Jay Burns & Brad Crotty

During the last year, Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Health Network has continued to expand the digital tools we use to support our patients. Our online behavioral health tool (powered by Silvercloud), has grown considerably in the scope of issues to which it helps patients apply cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills. We began with three options for Froedtert & MCW patients; Depression, Anxiety, and Stress. Since launching in 2017 over 3,000 people have used the tool to improve their mood and develop healthy behaviors.

Improvement in Depression and Anxiety

Earlier this year, we published a peer-reviewed article in…

In March, we will be launching our new login and identity experience for patients signing into their portal and applications at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin.

In this post, we will share a bit about *what* patients will experience moving forward, and importantly, *why* we are making these changes.

Our new login experience

We are implementing a new universal login experience for our patients that will work across our digital experiences … from our mobile application to our patient portal, and will set the foundation to use the same login across all future digital health experiences that are part of their care…

While 2020 was certainly not the year we were all expecting and hoping for, necessity has spurred innovation and change. Though virtual visits have been front of mind during the pandemic, other forms of digital health care have been making meaningful impacts on our patients.

As we approach the end of 2020, we are administering our first doses of the mRNA vaccines which help our bodies engineer antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It’s a triumph of science, built upon decades of research and experience. …

Starting November 2, 2020, the Information Blocking provision called for by the 21st Century Cures Act goes into effect. The regulations spell out what is already part of law — that patients have access to their healthcare records, and healthcare providers must share data and records with other providers for the purposes of treatment. Blocking information is any activity that would likely interfere with access, exchange, or use of electronic health information (EHI).

This represents a cultural change point for healthcare organizations. …

Healthcare is a data-centric field that would seem ideal for implementing novel AI methods and tools. For everything from multi-dimensional and complex record, to data-driven clinical decision processes, to the large use of modern technology, AI seems to have everything it needs to have an impact on healthcare practices.

Nonetheless, introducing a new algorithm to the healthcare field is no easy task. AI engineers must first ask a few questions, including — 1) How do we test the tool’s performance? 2) How do we demonstrate it is safe? (No more harmful than current practices) 3) How reliably does our tool…

In our digital age, people have expectations of efficiency and fast turnaround time. Providing a little information and answering a few questions to screen out more serious problems is all patients should need to do for common, relatively low-risk conditions.

In the future, maybe even computers will be able to write a prescription. …

Our teams continue to see an incredible amount of change. Health care is increasingly moving to a focus on value, with a growing focus on quality, cost, and experience. The COVID-19 pandemic has required all of us to adapt on a very regular basis to new guidance, new procedures, and new ways of delivering care services. If there is one thing about working in health care right now, it is that change is constant.

Change can be unsettling, can make us feel uncertain, unsure of ourselves, and nostalgic for days past. But we are all in this together. We continue…

We are witnessing one of the most severe pandemics in recent history. Albeit the technological progress our society has achieved, the only effective measures put in place across the globe to limit the sway of the COVID-19 pandemic have been a classical combination of social distancing, testing, and contact tracing. These measures had the associated by-product of shutting down the majority of economic sectors with healthcare being perhaps the most impacted.

In the wake of the pandemic, hospitals and health systems had to deal with new emerging challenges which left them little prepared, vulnerable, and almost at a state of…