On Wednesday, July 13, at 11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT/7 p.m. GMT, @eWEEKNews will host its 45th monthly #eWEEKChat. The topic will be "Hot New Trends and Products in Health Care IT." It will be moderated by Chris Preimesberger, eWEEK's editor of features and analysis.
Some quick facts:
Topic: Hot New Trends and Products in Health Care IT
Date/time: July 13, 2016, 11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT/7 p.m. GMT
Further reading
Moderator: Chris Preimesberger: @editingwhiz
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'Hot New Trends and Products in Health Care IT'
Health care IT is all about security of systems and privacy of personal information, whether it involves data from actual health care processes, imaging, records or financials.
As the world moves toward fewer private data centers and more subscriptioned functionality from cloud service providers, more of this important information is being stored and accessed at offsite locations. This was rarely the case in old-school medical systems, which relied first on paper and physical-image records that were copied and mailed or faxed to various locations, and later on simple on-premises digital records.
Now more than ever, hospitals are seeing the benefits and efficiencies of moving toward trusting the cloud, as evidenced by a 50 percent increase in cloud services purchases (IaaS) over a three-year span, according to a recent Peak 10 survey of 157 C-level executives and information technology professionals across the United States.
However, data privacy and security remain primary concerns because of recent ransomware attacks on hospitals, according to 60 percent of respondents.
Survey results show that the main challenges respondents face are system interoperability issues, meeting security and compliance, and balancing their human capital resources to meet regulatory and business requirements.
"The most concerning finding was around the lack of confidence in their security programs. The majority of respondents gave themselves a grade of B- at best," Christina Kyriazi, Peak 10's manager of marketing insights and analytics, told eWEEK's Nathan Eddy. "When speaking with them, quite a few of them expressed concerns that they feel that they either cannot catch up to all the new types of security threats or they do not have enough resources to meet the demand for security.
"Once you address one concern, something completely new comes up that you may have not thought about. We heard a lot of them spend sleepless nights worrying about their environment's security."
Aside from security, innovation continues on several fronts in health care IT. Here are some examples:
--Twiage has come out with a secure, interoperable platform that enables first responders to share real-time patient data on the spot with hospitals in order to accelerate life-saving emergency care.
--Lightline Catheter has designed a catheter that employs a visible light phototherapy technology to actively disinfect the device while residing within a patient's body.
--Ceeable has developed a mobile, Web-based test platform to detect and diagnose eye disease, including glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.
These are just a few of the products and data points we'll talk about on July 13. We will pose questions such as:
--Besides improving and bolstering security for personal medical information, what do you personally see as another important challenge in running a health care IT operation?
--What are some good examples of new-gen IT products and services that you have seen?
--How will we be able to use cognitive computing and artificial intelligence in health care IT?
--How do you see the new messaging platforms merging their products into health care IT?
--What surprising companies do you expect to become health care IT players in 2016?
Join us July 13 at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. GMT for an hour. Chances are good that you'll learn something valuable.
Research Assistant
