ONC's Cures Act: Empowering Patients, Drive Innovation, and Spur App Economy

This Week in Health Tech

In this episode of TWIHT we focus on the ONC's Cures Act Final act which is all about "Empowering Patients with Their Health Record in a Modern Health IT Economy".
The ONC Cures Act Final Rule implements interoperability requirements outlined in the Cures Act.

Vik and Jimmy jump into the details about how this Act helps Patients. Putting the patient first in health technology enables the health care system to deliver:

• Transparency into the cost and outcomes of their care
• Competitive options in getting medical care
• Modern smartphone apps to provide them convenient access to their records
• An app economy that provides patients, physicians, hospitals, payers, and employers with innovation and choice

Vik mentions about the API access that has already been enabled by EHRs and how it is allowing patients to access their health information on iPhone and Android devices.
Vik indicates that this ruling will spur up an App Economy, starting from purchasing a health service by comparing services and pricing provided by healthcare providers.
Another example would be the way information would be available to patients instead of the standard patient portal, where understanding the health / medical record is not very easy for most patients.
This is going to promote better health and better outcomes since it puts patients first.
Jimmy comments that this does sound amazing for patients but could be bad for bad performing clinics and hospitals. Vik said it will definitely increase patient quality because now the data available will show patient outcomes for every provider.
Vik and Jimmy also discuss privacy and security concerns. Vik discusses that you still need to follow the security protocols, OAuth2 to access patient information. There is also governance and authorization and it's not just open data. Vik compares it to banking budgeting apps that have to be authorized by the user and also need a valid back-end connection with the bank. The same idea will be used with the FHIR API access in healthcare and privacy and security concerns will be addressed.
Jimmy asks if everyone is for this ruling and Vik indicates that not everyone is. Big Tech (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon), even more EHRs (Cerner, AllScripts, Meditech, etc). are for the ruling. Epic EHR did oppose this ruling based on patient privacy concerns.
Vik comments that innovation is also going to benefit clinicians as the app economy will lead to the development of many apps for every service provided by healthcare.
Jimmy and Vik also comment on few other examples including sharing medical record between clinicians and hospitals.
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Chapters

1. ONC's Cures Act: Empowering Patients, Drive Innovation, and Spur App Economy (00:00:00)

2. Intro to ONC's CURES Act (00:03:20)

3. Easier Accessibility For Patients (00:06:20)

4. Health IT Developer Industry Boom? (00:08:42)

5. Privacy and Security (00:13:02)

6. Efficient Information Exchange for Provider and Clinicians (00:17:47)

7. What is potential timeline for the CURES Act to be fully implemented? (00:24:10)

8. What's coming up in This Week In Health Tech (00:28:17)