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Tag: 2022 News

Insurance Survey Says Fraud Accounts for 10% of Claims Cost

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In a recent study by FRISS, a risk and compliance solution provider for P&C insurance companies worldwide, the challenges and opportunities facing insurers in their efforts to combat fraud throughout the entire policy lifecycle are highlighted. The study gathered input from over 400 insurance professionals worldwide and provides insight into topics such as fraud schemes, data challenges, process automation and more.

Survey respondents have differing views on the challenges and benefits of fraud detection software solutions. The common theme however is the data challenge; from underwriting to claims to special investigations. The difficulty is harnessing timely data to respond quickly when fraud is detected. FRISS’ past biennial surveys indicate that insurance professionals have struggled with inadequate data – either poor-quality internal data or limited access to external data sources.

COVID-19 will have a lasting impact on insurance, in large part because the pandemic has accelerated digital processes. Insurers must continue to address their technology debt by digitizing core processes, migrating to the cloud and embracing flexible sourcing models. Insurers are using a multilayered approach to minimize their risk of fraud, and improving protection at the front door at underwriting is definitely an area of focus. While these trends are continuing, insurers also are better positioned to take advantage of digital tools to combat fraud end-to-end.

Exactly how much fraud impacts the industry is always hard to pinpoint, however according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, in the US alone, fraud steals at least $80 billion every year from American consumers. Creativity and persistence in claims fraud is therefore a serious threat for insurers. Fraudsters continue to perpetrate schemes against insurers and inevitably work to exploit emerging system gaps, continuing to drive up the cost of insurance for honest consumers. For 41% of survey respondents, keeping up with modern fraudster modus operandi was their greatest challenge in effective responding to fraud. The top fraud schemes that saw an increase in popularity the past year are claiming false injuries, nondisclosure of relevant information and staged accidents.

The industry generally agrees fraud accounts for about 10% of all claims cost. However, one change since the prior survey is an increase in the percentage of claims suspected as fraudulent. In 2021 the suspicion of claims containing a potential element of misrepresentation or fraud rose to 20% – a rise predicted by FRISS in the previous report.

Having the right data in the right place, and in real time, is essential to improving fraud detection. With many insurers utilizing digital processes for almost all of their operations, the ability to see real-time data identifying potential fraud is hugely beneficial across the policy lifecycle – from first-party policy requests, to underwriting, and of course as claims are reported. The difficulty is harnessing timely data to respond quickly when fraud is detected. FRISS’s past biennial surveys indicate insurance professionals have struggled with inadequate data – either poor-quality internal data or limited access to external data sources. This year, amongst the top challenges in fighting fraud again where data protection and privacy, internal data quality and inadequate access to external data.

The future of fraud detection lies in the use of advanced technologies to support real-time, large-volume, and highly precise modelling for claims and underwriting fraud. Fortunately, respondents do see significant benefits in fraud detection software. These include:

– –    Improve loss ratio, cited by 59%
– –    Stay ahead of developing fraud schemes, cited by 53%
– –    Increase investigator efficiency, cited by 52%

A hybrid approach of human expertise and predictive models will be essential in preventing losses. This will reduce the costs of underwriting and claims handling by removing unnecessary and error prone steps, and enables discovery of suspicious behavioural trends in data. This not only can augment the results of the existing data, it would give insurers an advantage when identifying the ever-changing schemes of fraudsters. Because FRISS believes that when insurance is more transparent and everyone can pay fair premiums that aren’t inflated by the real costs of fraud, businesses and individuals can thrive and achieve their dreams.

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Carriers Exempt From Insurance Frauds Prevention Act Liability

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In January 2016, Gilbert Ellinger injured his back while working, and he immediately informed his supervisor.

The following month, Ellinger reported to his employer’s human resources manager that he had sustained a work-related injury and had told his supervisor about it. The human resources manager created a “time line memorandum” summarizing the conversations she had with Ellinger about the injury. She placed the memorandum in Ellinger’s personnel file.

Ellinger filed a workers’ compensation claim based on the injury. Zurich was the workers’ compensation insurance carrier for Ellinger’s employer, and ESIS was Zurich’s claims administrator. Stephanie Ann Magill worked as a senior claims examiner for ESIS and was the adjuster assigned to investigate Ellinger’s claim.

ESIS denied Ellinger’s claim. Magill later testified that she denied the claim because of an April 2016 written statement from Ellinger’s supervisor in which the supervisor claimed that Ellinger had not reported the injury to him.

When the human resources manager was deposed in November 2016, she produced the time line memorandum, which Ellinger’s counsel in the workers’ compensation action did not know about until then. Nearly eight months after that disclosure, in July 2017, ESIS reversed its denial of the claim and stipulated that Ellinger was injured while working, as he had alleged.

When Magill was deposed in September 2018 she testified that she was unaware of the time line memorandum. Contrary to Magill’s testimony, her email messages show that the human resources manager had emailed Magill the time line memorandum in March and April 2016, and Magill thanked the manager for sending it.

Ellinger brought suit on behalf of the People of the State of California against Zurich American Insurance Company, ESIS, Inc., and Magill under Insurance Code section 1871.7, a provision of the Insurance Frauds Prevention Act (IFPA). Ellinger alleged that Magill’s concealment of or failure to disclose the time line memorandum violated Penal Code section 550, subdivision (b)(1) to (3).

Defendants filed demurrers. They argued that insurers and their agents, such as a claims administration company and a claims adjuster, could not be held liable in a qui tam action under section 1871.7. The trial court sustained defendants’ demurrers without leave to amend. The Court of Appeal affirmed in the unpublished case of People ex. rel. Ellinger v Magill (March 2022) E076378.

The trial court found persuasive State of California ex rel. Nee v. Unumprovident Corp. (2006) 140 Cal.App.4th 442 and State of California ex rel. Metz v. Farmers Group, Inc. (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th 1063, and concluded that insurance carriers are not subject to liability under the IFPA for claims handling practices.

In this case the opinion rejected arguments against these prior decisions and concluded that “excluding insurers and their agents from liability under section 1871.7 does not “tacitly approve of insurance company fraud” or otherwise entail that insurers and their agents can commit fraud with impunity. It means only that insurers and their agents cannot be sued under the IFPA. That holding is not surprising, because the IFPA expressly targets only deceptive conduct directed at insurers, not improper conduct by insurers.”

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State Fund Announces $55M Dividend to 2021 Policyholders

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State Compensation Insurance Fund announced plans to distribute an approximate $55 million dividend to its qualifying policyholders with policies that took effect between January 1 and December 31, 2021.

This dividend equals approximately 5% of the estimated annual premium reported during that period.

In 2021, State Fund reported approximately $1.1 billion in estimated annual premium (EAP) and approximately $159 million in realized capital gains.

“Due to the significant capital gains we realized in our equity portfolio, and our strong financial position, we are able to return money to our policyholders for the third consecutive year,” said State Fund President & CEO Vern Steiner.

“We are always looking for ways to help our policyholders improve their bottom lines and invest in California’s economy and we’re pleased to be able to provide this support.”

Since its creation in 1914, State Fund has paid out more than $5 billion in dividends to policyholders.

State Fund policyholders eligible for the 2021 dividend will begin to receive their payments after the expiration date of their individual policies.

Last year, it announced plans to distribute an approximate $39 million dividend to its qualifying policyholders with policies that took effect between Aug. 27 and Dec. 31, 2020.

This 2020 dividend equaled approximately 10% of the estimated annual premium reported during that time period.

That announcement followed up State Fund’s August declaration of an approximate 10% mid-year dividend that applied to all policies incepted between Jan. 1 and Aug. 26, 2020. The dividend distribution for the entire year equals approximately $114 million.

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California “Test to Treat” Facilities May be COVID Game Changers

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The president launched a nationwide “Test to Treat” Initiative on March 8 that seeks to make treating COVID-19 simple: You get tested at a pharmacy-based clinic. If you’re positive and at high risk, you can get antiviral pills on the spot, which can cut the chance of developing severe disease by some 85%.

“It’s a very exciting time,” said Dr. Annie Luetkemeyer, professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, in a recent USC webinar.

According to the story in DailyNews, all told, more than 2,300 pharmacies, hospitals and medical providers are distributing the drugs in California. CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid stores represent more than half of the stocked sites, with Kaiser Permanente, medical groups, hospitals, grocery chains and smaller pharmacies comprising much of the rest.

“The therapeutics are very different now than they were a year ago,” said Dr. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco. They can be game-changers for people who can’t get vaccinated or who haven’t had a robust immune response after vaccination.

Test and treat can be helpful if it can be implemented well, said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, which has 4.8 million members in Southern California.

What are these drugs?

Antivirals prevent viruses from making copies of themselves, while monoclonal antibodies bind to virus and help the body get rid of it. Here’s a few of the treatment options:

  • Pfizer’s Paxlovid is the new star in the antiviral treatment arsenal. It’s a series of pills, taken orally. They contain nirmatrelvir, which stops the virus from replicating, and ritonavir, which helps the main drug stay in the body longer, at higher concentrations. It’s three tablets taken together, twice daily, for five days, for a total of 30 tablets. Paxlovid significantly reduced the proportion of people with COVID-19-related hospitalization or death from any cause by 88% compared to placebo, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said when it issued an emergency use authorization in December.
  • Also new is Merck’s molnupiravir, an antiviral that received emergency use authorization in December as well. It works by introducing errors into the virus’ genetic code, which prevents the virus from replicating. It’s only for patients 18 and older, as molnupiravir can affect bone and cartilage growth, the FDA said. It’s a course of four capsules taken orally every 12 hours for five days, for a total of 40 capsules.
  • Veklury, the antiviral remdesivir, has been available since 2020 and isn’t part of the federal/state effort; clinics can order it directly. The drug must be delivered intravenously.
  • Monoclonal antibodies must be given intravenously or through injection as well, within about 10 days after symptoms. Sotrovimab is effective against omicron and part of the federal effort; Evusheld is for those who can’t get COVID-19 vaccines for medical reasons, or who didn’t have robust immune responses to vaccination.

Candidates for these treatments are those at high risk for developing serious disease, including folks who are older, overweight, pregnant, diabetic or have heart issues and other underlying health problems.

People should act as quickly as possible, contacting their doctors or finding a Test to Treat site at a local CVS or Walgreens, officials said.

“Although supplies remain limited, more residents are receiving these treatments through pharmacies, partners, and providers,” L.A. County’s COVID-19 update said. “To date, Public Health has distributed 20,960 doses of Paxlovid, 39,764 doses of Molnupiravir, and 13,584 doses of Evusheld, with 73% of Paxlovid doses, 82% of Molnupiravir doses and 66% of Evusheld allocated to residents in the most under-resourced communities.”

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Calif. Supreme Court Clarifies L.C. Whistleblower Protections

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Wallen Lawson worked as a territory manager for defendant PPG Architectural Finishes, Inc. (PPG), a paint and coatings manufacturer.

He claimed he was ordered to intentionally mistint slow-selling PPG paint products – that is, to tint the paint to a shade the customer had not ordered. Lowe’s would then be forced to sell the paint at a deep discount, enabling PPG to avoid buying back what would otherwise be excess unsold product. Lawson did not agree with this mistinting scheme and filed two anonymous complaints with PPG’s central ethics hotline. He also told his supervisor directly that he refused to participate.

He filed suit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and claimed that PPG had fired him because he blew the whistle on his supervisor’s fraudulent mistinting practices, in violation of the protections codified in Labor Code section 1102.5.  Because Lawson could not satisfy this third step of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973) 411 U.S. 792, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of PPG on the whistleblower retaliation claim. The three steps require that (1) the plaintiff establish a prima facie case of retaliation, (2) the defendant provide a legitimate, nonretaliatory explanation for its acts, and (3) the plaintiff show this explanation is merely a pretext for the retaliation

The California Supreme Court in the case of Lawson v PPG Architectural Finishes, Inc. (Jan, 2022) decided that the District Court applied the wrong standard.

The question in this case concerns the proper method for presenting and evaluating a claim of whistleblower retaliation under Labor Code section 1102.5. Since 2003, the Labor Code has prescribed a framework: Once an employee-whistleblower establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that retaliation was a contributing factor in the employee’s termination, demotion, or other adverse action, the employer then bears the burden of demonstrating by clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the same action “for legitimate, independent reasons.”

But in the years since section 1102.6 became law, some courts have persisted in instead applying a well-worn, but meaningfully different, burden- shifting framework borrowed from the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McDonnell Douglas.

Noting the lack of uniformity, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has asked the California Supreme Court to decide which of these frameworks governs section 1102.5 retaliation claims.

Unsurprisingly, the California Court concluded that courts should apply the framework prescribed by statute in Labor Code section 1102.6. Under the statute, employees need not satisfy the McDonnell Douglas test to make out a case of unlawful retaliation.

L.C. 1102.5 provides whistleblower protections to employees who disclose wrongdoing to authorities, and it prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee.

In 2003, the Legislature amended the Labor Code’s whistleblower protections in response to a series of high-profile corporate scandals and reports of illicit coverups, specifically citing “the recent spate of false business reports and other illegal activity by Enron, WorldCom and others”

The 2003 amendments added a procedural provision, section 1102.6, which statesl: “In a civil action or administrative proceeding brought pursuant to Section 1102.5, once it has been demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that an activity proscribed by Section 1102.5 was a contributing factor in the alleged prohibited action against the employee, the employer shall have the burden of proof to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the alleged action would have occurred for legitimate, independent reasons even if the employee had not engaged in activities protected by Section 1102.5.

To resolve the confusion, the Court clarified that section 1102.6, and not McDonnell Douglas three step process, supplies the applicable framework for litigating and adjudicating section 1102.5 whistleblower claims.

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WCAB Panel Clarifies Requirements for Reopening an Award

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Officer Jeffrey Wall injured his right knee during a foot pursuit of a felony suspect while employed as a Deputy Sheriff by the County of Sacramento as a deputy sheriff on April 11, 2015.

By Stipulations in December 2016, the parties agreed that he sustained injury AOE/COE to his right knee. The Stipulations did not include any reference to a right shoulder injury claim.

After the stipulation, Wall filed a timely Petition to Reopen his injury claim and amended the claim to include injury his right shoulder.

The parties proceeded to trial on September 25, 2020. Wall submitted an offer of proof stating: “Applicant would testify that at the time of the stipulations entered into in December 2016, he had no problems to his right shoulder.”

The WCJ found that Officer Wall showed good cause to reopen the injury claim and applicant sustained new and further disability as a result of the April 11, 2015 injury. Reconsideration of this finding was denied in the panel decision of Wall v County of Sacramento – ADJ 10046347 (March 2022).

On reconsideration the County contends that applicant was aware that he injured his right shoulder at the time that the parties submitted the Stipulations with Request for Award, so there is no good cause to reopen the injury claim.

In rejecting this contention, the panel reviewed the current law on the requirements of granting a Petition to Reopen.The employer argued that the case of Nicky Blair’s Restaurant v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd., (1980) 109 Cal. App. 3d 941, 45 Cal.Comp.Cases 876, established the principle that reopening for “good cause” does not permit an attempt to simply re-litigate the original award.

There was no dispute that on February 11, 2015, while chasing a suspect, Officer Wall slipped and fell, landing on his right knee and shoulder, and that he sustained an abrasion and/or contusion to his right shoulder.

However, at no time prior to the December 15, 2016 Stipulations did he receive medical treatment for his right shoulder. Nor is there any evidence that he had any right shoulder disability before the parties settled the right knee injury claim.

The first treatment report indicating that applicant sustained an injury to his right shoulder was dated February 13, 2018. “Defendant provides no explanation as to how the February 13, 2018 report and the various treatment notes thereafter, could have been discovered and produced prior to the December 15, 2016 award. Nor does defendant refer to any evidence indicating that the February 13, 2018 report, and the subsequent right shoulder treatment reports, were merely cumulative or a restatement of the original evidence.”

The WCAB panel concluded that “defendant’s reliance on the Nicky Blair’s decision is inconsistent with the evidence submitted in this matter.“

Based on the record, there is no evidence that applicant sustained a compensable “injury” to his right shoulder prior to the 2015 stipulation. A compensable injury by definition requires either medical treatment, or compensable disability. Officer Ward had neither of these before the 2015 stipulation, and thus the shoulder is “new and further” not re-litigating something that existed before the award.

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9th Circuit to Rule on Federal Preemption of California Sick Pay Law

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A Ninth Circuit panel heard arguments Thursday in an appeal with major implications for labor law in the United States and the sick pay of railroad workers in California.

Courthouse News reports that a consortium of railroad operators, including Amtrack and Union Pacific, sued the state of California claiming its 2014 law requiring employers to offer sick leave to workers should not apply to railroads for a variety of reasons.

Mainly, the railroads say federal preemption – the legal concept holding that when federal laws are in conflict with state laws, one must defer to the federal statutes – applies here. They say the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act regulates railroad worker issues like sick leave, as well as unemployment insurance and disability claims.

But California’s attorneys say the federal statute does not actually cover issues like short-term paid sick leave since it was passed in 1938, before the concept of paid sick leave for personal or family illnesses was fully integrated into employment law in the United States.

A federal judge in 2017 partly sided with the state, finding the rail operators must allow their California employees to use accrued sick time for family matters and issues related to domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. She said Congress’ intent when it passed the 1938 Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act was to provide national short-term railroad worker disability insurance, not a “stand-alone sickness benefit statute.”

“[The railroad act] does not so much as mention these other, substantively different benefits, demonstrating that Congress did not regulate those matters and pre-empt state laws that do,” U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller wrote.

In 2021, however, Mueller granted judgment in favor of the rail operators, eventually finding that forcing the railroads to apply the California law would create an undue burden to interstate commerce under Dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

California appealed. Arguing for the state before the Ninth Circuit panel on Thursday, attorney Kristin Liska doubled down on Mueller’s earlier ruling. “Congress understood and intended the phrase ‘sickness benefits’ to refer to situations that the RUIA’s language covers, namely when an employee is unable to work due to injury, illness or pregnancy,” she told the three-judge panel.

The state argues the railroad act does not cover “alternative forms of sickness” recognized under California’s law – caring for sick family members or attending to matters related to domestic violence – so the statutes are not in conflict and preemption doesn’t apply.

But U.S. Circuit Judge Morgan Christen did not seem persuaded during oral argument.  “The federal statute seems very broad so you are going to have to help me out in order to gain traction,” she said.

Arguing for the railroads, attorney Donald Monroe, agreed and said that if any provisions, including time off to vote or other activities, are provided to employees under laws that apply to sickness, they are automatically preempted. “No matter what it is, if California puts it under a sickness law, they can’t apply it to railroads,” Monroe said.

This dispute should be resolved at the Court of Appeals level over the next few months.

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Scientists Report on the Pandemic Related Research Sliver Lining

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The billions of dollars invested in covid vaccines and covid-19 research so far are expected to yield medical and scientific dividends for decades, helping doctors battle influenza, cancer, cystic fibrosis, and far more diseases.

“This is just the start,” said Dr. Judith James, vice president of clinical affairs for the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. “We won’t see these dividends in their full glory for years.”

James hopes that computer technology used to detect covid will improve the treatment of other diseases. For example, researchers have shown that cellphone apps can help detect potential covid cases by monitoring patients’ self-reported symptoms. James said she wonders if the same technology could predict flare-ups of autoimmune diseases.

“We never dreamed we could have a PCR test that could be done anywhere but a lab,” James said. “Now we can do them at a patient’s bedside in rural Oklahoma. That could help us with rapid testing for other diseases.”

According to the story published by California Healthline, building on the success of mRNA vaccines for covid, scientists hope to create mRNA-based vaccines against a host of pathogens, including influenza, Zika, rabies, HIV, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which hospitalizes 3 million children under age 5 each year worldwide.

Researchers see promise in mRNA to treat cancer, cystic fibrosis, and rare, inherited metabolic disorders, although potential therapies are still many years away.

Pfizer and Moderna worked on mRNA vaccines for cancer long before they developed covid shots. Researchers are now running dozens of clinical trials of therapeutic mRNA vaccines for pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, and melanoma, which frequently responds well to immunotherapy.

Ambitious scientific endeavors have provided technological windfalls for consumers in the past; the race to land on the moon in the 1960s led to the development of CT scanners and MRI machines, freeze-dried food, wireless headphones, water purification systems, and the computer mouse.

Likewise, funding for AIDS research has benefited patients with a variety of diseases, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine. Studies of HIV led to the development of better drugs for hepatitis C and cytomegalovirus, or CMV; paved the way for successful immunotherapies in cancer; and speeded the development of covid vaccines.

Over the past two years, medical researchers have generated more than 230,000 medical journal articles, documenting studies of vaccines, antivirals, and other drugs, as well as basic research into the structure of the virus and how it evades the immune system.

Dr. Michelle Monje, a professor of neurology at Stanford University, has found similarities in the cognitive side effects caused by covid and a side effect of cancer therapy often called “chemo brain.” Learning more about the root causes of these memory problems, Monje said, could help scientists eventually find ways to prevent or treat them.

One of the most important pandemic breakthroughs was the discovery that 15% to 20% of patients over 70 who die of covid have rogue antibodies that disable a key part of the immune system. Although antibodies normally protect us from infection, these “autoantibodies” attack a protein called interferon that acts as a first line of defense against viruses.

The discovery of interferon-targeting antibodies “certainly changed my way of thinking at a broad level,” said E. John Wherry, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Immunology, who was not involved in the studies. “This is a paradigm shift in immunology and in covid.”

For decades, public health officials created policies based on the assumption that viruses spread in one of two ways: either through the air, like measles and tuberculosis, or through heavy, wet droplets that spray from our mouths and noses, then quickly fall to the ground, like influenza.

Today it’s clear that the coronavirus – and all respiratory viruses – spread through a combination of droplets and aerosols, said Dr. Michael Klompas, a professor at Harvard Medical School and infectious disease doctor.

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Researchers Study Use of Plastic Barriers On COVID-19 Transmission

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Controlling the spread of COVID-19 has become a priority worldwide. After case reports in December 2019, social distancing has been widely adopted as a containment strategy. Therefore, it is essential to control the risks and ensure safety in educational, public, and workplaces.

To reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, measures against all three routes of infection (contact, droplet, and aerosol) and to reduce the probability of infection through multiple defenses, social distance, mask, vaccine, etc., are required.

However, compared to contact and droplet transmission, which can be prevented by social distancing and the use of masks, aerosol transmission is difficult to visually recognize, and the effectiveness of respective countermeasures has not been confirmed. Accordingly, mass transmissions of COVID-19 have been reported in poorly ventilated areas.

The inappropriate use of plastic sheeting for preventing droplet infection has caused clusters of infectious diseases and threatened workplace safety.

The use of carbon dioxide (CO 2) sensors to control indoor air quality has attracted significant attention. The measurement of indoor CO 2 concentration (referring to exhaled air) is considered an effective method for indirect risk management to ensure that exhaled aerosol particles containing SARS-CoV-2 do not remain indoors.

Therefore, these devices have been widely installed as a safety measure in places where people gather, such as restaurants, stores, classrooms, and offices. The guideline for its operation considers a provisional control value of 800-1000 ppm set by government agencies of each countries as the maximum CO 2 concentration. Under pandemic conditions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has indicated that the CO 2 concentration should be maintained below 800 ppm, which has been considered a good safety indicator.

However, as CO 2 concentration is not a direct risk indicator and there is no direct epidemiological relationship between CO 2 concentration and COVID-19 transmission.

In a new study, researchers used a CO 2 sensor network and conducted a tracer gas experiment to evaluate the complex ventilation conditions in a business site in Japan, where a cluster of COVID-19 infections occurred. In 2021, 14 infections occurred among 30 workers who spent a short time in a large work preparation room. The room was divided by four partitions, and only a small number of entrances and exits served as ventilation routes.

The objectives of this research were to 1) demonstrate a method for evaluating and determining the state of air quality management in an office with a complex geometry using a CO2 sensor network, and 2) verify the effectiveness of ventilation improvement measures.

The Researchers concluded that for aerosol infection control, which should be conducted in parallel with measures against contact and droplet transmission, the maximum height of partitions should be strictly controlled, and they should be installed at a height and orientation that do not interfere with ventilation. Measurement using sensor networks is effective in detecting such a ventilation bias.

Ventilation bias caused by ventilation pathways and inappropriate use of plastic sheeting can be detected by a CO 2 sensor network and time series data analysis. Estimated ventilation rate will be a good index to suppress the formation of the COVID-19 cluster.

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Google Announces New Technology For Electronic Health Records

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Just a week after pulling back the curtain on new natural language processing features for Care Studio, its clinician-facing patient record interface, at the ViVE conference in Miami, Google Health took to HIMSS 2022 to announce the technology’s first-ever integration with an electronic health record vendor.

News site Fierce Healthcare cited a “to-be-published blog post” from Google saying “Using Google Health’s tools, Meditech will form a longitudinal health data layer, bringing together data from different sources into a standard format and offering clinicians a full view of patient records.“

Google wrote that it has entered into a collaboration with Meditech to develop “a deeply integrated solution” that marries the search, contextualization and data harmonization capabilities of Google Health’s Care Studio with Meditech Expanse, the vendor’s web-based EHR platform.

“Using Google Health’s tools, Meditech will form a longitudinal health data layer, bringing together data from different sources into a standard format and offering clinicians a full view of patient records,” Google Health wrote in the to-be-published blog post. “And with Google Health’s search functionality embedded into their EHR, clinicians can find salient information faster for a more frictionless experience and the intelligent summarization can highlight critical information directly in the Expanse workflow.”

Care Studio leans on Google’s expertise in organizing information to help clinicians find health record information faster. The tool’s Clinical Search feature enables clinicians to simply type what they’re looking for and quickly find the specific information requested, and even related concepts.

Today’s medical data is often siloed, health records live within and across multiple systems. Care Studio simplifies complex information by creating a real-time, normalized longitudinal representation of a person’s clinical data.

The Google tools give clinicians a single, centralized view that automatically brings forward a patient’s important information – including hospital visits, outpatient events, laboratory tests, medications, and treatment and progress notes. And the intuitive interface offers unique ways to visualize health data and trends in tables, graphs and other helpful formats.

The Care Studio mobile app makes it easy to find important information before seeing a new patient, or quickly check in on a patient’s progress. It helps clinicians easily search a patient’s record, review the most recent physician notes, view a patient’s lab trends and more right from their phone.

In an Axios interview in January, Google Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo said, “When we think about how we’re going to support the health ecosystem, we’ve got three big buckets. Is it going to support consumers in their health journey? Is it going to support caregivers who are providing the services on the front lines – or is it going to support community context? Those are our three C’s: consumer, caregiver and community context.”

Google also used last week’s ViVE healthcare conference in Miami Beach to preview its new Conditions capability.

A March 8 Google blog, said “Healthcare data is structured in numerous ways, making it difficult to organize. Clinical notes may be written differently and stored across different systems. Clinician notes also differ based on if content is meant for clinical decision making, billing or regulatory uses.”

“Further, when it comes to writing notes, clinicians use different abbreviations or acronyms depending on their personal preference, what health system they’re a part of, their region and other factors. All of this has made it difficult to synthesize clinical data – until now.”

Adding Conditions to Google Health enables algorithms to pull meaningful detail from physician and clinician notes often written in partial sentences or using non-standardized terms to describe diagnostic findings, even ferreting out misspellings that can cause problems.

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