natural disasters

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 »

Unfortunately, we don’t yet have technology that can prevent a storm of the magnitude of Hurricane Harvey from devastating our cities and towns. But it can help in the response, and even provide valuable information for citizens trying to survive a catastrophic event. One key is properly locating backup and recovery systems for government agencies. Typically, most cities and towns with a backup plan for their data rely on nearby data centers. That’s fine if there is a fire at the local office building or something that forces the temporary closure of government buildings...

Read More »

IBM today announced Code and Response, a new $25 million, four-year deployment initiative to put open source technologies developed as part of coding challenges such as Call for Code in the communities where they are needed most. Code and Response includes resources to build, fortify, test, and implement solutions at scale. The initiative is supported by hundreds of IBMers as part of the IBM Corporate Service Corps, as well as government and NGO partners to put those technologies to work saving lives.

Read More »

State health information exchanges can best prepare for emergencies by ensuring that health information is readily accessible during routine care, concludes a report (.pdf) from the Southeast Regional HIT-HIE Collaboration published in July. But the report finds day-to-day health information sharing is a challenge, as individual state's efforts and HIE implementation timelines vary considerably. Read More »

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."

Read More »