International health IT week in review: October 20

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending October 20: Germany's plans for digital health, FHIR insertion for personal data into EMRs, Apple Watch to record consults verbally, phishing expeditions, barriers to eHealth adoption, Sony's wearable platform, UK's national record locator pilot, Amazon Textract is HIPAA compliant, Johnson adviser's ties to Babylon
Germany aims to become EU leader in digital health revamp
Politico ~ Carmen Paun ~ 16/10/2019
The German health ministry wants to create an electronic health record for all insured patients by 2021.
Joint task force to simplify merging personal health data into EHRs
Healthcare IT News ~ Bill Siwicki ~ 15/10/2019
A joint task force formed earlier this year has drafted a specification that applies the HL7 FHIR standard to report measurements taken by personal healthcare devices and mobile apps outside of healthcare facilities and report those measurements back to the person’s electronic health record.
CA Blues tries Apple Watches, AI to aid data gathering in care settings
Health Data Management ~ Staff writer ~ 11/10/2019
When doctors wear an Apple Watch to record patient visits verbally, Notable Health's wearable technology uses machine learning and natural language processing to parse the visit down to its most relevant data for insertion into the EHR.
Email breaches: a growing healthcare challenge
Information Security Media Group ~ Marianne Kolbasuk McGee ~ 17/10/2019
Data breaches involving phishing and other email-related compromises persist as a top challenge for healthcare providers. So, what are some of the top trends emerging from these incidents?
Several barriers prevent adoption of technology in the NHS, CQC finds
Digital Health News ~ Andrea Downey ~ 16/10/2019
“We have seen staff who have been sceptical of new technologies, for example, because of the poor performance of previous systems. The perceived complexity of adopting new technologies can also be a barrier.”
Sony's upcoming health platform is an easy-to-implement wearable for remote monitoring
MobiHealthNews ~ Dave Muoio ~ 16/10/2019
The B2B platform purposefully foregoes the bells and whistles of consumer smartwatches for a simple interface, long battery life and long-term support for clients.
Screening IT systems ‘unsafe’ and require ‘urgent’ upgrades, review finds
Digital Health News ~ Andrea Downey ~ 16/10/2019
Cancer screening IT systems “cannot support the safe running of programmes” and need to be upgraded “urgently”, a damning new report has found.
Paramedics to get access to mental health crisis plans
Digital Health News ~ Owen Hughes ~ 14/10/2019
Paramedics will soon be able to access the mental health crisis plans of emergency patients while on the move, following the successful first pilot phase of the National Record Locator.
Microsoft reports ‘encouraging increase’ of AI in UK healthcare
Digital Health News ~ Owen Hughes ~ 11/10/2019
The biggest growth areas reported were research-level AI, which grew 13% in the past 12 months. Robot process automation (RPA) and general automation both increased by 10%, while the use of voice recognition technology increased by 9%.
AWS says Amazon Textract is now HIPAA-eligible
Healthcare IT News ~ Mike Miliard ~ 11/10/2019
The machine learning tool, which helps to extract data from scanned documents, joins six other AI tools that are HIPAA-eligible.
Dominic Cummings accused of conflict of interest over NHS fund
The Guardian ~ James Ball, Simon Murphy and Ben Stockton ~ 11/10/2019
Boris Johnson’s aide was consultant for AI startup Babylon that could win share of £250m fund.
Posted in Australian eHealth