The University of Pennsylvania Health System, also known as Penn Medicine, is working with clinicians on an overhaul of EHR systems so they can become a more intuitive and interactive tool to relieve administrative burdens, enhance clinical efficiency and boost patient outcomes. "Ultimately, we need to move past the idea that the EHR is just an administrative tool and see it as a clinical tool -- like a scalpel, or a medication, or an X-ray machine," says Dr. David Asch, executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation.

Medtronic has alerted physicians that internet updates for around 34,000 of its CareLink programming devices, designed for programming implanted pacemakers, were disabled due to the system's vulnerability to cyberattacks. The company said a USB connection can be used to manually update the programmers and that it is working on security updates to "further address these vulnerabilities and will be implemented pending regulatory agency approvals."

An artificial intelligence-assisted ultrasound system was as accurate as physicians in evaluating thyroid nodules and could help doctors improve their own accuracy, researchers reported at the 2018 American Thyroid Association annual meeting. People who interpret ultrasound reports likely lack as much experience as thyroid radiologists or endocrinologists have, "so to have an AI approach reliably do that would be very interesting and exciting," said Dr. Mabel Ryder, co-chair of the meeting's program committee.

Louisville, Ky.-based health care-focused startup accelerator XLerateHealth is collaborating with the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and West Virginia University to develop an online accelerator hub that will offer best practices on commercializing biomedical technology. The partners will use a $3.5 million grant from the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences to fund the project.

The Maine Technology Institute has introduced a new process for allocating grants for research and development to businesses in the state. The nonprofit will now review applications and make grant decisions on a rolling basis and based on need instead of sticking to a strict schedule.

UK Biobank holds broad genomic and clinical data on 500,000 people, offering researchers a resource for identifying relationships between genetic variations and common diseases. The availability of detailed clinical and biological information about the participants facilitates research on associations that give insight into disease mechanisms, writes Nancy Cox of the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute.

Nonprofit organization Tidepool is seeking FDA approval for Loop, an algorithm-based app that corrects low or high blood glucose levels. Between 1,000 and 1,500 people currently use the open source insulin delivery app, which is available for iPhones.

Health Canada has granted Medtronic Canada license to market the MiniMed 670G insulin pump system for patients with type 1 diabetes ages 7 and older. The system, which is expected to be launched in Canada this fall, enables automatic basal insulin delivery adjustment based on real-time needs of users.

The California Consumer Privacy Act allows the state's 39.5 million residents to control whether their personal data can be used by businesses and enables them to sue over data breaches. In a report that surveyed 300 executives at high-revenue companies, PwC found that many respondents are "considering whether to extend CCPA's rights to all of their US employees and consumers for operational simplicity and long-term readiness for potential federal privacy legislation."

Premiums for silver Affordable Care Act plans are expected to drop by an average of 1.5% in 2019 after increasing by 37% this year, although premiums will vary widely across the US, ranging from a 26% drop in Tennessee to a 20% increase in North Dakota, according to a new CMS report. The agency said this is the first time that premiums will fall since the ACA took effect, but experts said much of the decline can be attributed to insurers raising premiums too much this year amid efforts by the Trump administration to undermine the health care law.

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