Earlier this year Chilmark Research launched its latest service, the Chilmark Advisory Service (CAS). One of the benefits of CAS is that subscribers receive a continuous feed of our research, from major annual reports such as the recently released 2012 HIE Market Report, to Quarterly Reports (e.g., mHealth Adoption for Patient Engagement) and exclusive to subscribers, the Monthly Update. Of course, subscribers also get unfettered access to our analysts to answer any specific questions they may have.
For the merry month of May, the Monthly Report touched upon four topics that are abstracted below:
Social Games for Wellbeing, Courtesy of Your Health Insurer
Much of this story was pulled from the forthcoming report that Cora is authoring that takes a close look at how payers are adopting consumer technologies (social media, gamification, mobile apps, etc.) to more effectively engage their members in healthy behaviors. This story looked at the current initiatives of Aetna, Blue Cross of California, Cigna, and Humana, each of which is taking a slightly different approach to more actively engage their members.
When Behavioral Health Goes Mainstream Will Technology be Ready?
This year, five states received grants of $600K each to explore how they would integrate behavioral health data into their statewide HIEs. Analyst Naveen interviewed several stakeholders about how they would actually address the technology and policy hurdles to incorporate such data into an HIE. One of his findings, which he details in this story, is that current technology offerings from HIE vendors are ill-prepared to address this growing need to fold in behavioral health data into the HIE. Secondly, there remain significant policy issues that need to be addressed as behavioral health data is some of the most sensitive and protected health data.
Filling Gaps Separating Behavioral Health from the Healthcare Continuum
We had another story on the relative state of technology adoption within the behavioral health community. Our interviews with several stakeholders uncovered a market that is even further behind (at least 10-15 years) the rest of the medical community in IT adoption and use. As public health officials, healthcare organizations and others come to the realization that a significant proportion of chronic disease patients have a co-morbidity with a behavioral health issue, they are also coming to the realization that more effective care coordination must also occur with behavioral health specialists. John (the younger) takes a close look at what may develop in this market to fill the current gap.
Feds Look to Tighten Privacy & Security of HIEs
This last story took provided subscribers an assessment of the current Request for Information (RFI) for the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN). The RFI was released on May 10, 2012 and is the an attempt by the U.S. government to establish a clear set of governance rules for the sharing and use of patient data within an HIE, and of course more broadly across the U.S., via the NwHIN. While the objectives are noble and to some extent needed, our assessment is that in several areas the RFI goes too far and will significantly hinder HIE innovation, deployment and adoption.
If you wish to learn more about CAS, please head on over to the Research Services page and towards the bottom there is a slide deck that provides a prospectus on CAS. If that piques your interest, drop us a line and we’ll be more than happy to answer any further questions you may have regarding the service.
