get attached to a solution… you need to remove that layer of emotion from the equation and be confident in the metrics that tell a successful story.”
Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health
Rany believes that within the realm of product management, it is essential to constantly remind oneself about human bias. It’s natural to become attached to a particular solution and emotionally invested in its success. However, he emphasizes the need to remove emotion from the equation and instead focus on finding the right metrics to gauge success. If a solution fails to yield the desired results, it becomes necessary to pivot and adjust based on data-driven insights.
Similarly, Rany notes that while the agile framework is valuable, it is not a rigid recipe but rather a flexible framework that should be adapted to suit the unique needs of each project. These challenges highlight the complexities inherent in product management. He believes that by recognizing these challenges and remaining open to continuous learning and adaptation, product managers can navigate the dynamic landscape of their role and strive for success.
What Are the Main Drivers of Lack of Transparency Costs in Healthcare?
One of the significant challenges in the healthcare industry revolves around understanding how different insurance companies handle various scenarios. Mr. Diwany acknowledges that each insurance provider has its policies and rules, which adds complexity to building software solutions based on logical patterns. The diverse approaches required by different insurance companies make it difficult to achieve consistency. To tackle this issue, Ron emphasizes the importance of promoting transparency, especially for patients who often have limited visibility into the internal workings of healthcare.
“We want to get to the point where we have transparency… helping patients understand what costs may occur before they actually see the provider.”
Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health
Transparency is pivotal in helping patients understand and appreciate the information typically hidden from them. It involves providing patients with upfront cost information, enabling them to make informed decisions. Ron notes that healthcare’s lack of cost visibility sets it apart from other aspects of the US economy, where prices are known before purchasing a product or service. Building trust through transparency becomes crucial, as even professionals within the healthcare industry may have doubts about their healthcare bills.
Trust can be fostered by being clear and upfront with patients about the potential costs associated with their medical encounters. Establishing transparency and trust creates an environment where some of the challenges faced by healthcare practices can be addressed. Overcoming these barriers and transitioning to a system where patients are willing to make payments or down payments for services rendered requires a significant journey.
While progress and efforts are being made to establish transparency and trust, Rany acknowledges there is still a long way to go.
Mr. Diwany explains that several functional aspects are being improved within the focus area of cost transparency.
One of these areas is insurance selection, which can be challenging due to the many insurance companies and the wide variety of insurance packages. Accurately identifying the appropriate insurance for each patient is crucial to ensure successful claims submission and payment.
Patient eligibility is another key component of cost transparency, involving understanding copayments, coinsurance, deductibles, and out-of-pocket limits. Having this information is essential for estimating costs accurately.
In addition to cost transparency, Rany emphasizes the importance of enhancing payment options. This includes exploring various methods such as digital wallets and platforms like PayPal and introducing automated payment plans. Offering flexible payment options is particularly important for patients facing financial difficulties, allowing them to pay outstanding bills over time without significant financial strain.
Opportunities and Qualities for Success in HealthTech Companies
As a PM, you’ll collaborate with diverse teams, including developers, user experience experts, analysts, customers, and leadership.
The success of a product hinges on aligning all stakeholders toward solving the identified priority problem and achieving the desired metrics. Building strong relationships and working collaboratively with people from various backgrounds and roles are crucial skills for a PM.
At Athena, the company values respect and intelligence, regardless of cultural, ethnic, or sexual orientation differences. Therefore, having strong communication skills and the ability to work with diverse groups of people are vital in this role.
“Being a PM and then being a PM in the enterprise B2B space and healthcare, there’s definitely some additional work that goes into play. And it’s hard; it’s a hard job, but it’s rewarding.”
Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health
Rany highlights that introducing the healthcare dimension adds complexity to the PM role. Unlike the focus in some PM literature, which is often business-to-consumer (B2C), healthcare often involves business-to-business (B2B) interactions. PMs with experience in B2C and enterprise B2B environments understand the thoughtful coordination required when planning, building, and developing solutions.
Athena Health serves a significant number of healthcare providers, and any changes made to their workflows can substantially impact their business operations. Coordinating deployments and providing thorough training and insights to customers is critical to minimizing disruptions and ensuring smooth transitions. Being a PM in the enterprise B2B space within healthcare demands diligent efforts to ensure that solutions enhance workflows rather than hinder them.
While being a PM, particularly in the healthcare industry, comes with challenges, Ron also emphasizes the rewarding aspects of the role. Being a PM in the healthcare industry requires unique skills and a deep understanding of the importance of effective communication and collaboration in driving successful product development.
As a product manager at Athena, Rany is invested in driving company initiatives promoting healthcare transparency. He believes leveraging technology, data, and collaboration can make significant progress in this area. Athena is about creating a system where patients have full visibility, enabling them to make informed decisions and engage in proactive planning.
You Can Foster Psychological Safety With These Two Essentials
Psychological safety is crucial for effective teamwork and innovation. Creating an environment where everyone feels safe to contribute ideas, whether good or bad, fosters creativity and innovation. Mutual respect is key. Rather than an “us versus them” mentality, the focus should be on solving problems collectively.
“One of the most important things is psychological safety, right? No one is bringing a bad idea to the table.”
Rany El Diwany – Director of Product Management at Athena Health
Building motivated and cohesive teams that enjoy working together and are enthusiastic about tackling challenges is essential. Encouraging open dialogue, valuing diverse perspectives, and creating a culture of psychological safety lay the foundation for successful problem-solving and driving innovation within the team.
Which Future Changes Should We Expect in Consumer Cost Management?
When it comes to healthcare practices, understanding and navigating costs can be complex. Practices have contracted rates with payers, but these contracts often involve intricate stipulations. For example, different charges may have different reimbursement percentages, or certain charges may not be reimbursed at all.
Helping practices gain a clear and simplified understanding of the contracted rates in various scenarios is a crucial first step. Currently, efforts are underway to provide practices with easier access to published information from payers.
While Medicare and Medicaid present additional complexities, simplifying the process for practice users to have transparent insights into contractual rates is considered a critical foundational milestone. This step will assist practices in managing costs more effectively and making informed decisions that will sustain them in the future.
Below are three major takeaways from our chat with Mr. Diwany:
Thoroughly understand the problem before diving into solutions: Product managers must invest time in understanding the problem space from different angles before developing solutions.
Transparency and cost management in healthcare: Cost transparency benefits patients and healthcare practices, leading to better financial experiences and streamlined operations.
Psychological safety for effective teamwork and innovation: Creating an environment of psychological safety, encouraging open dialogue, valuing diverse perspectives, and fostering collaboration are essential elements of effective teamwork.
The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.
Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?
Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels.
Listen to our podcast to get some useful tips on your next startup.
Welcome to another CareMinds podcast episode featuring Sameer Desai, Senior Director of Engineering and Product Management at Verona Health. In this two-part episode, Sameer Desai shares his invaluable insights into the limitations of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in addressing interoperability challenges comprehensively.
Sameer Desai’s expertise allows us to delve into the specific hurdles smaller and niche healthcare practices face in achieving interoperability. With over 12 years of experience in software development and HL7 C certification, Sameer Desai has extensive knowledge of EHR systems and their intricacies.
Throughout the episode, he sheds light on slower adoption of the FHIR standard and the cumbersome process of custom integrations they must endure to overcome interoperability challenges.
The Role of AI in Healthcare and Addressing Data Standardization Challenges
“I think we have heard about everybody transitioning to FHIR. Now, especially in the space I work in, we are going across 50 different EHRs. When you look at the FHIR standard, the maturity of FHIR APIs across EHRs varies a lot.”
Sameer Desai – Senior Director of Engineering & Product Management at Verana Health
According to Mr. Sameer Desai, the problem of lack of standardization has persisted over time. While there are standards in place, most healthcare providers consider them guidelines rather than strict requirements, leading to issues.
He mentions the transition to the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard, which many in the industry adopt. However, the maturity of FHIR varies significantly across different EHR systems. For example, one EHR may populate all the required fields correctly, while another may not adhere to the same structure or location for data population.
Mr. Sameer Desai also highlights the challenges faced in specialty areas like ophthalmology, where specific EHR systems may lack the resources or capabilities to implement the FHIR standard. Thus, some EHR systems can communicate effectively using standard formats, while others lack the capabilities or resources to do so. This presents a dilemma for building an inclusive AI program that accommodates all EHR systems, regardless of their size or resources.
He emphasizes the importance of enabling participation in AI advancements for all healthcare providers, not just those who can afford or have implemented systems like Epic. However, the customization of workflows within EHR implementations adds another layer of complexity to the FHIR framework. This is because even two Epic implementations may differ in appearance and data organization. Critical information may be stored in notes rather than standardized fields in certain fields like neurology, further complicating data extraction for algorithm development.
Mr. Sameer Desai acknowledges that such diverse data formats pose a challenge, despite recognizing that healthcare data is valuable, akin to oil. Still, it is not uniformly accessible or structured across all EHR systems. He underscores the need to address these issues and achieve standardized data formats to facilitate the development of accurate algorithms, predictions, and improvements in care quality and drug development.
Exploring the Relationship Between the Adoption of FHIR Standard and EMR/EHR Efficiency”
Mr. Sameer Desai expresses his perspective on adopting the FHIR standard and its limitations. He mentions that FHIR is still in its early stages of development and does not address all types of problems in healthcare data interoperability.
He provides an example of their current focus on helping providers submit MIPS reports, which involves administrative aspects of data. Specifically, he mentions the challenge of reconciling medications when patients visit healthcare providers. This type of specific information may not have an exact place within the FHIR standards, as FHIR is primarily evaluated as a clinical data standard. However, he notes that FHIR is also evolving to encompass financial and initiative spaces.
“So I think in the newer world, we expect, like now, we’re going to do something with images; we’re also going to do something with genomic data, which will always result in different formats.”
Sameer Desai – Senior Director of Engineering & Product Management at Verana Health
Mr. Sameer Desai emphasizes that healthcare data goes beyond just clinical information. The data requirements become more extensive as the industry shifts from transactional to value-based healthcare. They must consider factors beyond diagnosis and disease treatment, such as socioeconomic factors. The scope of data expands to include non-healthcare-related information. Progress must be made toward achieving standard formats.
Looking ahead, Mr. Sameer Desai mentions integrating images and genomic data, which will introduce further variations in data formats. However, he highlights that the challenges extend to the core clinical data, which is not yet standardized. He believes that the pace of FHIR standard adoption will help address these issues, noting that larger DH organizations have already taken the leap, and he expects others to follow suit.
Challenges in Data Plumbing: Addressing Development Obstacles for Integrating Diverse EHR Systems
“So at some point, you have to take a hit to convert that to a common model where you can apply these algorithms at scale and move forward.”
Sameer Desai – Senior Director of Engineering & Product Management at Verana Health
Mr. Sameer Desai expresses his opinion on the challenges and significance of working on healthcare data interoperability. He believes that although this job may not appear shiny or exciting to most engineers, it is crucial for the healthcare industry. Waiting for everyone to adopt the same standards is not feasible; therefore, immediate action is necessary to solve the problems at hand and make progress. He emphasized the need to address the challenges faced in the healthcare space today.
According to Mr. Sameer Desai, the challenges in this field start with technical problems such as establishing connections and sharing data, which can be solved through APIs or direct database connections. However, the real challenge arises once the data is in the environment and needs to be understood. This requires collaboration with EHR vendor partners, who may have different priorities and may be hesitant to cooperate, especially when dealing with startups that lack the leverage of larger organizations. Convincing EHR vendors to work together and establish a common data model becomes crucial, particularly when working across multiple entities.
Another obstacle is the operational aspect, where people become more dependent due to the complexity involved. Working with multiple EHR systems (30 to 50 in this case) requires finding a common data model to apply machine learning and analytical algorithms at scale. Operational challenges also arise from capturing data within EHRs, as different systems may have varied data entry and organization approaches.
He provided an example of the complexity involved in medication reconciliation, where different EHRs use diverse methods such as procedure codes, flags, reverse flags, or note templates. Human involvement becomes essential in resolving such discrepancies, leading to a greater need for larger teams to handle multiple EHR systems effectively.
“It’s also about figuring out these operational things – where does it make sense to invest in automating, and where does it make sense to actually just have people do it?”
Sameer Desai – Senior Director of Engineering & Product Management at Verana Health
Additionally, Mr. Sameer Desai mentioned the complexity at the practice level, where non-standard EHRs allow unstructured notes, and each provider or nurse practitioner may have a way of documenting information. These technological and operational challenges require balancing automation and human intervention, depending on the specific situation and the value derived from solving the problem.
He concludes by emphasizing that all startups encounter these challenges, and the key lies in finding a happy balance or a happy medium. This balance involves determining the value of solving problems and deciding whether automation or human effort is the most suitable approach. Mr. Sameer Desai considers achieving this balance to be an art or science in itself.
Unveiling Verana Health’s Strategies for Tackling Standardization Challenges in Healthcare”
Mr. Sameer Desai shares his perspective on Verana Health’s unique position and approach to solving healthcare data challenges. He believes that Verana Health has a distinct advantage in working with societies and specialties, enabling them to leverage their influence with HR vendors. By collaborating with these societies, Verana Health can request additional support in terms of data mapping and establishing connections with HR vendors.
Mr. Sameer Desai emphasizes that Verana Health’s primary focus is to provide the best customer satisfaction for its registry members. To achieve this, they meet their customers where they are. For practices using Epic, Verana Health has an FHIR injection API that allows them to easily ingest the data. This minimizes the burden on hospitals or practices. However, for practices using smaller, specialized HR systems that may not have similar integration capabilities, Verana Health is responsible for directly obtaining data from their databases.
They then work closely with the HR vendors to understand data mappings and ensure compatibility. Alternatively, if the HR systems have standardized data extracts, Verana Health works with those extracts and maps them to their common data model. This approach provides multiple options to customers, allowing them to participate in the registry and benefit from insights into the quality of care while receiving suggestions for improvement.
Additionally, Mr. Sameer Desai highlights that Verana Health considers patients’ well-being. They offer practice opportunities to participate in clinical trials, ultimately benefiting patients. While certain regions may have limited access to breakthrough treatments and trial participation, Verana Health strives to solve data-related problems for them. They facilitate connectivity to platforms and ensure that these regions are included, enabling them to be part of the larger healthcare ecosystem.
Furthermore, Verana Health leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to go beyond structured data. They analyze unstructured data such as notes and employ AI models to identify additional information. Verana Health excels not only in identification but also in converting this unstructured data into a structured format. By doing so, they can provide valuable structured data to research organizations and clinical trials, aiding in research advancements.
Achieving Effective Problem Solving and Execution in Product Development: Verana Health’s Collaborative Model and Success Stories
“I build the platform, I get the data, and then my outbound product managers are building experiences based on which customer they are serving.”
Sameer Desai – Senior Director of Engineering & Product Management at Verana Health
Mr. Sameer Desai discusses the collaborative structure and roles within Verana Health’s product management team. He explains that the structure resembles a common model seen in Silicon Valley, known as inbound or outbound product managers or technical product managers versus traditional product managers. Regardless of the terminology, Mr. Sameer Desai’s focus at Verana Health is on building the platform.
“So I am more technically oriented in terms of setting up the platform and looking at how we can scale this.”
Sameer Desai – Senior Director of Engineering & Product Management at Verana Health
As a technical product manager, Mr. Sameer Desai is primarily responsible for platform development and scalability. He considers the developers and individuals who will create additional applications on top of the platform as his customers. He focuses on the technical aspects of platform setup and operational scalability rather than direct customer interaction.
On the other hand, the outbound product managers work with the data and insights generated by the platform. They use this information to create tailored experiences for different customer segments. Verana Health serves various customer bases, including societies, doctors/providers, and clinical trial sponsors. Each customer base has specific needs, and the outbound product managers build experiences and applications to address those needs.
Mr. Sameer Desai emphasizes that the platform he develops remains agnostic to the specific customer bases. He acts as a layer between the data insights and the engineers, ensuring they clearly understand how the data is used without burdening them with customer-specific details. This structure allows for effective collaboration and streamlines the product development process.
Verana Health’s Resourceful Approach to Ensuring Smooth and Efficient Scaling
According to Mr. Sameer Desai, operational scaling at Verana Health involves several key aspects. Firstly, connecting with different electronic health record (EHR) systems is challenging, some of which are cloud-hosted while others are on-premises. With over 1,500 connections to individual practices, the goal is to make the setup process as easy as possible, particularly for small practices with limited IT resources. Verana Health focuses on building user-friendly and remotely manageable solutions to alleviate the burden on these practices.
In addition to the operational challenges, there is a focus on reducing data latency. In contrast to the traditional approach of working with claims data that may have a lag of 90 days, their goal is to shorten the lag to weeks. Maintaining connections and ensuring stability is crucial in achieving this objective. The company takes responsibility for ensuring the smooth running and uptime of these connections, focusing on maintaining low latency for data refreshes.
Another aspect of scaling involves the staggered implementation of different EHRs. Each EHR system may be adopted by practices at different times, which requires careful planning and program management. Resources on their side and the EHR partners’ side are limited, so efficient planning is necessary to make the implementation process feasible. Verana Health has dedicated mapping and clinical data transformation resources available for this purpose.
Once the data is received, another scaling layer comes into play, addressing data curation and organization for specific disease areas. Verana Health focuses on understanding market needs and the requirements of research organizations to effectively curate and transform the data for analysis and research purposes.
While these aspects are important, Mr. Sameer Desai emphasizes that the first two aspects, which are external-facing and involve operational scaling, hold greater significance. Meeting their partners’ needs is a priority, and achieving it requires a combination of art and induction in the planning process. It is not solely a scientific endeavor but also involves carefully considering various factors to ensure successful scaling and operational efficiency.
The Future of Interoperability: Navigating Integrations and Data Streams for Smaller Startups and Niche Practices
“We are moving towards data set marketplaces, where startups can leverage pre-cleaned data sets and build experiences that other competitors are not focused on.”
Sameer Desai – Senior Director of Engineering & Product Management at Verana Health
According to Mr. Sameer Desai, the healthcare industry lags behind other sectors in effectively leveraging data. He acknowledges that there are reasons for this discrepancy, noting that healthcare cannot acquire data in the same way as consumer industries.
However, Mr. Sameer Desai points out an emerging trend in the overall data landscape: the rise of data set marketplaces. He cites AWS as an example of a company that has recently introduced its marketplace, and he believes that other vendors are pursuing similar initiatives. This development will make the data space more interesting as organizations undertake the initial groundwork. They’ll be responsible for the data cleaning and preparation processes, making curated data sets available in these marketplaces.
Mr. Sameer Desai highlights the potential benefits for startups in this evolving landscape. By leveraging these curated data sets, startups can explore developing new AI models to address challenges that other industries and competitors may not be focusing on. Alternatively, they can utilize the data to build unique experiences that competitors have not yet explored or may not be interested in pursuing.
He emphasizes exhaustively exploring these options before resorting to expensive data acquisition methods. Mr. Sameer Desai acknowledges that establishing numerous connections and acquiring data through traditional means can be a capital-intensive process.
Here are five key takeaways from our discussion with Mr. Sameer Desai:
Data standardization challenges persist in healthcare, hindering interoperability and AI’s full potential.
Although still in its early stages, adopting the FHIR standard is essential for achieving data interoperability in healthcare.
Technical and operational obstacles must be addressed, including reconciling different data entry methods and addressing variations in data organization across different systems.
Verana Health employs unique strategies to tackle data standardization challenges. They also offer multiple options for practices of different sizes and capabilities to participate and benefit from insights into care quality.
Operational scaling, reducing data latency, and effective data curation are crucial for successful healthcare data management.
The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.
Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?
Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels.
Listen to our podcast to get some useful tips on your next startup.
Today, there is so much information in the world that no human brain can process it. Just imagine, when surfing your favorite social network, you see, not relevant content from friends and interest groups in the feed, but in general, everything that anyone has ever added there. In a word, chaos and confusion! Few people would like this.
To avoid this, companies working with big data use various methods to analyze the video/audio and text content they have so that every consumer of goods or services remains satisfied and active on the site for as long as possible.
These methods include predictive analytics and data mining. They are often confused, considering that they are about the same thing. However, there is a difference, although it can’t be denied that the goal is the same – to lure as many consumers as possible under your commercial umbrella. One comes out of the other.
To explain the difference between data mining and predictive analytics, let’s first talk about each method.
Data Mining is the process of simplifying and generalizing a colossal amount of data in a humanly-understandable way using machine learning technologies. During this process, various clusters of information are discovered, analyzed, sorted, and classified.
Thus, patterns are revealed based on which it is possible to draw certain conclusions and decide what to do next with the results obtained.
Depending on the subtlety of the customization, you can get hyper-precise results that will work for almost every client in a personalized way. According to aMicrostrategy report, 92% of respondents plan to roll out advanced analytics capabilities in their organizations.
Data mining is also used in risk management, cybersecurity, and software optimization in addition to forecasting the demand for goods/services and predicting behavioral factors.
Predictive analytics is the process of extracting valuable data from an existing system and then identifying specific trends and tendencies, based on which you can plan further business steps. Then, based on previous experience, future results are modeled by using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
This does not mean a 100% likelihood of events. Still, a high proportion of predictions helps marketers and business analysts navigate which course to lead the company in the near or distant future.
What is the Difference between Data Mining and Predictive Analytics?
Data mining helps organizations build a background and understand the current situation. In addition, predictive analytics is taking on a more proactive role, allowing users to anticipate results and develop preemptive strategies for a wide range of future scenarios while avoiding crises.
Simply put, these are interconnected high-tech processes. Without data mining, predictive analytics could not have appeared in principle since there would be no place to get information for further predictions. And without predictive analytics, data mining would not make much sense either, since the mere presence of structured information, without a further action plan, is not a very useful tool. Data mining illustrates today’s picture, while predictive analytics tells you what to do with it tomorrow.
Thus, data mining turns out to be a stepping stone for predictive analytics. Apart from this, data mining is passive, while predictive analytics is active and can offer a clear picture.
Imagine that you have gathered three friends and decided which pizza to buy – vegetarian, meat, or fish? You just poll everyone and conclude what exactly needs to be ordered in your favorite pizzeria. But what if, for example, you have three million friends and several hundred varieties of pizza from several dozen establishments? It’s not so easy to deal with an order, is it? Nevertheless, it is what data mining specialists do.
According to this principle, when you go to an online store to buy earrings, you will immediately be offered a bracelet, pendant, and rings to match. And to the swimsuit – a straw hat, sunglasses, and sandals.
It is precisely the ideally structured array of specific information that make it possible to identify a suspicious declaration of income among millions of others of the same kind.
Data mining is conventionally divided into three stages:
Exploration, in which the data is sorted into essential and non-essential (cleaning, data transformation, selection of subsets)
A model building or hidden pattern identification, the same datasets are applied to different models, allowing better choices. It is called competitive pricing of models
Deployment – the selected data model is used to predict the results
Data mining is handled by highly qualified mathematicians and engineers as well as AI/ML experts.
According to a report byZion Market Research, the global predictive analytics market was valued at approximately $3.49 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach approximately $10.95 billion by 2022, with a CAGR between 2016 and 2022 at about 21%.
Predictive analytics works with behavioral factors, making it possible to predict customer behavior in the future – how many will come, how many will go, how to change the product, and what promotions to offer to prevent consumer churn.
You can make predictions based on one person’s behavior or a group united by a specific criterion (gender, age, place of residence, etc.) Predictive analytics uses not only statistics, but ML, teaching itself.
Business analysts interpret forecasts from inferred patterns. If you don’t predict how your regular and hypothetical customers will behave, you will lose the battle with your competitors.
Data Mining and Predictive Analytics in Healthcare
The healthcare system was one of the first to adopt AI technologies, including data mining and predictive analytics. It includes detecting fraud, managing customer relationships, and measuring the effectiveness of specific treatments. And, of course, there is such a massive layer of developments as predictive medicine based on predictive analytics.
Using the example of the latter, we will explain how it works. Let’s say you have a cancer patient like thousands of other patients in your hospital. Based on their treatment, you decide which regimen to choose for this particular patient, taking into account all of the characteristics. The more patients you add to the database, the more relevant solution will be given by the self-learning application for future patients.
Another example: you can adjust the number of medical personnel in a hospital depending on the reasons for the visit. If most of the patients who come to you are kids, it’s time to expand the pediatric ward. AI will help the HR department see an impending problem before it becomes urgent. Also, such a system can predict peak loads in hours/days/months of hospital operation, which will make it possible to intelligently plan the shifts of doctors and nurses.
Clustering patients into groups will help assign a patient to a risk group for a particular disease before getting sick. For example, those prone to diabetes or disseminated sclerosis need to stick to diets so as not to worsen their health. If the patient prepares in advance, the course of the disease will be far less intense and more effectively treated.
But data analysis tools can be helpful not only for doctors. So, a special application can remind the patient that it is time to replenish the supply of prescription drugs, and if necessary, automatically pay for them at the nearest pharmacy and order home delivery.
According to spending data reported by theCenters for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the United States’ national healthcare expenditure reached $ 3.5 trillion in 2017. Applying a 12-17% savings to that number, the estimated cost reduction from system-wide data analytics efforts could earn between $ 420 billion and $ 595 billion.
It would be a crime to ignore such a lucrative market, where supply will not soon outstrip demand. Try trading with The APP Solutions now. Our company has excellent experience in developing health apps.
In the year 2021, health is a topic that is discussed more than others. And people are navigating this challenging domain more and more.
In the year 2021, health is a topic that is discussed more than others. And people are navigating this challenging domain more and more.
The App Solutions was always ahead of the curve, with its healthcare projects, both R&D and users facing ones. So it was only a matter of time when we would implement all our knowledge and expertise and encompass it in one app, one that has all the health tracking functions needed and leverage cutting edge technologies, at the same time. BuenoPR became this app.
BuenoPR Project Description
Bueno is the app that gathers all health-related information in one place. On the one hand, it is made to provide patients with comprehensive knowledge about their conditions, prescriptions, and lab results, with the ability to contact their practitioner or care team anytime via chat. On the other hand, Bueno provides up-to-date information about the state of the patient’s insurance, including individual deductible and benefits highlights.
How does Bueno make a difference in this niche?
Preventive medicine powered by AI
Bueno leverages machine learning to analyze all the health data from its user’s EHR to ensure the preventive care they need. Then, powered by Orb Health, the app provides the analyzed data to the care team to make suggestions to patients regarding time to do a check-up, make lab tests or pay attention to particular symptoms.
All the info about user’s condition in their pocket
Integration with Mayo clinic helps to provide users with comprehensive and 100% science-based information on their conditions. It also serves educational purposes with articles on different organs and systems in the body, and lab tests.
Tracking down all the metrics from one app
Users can track all life-important metrics such as height, weight, activity, blood glucose, and others, all in one place. The app supports both manual entry of these measurements and receiving info from the doctor’s office. It also has integration with Validic so that the data can be pulled from health devices.
Virtual care
The app provides a 24/7 possibility to contact the care team, including the user’s practitioner and trained nurses who can answer any bothering questions at any time, help with understanding a care plan, and schedule the next visit to the doctor’s office.
Gamification
The app presents a system of goals and badges to keep people engaged while improving their health. Achievements are given both for regular app usage, including its functions and reaching personal health goals (e.g., steps count).
Insurance insights
Using integration with Change Healthcare, we can provide information on the health of our users and let them track how it affects their Health insurance. In addition, it allows total transparency and zero worries when it comes to expenses.
The main goals of BuenoPR are the following:
Provide users with comprehensive insights into their health using their Electronic Health Record (EHR) data processed by AI
Ensure 24/7 health support
Reduce stress to a minimum with transparent info, excellent UX and gamification techniques
This combination of functions makes the app unique on the market.
Project technical specification
The main product is a mobile application for patients. Its features include:
360° overview of patient’s health (metrics that are collected from the devices, doctor’s office and manually logged, social activity, allergies, medications, health challenges)
Chat with the care team (doctor and nurses)
Knowledge base with all the info on the body, lab tests, and conditions
Lab results
Care activities prescribed by the doctor
Insurance information
Notification system
Achievements
The other elements of the service include:
Subscription website – to submit registration forms and subsequently, for subscription management;
Admin Dashboard contains the following features:
General application activity overview;
In-app analytics;
User management
Customer support operations.
Key Solutions
Orb Health
Orb helps connect Bueno to the doctor’s office and ensures users only see the most up-to-date information on their conditions. At the same time, Orb is the primary source of info in the app, including raw data from the EHR and results of AI processing. Its predictive algorithm is used to detect negative health trends and alert nurses about at-risk patients.
For Bueno users, this means that their care team knows exactly when to reach out to schedule a doctor’s appointment or do a necessary lab test. Statistics show that this approach prevents 2 out of 3 visits to ER.
Validic
Validic provides one API connection to access data from the best mHealth apps and devices. Since it covers most of the popular devices, our users don’t have to worry about not connecting their particular one to our app. This was one of the main problems we discovered in the competitor’s apps during the inception phase.
Change HealthCare
Since our solution has provided clinical information and insurance info, we needed to connect a third-party solution that would collect data from insurance providers on the user-specific data about their plans. Change really helped us to ensure complete transparency regarding health expenses to our users.
Mayo Clinic
One of the problems we aimed to solve in the Bueno app was the lack of correct patient information. So often, people tend to rely on posts on the internet, leading to a lack of professional help and even usage of harmful practices. So, instead of searching health-related info on Google, we wanted them to have all the relevant information that would be 100% science-based and backed up by research all in one place. The Mayo Clinic integration serves this aim perfectly, providing articles based on research and 150 years of medical practice.
You can’t go far without proper data analytics. An understanding of the state of things regarding the application, the way customers are using it, and how efficiently it operates, hangs on through-and-through analytics.
The app needed a practical and accessible mobile analytics solution to gain insights regarding application use and user engagement.
We have used Firebase because of its ease of use and flexibility. With its help, the company can see what is going on in the application and react appropriately.
It is also used as a platform for push notifications delivery.
Data security and HIPAA
Data security is one of the significant challenges that come with developing any application that deals with sensitive data. And with health apps, it becomes even more important.
The main requirement was HIPAA compliance which is usually identified with foundations secured by the law:
Emergency clinics.
Corporate medicinal services associations.
Research establishments.
Insurance agencies that manage patients and their data.
However, since HIPAA PHI security necessity likewise applies to partners of these offices, it was extremely important to follow these guidelines for user data management, transparent data use, and guaranteeing the safety of data.
The following solutions were used to provide appropriate data security measures:
HTTPS, TLS, SSH for data-in-transit encryption;
Activity Logging + Access Management;
Handling all the secure data on the backend;
Making sure all the third-party solutions are HIPAA compliant;
Limited access to the production database at the network level.
BuenoPR is an absolutely unique app and another great case in the large portfolio of our healthcare projects. It provides all the necessary data for users about their health, and connects them with their care team, but it also uses cutting-edge technology to prevent conditions and complications.
For our company, it was a great experience, applying all our expertise both in the Native mobile development and healthcare domains to create an app that would save people’s lives.
Using the Agile approach, and receiving quality feedback from users, each iteration really helped us deliver a product that would be useful, rich in functionality, and extremely easy to navigate.
BuenoPR Project Description
Bueno is the app that gathers all health-related information in one place. On the one hand, it is made to provide patients with comprehensive knowledge about their conditions, prescriptions, and lab results, with the ability to contact their practitioner or care team anytime via chat. On the other hand, Bueno provides up-to-date information about the state of the patient’s insurance, including individual deductible and benefits highlights.
How does Bueno make a difference in this niche?
Preventive medicine powered by AI
Bueno leverages machine learning to analyze all the health data from its user’s EHR to ensure the preventive care they need. Then, powered by Orb Health, the app provides the analyzed data to the care team to make suggestions to patients regarding time to do a check-up, make lab tests or pay attention to particular symptoms.
All the info about user’s condition in their pocket
Integration with Mayo clinic helps to provide users with comprehensive and 100% science-based information on their conditions. It also serves educational purposes with articles on different organs and systems in the body, and lab tests.
Tracking down all the metrics from one app
Users can track all life-important metrics such as height, weight, activity, blood glucose, and others, all in one place. The app supports both manual entry of these measurements and receiving info from the doctor’s office. It also has integration with Validic so that the data can be pulled from health devices.
Virtual care
The app provides a 24/7 possibility to contact the care team, including the user’s practitioner and trained nurses who can answer any bothering questions at any time, help with understanding a care plan, and schedule the next visit to the doctor’s office.
Gamification
The app presents a system of goals and badges to keep people engaged while improving their health. Achievements are given both for regular app usage, including its functions and reaching personal health goals (e.g., steps count).
Insurance insights
Using integration with Change Healthcare, we can provide information on the health of our users and let them track how it affects their Health insurance. In addition, it allows total transparency and zero worries when it comes to expenses.
The main goals of BuenoPR are the following:
Provide users with comprehensive insights into their health using their Electronic Health Record (EHR) data processed by AI
Ensure 24/7 health support
Reduce stress to a minimum with transparent info, excellent UX and gamification techniques
This combination of functions makes the app unique on the market.
Project technical specification
The main product is a mobile application for patients. Its features include:
360° overview of patient’s health (metrics that are collected from the devices, doctor’s office and manually logged, social activity, allergies, medications, health challenges)
Chat with the care team (doctor and nurses)
Knowledge base with all the info on the body, lab tests, and conditions
Lab results
Care activities prescribed by the doctor
Insurance information
Notification system
Achievements
The other elements of the service include:
Subscription website – to submit registration forms and subsequently, for subscription management;
Admin Dashboard contains the following features:
General application activity overview;
In-app analytics;
User management
Customer support operations.
Key Solutions
Orb Health
Orb helps connect Bueno to the doctor’s office and ensures users only see the most up-to-date information on their conditions. At the same time, Orb is the primary source of info in the app, including raw data from the EHR and results of AI processing. Its predictive algorithm is used to detect negative health trends and alert nurses about at-risk patients.
For Bueno users, this means that their care team knows exactly when to reach out to schedule a doctor’s appointment or do a necessary lab test. Statistics show that this approach prevents 2 out of 3 visits to ER.
Validic
Validic provides one API connection to access data from the best mHealth apps and devices. Since it covers most of the popular devices, our users don’t have to worry about not connecting their particular one to our app. This was one of the main problems we discovered in the competitor’s apps during the inception phase.
Change HealthCare
Since our solution has provided clinical information and insurance info, we needed to connect a third-party solution that would collect data from insurance providers on the user-specific data about their plans. Change really helped us to ensure complete transparency regarding health expenses to our users.
Mayo Clinic
One of the problems we aimed to solve in the Bueno app was the lack of correct patient information. So often, people tend to rely on posts on the internet, leading to a lack of professional help and even usage of harmful practices. So, instead of searching health-related info on Google, we wanted them to have all the relevant information that would be 100% science-based and backed up by research all in one place. The Mayo Clinic integration serves this aim perfectly, providing articles based on research and 150 years of medical practice.
You can’t go far without proper data analytics. An understanding of the state of things regarding the application, the way customers are using it, and how efficiently it operates, hangs on through-and-through analytics.
The app needed a practical and accessible mobile analytics solution to gain insights regarding application use and user engagement.
We have used Firebase because of its ease of use and flexibility. With its help, the company can see what is going on in the application and react appropriately.
It is also used as a platform for push notifications delivery.
Data security and HIPAA
Data security is one of the significant challenges that come with developing any application that deals with sensitive data. And with health apps, it becomes even more important.
The main requirement was HIPAA compliance which is usually identified with foundations secured by the law:
Emergency clinics.
Corporate medicinal services associations.
Research establishments.
Insurance agencies that manage patients and their data.
However, since HIPAA PHI security necessity likewise applies to partners of these offices, it was extremely important to follow these guidelines for user data management, transparent data use, and guaranteeing the safety of data.
The following solutions were used to provide appropriate data security measures:
HTTPS, TLS, SSH for data-in-transit encryption;
Activity Logging + Access Management;
Handling all the secure data on the backend;
Making sure all the third-party solutions are HIPAA compliant;
Limited access to the production database at the network level.
BuenoPR is an absolutely unique app and another great case in the large portfolio of our healthcare projects. It provides all the necessary data for users about their health, and connects them with their care team, but it also uses cutting-edge technology to prevent conditions and complications.
For our company, it was a great experience, applying all our expertise both in the Native mobile development and healthcare domains to create an app that would save people’s lives.
Using the Agile approach, and receiving quality feedback from users, each iteration really helped us deliver a product that would be useful, rich in functionality, and extremely easy to navigate.
Our company had the chance to work on such an amazing service. In this article, we are going to tell you about it.
Our company had the chance to work on such an amazing service. In this article, we are going to tell you about it.
Orb Health project description
Orb Health’s Care Management as a Service enables health centers, systems, hospitals, and unions to scale contact centers and deliver care management programs as a guided service. It simplifies the healthcare journey, maximizes patient outcomes, and enables financial success from fee-for-service to value-based care, without adding staff, apps, or infrastructure.
Orb Health scales patient access through remote contact centers that seamlessly deliver care management as an EMR-connected, data-driven virtual service. We rapidly enable unparalleled clinical patient outcomes and satisfaction while transforming the economics of patient service for health systems, FQHC/community health centers, payers, and unions without adding staff, apps, or infrastructure,
How does Orb Health help customers?
Reduce ER/Hospital Visits
Seamlessly Extend Practice
Expand Critical Services
Provide Interactive Patient Care
Increase Patient Engagement & Satisfaction
Keep Patients In-Network
Increase Revenue
Improved HCC Scoring
Reduce Patient Leakage
What did We Do in the Project?
From obsolete to technology-driven tech stack:
Migrate data storage from on-premise to cloud to improve accessibility, security, and cost-efficiency
Setting up fault tolerance infrastructure with monitoring, alerting, data backup, data recovering, and autoscaling
Implementing automation testing before release to prevent human factor in the production
Actualize technologies to increase maintenance and speed of delivering new features
Complete redesign and development of a new way of interaction with patient clinical information. Medication, Problems, Allergies, Appointments, Demographics, and much more in a new and easy to navigate format.
We created a new approach to working with patients in customer practice, maximizing efficiency. This allows navigation between assigned patients, easily keeping up on priority and general que.
A powerful tool aimed to process the Orb Data Base quickly. This allows identifying patients by specific parameters to group them for further treatment.
This cutting edge feature allows creating connections between smart health devices at the patient’s home, gathering, analyzing, and processing data for making peoples’ lives more secure and accountable.
We worked closely with a clinical team to make logging time more manageable and effective – complete redesign legacy Time Tracking with a new and modern look.
Complete redesign of dashboards, created new metrics, making executive board accountable for every vital indicator.
A new tool aimed to create patient programs. Powerful enhancements that allow adding programs and campaigns in a couple of clicks.
Universal Patient Engagement Center Experienced, licensed, and certified medical practitioners empowered by Orb Health’s EMR-centric patient intelligence provide care delivery that exceeds expectations. The core functionality of the Orb Health app is:
Mix and match services to meet your various patient population needs without adding resources.
Scalable patient access and high-quality care management empowers a new level of careful attention that keeps patients healthier, more satisfied, and in-network.
Repeatedly proven and independently validated Care Management as a Service drives significant outcomes while lowering costs and increasing revenue.
There are two web applications for internal users: Clinical Site and Program Manager Site.
Connecting digital health products to provider systems is fundamental to delivering value, but the industry hasn’t made that easy. Healthcare providers are running dozens of different EHRs with various protocols, which means connecting can be a tangled mess of ad hoc solutions. Product teams who use Redox skip the mess and get every provider’s connection in a single developer-friendly API designed to support their product’s functional needs.
Protect your existing workforce management software and technology investments with off-the-shelf integrations that hook into your current solutions. Out-of-the-box integrations with a CRM system, PBX, ACD, workforce optimization, case management, and other legacy systems reduce time to value and quickly get a contact center up and running.
Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated data sources into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. For example, your data may be an Excel spreadsheet or a collection of cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses. Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what’s important, and share that with anyone you want.
Data security is one of the significant challenges of developing any service that deals with sensitive data. Therefore, the first requirement was to be able to store patient data as securely as possible.
During the development of this project, we utilized a streamlined, agile workflow. This approach helped us deploy an operating prototype of the system, ahead of the planned date, and dedicate more time to its testing and refinement.
Orb Health’s Care Management as a Service enables health centers, systems, hospitals, and unions to scale contact centers and deliver care management programs as a guided service. It simplifies the healthcare journey, maximizes patient outcomes, and enables financial success from fee-for-service to value-based care, without adding staff, apps, or infrastructure.
Orb Health scales patient access through remote contact centers that seamlessly deliver care management as an EMR-connected, data-driven virtual service. We rapidly enable unparalleled clinical patient outcomes and satisfaction while transforming the economics of patient service for health systems, FQHC/community health centers, payers, and unions without adding staff, apps, or infrastructure,
How does Orb Health help customers?
Reduce ER/Hospital Visits
Seamlessly Extend Practice
Expand Critical Services
Provide Interactive Patient Care
Increase Patient Engagement & Satisfaction
Keep Patients In-Network
Increase Revenue
Improved HCC Scoring
Reduce Patient Leakage
What did We Do in the Project?
From obsolete to technology-driven tech stack:
Migrate data storage from on-premise to cloud to improve accessibility, security, and cost-efficiency
Setting up fault tolerance infrastructure with monitoring, alerting, data backup, data recovering, and autoscaling
Implementing automation testing before release to prevent human factor in the production
Actualize technologies to increase maintenance and speed of delivering new features
Complete redesign and development of a new way of interaction with patient clinical information. Medication, Problems, Allergies, Appointments, Demographics, and much more in a new and easy to navigate format.
Work Listing View
We created a new approach to working with patients in customer practice, maximizing efficiency. This allows navigation between assigned patients, easily keeping up on priority and general que.
A powerful tool aimed to process the Orb Data Base quickly. This allows identifying patients by specific parameters to group them for further treatment.
Integration with Remote Patient Monitoring Vendors
This cutting edge feature allows creating connections between smart health devices at the patient’s home, gathering, analyzing, and processing data for making peoples’ lives more secure and accountable.
We worked closely with a clinical team to make logging time more manageable and effective – complete redesign legacy Time Tracking with a new and modern look.
Complete redesign of dashboards, created new metrics, making executive board accountable for every vital indicator.
A new tool aimed to create patient programs. Powerful enhancements that allow adding programs and campaigns in a couple of clicks.
Universal Patient Engagement Center Experienced, licensed, and certified medical practitioners empowered by Orb Health’s EMR-centric patient intelligence provide care delivery that exceeds expectations. The core functionality of the Orb Health app is:
Mix and match services to meet your various patient population needs without adding resources.
Scalable patient access and high-quality care management empowers a new level of careful attention that keeps patients healthier, more satisfied, and in-network.
Repeatedly proven and independently validated Care Management as a Service drives significant outcomes while lowering costs and increasing revenue.
There are two web applications for internal users: Clinical Site and Program Manager Site.
Connecting digital health products to provider systems is fundamental to delivering value, but the industry hasn’t made that easy. Healthcare providers are running dozens of different EHRs with various protocols, which means connecting can be a tangled mess of ad hoc solutions. Product teams who use Redox skip the mess and get every provider’s connection in a single developer-friendly API designed to support their product’s functional needs.
Protect your existing workforce management software and technology investments with off-the-shelf integrations that hook into your current solutions. Out-of-the-box integrations with a CRM system, PBX, ACD, workforce optimization, case management, and other legacy systems reduce time to value and quickly get a contact center up and running.
Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated data sources into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. For example, your data may be an Excel spreadsheet or a collection of cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses. Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what’s important, and share that with anyone you want.
Data security is one of the significant challenges of developing any service that deals with sensitive data. Therefore, the first requirement was to be able to store patient data as securely as possible.
During the development of this project, we utilized a streamlined, agile workflow. This approach helped us deploy an operating prototype of the system, ahead of the planned date, and dedicate more time to its testing and refinement.
When people talk about cybersecurity and cybercrime, the first thing that comes to mind is financial fraud and bank security. However, what could be more important than the security of our data in healthcare? After all, it’s not about mundane financial well-being, but our physical condition, and even our lives. And it’s not so much a matter of someone possessing and taking advantage of our health data as it is of a doctor not being able to access such data on time.
This is especially true since healthcare is second only to finance in the interest of cyberattacks. And, the cost of a data breach puts healthcare in the lead (according to HIPAA Journal – $408 per record, compared to about $148 in other areas). In addition, 21% of the consequences result in legal liability, 40% in loss of essential data, and 33% in outages.
Healthcare cybersecurity is an area of information technology aimed at protecting healthcare systems. These systems include electronic health records, health tracking devices, medical equipment, and software to deliver and manage care.
Cybersecurity in healthcare aims to prevent attacks by protecting systems from unauthorized access, use, and disclosure of patient data. The main goal is to ensure the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of critical patient data, which, if breached, could endanger patients’ lives.
However, there is a global shift in health and human services, with more and more of these services being made available online since COVID-19. Accordingly, medical and paramedical processes, and all other areas, began to digitize as quickly as possible, which has happened before but not on such a scale or at such speed. The catalyst, in the form of the coronavirus, has given a significant load of medical professionals not only offline but also online – telemedicine, e-prescriptions, and even remote surgeries. Thus, the need to optimize processes through digitalization has become evident. And when it comes to the secure storage of big data, the question of cybersecurity is bound to arise.
According to Statista, the industry is expected to be worth $345.4 billion by 2026, up from $34 billion in 2017. In other words, the financial infusion into Healthcare Cybersecurity has increased tenfold in 10 years. Not surprisingly, Statista cites a study showing that in 2020, 17 percent of healthcare cyberattacks caused severe injury or damage to patients, and nearly 30 percent caused disruption of emergency services.
According to the HIPAA Journal, healthcare cybersecurity statistics show an 8% decrease in incidents in February 2022 compared to January 2022. Nevertheless, those 46 incidents affected 2.5 million people. As a result, the healthcare industry has lost $25 billion over the past two years.
By far, the most common type of cybersecurity attack is a money-making attack.
In addition to ransomware attacks on financial assets, the industry has seen invasions aimed solely at disruption, as well as attacks aimed at compromising user data. Recently, cybercriminals have been using indirect supply chain attacks to disrupt companies far beyond their original targets.
There is a vigorous public debate that responsible government agencies simply cannot keep up with the scope and “quality” of the threats that must be met. In such an atmosphere, it is every man for himself, and private companies are forced to establish a system of protection on their own without being able to ask for help from government healthcare providers. There is an understanding that it is necessary to work proactively rather than respond to attacks after the fact.
The Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 is designed to help with this, but it is too early to tell if it is effective.
As a result, more than half of the world’s population does not trust healthcare providers to protect personal data. At the same time, in the U.S. the figure is much better – 80%.
The difficulty is that, in any clinic or hospital, there are many networks and digital complexes: EHRs, electronic prescriptions and decision support systems, intelligent heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, infusion pumps, and medical Internet of Things (IoT) devices, etc. All of these can be threatened by cybercriminals.
Deloitte experts identified several threats faced by many healthcare organizations:
Phishing. One of the most unsightly, and therefore most common, methods – links or attachments in emails infect computer systems with malware, which then spreads across the clinical network.
Man in the middle. Cybercriminals infiltrate data transmissions and steal users’ personal information, resulting in severe damages and fines for privacy violations. Sometimes it’s much more trivial – attackers quickly gain physical access to the computer with the data.
Attacks on network vulnerabilities. Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) cache poisoning, HTTPS spoofing, and other similar cybercrimes targeting wired and wireless networks that provide access to patient information.
Ransomware attack. Criminals not only encrypt data and extort money for decryption, but also block access to the entire clinical system, paralyzing surgical and life-support equipment.
IoT attack. Personal patient information and high-tech connected medical devices used in invasive and noninvasive procedures can be attacked, as well as auxiliary equipment not directly related to medicine – smart elevators, intelligent heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, and infusion pumps.
Healthcare Cybersecurity Challenges
Indeed today, there is no medical institution that is not protecting the personal data of its patients, as they are required by law to do. But, undoubtedly, one of the most important challenges in this situation is the backwardness and complete irrelevance of such protection. Sometimes the so-called cybersecurity of an individual hospital can be compared to a cardboard wall that shields itself from a fire-breathing dragon.
The reasons for this may be different – from the inability to allocate an adequate budget for protection to the banal connivance – “it won’t affect us.”
One of the factors of such a challenge can be considered the forced pulling of your medical institution/company to the super modern standards of cybersecurity. Otherwise, no insurance company will want to cooperate with you to avoid their losses from attacks on you.
To make the number and possibilities of cyber attacks less and less possible every year, you need to work systematically on the process of building your security. Cybersecurity solutions include endpoint protection, identity access control, data protection, and network security. These technologies are used to protect sensitive information and critical systems from attack. More specifically, these measures aim to protect against threats from inside and outside the organization. This underscores the need to view cybersecurity as a comprehensive strategy consisting of practices and technologies.
Thus, it is first important to implement technology and collect analytics regarding the frequency and nature of cyberattacks so that a preventive level can be triggered later. In parallel, fundamental security should be in place in any business or government institution related to the protection of citizens’ data – from the tax office to the online lingerie store – should not be forgotten. Organizations should adopt modern security measures, including multifactor authentication and privileged access management, to create a threshold level of security.
Another effective measure should be cybersecurity training for all staff from the lowest to the highest levels (hopefully, no one keeps their account password on paper under their laptop anymore) – how to keep themselves safe; which links to click and which not to click; which emails to open and which not to. How often to backup data and make software updates, what passwords should be, what is multifactor authentication, and what to do if a hacker attack still occurs.
We would like to remind you that about a third of all data leaks are due to human factors – deliberately or not, an employee of a healthcare institution gives out the necessary data to malicious insiders. Of these types of leaks, twice as many are unintentional. In other words, the culprit is trivial human negligence.
Clinics must control and monitor malicious file activity. To do this, they can implement systems that block unauthorized actions with data, prevent unauthorized email exchanges, prohibit the possibility of copying to external sources, etc. Unfortunately, the institution doesn’t find out about 39% of hacks until a month later; this situation needs to change urgently.
Finally, endless testing is essential – APIs must be thoroughly tested before they can be trusted in healthcare systems to enable data sharing while maintaining internal security measures.
As times have changed, healthcare systems must change with them, which means more than just annual risk assessments and periodic tests. Each year we come to an increasing realization that the modern hospital is not just physicians and nursing staff, but also a complex system designed to automate, optimize, and store databases, integrated with pharma, biotech government, insurance, and financial entities. Breaking into this system would result in hours to weeks of paralysis, which is unacceptable due to the nature of the industry.
As we advance, organizations and their technology partners must take responsibility for implementing robust, thoughtful technology and procedures, as well as regular testing and validation of systems. These measures are the best way to meet today’s cybersecurity requirements while preparing organizations for future events.
Describing the security situation and communication risks
Identifying methods for dealing with cyber threats
A plan for continuous improvement
Obviously, it’s too costly and impractical for the smallest medical center to keep its own cybersecurity staff. It’s better to outsource that kind of responsibility and not have to worry about anything. But to do that, you have to find professionals you can trust.
The APP Solutions can find you a team of specialists who will protect against cyberattacks, regardless of the complexity of the product you need to secure.
