Technology

Virtual reality (VR) combined with pulmonary rehabilitation was more effective than pulmonary rehabilitation alone in improving the pulmonary function, exercise capacity, and mental health of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

A letter from the guest editor highlights how the findings in this special issue draw attention to critical questions that have arisen from health care’s digital transformation.

This analysis uses claims and electronic health records from 2021 to examine racial and ethnic variations in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases in the United States.

CMS has announced new federal rules that require health insurers to streamline requests to cover treatments; nearly 50,000 veterans used the emergency suicide prevention program launched by the Department of Veteran Affairs in 2023; the FDA recently authorized the first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered medical device to help doctors detect the most common forms of skin cancer.

This article compares cardiovascular disease risk management in community clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic among patients for whom primary care was delivered mostly in person vs mostly virtually.

Mike Brown, vice president of managed services at Cardinal Health, shares how drug cost control software has improved monitoring efficiency and reduced drug spending.

In a 2022 survey representative of US adults, sexual minority individuals reported greater rates of telehealth use, especially for mental health visits, than heterosexual individuals.

Longitudinal evaluation of an advanced primary care reform effort found some improvements in health information technology (IT) offerings and use as well as opportunities to improve future collaboration.

In a systematic review and meta-analysis, real-time continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) demonstrated benefits in terms of time in range, hypoglycemia, and hyperglycemia among patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

Brian Mullen, PhD, head of innovation and product at The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic, discusses how providing second opinions has improved patient and provider experiences in health care.

This study found that the dramatic shift from face-to-face posthospital transitional care to telehealth did not affect 30-day readmission or mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bevey Miner, executive vice president of health care strategy and policy, Consensus Cloud Solutions, shares how extraction artificial intelligence is helping train machine learning models to recognize and extract information from documents, providing structured data with confidence scores.

Patients’ motivations for telehealth use require further investigation to develop appropriate policies.

Compared with in-person appointments, virtual care appointments were associated with higher completion rates, shorter time to appointment, increased hemoglobin A1c documentation, and decreased blood pressure documentation.

Patients are less comfortable with predictive models used for health care administration compared with those used in clinical practice, signaling misalignment between patient comfort, policy, and practice.

Congress is being urged to reverse a cut to physicians’ Medicare payments; Bayer announced encouraging results on Monday of 2 phase 3 trials for its nonhormonal drug candidate meant to treat hot flashes; more students are turning to online mental health support rather than school counselors.

This article reviews the book Artificial Intelligence for Improved Patient Outcomes: Principles for Moving Forward With Rigorous Science by Daniel W. Byrne.

Mike Brown, vice president of managed services at Cardinal Health, discusses how Cardinal Health has worked to integrate key digital health solutions among hospitals across the United States.

From 2017 to 2022, patients with better communication with providers were more likely to report being offered and accessing a patient portal, but disparities persist.

The FDA announced it is allowing Florida to import medications in bulk from Canada at far lower prices than those offered in the United States; health insurance companies are revamping their technology to encourage more people to get their medications through the mail; nearly 17,000 patients with COVID-19 may have died after taking hydroxychloroquine during the first pandemic wave.

Kathi Mooney, PhD, RN, FAAN, of the University of Utah, discussed technologies she and her team developed to help improve the quality of life of patients with cancer and their families.

The most-read articles in digital health covered improved outcomes, patient management, and reduced cost of care in telehealth and app-based care.

Excision BioTherapeutics has so far released positive safety data from the first 3 participants living with HIV-1, with no evidence of vector shedding in sexual organ tissue.

Coverage from The US Oncology Network Payer Transformation Summit, held September 27-29, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia.

The FDA approved the first test to assess opioid addiction risk; Americans are using more cold and allergy medicines to mask any related symptoms to return to work and social gatherings, but may be overtreating themselves in the process; Rite Aid will be banned from using artificial intelligence–powered facial recognition technology for 5 years under a proposed Federal Trade Commission settlement.

This editorial provides suggestions for improving the process of e-consults, which are a promising method of expanding access to specialty care.

US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) clinicians’ perspectives on what constitutes a good e-consult and why suboptimal e-consult requests occur contain broadly applicable lessons for other health systems.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended that children with obesity receive intensive counseling at age 6 to promote healthy diet and exercise habits; a new survey found that the majority of American patients are wary of their doctors using artificial intelligence (AI); a class-action lawsuit was filed Tuesday against health insurer Humana for using an AI algorithm that systemically denies seniors rehabilitation care recommended by their doctors.

CDC revealed nationally representative estimates of chronic fatigue; the proposed merger between Cigna and Humana has been terminated over financial terms and shareholder skepticism; ChatGPT provides inaccurate responses to medication queries.

Andrew Srisuwananukorn, MD, of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, explained the potential of artificial intelligence (AI)-based support tools for differentiating primary myelofibrosis (prePMF) and essential thrombocythemia (ET) in the community setting.