Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

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Open Source Solutions for Immunization Tracking and COVID-19

The United States is starting to emerge from a nation-wide shut down imposed to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Most states are starting to reopen, and while higher education will likely stay largely remote this fall, primary and secondary schools are expected to reopen as the economy tries to get back on its feet. As both children and adults begin to spend more time together again, it is important to understand the impact that COVID-19 is having on current immunization practices and services, and how open source software is being leveraged to keep the population safe.

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1 in 4 Seniors Have Superbugs on Their Hands After a Hospital Stay, New Research Finds

Press Release | University of Michigan Health System | March 14, 2016

One in four seniors is bringing along stowaways from the hospital to their next stop: superbugs on their hands. Moreover, seniors who go to a nursing home or other post-acute care facility will continue to acquire new superbugs during their stay, according to findings made by University of Michigan researchers published today in a JAMA Internal Medicine research letter. The study focused on patients who have recently been admitted to the hospital for a medical or surgical issue and temporarily need extra medical care in a PAC facility before fully returning home...

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20 Orlando Health Workers Watched For MERS Symptoms

John Lantigua | Palm Beach Post | May 13, 2014

Nineteen employees at two Orlando hospitals who came in contact with a man infected with the rare MERS virus were sent home under quarantine and are being closely monitored for symptoms. An additional worker who displayed symptoms was put in isolation in the hospital...

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85% Of Measles Outbreak Victims Already Received Vaccinations

Ethan A. Huff | Natural News | June 23, 2014

The mainstream media is giddily engaging in a mass political orgy over measles after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the disease is allegedly spreading in large part due to foreign travelers and the unvaccinated...

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86 Potential Anthrax Exposures Identified As Count Continues To Go Up

Brian Stallard | Nature World News | June 21, 2014

Eleven more federal employees in the United States have come forward as people who were potentially exposed to an accidental anthrax outbreak after mishandling live samples in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab...

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A 'Slow Catastrophe' Unfolds as the Golden Age of Antibiotics Comes to an End

Melissa Healy | Los Angeles Times | July 11, 2016

In early April, experts at a military lab outside Washington intensified their search for evidence that a dangerous new biological threat had penetrated the nation’s borders. They didn’t have to hunt long before they found it. On May 18, a team working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research here had its first look at a sample of the bacterium Escherichia coli, taken from a 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. She had a urinary tract infection with a disconcerting knack for surviving the assaults of antibiotic medications. Her sample was one of six from across the country delivered to the lab of microbiologist Patrick McGann...

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A Deadly Superbug Appears to Be Invading America's Hospitals

Helen Branswell | The Week | January 23, 2017

A dangerous type of superbug has more tricks up its sleeves than we may be giving it credit for, a recent study suggests. The researchers found that this class of bacteria, CREs — that's short for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae — has more ways to evade antibiotics than have been currently identified, and that these bugs share their tricks readily across the families of bacteria that make up this grouping...

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A Lack Of Planning And Protocol Failures In Healthcare Are Not Limited To Ebola

Mark Graban | LinkedIn | October 17, 2014

With the two nurses now contracting Ebola at Texas Health Resources Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, there are many lined up to criticize the CDC and their lack of planning, communication, and preparation for Ebola cases. Many are criticizing THR Presbyterian Hospital for their lack of protocols and for not having the right protective gear available for nurses and other caregivers...

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A Nevada Woman Dies of a Superbug Resistant to Every Available Antibiotic in the US

Helen Branswell | STAT | January 12, 2017

If it sometimes seems like the idea of antibiotic resistance, though unsettling, is more theoretical than real, please read on. Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off 26 different antibiotics. “It was tested against everything that’s available in the United States … and was not effective,” said Dr. Alexander Kallen, a medical officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of health care quality promotion...

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A New Drug In The Age Of Antibiotic Resistance

Cari Romm | The Atlantic | January 7, 2015

Two alarming figures from a report released last month by the U.K. government: By 2050, antibiotic resistance will cost the world a projected 10 million lives and $8 trillion each year...

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A Patient In Minnesota Has Lassa Hemorrhagic Fever. (Don’t Panic.)

Maryn McKenna | Wired | April 4, 2014

News from the Minnesota Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: A Minnesota traveler returning from Africa has been hospitalized with what the CDC confirms to be Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic fever that is often lumped together with Ebola hemorrhagic fever, though they are caused by different organisms. Read More »

A Public Health Perspective on ONC's Strategy to Reduce Burden on Physicians

On November 28, 2018, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a draft Strategy on Reducing Regulatory and Administrative Burden Relating to the Use of Health IT and EHRs for public comment. The strategy aims to reduce the time and effort and improve the functionality of electronic health records (EHRs) for clinicians, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations. This strategy was developed primarily through the efforts of ONC-convened workgroups in response to requirements laid out by Congress in the 21st Century Cures Act (Section 13103). The report itself does not identify who exactly served on these workgroups and what organizations were represented.

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A Web Services Approach to Public Health Clinical Decision Support

David Raths | Healthcare Informatics | October 22, 2016

Although it is still early days, I am increasingly convinced that the movement to bring a web services approach to healthcare is real. Every week brings announcements of new efforts to create modules that do one thing well and that providers could subscribe to from within their EHR. This approach makes so much more sense than each provider working with its software vendor to recreate the wheel.This is especially appealing in the realm of clinical decision support (CDS), in which knowledge management is so time-consuming and difficult for provider organizations...

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An Open Source Project To Improve The Accuracy Of CDC's Mortality Data

Paula Braun | HealthData.Gov | June 4, 2015

As part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, which will take place world-wide on Saturday, June 6th, CDC would like to launch an open-source project to develop a Cause-of-Death companion application that will a) help guide medical certifiers through the process of filling out a death certificate and b) provide real-time feedback for common mistakes at the point of data entry. 

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Anatomy of a Public Health Open Source Project: HLN's Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE)

An immunization information system (IIS) aggregates immunization information for children (and some adults) living or receiving immunization services in a jurisdiction. One of the core components of an IIS is its immunization evaluation and forecasting system: the computerized algorithm that is used to determine if vaccine doses that were administered to the patient are clinically valid (evaluation) and to project what doses are due now and in the future (forecasting). These algorithms are used to support clinical decision support (CDS) at the point of care and also to help public health agencies understand and manage the immunization status of whole populations.

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