News Clips
Perspecta Sponsors OSEHRA Open Source Summit
OSEHRA is delighted to welcome Perspecta as the Conference Sponsor for our 7th Annual Open Source Summit, to be held this July 18 – 20, 2018. Officially launched less than a week ago on June 1st, Perspecta was formed through a merger of the U.S. Public Sector Business of DXC Technology with Vencore Holding Corporation and KeyPoint Government Solutions. Those of you who follow the industry know that DXC Technology was the result of a massive merger of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and HP Enterprise Services (which also included EDS). So, while the name is new, Perspecta will bring a wealth of experience (and yes, perspective!) to this year’s event.
HHS cybersecurity center so unstable staff don't know if it exists, Congress argues
The Senate HELP and House Energy and Committees are highly concerned about the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ cybersecurity plan, preparedness and the lack of leadership of its Healthcare Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center -- and is demanding answers from HHS Secretary Alex Azar. The bipartisan letter to Azar outlines a laundry list of issues at HHS when it comes to its security plan. Among them, includes the temporary reassignment of two senior HCCIC officials in charge of the day-to-day operations.
Apple Opens Health Records API to Developers
Today Apple delivered a Health Records API for developers and researchers to create an ecosystem of apps that use health record data to better manage medications, nutrition plans, diagnosed diseases and more. The Health Records feature allows patients of more than 500 hospitals and clinics to access medical information from various institutions organized into one view on their iPhone. For the first time, consumers will be able to share medical records from multiple hospitals with their favorite trusted apps, helping them improve their overall health.
This mock pandemic killed 150 million people. Next time it might not be a drill
A novel virus, moderately contagious and moderately lethal, has surfaced and is spreading rapidly around the globe. Outbreaks first appear in Frankfurt, Germany, and Caracas, Venezuela. The virus is transmitted person-to-person, primarily by coughing. There are no effective antivirals or vaccines...So began a recent day-long exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The simulation mixed details of past disasters with fictional elements to force government officials and experts to make the kinds of key decisions they could face in a real pandemic. It was a tense day. The exercise was inspired in part by the troubled response to the Ebola epidemic of 2014, and everyone involved was acutely aware of the very real and ongoing Ebola outbreak spreading in Congo.
OpenEMR Launches Multiple Turn-Key Solution Options Through Amazon's Cloud Services
OpenEMR, the most popular open-source electronic health record and medical practice management solution, now offers a full panel of easy to install packages on Amazon's Cloud Services. In 2017, OpenEMR released its first Amazon Cloud Services offering, OpenEMR Cloud Full Stack, with the goal of enabling Enterprise use of OpenEMR. However many clinics and academic settings did not require the complexities of a large-scale full cloud offering and/or HIPAA eligibility. The OpenEMR community realized that a one size fits all Amazon cloud service approach could not address the vast range of different requirements and workflows in modern-day clinical and academic settings.
LivingMatrix Launches Practitioner Research Network to Expand and Advance Published Evidence Base for Functional Medicine
Cloud-based Health Information Technology Company Launches Preeminent Research Network in the Field of Personalized and Functional Medicine...LivingMatrix, a health information technology company dedicated to broadening access to functional medicine by enhancing the operating efficiency of practitioners, today announced the launch of the LivingMatrix Practitioner Research Network (LM-PRN), a practice-based research network developed to advance the study and research of functional approaches to chronic disease. The LM-PRN allows practitioners to be efficiently matched with research organizations based on study needs and applies standardized outcome measures to further build the published evidence base for the application of functional medicine in the treatment of chronic disease.
thinkWhere Supports Global Humanitarian Project to Map Disaster Areas
Geographic information and technology specialist thinkWhere is supporting the global humanitarian Missing Maps project by hosting a series of mapathons in Stirling, Scotland. In the evening of 13th June 2018, around 50 local community volunteers, including members of the thinkWhere team, will collaborate on a crowd-sourced Missing Maps data capture project. The fourth event of its kind organised by thinkWhere, it will be the first to be held at the company’s new premises at CodeBase, Stirling.
IBM Commits $30 Million Towards Disaster Response Tech
IBM and partners today launched the Call for Code Global Initiative, the largest and most ambitious effort to bring startup, academic and enterprise developers together to solve one of the most pressing societal issues of our time: preventing, responding to and recovering from natural disasters. During a keynote address at the VivaTech Conference in Paris, IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty called on the technology industry to help build a better future, committing IBM technology and $30 million USD over five years in the annual Call for Code Global Initiative. Its goal is to unite the world's developers and tap into data and AI, blockchain, cloud and IoT technologies to address social challenges.
Humetrix CEO Presents the e-Prescription of SOS QR and TENSIO Mobile Apps At HIMSS Europe and Health 2.0
At HIMSS Europe and Health 2.O, Dr. Bettina Experton, Humetrix President & CEO will participate in the “Healthy and Active Aging – Health2.0 Style!” conference session on Thursday May 24, 3:30-4:30pm to present and demo how Humetrix SOS QR and TENSIO mobile apps are now prescribed by GPs in England. Starting May 1st of this year, GPs users of the EMIS Health EMR system can now e-prescribe patient facing mobile health apps curated by EMIS Health and Our Mobile Health. Among the eight curated mobile apps, which are include in the EMIS Health Library Powered by Our Mobile Health, are the Humetrix SOS QR emergency mobile platform and the hypertension coaching app, TENSIO.
Clade X pandemic exercise highlights policies needed to prevent or reduce the worst possible outcomes in future pandemics
The outbreak of a moderately contagious and moderately lethal novel pathogen precipitated a catastrophic end to the scenario in Clade X, the day-long pandemic tabletop exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security on May 15 in Washington, DC. Clade X simulated a series of National Security Council–convened meetings of 10 US government leaders, played by individuals prominent in the fields of national security or epidemic response. Their dialogue as the scenario unfolded addressed significant uncertainties in current prevention and response capabilities, hamstrung by policy challenges at the federal level.
A Bureaucratic Mess Leads to Shutdown of HHS Cybersecurity Center
In May 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to stand up its own version of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center in order to address the increasing cybersecurity risks to the health care sector. But creating the Health Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, or HCCIC, was the easy part. Soon after, the newfound center landed in the spotlight, sparking agency and industry drama about the role and scope of HHS authorities in information sharing.
Red Hat Announces 2018 Women in Open Source Award Winners
Red Hat, Inc...today announced Dana Lewis, founder of the Open Artificial Pancreas System (OpenAPS) movement, and Zui Dighe, a Duke University student, as the 2018 Women in Open Source Award winners. Both will be recognized today at Red Hat Summit, which is taking place in San Francisco this week. In its fourth year, the Women in Open Source Awards were created and sponsored by Red Hat to honor women who make important contributions to open source projects and communities, or those making innovative use of open source methodology.
1.13M Patient Records Breached from January to March 2018
Proprietary, non-public data from Protenus shows disclosed breaches are just one one-thousandth of the actual risk health systems routinely carry...1,129,744 patient records were breached between January and March 2018, according to new data released today in the Protenus Breach Barometer. Published by Protenus, an artificial intelligence platform used by top health systems to analyze every access to patient data inside the electronic health record (EHR), the Breach Barometer is the industry’s definitive source for health data breach reporting. In the first quarter of 2018, the average of at least one data breach per day in healthcare continued to hold true with 110 health data breaches.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Funds Pilot for Open Source/Community-Driven Bioconductor Software Platform for Human Cell Atlas
Fred Hutch computational biologist Dr. Raphael Gottardo has received one of 85 new funding awards from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, or CZI, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which are aimed at developing computational tools for the Human Cell Atlas, a global research effort to map every type of cell in the human body. The 85 one-year grants total $15 million in funding from the initiative and were chosen from nearly 300 applications. This set of projects, which were announced April 19, is the third set of grants CZI has awarded in support of the massive cell-mapping feat.
RAND Corporation study: VA Health System Generally Delivers Higher-Quality Care Than Other Health Providers
The VA health care system performs similar to or better than non-VA systems on most measures of inpatient and outpatient care quality, although there is high variation in quality across individual VA facilities, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Examining a wide array of commonly used measures of health care quality, researchers found that VA hospitals generally provided better quality care than non-VA hospitals and the VA's outpatient services were better quality when compared to commercial HMOs, Medicaid HMOs and Medicare HMOs...“Consistent with previous studies, our analysis found that the VA health care system generally provides care that is higher in quality than what is offered elsewhere in communities across the nation,” said Rebecca Anhang Price, lead author of the study and senior policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.