Hurricane Sandy
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HIEs: Help in Disasters?
How big of a role did health information exchanges play in providing access to records during Superstorm Sandy, and what lessons can be learned? Federal officials will address these questions, says HIE expert Lee Stevens. Read More »
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Hospitals Face Hurricane Sandy Power Outages, Failed Generators
Even with preparation, back-up systems failed at NYU Langone Medical Center last night, forcing the evacuation of all 215 patients to nearby hospitals, including Sloan Kettering and Mount Sinai, The New York Times reported. There were large-scale power failures in critical areas, including the emergency department, the transplant unit and labor and delivery.
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How AI, Twitter And Digital Volunteers Are Transforming Humanitarian Disaster Response
On 24 September a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck south-west Pakistan, killing at least 300 people. The following day Patrick Meier at the [QCRI] received a call from the UN [OCHA] asking him to help deal with the digital fallout -- the thousands of tweets, photos and videos that were being posted on the web containing potentially valuable information about the disaster. Read More »
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How Do Hospitals Know What To Do When Hurricanes Approach?
We all expect hospitals to be open and operating when we need them, but extreme weather events like hurricanes are a strain on resources and pose significant challenges for hospitals. Closing a hospital is an extreme action, but several hospitals in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina did just that before the arrival of Hurricane Irma in 2017.With more than 300 hospitals and a higher share of older adults than any other state, emergency plans for Florida’s hospitals were a critical issue facing emergency planners during those storms. This is true now as well as Hurricane Dorian approaches the state.
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How Health IT Benefits From Obama's Re-election
The day after President Obama was re-elected and Democrats held onto control of the U.S. Senate, the future looked bright to folks in the health IT field. Read More »
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In Disasters Such as Hurricanes, HIE Is 'As Critical as Having Roads, as Having Fire Hydrants'
The Statewide Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY) sees itself as a "public utility" as much as an HIE. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, as patients bounce between hospitals (and as other public utilities, such as electricity and transportation, are compromised), it has enabled critical continuity of care. The images of dozens of red-flashing ambulances, evacuating as many as 200 patients – some of them in critical condition, some of them infants – from NYU Langone Medical Center, whose backup generator had failed, to hospitals such as Sloan-Kettering and NewYork-Presbyterian, will be some of the most enduring images from the super storm. The harrowing process was made much smoother by the fact that those patients' electronic health records were secure and readily accessible at the hospitals to which they were thanks to New York's statewide HIE... Read More »
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In Hurricane’s Wake, Decisions Not To Evacuate Hospitals Raise Questions
Now, in the late evening hours, the worst-case scenario was unfolding at the main campus of NYU's Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, which had lost much of its backup power at the height of the storm. Could North Shore-LIJ dispatch ambulances from its Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City to pick up four critically ill babies from the neo-natal intensive care unit? New York City hospital and nursing home patients and their loved ones might reasonably have believed they were safe as Hurricane Sandy approached. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had exempted hospitals and nursing homes in low-lying "Zone A" areas of the city from his pre-storm evacuation order. Much thought and planning had gone into the decision to "shelter in place."
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Innovation At VA: App Offered To Hurricane Sandy Victims
A mobile app originally developed to aid veterans has been offered to mental health personnel helping Hurricane Sandy's victims, an example of how innovation and technology within the federal government can have a broader reach than ever before. Read More »
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Innovation At VA: Collaboration, Data Aid Veteran Benefits Project
A collaborative effort to combine data previously scattered across multiple federal agencies has led to a single portal where veterans can access key benefits. Read More »
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It Takes Years To Fully Recover From Big Storms Like Sandy
The 2012 hurricane widely known as Superstorm Sandy left at least an estimated 325,000 New Jersey homes damaged or destroyed. Nearly seven years later, many of the New Jersey residents who have not fully recovered have to fend for themselves. The government funding has mostly dried up. Only two nonprofits that help survivors remain engaged...While researching the recovery efforts after Sandy, I have found that up to a third of the 2.5 million people who live in Keansburg, Belmar, Toms River and other places along the New Jersey coastline and back bays struck by the storm had not fully recovered from this disaster by October 2017 - five years later. Today, almost seven years after the storm, a lack of data and the patchwork of assistance programs make it difficult to fully assess what remains to be done.
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Natural Disasters Become Battlegrounds In Spectrum Fight
While the government seeks to parcel out valuable spectrum to new technologies, TV and radio stations point to disasters like Sandy as proof that broadcasters are as important as ever. Read More »
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New York’s Ongoing Blackout: Hospitals In Lower Manhattan
Long after power is restored from Sandy, the effect of another more-precarious outage is still taking shape: Some of the largest hospitals in lower Manhattan remain shuttered. Other hospitals are scrambling to fill the gap, and concern is rising that the patchwork system can't last for long. Read More »
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News Participation Starts At ‘Home’
Seemingly every major news event worldwide is heightening participation in news. People are eager to share updates and photos of an unfolding news event, ask questions of media outlets, and share important information. But there are two important aspects to this type of participation [...]. In other words, people write about their immediate world using their ‘home’ or go-to platform. Read More »
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Notes On The Watershed Post’s Implementation Of Ushahidi’s Crowdmap
This fall, we decided to use a Ushahidi’s hosted Crowdmap platform to organize our coverage of Sandy in the Catskills. Here’s a list of what worked and what didn’t... Read More »
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Online Tools To Use To Track Hurricane Sandy's Power
Hurricane Sandy is proving to be a storm not to be trifled with. If you need to stay abreast of the latest developments, there are plenty of useful resources you can find online. Read More »
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