News Clips

As Hurricane Dorian threatened the Florida coast, top officials at HCA spent Labor Day weekend wringing their hands, pulling all-nighters in a Nashville command center. It almost didn't matter where the storm hits; HCA Healthcare's hospitals were going to be affected. With dozens of hospitals on Florida's east and west coasts, the for-profit hospital chain is exposed every time a hurricane threatens the Sunshine State. Late last week, the nation's largest hospital company granted WPLN rare access to observe storm preparations as Dorian bore down on the Florida coast. The mood was serious. Chatter was limited. The only sound competing with speakers was the hum of fingers on laptops taking furious notes.

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As healthcare evolves across the globe, so does our ability to improve the health and wellness of communities. Patients, providers, and health plans are striving for more value-based care, more engaging user experiences, and broader application of machine learning to assist clinicians in diagnosis and patient care. Too often, however, patient data are inconsistently formatted, incomplete, unavailable, or missing - which can limit access to the best possible care. Equipping patients and caregivers with information and insights derived from raw data has the potential to yield significantly better outcomes. But without a robust network of clinical information, even the best people and technology may not reach their potential...

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careMESH, the only service provider to guarantee digital delivery of patient health information to any US-based clinician, announced the launch of the country's first National Provider Directory based entirely on the HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) R4 standard. HL7 is a not-for-profit organization focused on developing consensus standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management and delivery of healthcare.

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Soom, a pioneer in utilizing barcode and knowledge graph technologies to bridge information gaps between data sources and physical products, has introduced SoomSafety, an iOS mobile app that allows users to scan a medical device and receive instructions for use, safety and recall information directly from the device manufacturer and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). "We built SoomSafety to help patients and caregivers relying on implanted medical devices and using medical devices at home answer one critical question, 'Is this medical device safe to use?'" said Charlie Kim, President and CEO of Soom. "Our technology makes it possible to connect previously siloed medical device data, giving patients-and their caregivers-more proactive control over their health and safety."

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An effort similar to the Manhattan Project - in which American-led R&D produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II - is needed now in defense against the growing global threats posed by infectious diseases and bioterrorism, sources said Thursday during a Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense meeting...witness panelists and attendees at the panel's first public meeting held yesterday in New York City discussed "A Manhattan Project for Biodefense: Taking Biological Threats Off the Table," a proposed national, public-private research and development undertaking that would defend the United States against biological threats.

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OSEHRA's Synthetic Patient Data Open Source Project Group is proud to announce the release of their end-to-end open source patient data software package. Sponsored by Perspecta Inc., an OSEHRA Organizational Member, this group has worked for more than a year to make it possible for users to generate, visualize, and ingest synthetic patient data with a single command. "The lack of realistic clinical data that mimics the volume, velocity, and variety of real-world patient records has been an impediment to health IT development, testing, and simulation," said Bo Dagnall, chair of the Project Group and Chief Technologist and Strategist for Perspecta's Health Business Group. 

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Is the nation ready to defend against antibiotic-resistant diseases or bioterrorism? What would the response to a biological attack or disease pandemic look like? Those threats and the collaboration of private, federal and local agencies to respond to them were the focus of a hearing Wednesday in the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security on biodefense preparedness. Congressman Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said at the beginning of the hearing that around 2.4 million people could die in high-income countries between 2015 and 2050 without an effort to contain antimicrobial resistance, according to an April report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

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