News Clips
17-Year-Old Invents $35 3D Printed Device for Diagnosing Respiratory Diseases
Not many teens can say they attend an Ivy League school and perhaps even fewer can claim an invention to their name. This is not the case for 17-year-old Maya Varma, an engineering student and intern at Stanford University who has developed a low-cost 3D printed device that can analyze a patient’s breath and help to diagnose pulmonary diseases. Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people suffer from respiratory conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and restrictive lung disease. In fact, respiratory diseases and infections are the third leading cause of death, after cancer and heart disease...
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Object Management Group Announces Business Process Modeling for Health Workshop on September 27
The Object Management Group® (OMG®), an international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium, today announced it will host the Business Process Modeling for Health Workshop at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans Hotel on September 27 from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. Registration costs $149 USD and is open to the public...The Workshop will feature experts from the healthcare field and business modeling who will explain how OMG business process modeling (BPM) standards can improve the portability of clinical processes and workflows...
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ONC Head Dr. Donald Rucker Addresses open API's, Interoperability and Usability During WEDI Keynote
Earlier this month, the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), the nation’s leading nonprofit authority on the use of health IT to create efficiencies in healthcare information exchange and a trusted advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), held its 2017 Summer Forum which featured keynote addresses by Donald W. Rucker, MD, head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC/HHS) and Madhu Annadata, director, Division of National Standards, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)...
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Government IT contractor sues VA over Cerner Deal
CliniComp, a major Pentagon and VA electronic health records provider, is suing the Department of Veterans Affairs over Secretary David Shulkin's decision to offer a no-bid contract to Cerner to replace the agency’s VistA system. The suit brought Friday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims charges that the VA violated federal contracting law by making the June announcement without first conducting market research or assessing the cost of the contract. It demands that the judge restrain the VA from awarding the contract to Cerner until the protest is resolved.
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Open source EHR platform tailored to treat Ebola patients
An open-source electronic health record system developed to treat Ebola patients during the recent epidemic in West Africa is being touted as a potential solution for clinical data collection in highly infectious environments and resource-constrained healthcare settings. Implemented two years ago at Save the Children International’s Kerry Town Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone, the EHR leverages a Java-based web application called OpenMRS that enables the design of a customized medical records system with no programming.
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Why Do We Settle in Healthcare?
[I]magine it’s the middle of winter and you’ve caught the latest bug du jour. You call your doctor for an appointment. When you arrive, you’re handed a clipboard and asked to fill out the same repetitive paper form with your health information that you fill out every time you visit. You’re certain they have this information already, but you’re required to fill it out yet again. You might wait 30, 40, or 60 minutes past your appointment time before you’re called back to a room...
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Microsoft, Red Hat Improve Container Adoption for Healthcare
Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) today announced an expansion of the two companies’ alliance with plans for new initiatives aimed at enabling enterprises to more easily adopt containers. This includes native support for Windows Server containers on Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Microsoft Azure, and SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift. These additions to the companies’ joint roadmap will focus on simplifying container technologies to help enterprise customers increase the agility and drive digital transformation using hybrid cloud.
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How Community Health Centers Support Patient-Centered Care
Each year, HHS celebrates Community Health Centers week. It is a time where the agency recognizes the impact community health centers have on patient-centered care and how they promote access to care in vulnerable or medically underserved populations...
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Development and Deployment of the OpenMRS-Ebola Electronic Health Record System for an Ebola Treatment Center in Sierra Leone
Stringent infection control requirements at Ebola treatment centers (ETCs), which are specialized facilities for isolating and treating Ebola patients, create substantial challenges for recording and reviewing patient information. During the 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic, paper-based data collection systems at ETCs compromised the quality, quantity, and confidentiality of patient data. Electronic health record (EHR) systems have the potential to address such problems, with benefits for patient care, surveillance, and research. However, no suitable software was available for deployment when large-scale ETCs opened as the epidemic escalated in 2014...
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While Waiting for a State Health-Records Exchange, Medical Society Launches One
Electronic medical records have become common, but the ability to share them easily between providers still lags. Frustrated that after 10 years of effort the state of Connecticut has yet to launch a functioning health information exchange (HIE) allowing physicians, hospitals and other health care providers to share patient medical records, the Connecticut Medical Society is offering one of its own. Available to all clinicians in the state and called CTHealthLink, it is based on a system currently used in Kansas...
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This Stanford Student’s $35 Invention Saves Lives and Won Her $150,000
Maya Varma did something at the age of seventeen that many people will never even accomplish in their lifetime—she invented a device that can save lives. Varma, now a rising sophomore at Stanford University, won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation at the Intel Science Talent Search in 2016 for designing an inexpensive pulmonary function analyzer for the diagnosis of five pulmonary illnesses. Unlike the typical devices that hospitals use to diagnose lung diseases, Varma’s invention is exceedingly affordable, with the necessary materials costing a measly $35...
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When Government Rules by Software, Citizens Are Left in the Dark
IN JULY, SAN Francisco Superior Court Judge Sharon Reardon considered whether to hold Lamonte Mims, a 19-year-old accused of violating his probation, in jail. One piece of evidence before her: the output of algorithms known as PSA that scored the risk that Mims, who had previously been convicted of burglary, would commit a violent crime or skip court. Based on that result, another algorithm recommended that Mims could safely be released, and Reardon let him go. Five days later, police say, he robbed and murdered a 71-year old man...
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Securing Health Data Means Going Well Beyond HIPAA
A two-decade-old law designed to protect patients’ privacy may be preventing health care organizations from doing more to protect vulnerable health care data from theft or abuse. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) established strict rules for how health data can be stored and shared. But in making health care providers vigilant about privacy protection, HIPAA may inadvertently distract providers from focusing on something just as important: overall information security...
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HIT System to Help Clinics Serve Medically Underserved Populations
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed an IT system to improve the health and well-being of medically underserved populations through personalized interventions. Called imHealthy, the system—which includes a mobile app, open source EHR and web portal—was specifically designed by a multidisciplinary research team for the FOCUS Pittsburgh Free Health Center. However, researchers are hoping the solution will serve as a model for free clinics in other major cities across the country. According to Leming Zhou, assistant professor in the Department of Health Information Management at the University of Pittsburgh, he and his colleagues intended imHealthy to be a user-friendly, scalable, easy-to-use system to help clinics provide a comprehensive well-being assessment for those living in medically underserved communities.
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Oracle Doesn't Want Java EE Any More
Oracle wants to end its leadership in the development of enterprise Java and is looking for an open source foundation to take on the role. The company said today that the upcoming Java EE (Enterprise Edition) 8 presents an opportunity to rethink how the platform is developed. Although development is done via open source with community participation, the current Oracle-led process is not seen agile, flexible, or open enough. ”We believe that moving Java EE technologies to an open source foundation may be the right next step, to adopt more agile processes, implement more flexible licensing and change the governance process,” Oracle said in a statement...
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