News

Reliable data on health is an essential part of a comprehensive health information system, which is central to evidence-informed, responsive decision-making for better public health program. A well-functioning health information system also helps policy-makers and program managers to monitor population health and plan interventions accordingly. In line with the vision of a Digital Bangladesh, one of the more significant changes that have happened in our health sector is transforming paper-based health reporting into an electronic health information system, along with initiating a medical record system through the Open MRS software...

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Medical record exchange is a major topic in healthcare, needed to improve healthcare outcomes (and reduce costs) for multiple patients receiving care at multiple sites.  The discussion in the industry primarily focuses on technical challenges. In reality, many of the technical challenges have been addressed. A big factor in the inability of medical record exchange is the hospitals themselves. They block information and APIs. I’ve had two experiences with getting medical records...

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Doctors aren’t doing nearly enough to care for their non-English speaking patients.
I spend a lot of my time harping about the importance of communication in the field of healthcare, whether it’s between primary services and consulting subspecialists, providers and patients, or providers and family members of patients. The times when effective communication between patients and providers is hindered prove especially difficult...

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When you start out as an entrepreneur, it’s just you and your idea, or you and your co-founder’s and your idea. Then you add customers, and they shape and mold you and that idea until you achieve the fabled “product-market fit.” [...] But if you are to succeed in building an enduring company, it has to be about far more than that: it has to be about the team and the institution you create together. Read More »

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Robert Martin, co-author of a recent study on industrial farm animal production, explains how a powerful and intransigent agriculture lobby has successfully fought off attempts to reduce the harmful environmental and health impacts of mass livestock production. Read More »

Your 14-year-old daughter is dumped on your freezing front lawn in a state of chemically induced incoherence with her shoes off and frost stuck in her hair. She tells you she was raped. [...] You wait for the indictments and some semblance of justice, but they dissipate, as one of the accused is a football star from one of the area’s most prominent and politically connected families. [...] Then it gets worse. Read More »

Doctors will one day be able to more accurately predict how long patients with fatal diseases will live. Medical systems will learn how to save money by skipping expensive and unnecessary tests. Radiologists will be replaced by computer algorithms. These are just some of the realities patients and doctors should prepare for as “machine learning” enters the world of medicine, according to Dr. Ziad Obermeyer, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania, who recently coauthored an article in the New England Journal of Medicine on the topic...

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