Innovation: Health Technology and Systems

HBHI convened supply chain scholars and industry leaders to discuss how to prevent supply chain interruptions from occurring when the next pandemic invariably arrives.

A symposium co-hosted by HBHI and the Hopkins Economics of Alzheimer's Disease and Services Center covers the ramifications of the approval of controversial Alzheimer's Disease drug Aduhelm for patients enrolled in approved clinical trials.

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.

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.

Millions of older adults co-manage or delegate health responsibilities to one or more family caregivers. Patient portals facilitate health care management tasks, but little is known about portal use arrangements (i.e., individual or joint use) among older adults and their caregivers.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Around 150 million Americans rely on employers for access to health care. Can the companies who employ them help foster an affordable system that improves our health and doesn't drive us crazy in the process?

As the health of Americans gets worse, with chronic disease and physical and mental illnesses on the rise, do corporations have a role to play in addressing the health crisis?

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.

HBHI pilot study publication on a proposed framework for the appropriate use of telemedicine in primary care

HBHI pilot study publication on interview findings of what clinicians and patients consider to be appropriate use of telemedicine in primary care

Artificial intelligence on call: The physician’s decision of whether to use AI in clinical practice