With so much transition ahead of us at the Federal, state, and local levels in 2017, it is important to begin to plan for what the Health IT landscapes will look like for the coming year (and beyond). Several key reports have come out – mostly from government sources – which are worth serious consideration for any Health IT planner...There are no easy answers here, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the information presented in these reports. But they cannot be ignored and can help form the basis of a solid organizational or governmental strategy.
Preparing for 2017: Four Important Reports
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Study: Elite Scientists Can hold Back Science
Recently, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released a working paper — titled, "Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?" — that puts Planck's principle to the test. Sifting through citations in the PubMed database, they found evidence that when a prominent researcher suddenly dies in an academic subfield, a period of new ideas and innovation follow. The NBER team identified 12,935 "elite" scientists — based on the amount of funding they receive, how many times they've published, how many patents they invented, or whether they were members of the National Academies of Sciences or the Institute of Medicine...
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In-Depth: All the News from the Connected Health Conference 2016
This week, the Connected Health Conference in National Harbor, Maryland brought together stakeholders and thought leaders in digital and connected health. MobiHealthNews covered the two-day event this week -- links to our coverage from Monday and Tuesday are at the bottom of this roundup... In a panel moderated by Dr. Joe Kvedar, the VP of Connected Health at Partner’s Healthcare, Alden Doerner Rinaldi, medical director at Mount Auburn Hospital and Ronan Wisdom, global lead for connected health at Accenture, talked about how the role of digital tools is changing in healthcare...
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Verily launches clever new spoon That Compensates for Disabilities
People with physical disabilities face many challenges, such as difficulty eating, something many take for granted. But now Verily Life Sciences, formerly Google Life Sciences, has launched the Liftware Level, a handheld robotic device that compensates for erratic hand and arm movements, allowing people to eat without spilling. As part of the recent launch, the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) and Teva Pharmaceuticals will be donating 1,000 Liftware Level Starter Kits to people who could benefit from the device...
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Canada's Headed For A HealthCare.gov Disaster Of Its Own
I am deeply disappointed at yet another massive government IT failure, and sadly, not surprised in the slightest. The Canadian government's initiative to consolidate more than 1,500 government websites into a single super site, Canada.ca, is failing and starting to look like Canada's version of the disastrous Healthcare.gov. The original deadline for completing the project passes this month, with costs ballooning from $1.54 million to a reported $9.4 million, and growing...
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How Hospitals, Nursing Homes Keep Lethal ‘Superbug’ Outbreaks Secret
The outbreak started in January 2014. That’s when a resident of the Casa Maria nursing home here was diagnosed with Clostridium difficile, a highly contagious and potentially deadly “superbug” that plagues hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities. By the end of February, six more Casa Maria residents were suffering from the infection, characterized by fever, abdominal cramps and violent diarrhea...
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The Case Against Sugar
‘Virtually zero.’ That’s a reasonable estimate of the probability that public health authorities in the foreseeable future will successfully curb the worldwide epidemics of obesity and diabetes, at least according to Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) – a person who should know. Virtually zero is the likelihood, Chan said at the National Academy of Medicine’s annual meeting in October, that she and her many colleagues worldwide will successfully prevent ‘a bad situation’ from ‘getting much worse’...
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How Praekelt.org and Open Source Provide Critical Services to Enable Social Change
In Eastern and Southern Africa, women are still dying unnecessarily during the basic, natural act of giving life. According to Unicef, “In 2010, close to 58,000 women lost their lives during pregnancy and childbirth, accounting for more than one fifth of all such deaths in the world.” Gustav Praekelt, founder of the South African design and development firm Praekelt.com, was deeply affected by the high maternal mortality rate in his country and realized in 2007 that open source software and mobile phones could help provide critical information and services to combat poverty and maternal mortality rates -- among other social issues -- across the continent and potentially around the world.
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Jono Bacon's Top Open Source Conference Picks for 2017
Many of you reading this will be fans of open source who would love to get out and meet open source leaders, companies, and users at conferences. With most of us having to prioritize conferences either due to budgetary or family reasons (or both), knowing which events we should prioritize can be difficult. I have spent my career treading the boards from conference to conference all over the world, so I figured I would share some of the conferences that I would heartily recommend for 2017...
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ZibdyHealth Sub-Optimal Data Exchange Standards
Reformers in the health care field, quite properly, emphasize new payment models and culture changes to drive improvements in outcomes. But we can’t ignore the barriers that current technology puts in the way of well-meaning reformers. This article discusses one of the many companies offering a patient health record (PHR) and the ways they’ve adapted to a very flawed model for data storage and exchange. I had the honor to be contacted by Dr. Hirdey Bhathal, CEO/Founder of ZibdyHealth. Like many companies angling to develop a market for PHRs, ZibdyHealth offers a wide range of services to patients...
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