Philips, Westchester decides to contract on precision medicine initiative

Ten-facility Westchester Medical Center Health Network in the region of Valhalla, N.Y., has inaugurated a precision medicine initiative to make better the cancer care enterprisewide across its acute and ambulatory facilities and services, and it has tapped Philips Healthcare as a primary supporting vendor.
The delivery system will utilize IntelliSpace Genomics product of Philips to combine and merge genomic sequencing information with clinical data, involving pathology, medical images, genomic databases and longitudinal patient records, and supported with health data exchange services to tailor treatment to genomic makeup of patient, and then establish therapy strategies at the point of care.
“Our precision medicine initiative for oncology is created to leverage entire available sources of critical information or data to help make the most informed decisions about each patient’s care,” claims John Fallon, MD, director of the department of clinical pathology at Westchester.
Westchester Medical Center has extra precision medicine initiatives in the works, like the new cellular and tissue engineering laboratory that supports and motivates cellular therapy under investigational latest drug applications covering hematological and oncological ailments.
The recently declared initiative follows the announcement previous year that Royal Philips and Westchester Medical Center had inaugurated a fifteen-year, $500 million partnership to transform and improve healthcare. The attempt is using an enterprise managed services model through which Philips gives the organization with a range of clinical and business consulting services, as well as advanced medical technologies. The partners claimed that they were seeking to “redefine how quality care is delivered.”

Contributors will lean on HIT to gain pop health objectives

A majority of healthcare agencies have population health management programs in place, and this year is relying on health data technology improvements to gain program objectives.

Top HIT initiatives to motivate population health programs involve working to enhance EHR functionality, while driving clinical betterments or improvements and interoperability.

The capability to link information across a variation of clinical systems is required to offer a broader picture of individual sufferers and better manage their care needs, claim the results of a latest healthcare leadership study, performed by HIMSS and sponsored by Royal Philips. The outcomes correlate with observations of many at the HIMSS16 yearly conference and exposition.

The quick move to value-based care is causing contributors to triage capital spending and projects. While EHRs are now executed in the vast majority of U.S. hospitals, contributors feel pressure to make better their analysis of data and acquire insights that will assist them to become more effective and raise quality.

As more agencies increase attempts to coordinate care across the continuum, sharing information from digital records becomes more significant, claims Jeroen Tas, CEO of Connected Care and Health Informatics for Philips

“The transition to value-based care is driving a growing number of health IT issues that can be dealt by innovative connected solutions that spur collaboration between contributors and sufferers across the complete health continuum,” Tas claims.

The survey discovered that more than two-thirds of the 105 respondents to the survey informed that they have population health programs in underway in readmissions, acute care and sufferer education, and more than half of respondents reported that their agencies have programs to assist sufferers who are suffering from chronic pain.

When inquired what clinical initiatives they will be initiating to make better their capability to keep sufferers healthy, top priorities overall involved mobile wellness monitoring, highlighted by 52.5% of respondents; aging well, 46.5%; and home monitoring devices, 45.5%.

To meet the latest IT needs for population health, respondents claim agencies are reallocating resources to help gain care coordination, highlighted as the greatest challenge by 23.5% of respondents. Other program challenges involve making economical investments (21.4%), data management (18.4%), patient engagement and adherence (14.3%) and cohort identification and risk stratification (12.2%).

Respondents stated that they hope to refocus IT buying to fill in gaps and augment their IT portfolios. For instance, half of respondents claimed that they plan to utilize cloud-based technology in analytics; 41.9% stated that they are concentrated on managed application deployment, clinical data storage (39%) and health data exchanged, also highlighted by 39% of respondents.

In detailing the technology they are purchasing to support pop health, respondents stated that 57.6% indicated both health data exchange and telehealth systems, while 54.5% said they are working on analytics.

Almost half of respondents reported that their agencies plan to execute home monitoring devices, aging well/elderly care or mobile wellness monitoring. Various patient care programs have a great requirement for IT solutions, as respondents report more planning of these programs than actual implementation.