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The performance analytics metrics dashboard identifies real-time and historic trends in laboratory performance. It provides figures that can be manipulated at the slide, case, pathologist, and laboratory level, as well as universal and individualized metrics tracking.

The platform’s intuitive, automation-enabled worklists filter and triage cases by status and importance using rules-based configurations. The functionality provides automated trigger-based notifications and alerts and a dynamic mini-metrics display that shows a visual summary of user or organization daily workload and performance.

Proscia has also enhanced Concentriq’s case viewer with functionality that automatically moves cases through the lab’s configured workflows and workflow stages. Users can track cases before and after submitting orders and requests, move to the next case in a worklist in less than a second, and preview remaining worklists as cases are reviewed.

Proscia, 877-255-1341

HHS offers guidance on HIPAA liability for third-party apps

The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights has issued guidance to answer common questions about using third-party patient health apps in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

The guidance comes in the form of five frequently asked questions about HIPAA liability with regard to transmitting electronic protected health information to applications or other software, collectively called apps.

“The FAQs clarify that once protected health information has been shared with a third-party app, as directed by the individual, the HIPAA covered entity or its business associate will not be liable under the HIPAA Rules for subsequent use or disclosure of electronic protected health information, provided the app developer is not itself a business associate of the covered entity,” according to a health information privacy post on the HHS website.

The FAQs also state that providers must make sure the appropriate privacy and security protections are in place before using an application programming interface to connect to the app designated by an individual to receive his or her ePHI.

The guidance, “The HIPAA access right, health apps, & APIs,” is available at www.bit.ly/HIPAA_health_app_FAQs.

Dr. Aller teaches informatics in the Department of Pathology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He can be reached at raller@usc.edu. Hal Weiner is president of Weiner Consulting Services LLC, Eugene, Ore. He can be reached at hal@weinerconsulting.com.