DIGITAL HEALTH BRIEFING: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan crown CEO of health venture - Salesforce targets payers with CRM suite - Breach exposes 270,000 patients' records

CORPORATE GIANTS NAME CEO OF HEALTH VENTURE: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase have appointed Dr. Atul Gawande as the head of their newly formed healthcare company - which was announced in January 2018 with the lofty goal of lowering the cost of healthcare in the US. Employers bear the brunt of rising healthcare costs: US employers contributed more than $13,000 per covered worker with a family health plan in 2017, according to Kaiser Family Foundation estimates. That's up about 60% from 2006. With more than one million combined employees, the corporate trio has a strong incentive to reduce healthcare spending.

Dr. Gawande's appointment could provide some insight into the possible avenues the partnership will explore. Gawande brings a background in surgery and a focus on improving the delivery of care to the partnership. Perhaps most indicative of the joint venture's future endeavors is Gawande's role as founding executive director of Ariadne Labs, a Boston-based innovation lab focused on improving the delivery of care of serious illnesses, childbirth, and surgery - three areas that have a significant role in employer-based healthcare spending.

Given Gawande's background, here's what the new company might explore:

• Treating chronic illnesses and delivering end-of-life care. Chronic illnesses are already the biggest strain on the healthcare industry, accounting for 86% of the $2.7 trillion spent in annual health care costs in the US in 2014 alone. That's set to rise as the US stares down an expanding aging population.
• Improving childbirth delivery. Gawande could apply his expertise from Ariadne Labs to reduce preventable pregnancy-related spending, such as the use of medically unnecessary cesarean sections, which adds billions in avoidable healthcare spending each year.
• Avoiding unnecessary surgeries and medical tests. Gawande has been an outspoken proponent of reducing unnecessary medical tests and surgeries. In his writing, Gawande pointed to a Walmart-sponsored program that found that about 30% of the spinal procedures employees were told they needed were inappropriate.

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SALESFORCE PLATFORM HELPS PAYERS CAPITALIZE ON CONSUMERIZATION OF HEALTHCARE: On Wednesday, customer relationship management (CRM) vendor Salesforce unveiled Health Cloud for Payers, a suite of new tools to help insurers improve the consumer experience. Salesforce will make the suite available to insurers in October 2018, with solutions that offer members greater transparency in claims processing and plan coverage, as well as new provider-member communication tools.

Salesforce's platform could help payers meet the rapidly shifting patient demand for an improved healthcare experience. Younger generations are leading the consumerization of healthcare - they're more likely to research their plan's coverage and cost, and seek out convenient ways to engage with healthcare professionals, for example. Providers and payers are already investing in addressing this demand - 91% of healthcare businesses have launched or plan to launch a tech adoption initiative to improve the patient experience in the next 12 months. Moving forward, successful adopters of solutions that emphasize consumer convenience and transparency for healthcare delivery will have an opportunity to drive customer retention and differentiate themselves from the rest of the industry.

Salesforce's aggressive push into the healthcare industry may signal ambitions to launch its own health platform. Salesforce has ramped up its healthcare play since it identified the sector as a $1 billion revenue opportunity in 2014 - it's added telemedicine tools, given its customers new features to identify at-risk patients, and joined forces with analytics solution provider Geneia to launch a new app focused on population health and value-based care. Salesforce's efforts to build out its healthcare offerings could hint that the company's gearing for the launch of its own health IT platform.

270,000 PATIENTS' RECORDS EXPOSED AS LATEST ORGANIZATION FALLS VICTIM TO DATA BREACH: A hack on Med Associates, a New York-based healthcare claims billing vendor, may have exposed more than 270,000 patients' records, according to Healthcare IT News. Med Associates provides claim services for 70 providers in the US. The company says affected data includes Social Security numbers, medical data, and insurance identification numbers, which can be used by hackers for medical fraud.

This attack adds to several others that have already occurred in 2018 and highlights a growing concern for healthcare organizations. Four in five US doctors say they've experienced a cyberattack, according to a study by Accenture and the American Medical Association. Despite this, only 15% of organizations employ a designated C-suite leader to manage enterprise-wide data security efforts, according to a Black Book Research study. This failure to adapt leaves legacy data security systems vulnerable to hackers, and the results are costly - the average healthcare data breach puts a $700,000 hole in a health system's pocket, according to Net Diligence. As the healthcare industry becomes increasingly digitized, the volume of health data being collected and stored will grow exponentially, making the healthcare market a particularly attractive target for nefarious players. It's integral that health businesses commit more resources to shore up their IT security against impending threats.

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MAYO CLINIC EXPLORES USE CASES FOR BLOCKCHAIN IN HEALTHCARE: Leading US health system Mayo Clinic has partnered with Medicalchain, a London-based healthcare blockchain startup, to test distributed ledger applications for medical data sharing, according to Healthcare IT News. By making the patient the access point for medical data, blockchain could offer newfound speed, affordability, and data integrity in electronic health record (EHR) systems. Health systems could leverage this tech to improve data sharing by bolstering security and reducing friction when sharing data across different departments. Moreover, blockchain could help reduce data management costs, which currently run providers more than $2 billion annually.

Despite the myriad potential for cost savings to providers, we're probably a long way from seeing pervasive clinical adoption - a February 2018 poll on whether blockchain was ready to enter the healthcare space found that nearly 50% of physicians weren't even aware of the tech. In the meantime, piloting blockchain tech can help health systems prepare for its eventual arrival in healthcare and provide clinicians with evidence-backed use cases. The Mayo Clinic isn't the only health system exploring blockchain - Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center piloted blockchain for improved interoperability in 2016.

IN OTHER NEWS:

• Pennsylvania-based health insurer Capital BlueCross has seen a surge in demand for its telehealth services, with over 2,000 visits already in 2018, up from 1,500 total in 2017, according to mHealthIntelligence. The payer plans to expand its telehealth program to include behavioral health.
• Facebook announced plants to redirect individuals trying to use its platform to purchase opioids or find addiction treatment to a federal crisis helpline, according to MobiHealthNews. In May 2018, Facebook unveiled a designated area for its blood donation feature - available in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan - that lets users see donation opportunities nearby.