News Clips
Blockchain’s Weak Spots Pose a Hidden Danger to Users
Technologists, entrepreneurs, and some big companies are busy dreaming up new ways of using the core of Bitcoin—a distributed cryptographic ledger, or blockchain—to reinvent everything from business contracts and health records to carbon credits and new trading platforms (see “Why Bitcoin Could Be Much More Than a Currency”). However, one expert warns that they may be building their dreams on top of a precarious foundation. Emin Gün Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell University, has been researching ways in which Bitcoin and blockchains can fail...
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Interoperability As A Service (IAAS): The AI Enabled Blockchain
It’s time for patients to come to terms with the fact that there is no financial incentive for healthcare providers to consolidate and normalize data from disparate providers. Patients must be cautious maintaining their patient records on a blockchain or another platform that cannot be used by other institutions, providers, or entities. Without portability, blockchains will add little value to advance patient medical record mobility. Healthcare providers may discover some indirect benefits from the consolidation of medical records — even records not immediately accessible by patients...
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Percona Announces Keynote Schedule for Sixth Annual Percona Live Open Source Database Conference
Percona, the company that delivers enterprise-class MySQL® and MongoDB® solutions and services, today announced the keynote sessions for the sixth annual Percona Live Open Source Database Conference 2017, taking place April 24-27, 2017, at The Hyatt Regency Santa Clara and Santa Clara Convention Center. This year’s conference features several exciting extracurricular events, including an opening reception sponsored by Booking.com, the MySQL Community Awards ceremony, and book signings hosted by O’Reilly featuring Sveta Smirnov, Laine Campbell, Charity Majors, Baron Schwartz, Peter Zaitsev and Vadim Tkachenko. Sponsorship opportunities for the conference are still available...
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Wearable Sweat Sensor Can Diagnose Cystic Fibrosis, Study Finds
A wristband-type wearable sweat sensor could transform diagnostics and drug evaluation for cystic fibrosis, diabetes and other diseases. The sensor collects sweat, measures its molecular constituents and then electronically transmits the results for analysis and diagnostics, according to a study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, in collaboration with the University of California-Berkeley. Unlike old-fashioned sweat collectors, the new device does not require patients to sit still for a long time while sweat accumulates in the collectors...
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Why China Is Beating the U.S. at Innovation
For decades, America lost factories and jobs to China but retained a coveted title: the world's leader in inventing and commercializing new products. Now, even that status has been eroded, and it's hurting the economy. While the United States is still at the top in total investment in research and development — spending $500 billion in 2015 — a new Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study released Monday has made a startling finding: A couple of years ago, China quietly surpassed the U.S. in spending on the later stage of R&D that turns discoveries into commercial products. And at its current rate of spending, China will invest up to twice as much as the U.S., or $658 billion, by 2018 on this critical late-stage research...
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Wyoming Awards Contract to SLI Global Solutions for IV&V of Medicaid Systems Modernization Project
SLI Global Solutions, LLC (SLI) is proud to announce that is has been awarded a contract for Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) services for the Wyoming Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) project. The project, called WINGS (for Wyoming Integrated Next Generation System), is a complex, multi-vendor endeavor that is critically important to Wyoming citizens and healthcare providers. With this award to SLI, Wyoming’s Department of Health (WDH) seeks to reduce risks inherent in any large-scale IT project by using IV&V as a means to independently assess and improve the health of WINGS over the life of the project...
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Dr. Dao Was Brutalized By Deregulation
A couple of readers asked why I did not include in my column, “A Government of Morons,” the violence used against the medical doctor Dao removed from his confirmed seat on a United Flight as a result of airline overbooking. The 69-year old was beat senseless by goons. A few days later United Airlines removed a bridal couple on the way to their wedding from a flight only partially filled. No explanation was given, but the couple wary of the beating that might be heading their way complied with the order...
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Health Record Banking Alliance Joins National Association for Trusted Exchange to Give Patients Control of Their Records
The National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) today welcomed the Health Record Banking Alliance (HRBA) as its newest association member. HRBA is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 to promote consumer-centered, consumer-controlled, comprehensive, lifetime electronic health records. The Health Record Banking Alliance advocates for a consumer-centered, unified, lifetime electronic health record. After consumers visit a healthcare provider, they should request that their provider send a copy of their visit summary to an account that they have established with a trusted private repository...
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UK Doubles Support for Neglected Tropical Diseases - To Protect 200 Million People
The UK will protect over 200 million people from the pain and disfigurement caused by treatable tropical diseases, International Development Secretary Priti Patel announced today. Neglected Tropical Diseases, such as trachoma, Guinea worm and river blindness, are avoidable infections but can deform, disable, blind and even kill if left untreated. They affect over a billion people in the poorest and most marginalised communities in the world, stopping children going to school and parents going to work - costing developing economies billions of dollars every year in lost productivity and reducing overall global prosperity...
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Pharmaceutical Giant 'Plotted to Destroy Cancer Drugs to Drive Price Up 4,000%
Leaked internal emails appear to show employees at one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies calling for “celebration” over price hikes of cancer drugs, an investigation has revealed. Staff at Aspen Pharmacare reportedly plotted to destroy stocks of life-saving medicines during a price dispute with the Spanish health service in 2014. After purchasing five different cancer drugs from British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the company tried to sell the medicines in Europe for up to 40 times their previous price, reported The Times...
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Roots of Trump’s ‘Economic Nationalism’
With most of the media and political commentators focused on the Republicans’ failed attempt to pass a healthcare bill, some of President Donald Trump’s most significant words appear to have gone almost unnoticed. The President was away from the political fight in Washington on March 20, conducting one of his periodic attempts to sustain excitement among his base. At a rally in Louisville, Kentucky, Trump repeated his standard lines about putting America first, starting with economic policy....
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Why the Threatened AHRQ Is Vital to the Hospital Industry
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is on the chopping block — again — and supporters are gearing up for what could be their biggest fight yet to save the little-known agency. In his fiscal year 2018 budget proposal, President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating AHRQ’s funding and folding the agency into the National Institutes of Health, which itself is facing a proposed 18% cut to its current $31.7 billion budget, and a requested $1.2 billion cut in FY 2017 funding.
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Cognitive Medical Systems President Named to 2017 FedHealthIT 100 List
Cognitive Medical Systems, a specialist in standards-based Clinical Decision Support (CDS) software and healthcare IT infrastructure, today announced that its President was named to the 2017 FedHealthIT 100 List. Douglas W. Burke was recognized for the company’s innovation and growth by nearly 3,000 percent since 2012.
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HL7 Publishes First Domain Analysis Model for Clinical Sequencing
Health Level Seven International (HL7), the global authority for interoperability in healthcare information technology and the home of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard, today announced that it has published the HL7 Domain Analysis Model; Clinical Sequencing, a model which captures precision medicine's use cases to facilitate interoperability of genetic and genomic data. This domain analysis model (DAM) was the basis for the design of FHIR Genomics, the genomics components designed under purview of the HL7 Clinical Genomics Work Group within FHIR Release 3...
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Valuable Mental Health Apps Lost in a Sea of Untrustworthy Digital Solutions
The mental health industry has been flooded with potentially untrustworthy apps.
With more than 10,000 mobile health apps available to assist with mental health treatment, patients and clinicians now face the daunting challenge of parsing out trustworthy digital tools. That challenge has only intensified as more apps have entered the marketplace amid the FDA’s hands-off approach to regulating apps and wearables, researchers wrote in JAMA Psychiatry...
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