The prestigious, open access, Journal of Medical Internet Research recently published a study looking at the effectiveness of OpenMRS’ use during the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The article highlights the work of a team who developed new user-interface components for OpenMRS and rapidly deployed the system in an Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC) in Sierra Leone. The team, composed of members from OpenMRS, Save the Children International, Thoughtworks, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Partners In Health, University of Leeds, and Columbia University. The team came together in response to an urgent request for healthIT from colleagues at Save the Children International to develop an EHR suitable for deployment in a new Ebola treatment Centre being set up in Kerry Town outside the capital, Freetown.
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...
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Sewage, Debris, Mosquitoes: Flood Waters Increase Health Risk for Harvey Victims
Tropical storm Harvey continues to threaten lives in Houston, where officials are focused on evacuating hospitals and securing life-saving emergency transportation, knowing they face long-term health threats. “Our number one priority now,” said Chris Van Deusen, a clearly frayed spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, is “to make sure hospital patients and those with medical needs are taken care of.”...
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Google Fights Ebola
While governments around the world were unsuccessfully trying to make up their minds about the best approach, sitting around and debating and discussing about the most valid ways to combat Ebola …Google came up to the plate in November and its CEO announced it would pledge $2 for every dollar donated through its website. They set up a specific URL onetoday.google.com/fightebola to explain this original social action and invite people worldwide to contribute to this worthwhile, timely cause...
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Google Builds a New Tablet for the Fight Against Ebola
Jay Achar was treating Ebola patients at a makeshift hospital in Sierra Leone, and he needed more time. This was in September, near the height of the West African Ebola epidemic. Achar was part of a team that traveled to Sierra Leone under the aegis of a European organization called Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders. In a city called Magburaka, MSF had erected a treatment center that kept patients carefully quarantined, and inside the facility's high-risk zone, doctors like Achar wore the usual polythene "moon suits," gloves, face masks, and goggles to protect themselves from infection...
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Urgent Supplies Through the Air
Drones can do so much more than take photos and inspect cell phone towers. They can ferry critical supplies to hard-to-reach areas and drop off life-saving packages to disaster survivors. One company, Zipline International in San Francisco, is deploying unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to drop off lifesaving packages of blood in Rwanda—and is the world’s first national drone delivery service. Another company, Windhorse Aerospace in Wells, England, is developing a UAS intentionally designed for a one-way trip. The aircraft is made of combustible or even edible materials that can be taken apart by disaster survivors after it lands and used for fires or meals...
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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...
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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?...
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After Building Apps For Harvey Victims, Houston's Techies Set Their Sights On Irma
After more than two days on a boat rescuing upwards of 50 victims of Hurricane Harvey from flooded houses, Matthew Hager decided to try to help his hometown of Houston the best way he knew how: with tech. Though Hager and his friends looked like a ragtag volunteer rescue squad, he’s a web designer by trade. With other volunteers from his design shop Poetic Systems, he built what has become one of the central hubs for information on Harvey recovery, HarveyNeeds.org. Hager and his crew are hardly alone. As Harvey hit, Houston’s startup community went into overdrive, connecting over a volunteer Slack channel and gathering around impromptu hackathons to build at least 20 new apps and sites designed to provide support to residents, first responders and the city...
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Science Journal Examines Key Role of Open Source EHR in Ending Ebola Epidemic in Sierra Leone
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Health Care's Juicero Problem
Bad news: if you were still hoping to get one of the $400 juicers from Juicero, you may be out of luck. Juicero announced that they were suspending sales while they seek an acquirer. They'd already dropped the juicer's price from its initial $700 earlier this year and had hoped to find ways to drop it further, but ran out of time. I keep thinking: if they'd been a health care company, they not only might still be in business but also would probably be looking to raise their prices. Juicero once was the darling of investors. It raised $120 million from a variety of respected funding sources, including Kleiner Perkins, Alphabet and Campbell Soup. They weren't a juice company, or even an appliance company. They were a technology company! They had an Internet-of-Things product! They had an ongoing base of customers...
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