Digital Medicine: health

Showing posts with label health. Show all posts

Jan 16, 2011

Using Communications Technology to Provide Better Healthcare : DiagnosisONE

DiagnosisONE, Inc. develops and markets Intelligent Connectivity Solutions which allows customers in the clinical and public health environments to collect data from disparate sources, apply clinical and bioterrorism rules to that data and deliver the resulting information to care providers and decision makers. The company was founded in 1999 and is based in Nashua, New Hampshire.

DiagnosisONE, the clinical decision support and analytics firm, has announced that Greenway Medical Technologies has selected the company to provide clinical decision support for its EHR deployments. Through this relationship, Greenway will now seamlessly integrate DiagnosisONE’s CDS solutions into its ONC-ATCB-certified PrimeSUITE 2011 EHR solution to deliver real-time, patient-specific alerts at the point of care. The collaboration will enable customers to more easily satisfy the CDS requirements necessary for demonstrating Meaningful Use.

Read more at www.healthcareitnews.com

Dec 9, 2010

Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs of 2010 : Time.com

Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs

Aug 4, 2010

NHS adds personalized Health Information Site for Decision Makers

The NHS Information Center is England's central, authoritative source of health and social care information for front line decision makers. Our aim is to revolutionize the use of information to improve decision making, deliver better care and realize increased productivity.

Find out more about us, our work and our objectives.

Check it out for all sorts of data and information, like:

Ambulances - How many ambulances in any particular district...
Cancer Screening - Prevalence rates..
Immunization - Statistics and more..
Health care workforce - How many are there?
Contraception, and lots more...

Jun 17, 2010

Mapping Asthma - GPS in Clinical and Preventive Medicine

Came across this wonderful use of Global Positioning System in medicine.

The Spiroscout inhaler tracker on Asthmapolis.

By tracking the use of inhalers, Asthmapolis aims to help patients and physicians improve management of asthma and provide a valuable new source of aggregated, anonymous and voluntarily shared data for scientists and public health.

The tracker can simply be attached to the top of the inhaler . It records the times and locations when the inhaler is used and this data can be viewed in real time over handheld devices like phones to create a complete clinical diary of events.This lets you map and track your asthma.

Besides, Physicians who remotely monitor asthma symptoms and the use of medications by their patients can identify those in need of additional attention, and help them achieve better asthma control. This would also provide very valuable real time data on trends in Asthma attacks amongst various populations and in specific geographical areas.

You can find them on Facebook and also follow their efforts on Twitter.

Oct 27, 2009

Best health care companies to work at.

The Best Places to Work at in Healthcare:

Modern Healthcare announced its second annual list of the Best Places to Work in Healthcare.

317 healthcare companies participated in this survey and were ranked on basis of employee feedback, company policies, benefits and demographics.

A video announcement is now available at modernhealthcare.com/bestplaces.

The top 10 health care workplaces for 2009 in US are-

1) Intelligent InSites -- intelligentinsites.com

2) Doctors Hospital of Sarasota Sarasota-- doctorsofsarasota.com

3) CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System (7)-- christushealth.org

4) Holy Name Hospital (6) -- holyname.org

5) Sage Products -- sageproducts.com

6) Memorial Healthcare System -- mhs.net

7) VHA (76) -- vha.com

8) Awarepoint Corp. (8) -- awarepoint.com

9) Premier -- premierinc.com

10) Valley Medical Center (34) -- valleymed.org

Oct 8, 2009

Obama needs Doctors support for Health reforms to be.

I have been following the Obama healthcare reform debate from a distance.The whole exercise seems too messy and too many people with too many agendas.

I have not come across many "Larger view" positions. Often, The debate turns to hair-splitting and sometimes turns rascist too.Most people online seem to misunderstand the whole point in this reform. Quite a few of the Cyber-citizens simply parrot against the old enemy,"Communism", while others do not even accept health as a fundamental human right!

Richard L. Reece is author, blogger, and health reform commentator. I read this piece on Medinnovationblog and found it neatly sums up the internal position of most of the concerned parties. And it takes a broader look at the whole issue, without debating too many nuances.Like someone said, "If it takes more than 3 sentences to explain your analysis, go rethink".

Obama, Doctors, Nurses, and Health Reform: "These days Obama and his committee, Organizing for America (OFA), are busily rallying doctors and nurses to bolster his case for a government overhaul of health care.

This week Obama and OFA assembled 150 doctors – all wearing white coats, many passed out by the White House if doctors didn’t bring their own – to stand by the President in the Rose Garden. OFA has bought ads featuring doctors and nurses on national cable TV channels. And just yesterday, OFA sent out emails to the nation’s nurses asking for displays of support and telling they could order pins proclaiming “Another nurse for reform.” The thought behind this frenzied recruiting of doctors and nurses is that the public admires and trusts doctors and nurses.

This strategy has pratfalls, beartraps, and pitfalls.

• In the first place, every doctor and nurse I know supports some form of reform, but not necessary the Obama brand featuring deeper federal intervention.

• Secondly, in the October 4 WSJ, three former AMA presidents came out against a “costly and inefficient government overall, “ instead saying a giant step towards reform would be enabling individuals to buy policies in any state, not just the state in which they live.

- Thirdly, Obama’s challenge in not persuading the public that doctors and nurses support his plan, but convincing the 270 million Americans already covered, and happy with their coverage and their doctors and nurses, to back his plan.

http://medinnovationblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-doctors-nurses-and-health-reform.html

10th November- NEWSFLASH-

President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul faces an uncertain battle in the Senate after a narrow weekend victory in the House revealed the continuing divide among Democrats.
The bill passed by a 220-215 margin late Saturday after fractious debate. Thirty-nine Democrats voted against the measure. One Republican, Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana, unexpectedly voted in favor.

The measure spends $1.05 trillion over a decade to provide health insurance to an additional 36 million Americans and creates a new public insurance plan by 2013. It requires most Americans to carry insurance, creates a new exchange where they can shop for it and gives the lowest earners tax credits to help them pay for it.

Sep 8, 2009

13th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference

The 13th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference takes place November 2-4, 2009 at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV. The conference is presented by the Forum for Health care Strategists and sponsored by Greystone.net and Staywell Custom Communications. The program includes-

30 Best-Practice Case Studies

Keynote Presentations by Mayo Clinic & Sharp HealthCare

Sessions on the Use of Personal Health Records, Patient Portals and Integration with EMRs including two special sessions on: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s use of Microsoft’s Health Vault & Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital’s use of Google Health

Sessions Highlighting the Effective Use of Social Media

Sessions on How to Measure and Report ROI

You can also join their community portal here.

Conference details http://www.healthcarestrategy.com/conferences/2009/TECH2009.asp.

From the look at the stated interests of all participants, it seems that social media is on the top of everyone's radar

Make your reservations by Friday, October 2, 2009.
You can register online Here.

Apr 3, 2009

Simple Pubmed Searches

PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 18 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to 1948. PubMed includes links to full text articles and other related resources. The search volumes at Pubmed are enormous!!

Many people i know do not derive the full benefits of that LARGE library - Pubmed. Most stop at simple article searches and then get lost in the thousands of results which pop up. The few who go for advanced search tend to stop at one or maximum two attributes. It has always been a bit hard to master the Pubmed maze. So now Pubmed has come up with a new improved design for its search Function.

Video by Melissa Rethlefsen, Librarian, LRC - Mayo Medical School

PubMed’s new Advanced Search screen is designed to replace the current tabs in PubMed (Limits, History, Index, etc.) and the Single Citation Matcher.Its more intutive and all the attributes are listed on one page to help you choose easily. I found it better than before. Take a look.

Simple Pubmed Searches

Video by Melissa Rethlefsen, Librarian, LRC - Mayo Medical School

Simple Pubmed Searches

Video by Melissa Rethlefsen, Librarian, LRC - Mayo Medical School

Feb 9, 2009

India needs IT based health delivery system

Image by drneelesh via Flickr

New Delhi: The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) International Advisory Panel Chairperson Jeffrey Sachs has called upon India to implement IT based health delivery system in the country.

The Columbia University Professor, while praising India's effort for closing gap on the health mission under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) with the other countries, however, said that the country needs to make more investment in the sector. "India should step up the budgetary allocation in health sector to four to five per cent of the GDP," Sachs said adding that a higher investment in the health sector will give great social returns.

Calling the NRHM as one of the most remarkable achievements in public health sector, he said that India's dramatic improvement in the health sector have been made possible due to enhanced partnership between the centre, state and local units.

Sachs, who is also the advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, said that the increase in institutional delivery and drop in mortality is especially impressive.

Arguing for an IT-based health delivery system, Sachs added that India can serve as a role model for other countries in the health sector.Having travelled to a few Indian states, he also said that there is, however, a need for more human resources and logistical support.

He was speaking with the media after a meeting with the Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss and the senior officials of the Ministry for the fifth meeting of the Panel in New Delhi on Tuesday. The advisory panel meeting was also attended by Health Ministers of three African countries— Kenyan Minister for Medical Services Peter Anyag â€˜Nyong' O, Malawi Minister of Health Khumbo Kachali, and Rawanda's Minister of Health Rechard Sezibera

India needs IT based health delivery system

Image by drneelesh via Flickr

The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) International Advisory Panel Chairperson Jeffrey Sachs has called upon India to implement IT based health delivery system in the country.
The Columbia University Professor, while praising India's effort for closing gap on the health mission under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) with the other countries, however, said that the country needs to make more investment in the sector. "India should step up the budgetary allocation in health sector to four to five per cent of the GDP," Sachs said adding that a higher investment in the health sector will give great social returns.

Arguing for an IT-based health delivery system, Sachs added that India can serve as a role model for other countries in the health sector.Having travelled to a few Indian states, he also said that there is, however, a need for more human resources and logistical support.

The advisory panel meeting was attended by Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss and the Health Ministers of three African countries— Kenyan Minister for Medical Services Peter Anyag â€˜Nyong' O, Malawi Minister of Health Khumbo Kachali, and Rawanda's Minister of Health Rechard Sezibera.

India needs IT based health delivery system

Image by drneelesh via Flickr

Dec 25, 2008

-A Fantastic Medical Informatics conference in India

Just back from the Meditel 2008, the fifth International conference on Medical informatics and Telemedicine. The theme of the conference this year was "ICT for Medical Education and Research" and there were some pretty sharp presentations in Medical e.learning. Hopefully, as promised, most of the presentations would be available on the MCSI website soon.

The few presentations i thoroughly enjoyed included,

E-Learning- Current trends in India- by Dr.Balasubramanyam, Prof. and head, Dept. of Anatomy, SJMC, Bangalore.

Cochrane Collaboration- Informed healthcare in South Asia- Dr.Pratap Tharyan

Improving Healthcare via Transparent monitoring- Mr.Bill Thies, MIT and Microsoft ( use of microchip within pill boxes to monitor compliance in National health programs like DOTS India.)

World"s first prepaid service for Doctors consultation from any Phone- by Mr.Sunil Kulkarni, Group President, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.( a beautiful concept to allow pre-paying for telephonic medical consultations)

There were a number of other interesting ones, like this Virtual conference using Webex services, via a lowly Tata Indicom plug2surf device !!

To keep in touch with other happenings regarding Medical Informatics in India, subscribe to my Friendfeed or connect to my Del.icio.us account.

Nov 14, 2008

- No green beards in path labs @ John Hopkins University

The pathology department at my medical college was very strict with us Resident doctors. All our activities were constantly noted by our seniors, and being reprimanded frequently for "unprofessional conduct" was the norm. Our seniors made sure we were always properly dressed and behaved.

Mason Hall (2007), the Visitor's Center & Admi...

But what i read on John Hopkins university, Dept. of Pathology website takes the cake. They have a detailed list of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" conduct. Sample a few,

1) Acceptable- Knee length culottes and dress shorts; Unacceptable- Mini skirts, blue jeans, baseball caps.

2) Acceptable- Fingernails that are of "professional length", whatever that means; Unacceptable- Applying cosmetics in the laboratory.

3) Acceptable- Short/ Tied back hair of natural color ; Unacceptable- Purple and Green beards and mustaches!!

4) Acceptable- Socks/ Hose/ Tights ; Unacceptable- Printed underwear showing through outer garments.

5) Acceptable- Jewelery in moderation ; Unacceptable- Badges promoting causes/products/slogans NOT endorsed by the Institution/department.

Its definitely a good read. Click here to access the pdf file of acceptable appearance standards at John Hopkins University.

Nov 13, 2008

-Why American healthcare is so expensive?

That the American healthcare delivery system is out of control and wasteful is a no-brainer.

Needless battery of investigations and over diagnosis, branded drugs, impractical insurance laws, free-markets approach to health care and sedentary lifestyle are all major factors in creating the current scenario.Its like a bad spiraling black hole which only sucks you into unnecessary and wasteful consumption of health services.

Keeping the whole machinery ticking seems to be the raison d'etre of patient existence.

This video below touches on a few reasons on why health care is so expensive in America. Features like this convince that India must be doing something right in its public health policy. I have been a member of Public health delivery system for about 10 years, in a wide range of positions and institutions. I fully appreciate Indian obstacles (population) and limitations (poverty) in public health delivery. A good step has been taken with the Swasthya bima (govt. sponsored health insurance with private partners). This Indian central govt scheme for BPL (Below poverty line) families is built on sound understanding of indian conditions and mindset. Eighteen states, including Rajasthan, have already launched this scheme. What is needed now is to make sure ALL BPL families OBTAIN an insurance smartcard. NGOs need to come forward to ensure all BPL families get their smartcards. The cost of the insurance is Ruppees 750/- annualy, 75% paid by central govt. and 25% state govt. The consumer would have to pay an annual Ruppees (Thirty) 30/- as registration/renewal fees. Then they would be able to use services at all public hospitals, many private hospitals and most specialist health care institutions all over the country with the help of a single smartcard!! The claims section of the scheme still has to show efficiency. But all in all, its a very well thought out scheme and should work wonders in more ways than one.This would also have a trigerring effect for adoption of EMR(Electronic medical records).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYC2DJWU41s

Nov 6, 2008

-Palliative care in Cancer-

Most People do not realize the importance of palliative care. in Cancer.

Palliative care (from Latin palliare, to cloak) is any form of medical care or treatment that concentrates on reducing the severity of disease symptoms, rather than striving to halt, delay or reverse progression of the disease itself or provide a cure. Palliative care is an interdisciplinary team approach, with a focus on comfort and quality of life rather than prolongation of life
or "cure" for a patient.

With better drugs and technology, we are dramatically improving the survival in cancer patients. New studies are carried out everyday to find new cures.Unfortunately, the research frequently focuses exclusively on survival as an endpoint, leaving surgeons with little information on an
intervention's impact on QOL (Quality of Life).

There are multiple examples of problems that can affect the QOL for a patient facing the end of life. These can be categorized based on symptoms or systems in the body that are affected. Major symptoms include pain, dyspnea, anorexia, and depression. Related to body
systems, one can imagine a potential symptom related to each body system. Neurologic problems include fatigue, headache and other pain syndromes, and delirium. Pulmonary complications include dyspnea, fatigue, and immobility. Cardiac symptoms include shortness of breath, fatigue, and pain. Gastrointestinal problems include obstructions, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and anorexia. Musculoskeletal complications include fractures, functional loss, and pain. Epidermal problems mainly focus on wound problems, but also can include poor cosmesis and pain. Complications related to the hematologic system include infection and fatigue. Urologic problems include ureteral obstructions, bleeding, and pain. It is this compendium of problems that palliative care research focuses on, rather than increase in survival time or cure. We need more research to focus on these problems of the people who survive cancer.

There are many potential reasons for the lack of palliative care research. Many of them are related to ethical aspects of this research.There are also innate barriers, such as a lack of trained researchers and the challenges of subject recruitment.

For the original article, click here.

Oct 17, 2008

- Health support services in Hindi-

Many Seek Second Opinions From Health Sites and Online Communities - NYTimes.com

Web 2.0 has certainly changed the way Medicine is practiced.
Now, if you are a lazy Doctor, your patient might come to you with more knowledge about his own disease than you do!! I cant help feeling amused when i think of some of my classmates and how they would be coping with today's super-informed patients.

And its not just about the information available to the patient.
Its also about the support.

Its easy to join any forum/group of people having the same illness as you. Have a Migraine? Log onto the headache blog and find out how other people are coping with theirs. Want to talk to someone about your migraine? Join a chatroom. Want some advice from a doctor? Log onto the Live chat service of Organized wisdom. Want to know more about the drugs the doctor prescribed you? Check it here. The options available are endless. Gone are the days when the doctor simply prescribed you acetaaminophen and sent you home.

My only crib is the lack of such resources and support in the Hindi language.Hindi is spoken by almost 500 million people and is the third most spoken language in the world. Native speakers of Hindi dialects account for 41% of the Indian population.And yet, we have no such services available for this huge under served population.

I am hoping to soon start similar services in Hindi, encompassing the whole patient education and support services. I hope to do this through RAKSHA, a non profit organization working for democratization of knowledge and health. This is a huge task and will take time. But then, SOMEONE has to do it. Why not me? :)

Read the original article here.

-Obvious uses of data and technology-

Scientists to use satellite imagery to predict disease outbreaks

At last, scientists are correlating what they know and what they see to come up with new ways to fight diseases.

Seen from a distance, both figuratively and literally, it is ridiculously easy to predict an epidemic or infectious disease outbreak.All you need is good dependable information about the current environment at the location. Tie this up with what we already know about the infectious agent life-cycle and the disease process and Voila!- We have our own Crystal Ball.

Scientists now plan to use satellite imagery to predict some seasonal and climate dependent infectious diseases like Cholera. Similar models can later be developed for other diseases like Hepatitis A, Malaria and Leptospirosis.

Hoping more money is spent on such life-saving use of Technology in preventive medicine.
Read the original news item here

Oct 15, 2008

Health wisdom , not just information

I am always on the look out for web services delivering knowledge services in the field of health. I run a non-profit organization, RAKSHA, for exactly this purpose and seek new ways of achieving democratization of knowledge in health.

Organized wisdom is a well thought out web service. This interview with the team at Organized wisdom clearly spells out their views and visions for this knowledge service. The talk with their Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Howard Krein and Esther Dyson , one of the investors was very interesting.

The service claims to be " a free service that provides patients with easy access to the best information available in easy to navigate Wisdomcards, helps patients to prepare for their appointments and helps streamline some to the conversations that must take place."
So, I decided to explore this service logged in as a patient searching for information about my imaginary headache. The first thing i noticed was the cleanliness of the welcome page. Simple, no unnecessary multimedia ( as is VERY often the case with medical information sites) and therefore, fast navigation between pages.

The fonts were friendly, the letters bold and easily legible. It didn't intimidate me, as a patient, with its vastness of information. There was a large search box in a major location with built in prompts via a drop down menu. So far so good.

What really won me over was the neatly laid out information. Not too deep on the first page, just plain English medical speak for an average person.There were links to more scholarly items, but everything i could possibly want to know as a patient was easily available within 2 degrees of separation. There were links to support forums, foundations and drug information ( again in plain English).There were chat rooms, message boards, personal blogs, every useful service i can think of today. They were also initiating a" LIVE chat with a doctor" service, which is now in a beta phase.

All in all, I really liked this service and i am sure something like this will soon be up and running in India, preferably in the Hindi language.
Amen.

Pages

Jan 16, 2011

Dec 9, 2010

Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs

Aug 4, 2010

Related articles

Jun 17, 2010

Related articles

Oct 27, 2009

Oct 8, 2009

Sep 8, 2009

Apr 3, 2009

Feb 9, 2009

Dec 25, 2008

Nov 14, 2008

Nov 13, 2008

Nov 6, 2008

Oct 17, 2008

Oct 15, 2008