News Clips
New Software from Kitware Virtualizes Medical Education and Training
Kitware added to its collection of open source toolkits with the first release of the interactive Medical Simulation Toolkit (iMSTK). The toolkit offers manufacturers and researchers all the software components they need to build and test virtual simulators for medical training and planning. "iMSTK, which we've been developing in close collaboration with Professor Suvranu De's research center - the Center for Modeling, Simulation and Imaging in Medicine at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - is meant to empower developers to rapidly prototype virtual simulator applications," said Andinet Enquobahrie, the director of medical computing at Kitware.
Google Taking Over Health Records Raises Patient Privacy Fears
Last year, the U.K. government privacy watchdog said an NHS hospital had illegally sent 1.6 million patient records to DeepMind to develop Streams, fanning public fears about data safety. In June, a group of outside experts DeepMind Health appointed to scrutinize its work urged the unit to "entrench" its separation from Alphabet. After the consolidation with Google was announced, Julia Powles, a researcher at New York University School of Law and a critic of DeepMind's work with the NHS, scorched the reversal. "DeepMind said it'd never connect Streams with Google," she wrote. "The whole Streams app is now a Google product! That is an atrocious breach of trust."...
Assisting California Wildfires Victims Retrieve their Medical Histories
The horrific California wildfires which have devasted entire communities, caused loss of life and displaced tens of thousands of Californians is touching all of us. At Humetrix our public health driven mission has led us to develop tools for individuals to help be prepared and be safe during emergencies, we want to step in and help those with ongoing health care needs, while their physician offices or hospital-based care have now been destroyed. With this destruction, the health records of thousands of fire victims with chronic conditions, or on daily medications and special needs are now gone, leaving many with the incapacity to fully recollect their important medical history when seeking care away from what was home.
WELL Health Acquires NerdEMR, Largest OSCAR Open Source EHR Provider in British Columbia
WELL Health Technologies Corp., a company focused on consolidating and modernizing clinical and digital assets within the primary healthcare sector, is pleased to announce it has entered into an arm's length share purchase agreement dated November 14, 2018 (the "Agreement") with the shareholders of NerdEMR..."We're excited to welcome the very talented and committed staff of NerdEMR to the WELL Health family," said Hamed Shahbazi, Chairman and CEO of WELL Health Technologies "NerdEMR is the leading OSCAR service provider in BC with approximately 220 medical clinics under contract. The closing of this transaction will catapult WELL into the National EMR marketplace with a premier asset."
Top White House Biodefense Official to Address Bipartisan Panel
The Trump Administration recently released a National Biodefense Strategy to better defend the United States against myriad biological threats. The development and implementation of a comprehensive national biodefense strategy were among the top recommendations made by the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense in 2015. This Wednesday, November 14, the Panel will convene at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. to gain a better understanding of how far the Executive Branch has come in implementing its National Blueprint for Biodefense.
Open Source Machine Learning Tool Could Help Choose Cancer Drugs
The selection of a first-line chemotherapy drug to treat many types of cancer is often a clear-cut decision governed by standard-of-care protocols, but what drug should be used next if the first one fails? That's where Georgia Institute of Technology researchers believe their new open source decision support tool could come in. Using machine learning to analyze RNA expression tied to information about patient outcomes with specific drugs, the open source tool could help clinicians chose the chemotherapy drug most likely to attack the disease in individual patients. In a study using RNA analysis data from 152 patient records, the system predicted the chemotherapy drug that had provided the best outcome 80 percent of the time.
FDA Launches Open Source Tool to Help Capture Data from Patients
Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is announcing the MyStudies app, a new mobile technology to foster the collection of real world evidence via patients' mobile devices. Real world data can be collected from a variety of sources, such as electronic health records, claims and billing activities, and product and disease registries, as well as from patient-generated data including in home-use settings, or from data gathered from other sources, such as mobile devices. As part of the agency's work to foster greater opportunities around real world evidence, the FDA partnered with Kaiser Permanente on a pilot study to measure the functionality and engagement of the MyStudies app.
Dr. Noam Arzt named Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association
Dr. Noam H. Arzt, president ofHLN Consulting, LLC, has been named a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Dr. Arzt joins 129 of his colleagues in the inaugural class of fellows. The fellowship was created to recognize AMIA members who apply informatics skills and knowledge within their professional setting, who have demonstrated professional achievement and leadership, and who have contributed to the betterment of the organization. A member of AMIA since 1998, Dr. Arzt has been a leader in public health informatics for many years. He has been active in various AMIA task forces and workgroups, and has been a speaker at AMIA conferences, events, and webinars.
Developers from 156 Nations Work on Open Source Apps to Help Victims of Natural Disasters. Project OWL Wins 'Call for Code Global Prize'
With the global reach and vision of Call for Code Creator David Clark Cause, Founding Partner IBM, and Charitable Partners United Nation Human Rights and The American Red Cross, the largest engagement of developers in history culminated with the Call for Code Global Prize winners and finalists being celebrated last night during a gala event globally broadcast from The Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. Knowing that people suffer when communications are destroyed when natural disasters strike, Project OWL is an innovative software/hardware solution that includes an offline communication infrastructure, providing first responders with a simple experience for managing all aspects of disaster response.
IBM To Acquire Red Hat, Completely Changing The Cloud Landscape And Becoming World's #1 Hybrid Cloud Provider
IBM and Red Hat the world's leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion...."The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market," said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "IBM will become the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.
FDA Partners with Sensato-ISAO and H-ISAC to Create Open Source Cybersecurity Intelligence Network and Resource
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) has officially executed a tri-lateral agreement between the FDA, the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (H-ISAC) and the Sensato-Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (Sensato-ISAO), Sensato announced today. The goal of the agreement is "to ensure that essential medical device or healthcare cybersecurity vulnerability information can be shared with all stakeholders within the HPH Sector, including those who are not members of H-ISAC and Sensato-ISAO," according to a statement from the FDA. "This collaboration will help inform a common understanding of that risk threshold upon which exploit of a vulnerability might impact on patient safety and/or public health."
HHS Deputy Secretary Hargan Announces Collaboration to Accelerate Innovation and Investment in Healthcare
Today, Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan announced the creation of the Deputy Secretary's Innovation and Investment Summit (DSIIS). The DSIIS will be a yearlong collaboration between healthcare innovation and investment professionals and HHS personnel who will meet quarterly to discuss the innovation and investment landscape within the healthcare sector, emerging opportunities, and the government's role in facilitating more investment and accelerated innovation.
Bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense Applauds Release of National Biodefense Strategy as a Crucial Step in Protecting the U.S. From Biological Attacks
The bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense today applauded the Trump Administration for developing and releasing a National Biodefense Strategy to better defend the U.S. against myriad biological threats. The development and implementation of a comprehensive national biodefense strategy was among the top recommendations of the Panel's 2015 report: A National Blueprint for Biodefense...Governor Tom Ridge, Panel Co-Chair, [said] "Today's release of the National Biodefense Strategy is an important and necessary part of U.S. national security...We look forward to the White House assigning responsibilities for each element of this Plan to specific federal departments and agencies, and establishing timelines for their completion. This is the sort of proactive planning and preparation the American people are looking for in their federal government." Read More »
What Puerto Rico’s Death Toll from Hurricane Maria Really Tells Us
The recently released report from the Milken Institute is perhaps the strongest rebuke to date on the impact of Hurricane Maria during the 2017 hurricane season. The report notes nearly 3,000 people have died in Puerto Rico because of the storm. These numbers provide a more accurate depiction of the devastation and lives lost in Puerto Rico. While sad and troubling, it is important to call out that these updated numbers do not even account for the death toll in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
José Andrés’s riveting ‘We Fed an Island’ calls for a revolution in disaster relief
After dealing with so much red tape and mismanagement... Andrés wants the government and nonprofit groups to rethink the way they handle food after a large-scale natural disaster. He wants them to drop the authoritarian, top-down style and embrace the chaos inherent in crisis. Work with available local resources, whether residents or idle restaurants and schools. Give people the authority and the means to help themselves. Stimulate the local economy.“What we did was embrace complexity every single second,” Andrés writes. “Not planning, not meeting, just improvising. The old school wants you to plan, but we needed to feed the people.” Andrés and World Central Kitchen have embraced complexity. An organization not originally designed as a food relief organization, WCK has, in the aftermath of Puerto Rico, sent chefs to Hawaii, Guatemala, Indonesia and other locales to feed locals in need.