Carestream Health earned the highest position in TractManager’s MD Buyline User Satisfaction Ratings across three categories—portables, X-ray detectors and room-based digital radiography systems—during 2019 survey periods.

Carestream’s DRX-Evolution Plus and DRX-Ascend systems scored high marks for performance, reliability, installation and service. The DRX-Plus 3543 detector remains the panel of choice among healthcare providers. It can be paired with all of Carestream’s DRX-based systems via its unique X-Factor capability—which enables easy transfer of detectors across X-ray units and made possible by a common graphical user interface.

“The MD Buyline report validates our commitment to innovation and leadership in digital radiography. It underscores the breadth and strength of our DR portfolio,” said Charlie Hicks, General Manager, Premium Tier Solutions at Carestream. “These independent ratings are especially important as they come directly from the talented healthcare professionals who use our products every day.”

The image clarity and quality of Carestream’s imaging systems were key differentiating factors for customers surveyed by MD Buyline. Carestream received praise on detector durability, software functionality and ease of transferring data as well.

Carestream’s fully featured, reliable DR systems are designed to meet the needs of hospitals, clinics, urgent care centers and other imaging services providers across the globe. The DRX Plus detectors are fast, light and fully compatible across the company’s DRX family of X-ray solutions.

MD Buyline reports are based on user satisfaction ratings in the following categories: system performance, system reliability, installation/implementation, applications training, service response time and service repair quality.

About MD Buyline

MD Buyline, TractManager’s strategic sourcing division, has served the U.S. healthcare industry with integrity for more than 30 years, providing valuable market research, planning, budget management, and consulting services to healthcare organizations to improve purchasing decisions for capital equipment, healthcare consumables, and purchased services. Our suite of strategic sourcing solutions delivers the robust data hospitals need to ensure maximum ROI on every vendor quote. We are exclusively focused on healthcare purchasing.

Orion Health announced its machine learning service, Amadeus Intelligence to help the health sector reduce operating costs and improve patient care. Led by ground-breaking research by Precision Driven Health (PDH), a New Zealand partnership between Orion Health, Auckland University and Waitemata District Health Board, the company is exploring meaningful ways to minimise wastage in the healthcare sector and help clinicians make more accurate decisions at the point of care.

More than $6.5 trillion is spent on healthcare each year globally, yet typically between 20-40% of spend is wasted on unnecessary services and excess administration. With an ageing population and a growing number of people with chronic illnesses growing globally, the issue is set to worsen.

Speaking from the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, Ian McCrae, CEO of Orion Health said, “With more than 20-40% of wastage in healthcare on costly administration and avoidable hospital readmissions, data analysis combined with the rise of machine learning can help minimise this wastage. Orion Health’s Amadeus Intelligence will use machine learning models initially to predict patient costs and readmission risks, and analyse clinical and financial outliers. This will improve decision-making at the point of care and target resources including interventions, which will result in significant cost savings.”

“We’re yet to see the true impact of machine learning on healthcare. The last decade has been focused on integrating IT systems and capturing massive amounts of information about patients and their environments. The next decade will be to connect all that data and use machine learning for daily healthcare decisions, driving improved care, operational efficiencies, and cost effectiveness,” said Mr McCrae.

Unlike most current uses of machine learning, Amadeus Intelligence ingests and combines multiple datasets from diverse data sources to predict multiple outcomes – financial, operational and administrative.

“The key to making a meaningful impact on healthcare is in the accuracy of the prediction, and the ability to respond,” said Mr McCrae. “Tapping into the vast amounts of data available through many different sources – including relevant genomic, socio-economic and behavioural data, information from devices, and data based on demographics and climate – will engender better decision-making, drawing on information from entire populations to treat and manage a person’s health. Today healthcare organisations need more accuracy in their predictive analytics to reduce operational costs and improve patient care and outcomes.”

Readmission rates remain a costly challenge for healthcare organisations. With 17.6% of hospitalisations in the U.S. resulting in a re-hospitalisation within 30 days, an estimated 76% of those re-hospitalisations are potentially avoidable, costing $30 billion. PDH has completed research projects that use a breadth of data types and apply machine learning models to achieve greater predictive accuracy, calculating potential savings four times higher than current predictive models. Using machine learning techniques, healthcare can expect larger reductions in readmission rates achieved in a far more cost effective manner.

The Health Outcome Prediction Engine (HOPE) is another application where machine learning models will help to reduce the cost of healthcare and save lives. HOPE is designed to identify patients at risk of an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA), a silent killer. Based on epidemiological studies, 800 New Zealanders were identified through data analysis of patient records as likely candidates for AAA during a precision screening trial. All the patients identified during the precision screening trial were contacted and 632 took up the offer of an ultrasound. 36 were found to have AAA, a prevalence rate of 5.5% and almost exactly the rate that was predicted by the data analysis.

“Precision screening presents a huge opportunity for the health sector, where data science can help target health interventions to those with the greatest need,” said Mr McCrae.

With more than 20 years’ experience building technology for the healthcare sector, Orion Health is initially working with select customers to apply machine learning to deeply mine the data within these organisations. While still in its infancy, data analysis combined with the rise of machine learning, will provide clinical and financial insights to accelerate precision medicine, improve personalised treatments and maximise cost effectiveness of interventions.

Machine learning is perfectly suited to Orion Health’s existing product set. Using Orion Health’s Amadeus Platform and Rhapsody to ingest and manage multiple data types in large volumes and Amadeus Analytics to create cohorts based on existing and new insights, Amadeus Intelligence will apply machine learning to the data on the platform to enhance precision and prediction.

Greater precision in identifying at risk populations will also transform the way clinicians work at the point of care. Unique to Orion Health, Amadeus Analytics and Amadeus Intelligence service connect seamlessly to its Amadeus Coordinate, care coordination tools including Care Plans and Pathways and Care Coordinator Activity Management which create actions and workflow to support identified patients.

CoNextions Inc. announced that it received a 510(k) clearance from the U.S. FDA for CoronetTM System, a tenodesis product intended for the fixation of tissue to bone and tissue to tissue. The Coronet’s novel design improves the soft tissue fixation strength of these repairs compared to conventional suture repairs. A streamlined delivery system allows for the simultaneous placement of the implant in the bone and soft tissue and provides a knotless repair.

This 510(k) furthers our mission at CoNextions while putting quality first, improving the lives of patients by revolutionizing soft tissue repair with safe, innovative, and easy to use medical devices,” said Jeffrey Barnes, CEO CoNextions Medical. “It is a clear example of our unwavering commitment to creating the most clinically effective and technologically innovative tendon repair solutions. We look forward to Coronet being the first of many exciting products to come.”

CoNextions Medical will begin marketing the Coronet in the United States in the second quarter of 2020. The device will be marketed by a network of orthopaedic distributors across the United States.

About CoNextions Inc.

Founded in 2011, CoNextions Inc. is a privately-held company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. They are an innovation-based medical device company dedicated to achieving safer, stronger, and more durable tendon repairs worldwide marked by faster rehabilitation, fewer complications, and lower long-term costs.

Clinical artificial intelligence health IT vendor Jvion has released its new Social Determinants of Health system that identifies socioeconomic barriers driving an individual’s health risk and opportunities for investment in community benefit programs to address gaps in care.

WHY IT MATTERS

Leveraging Jvion’s peer-reviewed analytics layer and Microsoft Azure Maps, the SDOH system empowers health systems and hospitals to address underserved populations and inequalities in existing healthcare delivery, the company said. The system is designed to help caregivers go beyond a better understanding the impact of SDOH by offering individualized interventions that aid in aligning community benefits more effectively, the company added.

THE LARGER TREND

As alignment and access to community benefit programs continue to be the cornerstone of building healthier communities, providers need appropriate insight into their populations and individual healthcare needs, Jvion contends.

Hospitals spent $95 billion on community benefits in the most recent year data is available from the American Hospital Association. Increasingly, both federal and state regulators are seeking clarity on what benefits are being provided to communities with this spend and their impact.

Jvion’s SDOH system, the company explained, fulfills the federal and state assessment needs for healthcare organizations, but also strategically informs providers where to allocate their community benefit spend to have the greatest level of impact.

Jvion’s SDOH solution requires limited input from providers and none from patients. It relies largely on its AI approach, which leverages a global instance of de-identified patients to power the inferential outputs of the solution, the company explained. Through this approach, the community inherits the attributes of the individual versus traditional methods, which apply community qualities to the individual, the company added.

The SDOH system features an interactive map interface built using Microsoft Azure maps and a web-based portal.

ON THE RECORD

“Providers and healthcare executives recognize the growing role of socioeconomic insights in healthcare, especially in meeting the needs of underserved populations,” said Shantanu Nigam, CEO of Jvion. “To date, capturing that data and turning it into meaningful and actionable intelligence has proved elusive for many. Our approach turns socioeconomic, environmental and behavioral data into real clinical value that drives higher engagement, more tailored interventions, and greater alignment between need and risk, resulting in better outcomes for individuals and the community as a whole.”

“The Microsoft platform helps responsibly unify people, devices, apps and information by prioritizing compliance, security and trust,” said Gareth Hall, director of business strategy for worldwide healthcare at Microsoft. “Our partners are critical in helping healthcare organizations use technology to address industry challenges and seize opportunities to impact people’s lives in a positive way. The combination of the Microsoft platform and partner innovation is key to helping our industry transform.”

California-based Huntington Hospital has signed a letter of intent (LoI) to join Cedars-Sinai Health System. Cedars-Sinai Health System was set up in 2017 to bring together a collaborative network of healthcare institutions to share resources and expertise.

Presently, Cedars-Sinai Health System includes Cedars-Sinai and Torrance Memorial. Cedars-Sinai comprises the 890-bed Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the 145-bed Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital in addition to its network of physicians and medical offices throughout Southern California.

Torrance Memorial includes the 470-bed Torrance Memorial Medical Center, its network of physicians and medical offices throughout the South Bay.

The LoI provides sustained investment in enterprise information technology, ambulatory services and physician development of Huntington Hospital.

It also provides for continued local governance and ongoing community commitment to advancing Huntington’s existing mission and unique culture.

Huntington Hospital board of directors chairman Jaynie Studenmund said: “I am delighted to announce this first step toward creating an affiliation between Cedars-Sinai Health System and Huntington Hospital that will further strengthen the communities we serve.

“After reviewing a variety of alternatives, it became clear to our board that connecting our trusted brand of care to Cedars-Sinai Health System is the right choice to secure our future, enabling us to continue to provide high-quality care to the community for years to come.”

Huntington Hospital expects that the collaboration will be beneficial for its patients, doctors and associated clinical staff in several ways in the years to come. With the completion of the letter of intent, Cedars-Sinai Health System and Huntington Hospital will commence work on definitive agreement.

Huntington Hospital stated that the completion of the affiliation is subject to customary closing conditions, including securing necessary regulatory approvals. Cedars-Sinai Health System board of directors chairman Vera Gueri said: “Huntington Hospital’s longstanding commitment to the community, its reputation for quality and its outstanding physicians, nurses and other staff make it a very good fit for Cedars-Sinai Health System.

“Collaborations and sharing of resources throughout the health system will further strengthen Huntington’s ability to serve the community for decades to come.”