Gary Austin, Ken Kleinberg and Jocelyn Keegan discuss the role of Health IT in the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the pandemic on the future of Health IT which may include opportunities for progress toward better interoperability coming out of this crisis and the innovations happening now. From supply chain to telehealth to the temporary suspension of prior authorizations, they cover a fascinating range of topics.
Gary kicks off the podcast with introductions. Jocelyn and Ken tell the audience a little about their background and expertise across the healthcare industry and health IT. Jocelyn explains that Point-of-Care Partners is an objective consultancy with a "Switzerland" status. Gary leads the discussion by introducing the key topics covered by the news non-stop like availability and production of COVID tests, delays in lab results, shortage or personal protective equipment like masks, mass immunizations while looking at all these issues from a health IT perspective.
Then the panel focused on the opportunity for positive change coming out of the pandemic starting with telehealth. As patients and physicians have embraced telehealth as a lifeline during COVID-19, will this stick or will patients and physicians go back to doing things the old way or will there be profound transformational effects?
What about Interoperability and standards? Jocelyn provides her perspective on whether this crisis will be the impetus for an acceleration of new use cases or will the industry be forced to use old tools they never bothered to pick up before?
The panel then moves on to discuss the crucial role of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) and Public health and liquid data flow that needs to occur during a pandemic and beyond.
The panel then tackles whether work on streamlining and automating prior authorization will slow down during the pandemic or is it more important than ever?
Audience reminded they can submit topic and guest ideas by emailing podcast@pocp.com