Innovation: Health Technology and Systems

Highlights

Events

AI and Healthcare Workgroup Seminar

Generative AI and Medical Diagnosis

Arjun (Raj) Manrai, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School
Research Project

2024 Pilot Grants

HBHI is pleased to announce our five pilot grant awardees for our 2024 cohort.
Events

Why Can't Americans Have Better and Cheaper Health Care? Exploring the Innovation Challenge

Why doesn't healthcare in the US improve in quality while becoming more affordable, as we see in other industries? Join us for an enlightening discussion with James (Jim) and Robert (Bob) Rebitzer, authors of "Why Not Better and Cheaper?" We explored the unique challenges of healthcare innovation in the US, discussing why there's a lack of incentives for cost-reducing innovations and the ease of profiting from low-value innovations. The Rebitzers also shared their perspectives on directing healthcare innovation towards more efficient and cost-effective solutions. This is a crucial conversation for anyone interested in the future of American healthcare.
Publication

Friend or Foe? Teaming Between Artificial Intelligence and Workers with Variation in Experience

As artificial intelligence (AI) applications become more pervasive, it is critical to understand how knowledge workers with different levels and types of experience can team with AI for productivity gains. We focus on the influence of two major types of human work experience (narrow experience based on the specific task volume and broad experience based on seniority) on the human-AI team dynamics.
News

AI in Healthcare Delivery: 10 Expert Takeaways

A public conversation around generative artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine is both long overdue and increasingly urgent. In health care applications, the stakes are heightened because of the intricate privacy considerations and the critical nature of decision-making. The potential positive impact is also enormous.
Publication

Addressing Algorithmic Bias and the Perpetuation of Health Inequities: An AI Bias Aware Framework

The emergence and increasing use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in healthcare practice and delivery is being greeted with both optimism and caution. We focus on the nexus of AI/ML and racial disparities in healthcare: an issue that must be addressed if the promise of AI to improve patient care and health outcomes is to be realized in an equitable manner for all populations.
Publication

Performance of Smartphone Automated Audiogram Image Recognition for Personalized Sound Amplification

In August 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration issued the final rule to establish a new category of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids. Over-the-counter hearing aids are intended for use by adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss without the need for an audiologist to adjust and program the device for the user’s level of hearing as is currently done for most conventional hearing aids. One key aspect of the effectiveness of these future OTC hearing aids is provision of the correct level of sound amplification based on the individual’s level of hearing. Thus, a feature to import prior hearing test (audiogram) results into these devices may be an important consideration to ensure optimal amplification of sound.
News

Digital Tools Are Putting Effective Behavioral Health Treatments in Patients' Pockets

It’s clear that changes in telehealth policy, mobile technology development, and consumer demand have fundamentally reshaped mental health treatment and substance use care in the US and around the world. What does this mean for people’s outcomes, specifically behavioral health care access, quality, and cost?
Publication

Trends and Patterns of Social History Data Collection Within an Electronic Health Record

There is increased acceptance that social and behavioral determinants of health (SBDH) impact health outcomes, but electronic health records (EHRs) are not always set up to capture the full range of SBDH variables in a systematic manner. The purpose of this study was to explore rates and trends of social history (SH) data collection—1 element of SBDH—in a structured portion of an EHR within a large academic integrated delivery system.
Publication

Consumer Confidence in Public and Private Organizations to Use Their Digital Health Data Responsibly

Interactions with wearable devices, smartphones, and social media generate user data, which can reveal sensitive health information. Those data can be used to improve individual and community health, but also raise security and privacy concerns. Given potential benefits alongside substantial privacy risks, it is important to evaluate how consumers view organizations and entities that collect and re-use their personal digital health data. We surveyed US consumers to assess their confidence in sixteen public and private organizations to use their digital health data responsibly.
Publication

Nudging the Nudger: A Field Experiment on the Effect of Performance Feedback to Service Agents on Increasing Organ Donor Registrations

We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving nearly 700 customer-service representatives (CSRs) in a Canadian government service agency to study whether providing CSRs with performance feedback with or without peer comparison affected their subsequent organ donor registration rates. Despite having no tie to remuneration or promotion, the provision of individual performance feedback three times over one year resulted in a 25% increase in daily signups, compared to otherwise similar encouragement and reminders.
Publication

Where Do Real-Time Prescription Benefit Tools Fit in the Landscape of High US Prescription Medication Costs? A Narrative Review

While providers are aware of the financial burden of healthcare for patients, there is a lack of actionable price transparency at the point of prescribing. Real-time prescription benefit (RTPB) tools are new electronic clinical decision support tools that retrieve patient- and medication-specific out-of-pocket cost information and display it to clinicians at the point of prescribing.
News

AI in Healthcare Is Here, But Uptake Is Slow

For many years, there has been a collective excitement about using artificial intelligence in healthcare delivery. Still, AI technology is often talked about as if it is science fiction and the future of healthcare. Despite the FDA's approval of more than 500 medical AI systems by July 2022, many experts question if AI is a reality in the medical arena, or if it remains far in the future—and how to overcome the obstacles to adopting the new technologies?
News

HBHI 2020 Pilot Grant on Telemedicine Triage Yields Two Publications

In 2020, HBHI awarded a pilot grant to Jodi Segal, MD, MPH, a HBHI Leadership Committee member and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health to understand what clinicians and patients consider to be appropriate use of telemedicine in primary care to inform future development of a framework that should be valuable to diverse stakeholders.