App developer Big Health collaborated with psychologists, a Pixar animator, podcast developers, designers, scriptwriters, software engineers and others to make a mental health app that's meant to be more user-friendly and approachable than many others on the market, and the company is running a clinical trial to test its effects. "A lot of what we're doing from, from scripting to the animation, is really about trying to show that we really understand what you're going through," said Big Health vice president Kelvin Kwong.

The CMS added GuideWell Connect to the list of approved platforms for enrolling in health insurance policies through Affordable Care Act exchanges. HealthSherpa and Stride Health are also CMS-approved for direct enrollment.

Although the data breach at the American Medical Collection Agency did not affect computer systems at Texas-based Clinical Pathology Laboratories, officials have alerted its 2.2 million patients whose information may have been compromised. Among the affected data include patient names, provider treatment information, dates of service, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, balance information, and credit card or banking information, but no Social Security numbers.

The CMS saw a near-doubling of Advanced Alternative Payment Model participation in the Quality Payment Program from 2017 to last year, and it plans to take more steps to reduce clinician burden. An MGMA survey last year found QPP was the top regulatory burden for medical practice leaders for the second year in a row.

Health care CIOs can greatly enhance their data security capabilities by adhering to a framework, such as NIST, says Ian Amit, chief security officer of Cimpress. He warns, however, that frameworks only offer a starting point for a health care organization's specific operation and must be expanded on beyond HIPAA compliance for an organization to effectively manage risks. He recommends pairing frameworks with the Factor Analysis of Information Risk standard.

A study in the Annals of Family Medicine showed that physician satisfaction at Bellin Health rose from 34% to 88% after receiving in-room support for EHR documentation. The model uses care team coordinators, such as medical assistants or nurses, who record notes for EHR documentation to help lessen a physician's administrative tasks.

A report from Thales found that 70% of health care organizations have suffered a data breach, and one third-of those reported a cybersecurity incident in the past year. All respondents said their organizations collect, share and store sensitive data, 38% said they use data encryption and 80% are moving data to the cloud, according to the report.

Participants of a study, to be led by the Yale University-Mayo Clinic Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation, will use a mobile health platform from Biofourmis to track their physiological biomarkers in an effort to evaluate the efficacy of using patient-measured data in developing drugs for heart failure. Biofourmis' mobile health platform can collect raw biosensor data from wearable biosensors and detect signs of worsening heart failure by using machine learning.

HealtHIE Nevada, a statewide health information exchange, will use a $1.2 million grant it received via the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act to connect with Nevada WebIZ, the state's immunization information system. "The more connections we can make to capture the full spectrum of various types of clinical data will improve the care patients receive," said HealtHIE Nevada Executive Director Michael Gagnon.

Missed AHIMA's CDI Summit earlier this week? The Journal of AHIMA has you covered. Read the highlights here.