The 10 Most Impactful Healthcare Solution Providers of 2019

www.mirrorreview.com April 2019

VOL - I

IoT Drive Got Stuck? Try These Tips To Streamline Your Changing Testing Approach In IoT

First Look Take A Closer Look At The First Ever Picture Of Black Hole

David Barzillai Founder & President

ADVANCED DATA SYSTEMS And Its MedicsCloud Suite Of Healthcare Software Products

EDITOR’S LETTER

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he modern healthcare tech industry continues to transform at exponential rates. The rationale behind establishing a smart health community is to be able to tackle numerous issues such as ever-increasing population, prevalence of chronic diseases, emergence of new infections, advancements in cutting-edge yet costly disruptive technologies, low financial status of masses, and doctor-patient communication gaps among others.

www.mirrorreview.com April 2019

VOL - I

IoT Drive Got Stuck? Try These Tips To Streamline Your Changing Testing Approach In IoT

First Look Take A Closer Look At The First Ever Picture Of Black Hole

David Barzillai Founder & President

ADVANCED DATA SYSTEMS And Its MedicsCloud Suite Of Healthcare Software Products

Global Mission To Establish A Sustainable Smart Health Community!

In order to accomplish this mission, healthcare providers, organizations, caregivers, researchers, and payers are fighting tooth and nail to make a long and sustainable impact. For this, technology trends such as Artificial Intelligence, AR/VR, nano medicines, robotics, 3D printing, and data analytics are proving to be extremely beneficial.

Our latest magazine issue, ‘The 10 Most Impactful Healthcare Solution Providers of 2019,’ Vol I features some of the pioneering solution providing companies from the medical industry.

What makes the journeys of these impactful healthcare solution providers so inspiring are the missions, visions, and core values that they have undertaken and fulfilling. Additionally, entrepreneurs and industry leaders of these companies are translating their ideas into fruitful realities by bridging the existing gaps in the global healthcare market. Widespread around the globe, we get to understand their opinions, issues they are confronting, solutions/products/services they are currently developing and working on, R&D breakthroughs, and how the future of healthcare sector will look like in the coming years.

Ultimately, these healthcare solution providing companies are working for a united cause to help build a high-quality, affordable, and sustainable smart health community.

We also hope you enjoy the highlighted articles on popular technologies in ‘IoT Drive’ and the latest space discoveries in ‘First Look’ sections respectively Our avid readers can also subscribe for newsletters to know about the upcoming industry trends, news updates, featured articles, blogs and a lot more.

Happy Reading!

Anuja Mulmule Managing Editor

CREDIT PAGE Publisher : Archana Ghule Editor-in-Chief : Vikram Suryawanshi Managing Editor : Anuja Mulmule Assistant Editor : Mayur Shewale Contributory Writers : Bansidhar Tigga Deepali Sarwade Business Development Manager : Rohan Yadav Project Managers : Vinayak Todchetwar William Taylor Pandurang Kulkarni Joseph Thomas Art Director : Vinod Alhat Visualizer : Mark Davis Graphic Designers : Poonam Magdum Sumit Bonage Aniket Diwane Sakshi Bendre Head of Distribution & Production : Aakash Mahajan Head of Operations : Robert Smith Research Analysts : Jacob Eddy Advertising : Maria Smith

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CONTENTS

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18

Behavior ImagingÂŽ Transforming The Healthcare Industry Through Enhanced Patient Engagement Solution

28

26

Business Automation Experts A Knowledgeable Expert Of Technical Skills Combined With Business Acumen

CereSoft Inc. Energizing Healthcare Cash Flow Through Innovation

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34

Highmark Interactive

MonarchFx

TRIARQ Health

Bringing The Positive Change In Concussion Management And Neurological Testing

Providing Smartest Logistic Solutions To The Healthcare Industry

Putting Patients First By Empowering Independent Physicians

Cover Story Industry Analyst

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ADVANCED DATA SYSTEMS And Its MedicsCloud Suite of Healthcare Software Products

Marc Zionts | Automated Insights

Not All Data Heroes Wear Capes

Articles 22

IoT Drive Got Stuck? Try These Tips To Streamline Your Changing Testing Approach In IoT

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First Look

Take A Closer Look At The First Ever Picture Of A Black Hole

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One was the move towards value-based (VB) medicine whereby positive outcomes would result from fewer office visits and readmissions into inpatient facilities. The fee-forservice model with patients continually returning for their next appointments would disappear. To get physicians into a VB mindset, Medicare devised a reporting matrix under which three things would happen: (1) be penalized against future Medicare reimbursements for not reporting enough or at all, or (2) obtain incentives for high quality reporting, or (3) remain neutral by reporting enough to avoid penalties but not enough for incentives. Complying with VB was a definite challenge.

people back on track health-wise. Today, they also need to have a great overall experience.

A Suite of proven clinical, financial, management & patient experience solutions Advanced Data Systems’ (ADS) MedicsCloud Suite and MedicsRCM clients have not only been able to overcome these and other challenges, they’ve actually been able to benefit financially and operationally in the process: Ÿ

Another was moving from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding which involved replacing a comprehensive set of thousands of codes in use for many years (ICD-9) with an entirely new set of even more detailed codes (ICD-10). Claims would be rejected if they weren’t coded correctly by ICD-10’s deadline date.

By now coders have probably become accustomed to which ICD-10 codes to use, but the Code Converter will remain in place as a “just in case” system feature. Ÿ

Here’s another: patients have reportedly become the third largest payer group in the US only behind Medicare and Medicaid because insurance reimbursements have gone down in general. Today, the patient might owe as much, or even more, than what his or her insurance paid.

One more challenge is how “patient engagement” and “patient experience” have taken on new meaning and importance, perhaps because of social media, or the competition for patients, or both. It’s not enough to get

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ADS created its ICD-10 Code Converter well in advance of the deadline. The Converter has two options for making the correct ICD-10 code selection: either through a drop-down list of ICD-10 codes to use in place of the ICD-9 code, or by using a Google-like search capability for entering a phrase and selecting the correct ICD-10 code.

The value-based medicine challenge came by way of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) calling for two separate methods for nonexempt providers to report their VB stats depending on whether they’re using the “MIPS” or “APM” method of reporting. A minimum degree of reporting would be required in order to at least avoid penalties against future Medicare reimbursements.

Thanks to its MedicsCloud EHR’s (Electronic Health Records) built-in MACRA Dashboard, ADS’ clients are

ADS is your stability and reliability source for healthcare systems since 1977.

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here have been some monumental healthcare industry challenges in recent years.

continues to be a leader in meeting the challenges and changes within the healthcare industry.

able to do their reporting with the dashboard providing visual guidance on how their data is progressing, helping to ensure they at least avoid the fairly sizable penalty. For example, a lack of quality reporting in calendar year 2019 will mean an up to a 7% reduction in the provider’s 2021 Medicare reimbursements.

Besides the dashboard, ADS has a team of in-house MACRA experts who work with clients in helping to ensure they’re on track, and to answer any MACRArelated questions. Ÿ

To address the very serious challenge of patient balances increasing after insurance, the ADS team created the Medics Patient Responsibility Estimator. And, the company made it accessible through the scheduler so patients can be given a good approximation of what they’ll owe as part of scheduling the appointment.

This helps prepare the patient for at least a partial, if not a full payment on arrival, and / or to setup a payment plan. The copayment is also displayed making for another great reminder.

When leaving, patients can be shown a more accurate representation of what will be owed. The practice might even get signed acknowledgments from patients, ensuring there are no surprises when their statements arrive.

The MedicsCloud Suite accommodates patient payments in any number of ways, including securely online through the MedicsPortal. In fact, the portal is iPad, iPhone, and Android-friendly. The practice can send payment reminder texts and patients are able to make payments even when they’re on the go.

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Our vision is to ensure that our software

As for patient engagement and enhancing their experience, the Suite supports a number of features and capabilities fostering that. But what about others who also need to have a great experience? These are the practice or organization itself, its providers, and an often-neglected yet incredibly important group: referring physicians. The Suite has all of these segments covered as well.

First, the MedicsPortal keeps the practice accessible to patients via their iPads, iPhones, or Androids, 24 x 7 x 365 to schedule appointments, complete questionnaires, and perform a host of other self-empowering, efficiency-producing capabilities benefiting the patient and the practice. The portal’s Notifyer sends alerts when new messages are available to be read. And as mentioned, patients can make payments online through the portal.

Medics Texting enables the practice to send interactive appointment reminder texts to patients who confirm or cancel by replying. Cancelations can be quickly called to reschedule and future appointments may be contacted to see about filling in gaps. Texts can contain directions, special instructions, and be in multiple languages.

Texting is also ideal for reminding patients about balances due which are then payable through the portal.

On arrival, MedicsKiosk supports self-registrations eliminating the sign-in sheet at the front desk, and clipboards of paper. It’s also iPad, iPhone, or Androidfriendly.

Medics Telemedicine enables patients to use their devices for remote appointments from almost anywhere

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Our MedicsCloud Suite successfully navigates the complexities of intake, medical billing, clinical documentation, and workflow management.

Physicians can be mobile yet stay connected using their devices to see patient information, check schedules, and even transcribe reports. Those finalized reports can then be emailed or e-faxed to referring physicians from the device.

All of these mobility features work to create positive experiences while keeping everyone engaged.

These are just a few of the real-world industry challenges ADS’ clients have had to overcome, and they did so, and continue to do so, with its unique MedicsCloud Suite or MedicsRCM if revenue cycle management services are preferred.

A Purpose-Driven Leader Behind ADS’ Market Dominance David Barzillai, the Founder and President of Advanced Data Systems Corporation is a hands-on CEO and enjoys working with his Programming and Development teams in creating new features and enhancements.

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globally. The practice can see more patients using virtually no office resources. And telemedicine visits generate revenue.

Sharing his experience on working with ADS’ extensive client base, David asserts, “We’re lucky to have a sophisticated group of clients with whom I keep in close contact. Very often they’ll make suggestions which are almost always incorporated in future versions.”

Furthermore, the tech-savvy CEO elaborates that technologies being incorporated in ADS’ product portfolio includes updated Artificial Intelligence, medical device connectivity, next-generation telemedicine, and even greater features for patient and provider mobility.

An Extraordinary History Of Stability And Reliability In The Healthcare Industry “ADS began in 1977. To say things have evolved galactically over the past 42 years is an understatement. Yet, revolutionary technology never ends. Wearables, audibles, imaging, greatly enhanced artificial intelligence or machine learning. ADS looks forward to being right there with all of them for our clients!”

“ADS’ core mission is to ensure its MedicsCloud Suite and MedicsRCM clients obtain the most revenue possible from insurers and patients while operating at maximum efficiency using intelligent, “hands off” automation. And, we’re very focused on providing the tools our clients need to retain and even expand their patient and referring physician bases.”

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Company Name

Company Info

Advanced Data Systems David Barzillai Founder & President

Advanced Data Systems creates and delivers superior healthcare software solutions supporting maximized reimbursements and revenue and optimized productivity for its clients while providing them with the finest training, support, and services. www.adsc.com

Amgen Robert A. Bradway Chairman & CEO

Amgen is one of the world’s leading biotechnology companies. www.amgen.com

Behavior Imaging Ron Oberleitner CEO & Chairman

Initiated in 2005, Behavior Imaging® develops solutions to facilitate the observational, analytical, and collaborative needs of behavioral healthcare, and special education professionals. www.behaviorimaging.com

Business Automation Experts Matt Lepkowski Founder

Business Automation Experts (BAE) is a consulting firm focused on the strategic use of technology to improve the operational efficiency of organizations. www.businessautomationexperts.com

CereSoft Inc. Dr. Hsing-Hen Chen Founder & CEO

Established in 1994, CereSoft is a healthcare RCM services company, which has ingrained its core values on creative innovations and rich knowledge base of its workforce. www.ceresoft.com

Cerner Brent Shafer Chairman & CEO

Cerner Corporation is an American supplier of health information technology solutions, services, devices and hardware. www.cerner.com

Highmark Interactive Dr. Sanjeev Sharma Co-founders & CEO

Highmark is offering smart solutions to protect people’s brains with the implementation of advanced technologies like AI and ML. www.highmark.tech

Molina Healthcare Joseph M. Zubretsky President & CEO

Molina Healthcare offers Medicare Advantage plans designed to meet the needs of individuals with Medicare or both Medicaid and Medicare coverage. www.molinahealthcare.com

MonarchFx Dr. James A. Tompkins Chairman & CEO

MonarchFx, a Tompkins International company, offers a nationwide healthcare ecosystem. www.monarchfxgo.com

TRIARQ Health Mike Sappington Chairman & CEO

TRIARQ Health offers a unique combination of technology and billing services in a way that strengthens the US’s Independent Medical Practices. www.triarqhealth.com

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Behavior Imaging : Transforming The Healthcare Industry Through Enhanced Patient Engagement Solution

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utism spectrum disorder (ASD) is widely known by individuals across the globe. ASD has no cure in spite of having widespread research and public awareness.

According to the Stanford Medicine News Center, the demand for autism treatment is 18 times larger than the available supply of caregivers in the US. Along with this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that there is 15 percent upsurge in the demand for autism treatment & diagnosis as compared to the previous year. Because of potential barriers such as distance, cost, and availability of experienced providers, the individuals with autism and their families are unable to receive timely diagnosis and treatment.

Inspired by their own personal experience with autism, Ron and Sharon Oberleitner established Behavior Imaging® to provide disabled people access to better care digitally. The duo has devoted their careers to aiding families and organizations to improve their accessibility to behavioral health treatment.

Behavior Imaging has been innovating digital health solutions for diagnosing and treating autism for 13 years.

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Back in 1996, Ron and Sharon went through an unfortunate event.

Their son was diagnosed with autism and they experienced difficulties in receiving specialized care. But, there was a big drawback in the healthcare systems. Their son received his treatment late due to lack of facilities. Therefore, Ron and Sharon decided to break the aforementioned barriers and develop a unique solution that will bring families closer to the options they need for their autistic child’s development and future.

Meeting the Challenges of Early Autism Diagnosis Initiated in 2005, Behavior Imaging® develops solutions to facilitate the observational, analytical, and collaborative needs of behavioral healthcare, and special education professionals. The company focuses on the challenges of early autism diagnosis and takes behavioral care beyond in-person assessment & treatment into a fully realized technological landscape. The services provided

by Behavior Imaging® enables patients to collaborate and consult with physicians through video capture and a secure health record application that allows users to store, share, and annotate video

files. In addition, the patients do not have to wait long at the diagnostic clinics. Instead, they receive the diagnosis reports as early as possible.

“family first, Behavior Imaging second” which helps to attract and retain the right employees.

A Leading Expert Improving the Quality of Healthcare

Connecting Healthcare Entities through Effective Applications For the early diagnosis and better treatment, Behavior Imaging® has developed the following applications, which help in the areas of behavioral healthcare, mental health, and special education. Ÿ

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Behavior Connect™: It is an online portal that enables health and education professionals and their organizations to remotely interact with clients, specialists, and other staff members while building a library of shareable assets and a continuous health record.

Behavior Capture™: It is an app used to capture and upload video evidence from natural environments securely into the online service, Behavior Connect™ or AssessmentView™.

NODA™ Autism Diagnosis: NODA enables clinical centers to offer a new remote autism assessment service.

With NODA, clinicians observe behaviors captured by the family at home through a secure platform. A recent study has been done in which current in-person autism assessment practices are compared with the NODA smartphone-based method. This research shows that the NODA method cut the average total time for an ASD assessment in half—saving on average two months for families.

Assessment View™: The company has developed a seamless platform for assessing student progress in special education on every level: classroom, school, district and state-wide alternate assessment.

Due to aforesaid contributions in assessing the diagnosis of autism, Behavior Imaging® has won prestigious awards from the Small Business Administration (awarded 2016 at the White House) and Google/Autism Speaks for its disruptive business model.

Enhancing Employees’ Experience To deliver better care facility, Behavior Imaging® needs employees who are experienced in managing individuals suffering from autism or other disabilities. To achieve this, the company pays for additional training provided to employees regularly in areas relevant to their position. In some cases, employees receive direct hands-on experience from colleagues with disabilities who perform special tasks for the company.

Apart from this, Behavior Imaging® reflects a culture of

Ron Oberleitner, the CEO and Chairman of Behavior Imaging®, has over 25 years of executive management experience within the health industry including medical devices, telemedicine, and medical imaging solutions. The Cofounder—Sharon Oberleitner works as the Vice President of Clinical and Corporate Affairs of the company. Sharon and Ron, both are leading the company to help others from their personal experience with autism and professional experience from the medical device, nonprofit, and research industries. To become a helping hand for families and individuals, the dynamic duo and their teams are creating and expanding solutions for better diagnostic, assessment, and continuity of care for a variety of behavioral and mental health challenges.

Additionally, Ron also successfully commercialized numerous innovations for the autism community, including Behavior Imaging®, TalkAutism™, and AutismCares™. He has a proven track record of bringing helpful technologies to market for improved clinical operations and treatment of various medical conditions, autism and other developmental disabilities.

Similarly, Sharon has spoken at numerous national autism conferences and was felicitated with a “Top Innovator Award” for founding a new platform used throughout multiple states for assessing Special Need student progress.

In the upcoming years, Ron and Sharon are planning to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) to help clinical professionals make quicker and better-informed decisions as they assess behaviors and recommend treatments.

The Future of Healthcare Industry Being an experienced entrepreneur, Ron believes that the healthcare market is awakening due to the benefits of capturing health data in real-time. The sharing of health data with the remote knowledgeable doctors to receive earlier diagnosis and/or treatment guidance is helping families and individuals across the globe in improving and managing their health.

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Business Automation Experts: A Knowledgeable Expert Of Technical Skills Combined With Business Acumen

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ealthcare organizations accumulate and pile vast amounts of personal information, making them a major target for cyber-criminals. Today, the frequency of cyberattacks is growing and new vulnerabilities to networks and computer systems are being discovered and exploited. Different types of attacks create different issues, often causing healthcare organizations to lose focus. Even though there are many security tools available in the market, it’s a major challenge to keep up with the growing healthcare data volume. Healthcare organizations are therefore looking for a system, which can provide better prevention and faster detection of cyberattacks. This can be possible by implementing a balanced approach with innovation and investment in new technologies. Leveraging innovative technologies to empower people and improve processes, Business Automation Experts offers personalized software solutions to enhance operational efficiencies and delivers proven results in profitability.

Building Trust through Incredible Customer Satisfaction

Matt Lepkowski Founder

We help business owners become protable by automating processes and ensuring business continuity.

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Business Automation Experts (BAE) is a consulting firm focused on the strategic use of technology to improve the operational efficiency of organizations. The company provides consulting and support with standard compliance audits to safeguard against misuse by unauthorized groups. The custom software solutions provider has collaborated with Laserfiche, Seceon, Microsoft, and Intel Corporation so that it can take advantage of the solutions developed by them that are well-designed and engineered for the business needs. BAE empowers and educates their clients to assist them in doing their job effectively, which further builds on the trust that is required to take risks and reach goals.

Leveraging Disruptive Technologies to Prevent Cyberattacks BAE offers personalized IT solutions for businesses and aids companies to add new revenue streams. To protect from

cyberattacks, the company proposes Security Operations Center (SoC) in a box solutions that are personalized according to the clients business needs. These solutions identify network behaviors that are unusual and respond with remediation in milliseconds. To strengthen security, they collaborated with Seceon; a threat detection and management company that visualizes, detects, and eliminates cyber threats in real-time. Seceon has incorporated Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Machine Learning (ML) and developed aiSIEM, a modern adaptation to security information and event management (SIEM). In addition to this, BAE also focuses on reducing System Debt by better aligning technology spend to strategic initiatives. In doing so, organizations can meet the growing needs of the healthcare industry.

AI supported robotic process automation to assist clients with their operations since traditional-powered solutions are simply not built to scale.

An Intellectual Business Leader Aiding in Streamlining Business Operations

BAE’s Experienced Employees Aiding in the Organization’s Overall Performance

Matt Lepkowski, Founder of Business Automation Experts has established the company in 2005. Matt has 20 years of experience and in that period; he learned numerous skills that involve project management, troubleshooting, software implementation, business process improvement, disaster recovery, management, and leadership. Using his experience and expertise, Matt assisted other companies in delivering value to their clients and created new avenues of revenue generation for organizations through technology and systems.

For any organization, employees are valuable assets and play a significant role in its growth. Through employees’ hard work, dedication, and contribution, organizations can achieve their goals and climb the ladder of success. Therefore, BAE recruits experienced employees who demonstrate selfmotivation and a passion to delight clients. The Somerset, NJbased company helps employees learn about industry trends and lessons from other engagements to improve overall performance. As employees increase their performance and security posture, the company continues to prosper and grow.

As the Founder of BAE, Matt’s role is to set the strategy for the company and market the services to clients. Being an intellectual business leader, Matt closely works with clients to understand challenges they face and engage his skilled team to seek out advanced solutions, which best fit their model of comprehensive, quick deployment, and value accretive for his clients. These solutions are used internally first so that Matt’s company can identify pitfalls before his clients. Under Matt’s guidance, BAE is leveraging cloud based services to improve its operations and security services to help monitor its assets.

Forthcoming Plans to Bring New Revenue and Keeping up with Modern Tech Trends

The Future of the Healthcare Sector

Every successful business regularly reviews its business plan to ensure it continues to meet its needs. Through these business plans, companies can achieve their goals, predict the revenue growth, and move towards continued prosperity.

Being a scalable and adaptive company, BAE will continue leveraging many years of client engagements and ensuring alignment between their strategy and infrastructure.

Furthermore, it will keep on generating new revenue and boosting loyalty by presenting ways on how clients can do their job in the most efficient way possible while maintaining the security frameworks they need. In order to stay attuned with the market trends, the leading medical software solutions provider keeps tabs on what Seceon and other big players are bringing to the healthcare industry as well as how it can address newer challenges confronted by its client organizations. Additionally, the company is also looking into

Being an entrepreneur, Matt understands the business issues faced by clients as well as observes the transformation happening due to disruptive technologies. According to Matt, as healthcare is moving from a fee-for-service model to valuebased purchasing, the pressure to improve operations will heighten. The tremendous positive developments within the healthcare industry will become possible with the help of patient monitoring, advanced algorithms, and innovative systems to manage healthcare data. Further, he adds, “This sector will continue to develop innovative solutions which will improve health outcomes.”

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IoT Drive

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Try These Tips To Streamline Your Changing Testing Approach In IoT

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n recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained a lot of attention. In fact, Google searches show that IoT is the most searched term on the internet at this moment. As technology is progressing in various sectors, market demands are also increasing. As a result, companies are also strategizing to build IoT products so they can grow their connected networks.

At the same time, there is an increasing fear that the number of IoT devices will cause security exposures. To manage dissents such as architecture, enormous cost, and diverse information, companies need to be alert and plan IoT testing strategies to assure the dependability of their products and devices.

This is important as IoT is utilized on both consumers as well as enterprise fronts. On the consumer front, internet-connected devices such as televisions, thermostats, lights, door locks, and refrigerator are a norm these days. Similarly, health and ďŹ tness related digital devices, which provide biometric scales like heart rate, perspiration levels, and compound measures such as oxygen levels in a bloodstream show habiliments of IoT devices. On the enterprise front, anti-theft tags, driverless trucks, power generation and delivery systems, water systems, connected sensors for farms, production systems, and IoT connected devices to alert on defective instruments demonstrates IoT applications’ signiďŹ cance and the requirement of its dynamic testing approach.

IoT Applications = Security in Question There has been a surge to introduce new electrical or electronic attributes. In this competitive world, new companies with not much experience expediently disregard complex system of hardware and software security design to launch a new feature at a lower cost. The vulnerability can be understood by knowing the way manufactures treat new products. They apply the same guidelines to these complicated products as well as to the normal components. For example, manufacturers utilize old designed chips that are utilized for devices whose requirements are less when it comes to proficiencies.

In other words, when software such as home appliances or any other devices are tested, they are required to pass the test, which requires these appliances to work and to be assembled easily. At that moment, security of the software is neither a priority nor a need. Manufacturers utilize ageold chips to assemble new devices, which have many susceptibilities. Obviously, software with vulnerability which does not receive any thorough testing creates security issues at a later stage. As a result, the devices, appliances, and toys installed into homes, and offices become a more convenient target for hackers.

Having said that, following are three new ways to develop software companies’ testing approach using IoT: Ÿ Constantly Working on Security Testing IoT is an easy prey for hackers. It is connected to various points of connections, which remain active through the internet and continue to reciprocate with each other. The risk of hacking can reach the device in any form. This makes it impossible to concentrate on one area of IoT and prevent security risk. Therefore, IoT is in need of modification, which can only be achieved through constant security testing.

Although, the process of software testing does not show that security testing gets the priority. Most of the times, functional and unit tests get the attention of the testing team. Hence, security testing becomes a part of the procedure and gets treated as the last step in the entire software testing cycle. Rather putting it aside, testing teams should make security testing as an integral part of the software development process. This way, security testing will become a norm than a part of the procedure.

If security testing becomes the norm for the software development process, then it will be advantageous in an environment where IoT softwares are upgraded every day.

On top of that, a survey of Fortune 500 CEOs shows that CEOs have been worried about the abrupt growth in technology change as well as cybersecurity. This concern is genuine as these two entities are interrelated to IoT and cause many annoyances as software testing teams try to match the pace of cybersecurity and technology change and build softwares accordingly. Ÿ Utilizing Test Automation in IoT IoT system encompasses three main components such as the connectivity apparatuses, the cloud and the mobile app, which allows end users to communicate with the device.

These components are tested for performance, dependability, compatibility, and security in the period of amalgamation process. Here, possible software problems are detected and resolved. However, the manual testing of the components becomes difficult as apparatuses are to be checked for at least a thousand times.

Hence, the utilization of test automation is a practical method to do massive software tests. This technique allows virtualization of a device to remove resource coercion and impasses. Test automation authorizes consistent testing of apps with acceleration, proficiency, and enables test on all devices at the same time.

On top of that, this method allows low-cost tests on all app versions, mobile devices, and operating systems. Test automation allows measurable virtual labs, which are compatible to test flows. It also helps to mend imperfections and delivers superior features at a faster rate.

This allows software testing with enhanced efficiency in IoT. More importantly, it enables to eradicate the necessity of constrained business critical infrastructure, third-party systems for testing. Ÿ Finding Superfluous Testing Area in IoT There is a need for a thorough consideration to be given when it comes to testing IoT devices. When one pays attention to the prerequisites of consistent security testing, it is also similarly vital to take heed of superfluous testing so that one can intensify delivery speed. This treatment will lessen the anxiety of relevancy in the testing area and mitigate the coercion of the time frame.

After locating the section of the software, which does not need testing at every rollout, professionals need to identify protocols that passed security testing and maintain that as such as possible for the next releases. Finding these areas are crucial, since this will enable organizations to balance hostile timeframes as well as fulfill security objectives.

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H

ealthcare’s Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) is the administration of financial processes that result from the medical encounters between a provider and a patient and insurance companies. These processes encompass the billing, collections, payer contracting, provider enrollment, coding, data analytics, management, and compliance. However, it is observed that the healthcare RCM sector is facing challenges in the industry that involves increasing A/R, translation of Paper EOB’s into ERA’s, denial process becoming larger and time-consuming, issues with unapplied cash, and managing employees productivity measurement. To tackle these problems, CereSoft Inc., offers innovative RCM services to its clients in the healthcare industry.

Empowering the Healthcare Industry with its Values, Practices, and Strategies Established in 1994, CereSoft is a healthcare RCM services company, which has ingrained its core values on creative innovations and rich knowledge base of its workforce. This knowledge base is a repository that contains information about services, products, or a specific topic of the company which works as a self-service help desk for its employees. For 25 years, CereSoft has been utilizing a holistic approach to resolve issues related to healthcare’s RCM. This methodology reduces A/R days from 50 to 15 days with its unique 12 STEP Plan and enhances employees’ productivity by streamlining their operations. For its clients, CereSoft uses agile automation strategies, which eliminates the human influence from the manual processes. The Silver Spring, Maryland-based company constantly looks for novel developments that will further empower the healthcare industry through its portfolio of services. Few transformations implemented by CereSoft to enhance the management operations include workflow automations, business rules, process mapping, automatic appeal with eFax connectivity, and robotics. With its automated processing systems located in multiple data centers on shore in US, it maintains a workforce that can handle the complete revenue cycle demands of over 10 billion dollars and over 30

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million patient encounters annually for many hospitals and physician networks of various sizes nationwide.

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A Focused Leader behind CereSoft’s Bright Future Dr. Hsing-Hen Chen, Founder and CEO of CereSoft established the firm with a mission to administer healthcare payments and its correlated operations within a single digital stream architecture design. This single digital stream platform allows healthcare providers to receive and handle cash related transactions more efficiently while increasing employee productivity. For the past two decades, Chen has been immeasurably participating in healthcare RCM services. Prior to CereSoft, Chen worked as a professor in Physics and Computer Sciences at the University of Maryland for more than thirty years where he specialized in complex systems analysis.

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· As the CEO of CereSoft, Chen is accountable not only to handle the company’s day to day operations but also to foster its future by developing cutting-edge products and integrating new technologies with latest and upcoming platforms. To ensure that CereSoft stays two paces ahead of its competitors, Chen always looks for futuristic trends while offering his employees with modern technologies so that they can accomplish their tasks flawlessly.

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· Equipping Employees with High-tech Tools and Education Models Any organization depends on its workforce to meet its targets, achieve its vision, and ultimately, lead the game. In order to accomplish this, organizations need to improve their employees’ overall performance. At CereSoft, progressive education models are utilized where each employee is provided with updates on the industry trends. It also offers tools, which streamlines employees’ tasks leading to their outstanding performances. In this way, CereSoft elevates its productivity and continued growth.

Forthcoming Tactics of CereSoft

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Fully integrated Denial Management System: CereSoft has already launched its Denial Management Solution, which is integrated within the MedAR Online Navigation System. But now, the Chen led company will be developing and adding new features to turn it into a fully integrated system.

Emerging Innovative Tools: CereSoft enhances employees’ productivity and streamlines to manage the healthcare provider workforce.

Patient Engagement Services: It a single platform system which is incorporated with eligibility i.e. patients who are able to pay, payment estimator, medical necessity, and prior authorization.

Introduction of Self-Insurer module: CereSoft is rolling out a Self-Insurer module for the rising marketing in the United States.

Central gateway for payment: The firm is developing a single interface payment application which allows patients to pay in whatever way they want accompanied by Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP).

Fusion of systems: It is integrating bank, billing system, and finance accounting system so that they can provide a fully balanced platform for payments.

Expansion of AIR technology: The firm will soon expand its Artificial Intelligence with Robotics (AIR) technology capabilities to other regions of healthcare.

Practice Management System: CereSoft will also be introducing a full practice management system for doctor groups under 100 doctors. This system will allow doctors to record patient demographics, manage charge capture, perform billing procedures, generate reports, and schedule appointments. With these upcoming ideas, CereSoft is also making room for other things such celebrating its 25 anniversary in 2019. This is not all. For the next 25 years, CereSoft has already developed a solid roadmap and the company believes that “The Best Is Yet To Come”

CereSoft’s vision is to continue and widen the gap between competitions as the industry leader, single source service company for healthcare providers in the United States as well as reach every part of the healthcare revenue cycle. In the near future, CereSoft with its innovative services and products is planning to expand its healthcare portfolio into new sectors in which its clients are currently facing issues.

Here are some of its upcoming services/solutions/plans.

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Highmark Interactive: Bringing The Positive Change In Concussion Management And Neurological Testing

T

he digital age has almost covered all the industries under its canopy. In recent years, digital innovations in the healthcare industry have been reinvented, which transformed the industry to a great extent. Powerful and intelligent technologies like artificial intelligence are already uplifting the digitalization in the sector. The solutions for common and essential problems are now at a few clicks away from the users. Therefore, the fast developing technology has made us the “right now” population who hate to wait for their problems to be resolved. The traditional healthcare process is no exception to this. It is becoming a bygone era where people schedule a doctor’s appointment to get to the hospital, wait a couple of hours for treatment, and again wait for test results.

Highmark Interactive Solution, Empowering People towards better Brain Care

Dr. Sanjeev Sharma CEO & Co-founder

We are the team leading innovation in brain health technology and neurological testing, improving lives one game at a time.

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The EQ Active Brain Tracking solution by Highmark Interactive is the live example of advanced healthcare which is built to eliminate the traditional, burdensome, expensive, and tedious medical processes in concussion management. The patients or users don’t have to wait for hours as this solution actively monitors their brain’s performance from wherever they may be and simultaneously produces important data for their medical practitioner to assess from their office. As per the aforementioned scenario, doing tests like a baseline test on brain functioning or any test related to brain performance measurement required a visit to the doctor. Today, with the EQ Active Brain Tracking app installed on a smartphone or tablet, an individual or group of teams, schools or workplaces can take better care of their brain’s health. Users can simply start by registering an EQ dashboard to add their members. Secondly, they can set a testing schedule, send reminders, and monitor the range of results in real time.

Importantly, to improve user engagement, the neurological tests by Highmark Interactive are “gamified”. The mobile app sports seven games which are designed and successfully tested against existing, standard neurological tests. The gamified app encourages users to participate regularly. In case a concussion occurs, the invaluable data gathered from the user’s frequent participation greatly helps the health professional during the assessment/diagnostic phase.

Proper diagnosis tends to lead to more customized treatment plans, which should lead to improved recovery.

Due to its precise results and interactive features, EQ Active Brain Tacking is currently used by numerous clinics, sports leagues & teams, schools, parents or individuals with general concern about their brain performance.

The Origin of an Innovative Solution Like the saying, “Leaders are those who rise in bad situations and fight back”, the Co-founder and CEO of Highmark Interactive—Dr. Sanjeev Sharma and Cofounder Sunil Sharma established the company based on an unfortunate event when Sanjeev’s young daughter suffered a head injury during a sports event. At that time, despite much advancement in healthcare, there was a serious relative lack of medical solutions to assist those suffering from concussions and TBIs. That incident built a strong will within Sanjeev to develop technology that can serve as a tool for people to actively protect their brain’s health. Today, the solution developed by Sanjeev and his team at Highmark Interactive has the capability to protect the susceptible and important brains of millions of people. Highmark Interactive does not prevent people from pursuing sports activities; rather it assists them to improve their safety with intuitive brain performance data.

athletes, schools, and sports organizations around the globe. Likewise, the company is aiming to expand its service outside of sport while establishing creative industry partnerships and collaborative opportunities.

Teamwork and Friendly Culture, Bringing New Additions to Highmark Interactive Today, the success credit of Highmark Interactive goes to the Co-founders and their fascinating team made from the blend of doctors, neuro-specialists, software developers, and dynamic individuals who come from a broad range of backgrounds. Sharing the experience with his staff members, Sanjeev proudly asserts, “I consider our team to be the true engine behind what we are bringing forward, as we hold daily ‘scrums’ and idea sessions for staff to help drive the growth of our Highmark family.” Therefore, Sanjeev and Sunil always strive to support their dedicated teams with a culture of responsibility, sharing and teamwork which brings the best out of every team member.

According to the founding duo, the nature of innovation in the team of Highmark Interactive empowers them to constantly move forward with better resolutions or advances so that at the end of the day, they feel content by seeing their product improving the lives of people and fulfilling the essential gaps in healthcare. In the coming days, EQ can be integrated with Healthkit and Google Fit to enable users to seamlessly access data, track activity, and sleeping patterns.

While leaping with the rapid growth of current sectors, Highmark Interactive is all set to announce exciting solutions in other verticals. In coming days, the company plans to utilize the same principle as in EQ Brain Tracking Tool for some truly groundbreaking areas.

Highmark is currently offering its smart solutions to protect people’s brains with the implementation of advanced technologies like AI and ML, which follows their acquisition of a mobile gaming company to help further enhance its offerings. With such persistent improvements, Highmark is growing at a rapid pace and working with some of the world’s leading research universities, health professionals, professional teams and

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Industry Analyst

Not All Data Heroes

WEAR CAPES B

ig data is a big deal. Every second, people around the world are creating new data and companies are collecting new data. In the race to be data-driven, organizations can’t afford to be idle and allow forward thinking competitors to move ahead. Technology advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning for business intelligence and analytics are driving the need for highly-skilled data scientists to adopt, utilize, and deploy platforms that leverage this emerging technology.

There’s a rising demand for data scientists and analysts who play an invaluable role in data wrangling, discovery, analysis, structuring, cleaning, and communicating data to grow organizational health and furtherment. However, the number of job openings for data scientists far outweigh the professionals available to fill those positions, and while designated programs to educate and train data scientists are on the rise, it’ll still take time for supply to catch up with demand. The worldwide shortage likely won’t end anytime soon.

In an age where understanding and decision-making based on analytics are the foundation to business strategy, people who can bridge the gap are becoming increasingly valuable.

This shortage is giving rise to a new role emerging from within organizations: the citizen data scientist. These individuals fill the need between simple self-service analytics and advanced analytics done by expert data scientists. The adoption and integration of business intelligence and analytics software tools and technology

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helps this shift of business professionals as incoming citizen data scientists.

According to Gartners Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019, “through 2020, the number of citizen data scientists will grow five times faster than the number of expert data scientists.” With this massive jump, it’s imperative to set citizen data scientists up for success when it comes to understanding, communicating, and acting on data.

Who are citizen data scientists?

Gartner defines a citizen data scientist as someone who creates models using advanced analytics or predictive tools, but whose main role is outside of statistics or analysis. Not everyone can, or will, become a citizen data scientist. Those who enter this position have data science-like skills and are power users, like business analysts, who can perform analysis tasks that are both simple and moderately sophisticated. The defining characteristic of a citizen data scientist is that analysis, data, and statistics are secondary to their role.

It’s not a position you’ll see advertised on a job board because it’s not a position an organization will directly hire for, but it’s a requirement they still need to fill. The key is looking internally at employees who have a passion for data discovery and analytics and want to evolve their skills and incorporate those aspects into their position. These could be

business analysts adept with basic data science skills, but don’t be surprised if you find this person in your marketing, communications, engineering, or sales departments.

Since they come from positions within an organization, they hold a unique perspective in their specific business area that provides context on what the data visualizations such as charts, graphs, and models, in a business intelligence platform dashboard illustrating the data-driven story behind the scenes. Every business striving to become fully datadriven demands resources for extracting, communicating, and acting on meaningful insights, regardless of the size of the company. Data discovery isn’t just reserved for the big enterprises anymore, all organizations need to harness the power of data if they want to remain relevant among competitors and see exponential growth within their industry.

How do we empower citizen data scientists in their new role? Ÿ

Democratize analytics with business intelligence platforms Like any other position, citizen data scientists must be armed with the right tools, technology, and development opportunities to ensure success. Software and BI

platforms like Tableau, Power BI, MicroStrategy, Domo, and Sisense take data and create visualizations to portray the data story in an effort to democratize analytics throughout an enterprise and make them accessible for users to gather information, draw conclusions, and make data-driven decisions. Increasing availability of data allows insights to be distributed to the right people across an organization who previously didn’t have the access or tools needed for the discovery process. By skilling employees to take on these enhanced data roles, companies can make better use of data which leads to cost savings through more utilized resources (human and technical) and increased competitiveness in the market. Ÿ

Augment analysis with natural language generation to increase data literacy The more tools available to assist citizen data scientists, the more effective they will be in their new role. The purpose of data discovery and analysis is to expand insights to the broadest audience within an organization in order to drive value, so it’s crucial to ensure that audience can accurately interpret and understand the visualizations of a dashboard that are presented. Citizen data scientists are being introduced to complex dashboards and asked to perform tasks that stretch their

About the Author

Marc Zionts (Chief Executive Officer, Automated Insights) is a technology executive and entrepreneur who’s been successfully leading companies since 1987. He currently serves as the CEO of Automated Insights, a Vista Equity Partners owned company. Zionts is also an Independent Board Director for Pivot 3, TEOCO, and Friends of the Earth, an environmental group based in Washington, D.C. Zionts earned a BS in industrial design and MS in management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Industry Analyst

knowledge and comfortability with data. Visualizations paint a picture of the data they’re analyzing; however, they’re still essentially making their best guess of what the data means based on their current level of data expertise.

With increased complexity of visualizations comes an increased risk of misinterpretation.

Adding narratives through natural language generation (NLG), a subset of artificial intelligence, improves comprehension by transforming structured data into clear, natural language. There’s a broader story that needs to be told in addition to explaining the graphs, the overall story is told through explaining the relationships between visualizations. NLG augments analysis by meeting citizen data scientists in their place of expertise and fills the data literacy gap to break down the barrier to ensure each user has contextual understanding of what they’re looking at so they can best decide what to do about it. NLG supports citizen data scientists by allowing any person, regardless of their role, position, or level of data expertise, to understand the data presented, know what it means in its entirety, and act on it with confidence because of the mode in which insights are presented–the written word. It acts as an expert analyst guiding viewers through visualizations and talking them through insights using the most natural form of communication. Ÿ

Provide Adequate Training for Success Training programs for developing citizen data scientists builds the skillset required to thrive in their new position, this requires intentionality and prioritization of training on their management’s behalf. The leap from “employee with a passion for statistics” to citizen data scientist takes a new way of thinking, processing, and looking at data. Instead of simply investing in a short training (while still beneficial), invest in continued technical training to develop new skills, strengthen existing ones, and provide a deep working knowledge of platform tools. Ongoing training empowers citizen data scientists to evaluate analytic possibilities, go beyond surface-level data insights, and ask the right questions

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that will yield the best results. There’s ample training available through online courses, executive education programs, vendor software training and tips, webinars, conference sessions, and community meetups aimed at people whose career focus isn’t primarily data science, analytics, and statistics with the goal of enhancing the outcome and reducing the time spent incorporating themselves into their new role. Ÿ

Harmonize the relationship between citizen and expert data scientists Emerging citizen data scientists don’t threaten or replace expert data scientists, data analysts, or business analysts. Citizen data scientists compliment and supplement their expertise by alleviating simpler tasks, like generating regular reports or one-off requests. They remove the bottleneck of reliance on expert analysts to prepare core data sets and infrastructure and, at the same time, bolster findings with the advantage of their business intimacy. There will always be a need for the unique experience, education, and high-level skills of data scientists. As the citizen data scientist explores data, generates mildly sophisticated reports, and develops hypotheses, data scientists can reign in further exploration, developing advanced models, and doing the time-consuming work of data wrangling in all forms.

It’s easier to train subject matter experts to use data science software and BI platforms than it is to train data scientists to understand the intricacies of many business sectors.

Raising up and empowering citizen data scientists, holding their expert level of industry knowledge, makes significant contributions to an otherwise inaccessible field of data science. Gartner states, “By 2020, more than 40% of data science tasks will be automated, resulting in increased productivity and broader use by citizen data scientists.”

This emerging wave of new positions isn’t just coming, it’s here and will only grow.

www.biasaparation.com

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ver the past few years, e-commerce has made remarkable progress and is boosting the sales of all industries. Healthcare is one such industry that is highly influenced by the evolution of e-commerce. The statistics taken from Goldman Sachs shows that the healthcare industry is about to spend approximately $32 billion on e-commerce and web services annually. That is five times more than the $6 billion online retailers currently spend annually on all forms of e-commerce and services. E-commerce is transforming everything and in order to match up with the growing, ecommerce industry, sellers of healthcare products require a new ecosystem, which they can rely on. In response to this, MonarchFx, a Tompkins International company, offers a nationwide healthcare ecosystem. It integrates offline, online, logistics & data across a single unified supply chain for sellers of healthcare products and delivers high-tech solutions to the ever-changing healthcare sector.

A Global Specialist Leading End-To-End Supply Chains Dr. James A. Tompkins, Chairman and CEO of Tompkins International, is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. As an elite business and supply chain strategy consultant, Tompkins utilizes his unique outlook to prepare firms and executives for the future as well as focuses on aiding companies so that they can achieve profitable growth. Tompkins continues to share his insights on business strategy and has written or contributed to more than 30 books. Tompkins has served as President of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, the Materials Management Society, and the College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education.

Due to his contributions and achievements in industrial engineering, Tompkins has received the prestigious Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE).

The healthcare industry is being crippled by increasing regulations, rising costs, supply chain inefficiencies, and product security concerns. The present-day healthcare

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organizations want a new ecosystem, which can assist them to match up with the current trends and likewise incorporates the changes. Therefore, Tompkins introduced MonarchFx. Offering Comprehensive Logistics Services to Vendors, Brands and Other Sellers MonarchFx is an association of the leading logistics service providers, catering to numerous clients from its flexible, scalable, and automated fulfillment centers. The role of these centers is to focus on each supply chain for replenishment, buy online-pickup in store, and direct-toconsumer. Companies utilize MonarchFx’s services because it empowers them by increasing revenue, reducing transportation cost, and minimizing the returns, while delivering an exceptional customer experience. MonarchFx offers a comprehensive unit pricing ecosystem that makes certain that no additional cost is included to the final cost of delivery. It also caters to vendors, brands, and other sellers with multiple fulfillment channels, while providing them with efficiency, speed, and quality.

Resolving Issues Related to Healthcare Supply Chain Management The traditional health logistics is not efficient enough to handle ever-growing needs of the healthcare industry.

Presently, the medical supplies market is growing exponentially, expected to reach $132 billion by 2022, with over 25% of US sales occurring in e-commerce. In addition to this, the shortage of health IT to collect and analyze supply chain data can lead to billions of dollars in wasteful spending. In order to overcome this, MonarchFx with its dynamic services has created MonarchFx Health, led by healthcare industry executive Benjamin Patipa, MD. MonarchFx Health is addressing the unique needs of healthcare product sellers by reducing transportation costs, replenishing stores based on the real-time signals making more space available for new health products, and delivering them accurately, safely, and efficiently.

Tompkins International’s Other Ventures

supply chains, and provides unrivaled flexibility and throughput. Tompkins Robotics facilitates MonarchFx fulfillment centers or back room sortation to sustain each supply chain for store replenishment, buy online – pick up in store and direct-to-consumer. Ÿ

NexusFx: NexusFx is a direct-to-consumer enablement partner helping develop and manage go-to market strategy for consumer packaged goods brands, also helping to create a deeper brand experience for all commerce.

Ÿ

SensorThink: SensorThink is an internet platform and warehouse execution cloud-based software solution that supports the IT necessities of MonarchFx and Tompkins Robotics. It bonds all the elements of production, performance, and execution into a single platform.

Through this platform, every piece of information can be gathered, processed and analyzed. In this way, users can see and analyze its operations more efficiently.

MonarchFx’s Principles Guaranteeing Market Success MonarchFx’s values, mission, and vision are based on three principles that are awareness, credibility, and trust. Using these principles, MonarchFx delivers exclusive services to its clients who are divided into three classes manufacturing medical supplies, diagnostic equipment, and pharma.

Regarding the safety of customer’s products, MonarchFx ensures that its customers’ product or brand morality is not compromised during its shipping. While shipping items, MonarchFx upholds the safety, quality, and efficiency of consumer’s products.

MonarchFx’s Present and Future Strategies MonarchFx continuously hunts for new trends in the healthcare marketplace and implements excellent tactics to deliver solutions that are based on the needs of its customer base. Currently, MonarchFx is working on how to maintain a temperature surrounding its product portfolio. To ensure this, the firm is going to address refrigeration, which is a freight shipping method that requires a temperaturecontrolled means of transport.

Tompkins International has established new business units, Tompkins Robotics, NexusFx, and SensorThink, which all support MonarchFx to deliver smart healthcare services. Ÿ

Tompkins Robotics: It is a pioneering unit and parcel sortation robotic system which aids in building excellent

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First Look

Take A

At The

Closer First Ever Look Picture Of A

BLACK A

pril 2019 saw the occurrence of a very unique event that transformed the history not only of astrophysics but of science and technology as well.

Astronomers have revolutionized the understanding of the universe's most enigmatic objects by capturing the first image of a black hole. This was made possible by arranging a global network that produced a picture of an event horizon which is a black hole's perilous edge against a backdrop of swirling light gas and dust. The images of a glowing ring-like structure show the massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy M87 which is 55 million light years away and 6.5 billion times the masses of the sun. The event horizon is so strong that matter and light can only just enter but not climb out of the event horizon. The highly anticipated results were unveiled by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration in seven simultaneous press conferences in four continents. The findings were also published in a suite of papers in Astrophysical Journal Letters on 10th April 2019.

Predictions of the existence of black holes The prediction of the existence of the black hole dates back to more than a century ago in 1915. Speculations started when Albert Einstein came up with his theory of gravitational relativity that reimagined gravity as the distortion of space and time by matter and energy. At that time, Einstein himself was not sure about the existence of black holes. It was predicted that when too much matter

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E

will be concentrated in one place beyond a certain threshold, the result of that would be the creation of a sinkhole through which light and matter could only enter but not escape. These were predicted to be mathematical oddities rather than real astronomical objects but astronomers have collected evidence to prove that these cosmic sinkholes do exist along with gravitational waves that ripple across the cosmos when pairs of them collide.

More than a century later, the EHT collaboration containing a consortium of 200 scientists teamed up to find out whether Einstein's predictions of general relativity needed any revisions.

Forming of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration In 2009, there was just a network of just four observatories which were located in Arizona, California, and Hawaii but these four observatories didn't have enough power to capture the image of the black hole. Over the years there was a refinement of techniques and retrofitting of new observatories so that they could add them to the existing network. In 2017, a team led by Shepard Doeleman and 200 others joined hands to form the Event Horizon Telescope.

There were eight radio observatories in North America, Hawaii, Europe, South America, and the South Pole.

Amongst the newcomers was the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, located on a high plateau in northern Chile. The EHT collaboration had

two goals, the first was to capture the event horizon and the second was to help determine whether Einstein's theory of general theory needed any revisions.

Developing the Earth Telescope Previously, it was an unconquerable challenge to observe a black hole because they are tiny, dark and distant that it would require a telescope with a resolution equivalent to see these black holes. So to achieve their first goal of capturing the event horizon, the collaboration combined data from eight of the world's leading radio observatories which were located across four continents and Hawaii to form an efficient telescope which was as big as the Earth.

This was carried out through a technique known as interferometry which combines the radio waves that are spotted by different telescopes simultaneously so that the telescopes function like one giant dish.

Two targets of the EHT When the observations of the event horizons were launched in 2017, they set two primary targets in order to capture the image. The first was the Sagittarius A star which is the black hole located at the centre of the Milky Way with a mass of about 4 million suns. The second target was a massive black hole located in the galaxy M87 which has 6 billion sums of light and matter that had disappeared into the sinkhole.

Working of the EHT Project The Event Horizon telescope project was first carried out across a time frame of 10 days in April 2017. The success of this project depended on two main factors. One was the presence of the clear skies across several continents at the same time and the second was the intense coordination between the eight distant teams. The telescopes that create the Event Horizon telescope were not physically connected; the observations of the event horizons at the eight far-flung

sites were synchronized with the help of atomic clocks known as hydrogen masers over a period of 10 days in 2017.

Forming an innovative algorithm After the observations were carried out, the signals from all eight telescopes had to be combined and fed through a computer to turn the data collected from the eight observatories into a visual picture. At that time, they faced an unprecedented computational challenge as the amount of data gathered was so voluminous that it had to be shipped to the MIT Haystack Observatory in the form of half a tonne of hard drives. In order to convert the Event Horizon Telescope data into a visual image, there needed to be development of new sophisticated algorithms that would not only combine the data collected from eight observatories into a visual image but also filter out noise caused by atmospheric humidity which would distort radio ways and precisely synchronize the signals that were captured by the far-flung telescopes.

The person behind the imaging algorithm and the process of the algorithm At that time, computer scientist Katie Bouman developed a new algorithm to combine data that was gathered across the Event Horizon Telescope in order to produce the first-ever image of a black hole the telescopes positioned throughout the world from Antartica to Hawaii gathered light which was emitted from the black hole that was 6.5 billion times more massive than the sun. But at the same time, this light would just capture the structure of the and not the entire black hole. Thus, there was a necessity of the imaging algorithm as it filled in gaps of data in order to capture a picture of the black hole. She went on to lead a series of tests to ensure that the EHT's result was not a technical fluke. So the EHT collaboration split into four teams in order to analyze the data until they were sure of their findings that they had achieved something impossible.

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First Look

EHT achieves their second goal That's when the second goal of the EHT comes into consideration whether Einstein’s theory needs to be revised.

The theory of general relativity had held true with the experiments of every scientist. There was a possibility that EHT’s predictions may not match the theory since astronomers could calculate the expected size and shape of an event horizon using general relativity. They had to make sure the observed black hole matched the theory so that they could conclude whether Einstein was correct or not. If Einstein was incorrect, they would have to revise the theory. They later concluded that there were no revisions needed in the theory of general relativity as their observations were consistent with general relativity. Team members said that the event horizon is nearly circular and is the right size for a black hole of that immense mass.

Future developments on black holes With the achievement of the first target, the next step for the collaboration that is led by Shepard Doeleman is to achieve their second target and that is on producing an image of a black hole in the Milky Way. With the team of 200 members achieving the impossible and proving the existence of Einstein's theory of general relativity, the new results have given scientists more scope to research on black holes. As a result of the new results on imaging a black hole, scientists could get a better perspective on how gas and light spiral down into a black hole.

To summarize, it could be said that there have been a lot of speculations from Einstein's time about the existence of black holes. With the imaging of a black hole being captured as per the predictions of the theory of general relativity, there are a lot of developments taking place in the field of astrophysics, science, and technology. The observations of the EHT are just the beginning; the scientists could research more on black holes.

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References:

TRIARQ Health:

Putting Patients First By Empowering Independent Physicians

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ver the past several years, the healthcare industry has observed some major shifts on both the provider and payer side of the business. On the payer side, there is a growing implementation of Value-Based payment models like MACRA/MIPS and BPCI-Advanced. While on the provider side, there is an upsurge of hospital consolidation. However, these systems are depleting the entrepreneurial spirit of American physicians, reducing the incentive to become the best possible doctor, and putting too much control over the nation’s healthcare system in the hands of few people. Therefore, TRIARQ Health offers a unique combination of technology and billing services in a way that strengthens the US’s Independent Medical Practices.

The company focuses on providing one complete solution at one single price while enabling physicians to offer better quality care, improve patient relationships, optimize workflow, and maximizes opportunities to grow.

Mike Sappington Chairman & CEO

We, at TRIARQ Health, are improving the quality of care while reducing the cost to deliver it.

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Focusing On Delivering Better Care, Health, and Economics Founded in 2005, TRIARQ Health is a physician practice services company that partners with doctors to run modern patientcentered practices so that they can be rewarded for delivering high-value care. These physician-led partnerships can succeed in value-based care through TRIARQ’s proprietary, cloud-based, practice management platform, and patient engagement services.

As a national physician practice management company, TRIARQ is designed to meet the Triple Aim of health reform goals that are Better Health for Populations, Better Care for Individuals and Families, and Better Economics by Intelligently Aligning Quality and Spending.

TRIARQ Health tactically analyzes every practice one-by-one and offers a close partnership with custom-built services that delivers positive outcomes and effectively deals with regulatory and industry related issues. The company’s holistic approach consists of performance management, technology, communication tools, billing services, and everything else a practice needs to become successful on the road to value-based care. Altogether, it aims to align and address the value and quality of healthcare to consumers through value-based programming with payers and providers.

Offering a Variety of Value-Based Solutions TRIARQ Health provides an exceptional amalgamation of technology and billing services in a way that strengthens the nation’s Independent Medical Practices. On a partnership level, the company works with physicians so that they can continue their own practice while still profiting from the power of large-scale data and analytics. As a national physician practice management and value-based solutions company, it has access to a vast amount of data that aids in discovering unique insights into the healthcare business so that they can pass it along to their practice partners.

TRIARQ’s Performance Managers share these insights with practices that are part of TRIARQ family. In this way, they can gain a competitive edge over their competitors, and deliver better quality care.

The company’s practice partners also gain easier access to new Value-Based payment models, which increases their ability to compete. These Value-Based contracts require significant administrative investment such as recording, analyzing, and reporting of data, which takes a lot of time.

Therefore, TRIARQ Health utilizes its modern technology to simplify data collection and syntheses.

Enhancing Employees’ Performance through Benefits When organizations start recognizing and acknowledging their employees’ work, it leads to better performance of the workforces. An employee who feels appreciated will be more satisfied and productive in their work. To keep workforces mentally and physically healthy comes down to several types of services as well as benefits. To progress well in the industry, TRIARQ Health is constantly looking for new ways to improve employees’ performance. The company offers favorable benefits to its employees such as work from home with performance-based incentives. Over the past few years, it has exhibited significant growth, which leads to the increase in the number of employees in multiple states so that they can provide better quality care and help independent practices thrive in the changing industry.

Blueprint for New Developments Related to Healthcare Sector For the upcoming years, TRIARQ Health has already planned the roadmap for new developments in the healthcare sector.

These new developments will help in delivering better care, optimizing practice management workflow, generating increased revenue, improving doctor-patient relationships, and staying up-to-date with latest trends and technologies in the healthcare industry. These include: Ÿ The technology team is in the middle of two major projects that will bring the entire EMR to mobile devices and add video chat features to enable e-visits.

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Ÿ

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The billing team is working on new innovative features that will make life easier for both doctors and their patients.

A new Patient RCM is rolling out this year providing patients with more options for paying their share of healthcare costs by offering mobile payments, flexible payment plans, and other features which will bring both patients and practices together.

TRIARQ Health is also in the midst of developing a library of new resources called QCollege within the MyQOne partner portal. This library will contain educational and training materials that will help practices make the most of their EMR as well as keep them on the top of other important information regarding changes in the healthcare space.

A Visionary, Talented Leader Looking for New Opportunities The Chairman and CEO of TRIARQ Health, Mike Sappington is an extremely talented and visionary leader. As the CEO of TRIARQ Health, Mike’s role is to lead the TRIARQ team and nationwide network Independent Medical Practice through the chaotic and ever-changing world of modern healthcare. In order to achieve this, Mike focuses on strengthening the essence of physician practices by identifying new opportunities to help practices get involved in Value-Based contracts to pioneering new practice management technology. Under his leadership, the company has combined technology services and billing services into one simple package called TRIARQ Complete, thereby offering the marketplace a revolutionary revenue guarantee based on innovative technology. In 2018, he led TRIARQ Health into an exciting nationwide program called BPCIAdvanced by pioneering a new approach to care management which he calls Clinically Integrated Networks.

The Future of the Healthcare Sector With the emerging new technologies, the future of the healthcare industry looks very exciting. Being a healthcare futurist, Mike has witnessed shifts happening in the healthcare industry. According to him, technology-enabled practice management tools and value-based care contracts will give providers an even-greater influence on healthcare quality and cost. In this, TRIARQ Health will play a significant role by providing the resources to help them.

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