News Clips

A 'Very Graphic History' Of Germ Warfare

Press Release | Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense | April 25, 2019

Max Brooks, best-selling author of "World War Z" and non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, has partnered with the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense to produce GERM WARFARE: A Very Graphic History. This highly stylized and engaging graphic novel, set for release this Saturday, depicts previous biological warfare events, the possibilities for the future, and the continued need for public health security. This is part of an effort by the bipartisan Panel to educate the public about biological risks and why a strong biodefense enterprise is critical to the health and security of the Nation.

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TFAH: Persistent Underfunding of America's Public Health System Makes the Nation Vulnerable to Disasters and Puts Lives at Risk

Press Release | Trust for America’s Health | April 24, 2019

Chronic underfunding of the nation's public health infrastructure has left the nation vulnerable to serious health and safety risks, according to a new report released today by Trust for America's Health...The federal government, primarily through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), provides critical support for the nation's public health infrastructure including by funding a substantial portion of state and local public health programs. But, between Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 - Fiscal Year 2019, the CDC's budget fell by 10 percent when adjusted for inflation. Cuts to the CDC budget have direct impacts on state and local public health departments' budgets.

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"Disease X: Are You Prepared?" Conference on Highly Infectious Disease Preparedness to be Held in Tennessee

Press Release | Ballad Health, Northeast Tennessee Healthcare Preparedness Coalition | March 25, 2019

When an outbreak of infectious disease occurs, it's essential for healthcare providers to have a well-planned, coordinated approach to treating the disease and protecting the community. That's why Ballad Health has organized a panel of experts to provide training and education to regional healthcare providers on the topic of serious communicable diseases that are either highly infectious or extremely rare and often never seen before The conference, titled "Disease X: Are You Prepared?" will be held March 26 at Bristol Regional Medical Center.

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2019 International Conference on Disaster Medicine and Hurricane Resiliency Draws Hundreds

Press Release | American University of the Caribbean | March 20, 2019

More than 280 healthcare professionals, emergency preparedness experts, and government leaders gathered on campus March 8-11 with the goal of uniting their collective experience and expertise to increase their communities’ ability to manage hurricanes and other disasters. Attendees represented 12 countries, including 9 Caribbean islands, and a multitude of backgrounds in disaster preparedness and response, including disaster medicine and veterinary medicine, nursing, hospital administration, mental health, telehealth, EMS and first responders, disaster recovery and humanitarian assistance, medical education, and more.

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careMESH Launches New Referral Management Module with Guaranteed Digital Delivery to Any U.S. Clinician

Press Release | careMESH | March 14, 2019

careMESH, the only service provider that guarantees 100% digital delivery of protected health information to any clinician nationwide, announced that it has expanded its secure communications capabilities to include a comprehensive referral management module. The built-in workflow tools and convenient administrative Task Manager make it easy for users to create a referral, attach a patient record and other relevant care information, and send it digitally to any other healthcare provider in the country. careMESH customers, including hospitals, large physician groups, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and others, use careMESH to send structured medical records, discharge summaries, secure messages, and other sensitive clinical information.

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Apache Roadshow Conference to Take Place in Washington DC

Press Release | Apache Software Foundation, George Mason University | March 4, 2019

ApacheCon, the official conference series of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), announced today the Apache Roadshow/DC, held in partnership with George Mason University (GMU)...The Apache Roadshow is held in cooperation with the Center for Assurance Research & Engineering (CARE) of the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University. The multidisciplinary school maintains a dual pre-eminence in both information technology and engineering and seeks to graduate students who will take initiative, step up, and leave the planet better than they found it.

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OSEHRA 2019 Summit Call for Abstracts Now Open

Press Release | OSEHRA | February 21, 2019

The 2019 OSEHRA Summit Program Committee invites researchers from around the globe to submit abstracts for our 8th Annual Summit this July 9 – 10. This year’s theme, Open Saas – Open Source in the Cloud, will feature a wide range of leading-edge open source initiatives, cloud-based solutions, software-as-a-service delivery models, and growing public-private partnerships.

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New Open-Source Bioinformatics Tool Identifies Factors Responsible For Diseases

Press Release | Boston University School of Medicine | February 19, 2019

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have developed and tested a new computational tool, Candidate Driver Analysis (CaDrA), which will search for combinations of factors that are likely to cause a specific disease. CaDrA recognizes that diseases are complex and likely induced by multiple causes. It is now available free to members of the research community. To measure CaDrA's ability to select sets of genomic features that are responsible for certain oncogenic phenotypes in cancer, the researchers performed extensive evaluations based on simulated data, as well as real genomic data from cancer cell lines and primary human tumors. The results from their simulations showed CaDrA has high sensitivity for mid- to large-sized datasets, and high speci?city for all sample sizes considered.

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IBM Announces Additional $25 Million Investment to Develop Open Source Tech for Disaster Response

Press Release | IBM Think | February 12, 2019

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.

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New Report Finds Nation's Public Health Emergencies Are Increasing While State Emergency Preparedness Levels face Challenges

Press Release | Trust for America’s Health | February 12, 2019

The report takes an annual snapshot of states' public health and emergency readiness. Authored by TFAH since 2003, it...highlights pressing needs for additional action particularly as weather- related and other public health emergencies become more frequent...It identifies specific action-steps that if taken would improve the jurisdiction's overall level of emergency preparedness, including dedicated funding for health security initiatives, modernizing and supporting technologies and innovations within public health programs, and building multisectoral collaboration and leadership.

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Medal Unveils Platform to Pioneer the Creation of a Unified, Contextual Record of Health

Press Release | Medal, Inc. | February 11, 2019

Medal Inc. today announced the debut of its platform that can extract, transform and use the vast and fragmented information that exists about patients - and present it to healthcare providers in a timely and meaningful way. Health data is only purposeful when it is accessible and contextual. Medal developed a complete system for extracting medical information from every possible source where data is trapped: fax, printed paper, health information exchange data, and from EMRs. Machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) match more than 300 medical attributes to each word of unstructured text, allowing clinicians to more easily gain access to critical data that could save a patient's life.

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HHS Releases Interoperability Rules

Press Release | HHS | February 11, 2019

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today proposed new rules to support seamless and secure access, exchange, and use of electronic health information. The rules, issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), would increase choice and competition while fostering innovation that promotes patient access to and control over their health information. The proposed ONC rule would require that patient electronic access to this electronic health information (EHI) be made available at no cost.

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careMESH to Participate in the CMS Electronic Medical Documentation Interoperability Program

Press Release | careMESH | February 8, 2019

careMESH®, the only service provider that guarantees 100% digital delivery of referrals and care transitions to any healthcare organization nationwide, announced today that it has joined the Electronic Medical Documentation Interoperability (EMDI) program of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)...Under the program, careMESH will partner with a hospital to leverage its existing Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to deliver digital referrals and care transitions to post-acute healthcare providers. Receiving clinicians will be able to reply to the sender, save patient records to their own EHR, and close referral loops through automated workflow tools. This allows both the hospital and the receiving providers they interact with to...

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OSEHRA 2019 Summit Dates Announced

Press Release | OSEHRA | February 8, 2019

Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) is pleased to announce its 8th Annual Open Source Summit: Open SaaS - Open Source in the Cloud from Tuesday, July 9 through Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, just north of Washington, D.C. This year's two-day Summit will showcase leading-edge, open source initiatives and highlight the increasing level of public-private partnership in major programs and agencies. Open source software has become key to both implementation and interoperability as more and more programs opt for cloud-based solutions and software-as-a-service delivery models. This Summit will address ways to optimize open source utilization and community involvement in this new playing field.

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Humetrix to Showcase Medicare Approved Blue Button 2.0 Mobile Platform at HIMSS19

Press Release | Humetrix | February 8, 2019

At HIMSS 19 February 11-15 in Orlando, Florida, Humetrix will demo its iBlueButton 8.0 mobile health platform approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to help millions of Americans covered by Medicare, Veterans, and military personnel in TRICARE receive safer and more cost-effective healthcare. A year after announcing the Medicare Blue Button 2.0 and MyHealthEData initiative at the HIMSS 18 conference, CMS Administrator, Seema Verma continues to emphasize the importance of "giving patients the necessary information they need to make the best decisions about their health care". Humetrix...has embraced this initiative from the start recognizing first and foremost that because Medicare beneficiaries are most at risk for medical errors and redundant tests across multiple providers they need to have access and use of their medical history wherever they receive care.

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