Bill Gates Won’t Save You From The Next Ebola Outbreak
In late August 2014, Tom Frieden, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traveled to West Africa to assess the raging Ebola crisis. In the five months before Frieden’s visit, Ebola had spread from a village in Guinea, across borders and into cities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières, the first international responder on the scene, had run out of staff to treat the rising numbers of sick people and had deemed the outbreak “out of control” back in June...
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The Biothreat Is Real — And We’re Not Ready, Report Says
It's a scary scenario: A genetically engineered Nipah virus is sprayed into the air during a July 4th celebration in Washington, D.C., and across the country, killing more than 6,000 people. A badly prepared United States does almost nothing at first, and people die as officials scramble to get a grip on what happened...
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Kenya Creates Online System to Monitor Rural Sanitation
Kenya has launched an online monitoring, evaluation and reporting system to improve capturing of data on sanitation and hygiene status, a conference has heard. According to Kenya’s Ministry of Health, the country has open defecation rate of 14 per cent, with countries such as Wajir and Turkana having a rate of 76.7 and 82.2 per cent respectively. The online portal could help coordinate monitoring of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and enable public health officials in rural areas facilitate rapid acceleration of the Open Defecation Free (ODF) campaign, experts say...
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Worse Than Ebola: U.S. Not Preparing for the Next Bio-Threat
The U.S. government is slacking off on preparing for the next big pandemic or biological terrorism attack and is not only endangering its citizens but also missing out on a great opportunity to score political points, experts said Monday. Protecting the United States from the next pandemic of killer flu, or from a bioterrorist strike, is something Republicans and Democrats can easily agree on, a top congressional appropriator told a biodefense panel...
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Open Invention Network Expands Open-Source Patent Protection Beyond Linux
Today, everyone and their uncle -- yes, even Microsoft-- use Linux and open-source. A decade ago, Linux was under attack by SCO for imaginary copyright violations, and then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was claiming that Linux violated more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. So Open Invention Network (OIN) patent consortium was formed to defend Linux against intellectual property (IP) attacks. The stakes may not be so high today, but Linux and open-source software is still under attack from patent trolls and other attackers...
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UK's Bolton NHS Trust Plans on Broader Open Source Eye Care Record Uptake
Having this year gone live with OpenEyes software devised by another trust, hospital body now looking to expand functionality and user base among other trusts Bolton NHS Foundation Trust is committed to integrating a growing number of paper-based processes for optical care onto the OpenEyes open source patient record software that was initially developed by Moorfields Eye Hospital in London...
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Does Healthcare Need a More Modern Way to Define and Measure EHR Interoperability?
KLAS executive vice president Taylor Davis said that measuring interoperability can get messy because the EHR market is currently immature. Industry experts and the federal government are divided on the best way to assess the state of the nation’s health IT interoperability. The Office for the National Coordinator for Health IT, for instance, has proposed using CIO surveys to gauge the status of interoperability among and between healthcare organizations...
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NHS Urged to Consider Microsoft Alternatives Following Cyber Attacks
In the wake of Friday’s international cyber attacks, which caused widespread disruption across NHS organisations, a small team of developers is recommending the health service reduce its reliance on Microsoft. The NHS almost exclusively uses Microsoft operating systems, some of which – like Windows XP – are no longer officially supported. To demonstrate that there is a licence-free alternative, GP Marcus Baw and technologist Rob Dyke have adapted the open source Linux-based Ubuntu operating system specifically for the NHS...
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Bio-IT World Conference & Expo 2017
The Bio-IT World Conference & Expo is a conference designed to showcase a wide variety of IT and informatics applications and enabling technologies for biomedical research, clinical and healthcare initiatives, and drug discovery and development. More than 3,300 delegates representing 41 countries are expected to attend this three-day event. The 2017 conference features more than 280 speakers, keynotes, workshops, industry awards, an exhibit hall, and the FAIR Data Hackathon 2017...
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Nanopillars Help Orthopaedic Implants Resist Infection
Inspired by insect wings that kill bacteria on contact, Indian researchers have developed a method to treat the surface of titanium orthopaedic implants at nano-scales so that they resist bacterial infection — a complication that often develops following surgery. Orthopaedic implants like hip joints, knee joints, plates and screws can be treated to resist bacteria without the use of antibiotics, says a paper published online in Scientific Reports...
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