News Clips
University of Utah Health and Intermountain Healthcare Receive $3.8 Million to Develop Advanced Open Source Cancer Screening Tool
Researchers from the University of Utah Health, Intermountain Healthcare, and Huntsman Cancer Institute received a grant for $3.8 Million from the National Cancer Institute to develop an advanced cancer screening tool. The new tool will couple electronic health record technologies with advanced clinical decision support (CDS) tools to screen for several types of cancer and identify and manage high risk patients within primary care settings and the broader care delivery system.
- Login to post comments
Opinion: The US Needs to Invest Foreign Aid Dollars in Smaller NGOs
Last month, U.S. Republican congressional House members released a budget that proposes a gradual reduction in spending on domestic programs and foreign aid from $511 billion to $424 billion through 2027. This is marginally better for global health programs that aid poor countries compared to President Donald Trump’s 2018 proposed budget, which calls for cutting about 32 percent from foreign aid budgets, or nearly $19 billion in total...
- Login to post comments
Houston’s Flooding Shows What Happens When You Ignore Science and Let Developers Run Rampant
Since Houston, Texas was founded nearly two centuries ago, Houstonians have been treating its wetlands as stinky, mosquito-infested blots in need of drainage.
Even after it became a widely accepted scientific fact that wetlands can soak up large amounts of flood water, the city continued to pave over them. The watershed of the White Oak Bayou river, which includes much of northwest Houston, is a case in point. From 1992 to 2010, this area lost more than 70% of its wetlands, according to research (pdf) by Texas A&M University...
- Login to post comments
We Need a Whole-Community Response in Health and Health Care
It’s inspiring to watch the “Cajun Navy” of fishing and pleasure boats rescuing people in post-Hurricane Harvey Houston, along with the National Guard and other officials. I’m always on the look-out for examples of people pitching in to help each other and solve problems, whether in peer-to-peer health care, the Maker movement, or evacuating a plane, so I loved the article that David A. Graham just published in The Atlantic on why ordinary citizens are acting as first responders in Houston...
- Login to post comments
Blue Cross to Present the Faces of Fearless Healthcare Innovation Award with Not Impossible Labs
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) will present the Faces of Fearless Healthcare Innovation Award as part of the 2018 Not Impossible Awards show at CES® 2018 in Las Vegas. The Faces of Fearless Healthcare Innovation Award is included in the Not Impossible Awards show and recognizes technological innovation that advances health and wellness. The award exemplifies the values of the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Faces of Fearless℠ campaign, which celebrates the stories of people who are overcoming challenges to live their healthiest lives.
- Login to post comments
Presenting the Open Aid Movement at Open Source Bridge
“Open source” is a method for putting intellectual property in the public domain, allowing anyone to use it however they see fit. I’m an advocate of the “open source way” because I believe that if more people shared intellectual property of all types – whether its farming techniques, software code, music, etc – then we’ll eventually be able to meet the basic needs of everyone in the world, allowing all people to pursue their own happiness without fear of material scarcity...
- Login to post comments
Will Flooding in Texas Lead to More Mosquito-Borne Illness?
The devastating floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey will damage many human habitats, but after the flood recedes, the waterlogged city may become a more welcoming habitat for mosquitoes. And that means that residents already made vulnerable by the hurricane might also eventually be at increased risk for mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile virus and Zika. West Nile virus has been endemic in Texas since 2002. In 2016, the state had 370 cases; so far in 2017, there have been 36 confirmed cases. Harris County, where Houston is located, has seen cases of West Nile in humans this year, and detected the virus in local mosquitoes...
- Login to post comments
Infectious Diseases Could Sweep Across Texas as Harvey Floods Houston
In the coming weeks and even months, residents of Houston and other parts of southern Texas hit hard by Hurricane Harvey will be faced with the public health disasters that can result from dirty floodwater and landslides. The natural disaster has ostensibly turned the city into a sprawling, pathogen-infested swamp. Up to 25 inches of rain have already accumulated in two days. Rains are expected to continue until Wednesday night, and by the end, Harvey will have dumped 40 to 50 inches on the metropolitan area. Heavy precipitation is turning entire neighborhoods into contaminated and potentially toxic rivers. For many of the city’s residents, contact with floodwater is unavoidable, putting them at risk for diarrhea-causing bacterial infections, Legionnaires’ disease and mosquito-borne viruses...
- Login to post comments
Why Ordinary Citizens Are Acting as First Responders in Houston
Harvey hasn’t even finished dumping rain on Texas, but it has already produced an honor roll of heroes. There is, for example, the video of the boat-owning man telling CNN, “We got eight people that done called for us already. So we’re going to go and get them eight, come on back, and try to save some more.” On a larger scale, there’s the so-called Cajun Navy, a Dunkirk-like mobilization of volunteers in fishing boats and pleasure craft that is out working to rescue people. The ethos behind these efforts is straightforward and admirable: Some people are in trouble, and other people have the tools to help them. Why wouldn’t they?...
- Login to post comments
Hyping the Hyperledger with Blockchain Boffin Brian Behlendorf
HfS’ Saurabh Gupta recently caught up with Brian Behlendorf (see bio), the Executive Director of Hyperledger at the Linux Foundation. Brian was a primary developer of the Apache Web Server – the most popular web server on the internet...Two decades after developing the Apache HTTP server that played a key role in giving us the internet and the web, Brian is reimagining our world again with blockchain. We discussed a range of topics around the reality and practicality of blockchain for enterprises along with the one wish that he wants to come true...
- Login to post comments
IEEE and UL to Develop a Standard for Wireless Diabetes Device Security Provided by DTS
UL (Underwriters Laboratories Inc.) and IEEE recently signed a Joint Standard Development agreement to develop a consensus-based standard for wireless diabetes device security. The Standard for Wireless Diabetes Device Security (DTSec) has been provided by the Diabetes Technology Society (DTS) for use in this effort. "The collaboration is a first for IEEE and UL and demonstrates a shared commitment to advance healthcare, bringing significant health benefits to patients in need, while also safeguarding their data and privacy," said Konstantinos Karachalios, Managing Director, IEEE Standards Association...
- Login to post comments
Open Source Collaboration Key to Healthcare Blockchain Adoption
Interest in healthcare blockchain continues to grow as organizations realize the potential data sharing advantages. Blockchain is not currently used in healthcare, but open source projects, such as Hyperledger, are working to develop blockchain standards that can eventually be used in healthcare. Entities are showing genuine interest in blockchain and are currently working on projects for future adoption, according to Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf...
- Login to post comments
Red Hat Helps Intermountain Healthcare Migrate to an Open Source Infrastructure
Red Hat, Inc...today announced that Intermountain Healthcare is using Red Hat solutions to help the company transform its existing infrastructure by migrating services from a proprietary platform to an open source Red Hat stack. By implementing Red Hat platforms, Intermountain Healthcare is moving towards a more streamlined and modern IT environment offering enterprise-wide IT automation and on-demand services, enabling them to do more while decreasing complexity.
- Login to post comments
ReFigure – Connecting Scientific Insights Across the Web
Today, we are introducing ReFigure, a new science curation and publication tool supported by the eLife Innovation Initiative. ReFigure is a chrome extension and website that allows researchers to connect new and previously reported findings across publisher websites and repositories. It is currently in beta and being developed in the open on GitHub... ReFigure was born from an idea that research outputs should be incremental, immediately connected to published findings and not confined to the websites of individual journals...
- Login to post comments
The Widespread Problem of Doctor Burnout
The patient, a powerfully built middle-aged restaurant worker, had awakened one morning with a tight pain in his shoulders that traveled down his right arm. At work, he could barely shrug his shoulders or turn his head. “My fingers were so weak,” he recalled, “that I couldn’t even get a good grip around a glass of water.” A senior doctor at a local clinic diagnosed a pinched nerve and prescribed a muscle relaxant. Two weeks later, only more incapacitated, the patient went to another clinic, where a younger doctor made the right diagnosis: A malignant tumor in his chest was pressing against a nerve to his arm...
- Login to post comments