What Are We Reading? Articles on Health Care

ANCOR is sharing the articles below for readers interested in keeping track of broader trends and discussions in the health care industry.

NPR article on how telemedicine improves recruitment of rural doctors, nurses. “It used to take at least nine months for a patient to schedule an initial appointment with a psychiatrist at Meridian Health Services in Indiana. Now, it takes days, thanks to a program that allows doctors to connect over the Internet with patients, reaching those even in remotest corners of the state.

That has also helped with recruitment. Over the last several years, Meridian’s staff of psychiatric specialists, including nurse practitioners, tripled from four to 12.

[…]

Growing problems with addiction and depression have made the country’s shortage of mental health professionals much more acute for rural areas. Geographic isolation exacerbates a vicious cycle. A shortage of doctors means patients can’t get timely care. The health system atrophies, and doctor recruitment gets even tougher.

As a potential workaround, telemedicine is one of the most promising and lucrative opportunities in healthcare. The way it has transformed both psychiatric care and recruitment for Meridian is a case study of its appeal.”

Politico Pro highlights a join Google and Mayo Clinic project to “redefine healthcare” which has potential for lower administrative burdens in health systems:

“The Mayo Clinic and Google this morning announced a ten-year partnership in cloud computing, machine learning and AI they said would combine the powerhouses’ data and health expertise to ‘redefine how health care is delivered.”’

A major focus of the agreement is AI-enabled digital diagnostics — developing machine learning models to make treatment more precise and effective, said Mayo pulmonologist Steve Peters, a leader of the effort. He also expected advances in reducing provider and administrative burden.

Google Cloud will secure, manage and store Mayo Clinic’s data, much but not all of it currently stored in an Epic data center. Using Google Cloud will give the 60,000 Epic users at Mayo a vast opportunity to crunch data for more precise medical care and research, he said.

Neither Google nor Mayo Clinic disclosed the size of the enterprise or how they will monetize knowledge gained from it. The partnership could result, say, in a machine-learning algorithm licensed to other health care systems, Peters said in an interview.”