Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
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FDA Plays Chicken With Antibiotics: Newly Disclosed Documents Reveal Agency's "High Risk" Gamble With Human Health
Here’s some unfortunate, but not so surprising news: The Food and Drug Administration has allowed 30 potentially harmful antibiotic additives to remain approved for use in food animals (cows, pigs and chickens), even though the agency’s own scientists found them to pose a risk to human health or lack necessary data on safety. Read More »
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Federal Prize Competition Seeks Innovative Ideas to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance
A federal prize competition launched today is calling for innovative ideas for rapid, point-of-care laboratory diagnostic tests to combat the development and spread of drug resistant bacteria, a rising public health threat. Antibiotic resistant bacteria cause at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge will award $20 million in prizes over all phases of the competition for new, innovative and novel laboratory diagnostic tests...
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Federal ‘Biosurveillance’ Plan Seeking Direct Access To Americans’ Private Medical Records
The federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom.
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For V.A. Hospitals (And Patients), A Major Health Victory
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the United States is making modest progress in bringing down rates of hospital-acquired infections...
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Found: Forgotten Vials Of Smallpox
Headline-making news today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Workers clearing out an old storage room on the Bethesda, Md. campus of the National Institutes of Health have found a forgotten box of vials that contain smallpox...
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GAO Report on Patient Matching: Nothing New Under the Sun
On January 15, 2019 the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report to Congress, Health Information Technology: Approaches and Challenges to Electronically Matching Patients' Records across Providers. This report is in response to the mandate in the 21st Century Cures Act for the GAO to study patient matching. To develop this report, GAO reviewed available literature and interviewed more than thirty-five stakeholders (who are not identified) over the course of a year. I have written several blogs and a feature article on patient matching developments in the US. Similarly, this new GAO report is an excellent retrospective on industry efforts over the past several years.
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Global OpenHIE Community to Hold 2019 Conference in Ethiopia
The OpenHIE community will hold its second annual community meeting November 4-8, 2019 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Between 200 and 300 individuals are expected to attend with the ultimate goal of development and efficient and effective operation of national and regional health information exchanges. OpenHIE, short for Open Health Information Exchange, is a global, mission-driven collective dedicated to improving the health of the underserved through open, collaborative development of implementation tools and to supporting country-driven, large-scale health information exchange. Read More »
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GWU Milken Institute School of Public Health releases report on deaths due to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and outlines steps to protect the most vulnerable communities from disasters
In an independent report published today, researchers at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health (GW Milken Institute SPH) estimated there were 2,975 excess deaths in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria from September 2017 through the end of February 2018. The researchers also identified gaps in the death certification and public communication processes and went on to make recommendations that will help prepare Puerto Rico for future hurricanes and other natural disasters.
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Health IT 2014: Interoperability, Ebola And Healthcare.gov 2.0
Health IT in 2014 continued its path toward a system of interoperable and open data to improve patient care with IT systems...
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Health Organizations Implore Congress to Fund Public Health Surveillance Systems
HLN Consulting joined more than eighty organizations, institutions, and companies in imploring Congress to fund public health surveillance systems. The appropriations request letters – one to the House and one to the Senate – seek one billion in funding over ten years (and $100 million in FY 2020) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This funding would allow CDC, state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments to move from sluggish, manual, paper-based data collection to seamless, automated, interoperable IT systems and to recruit and retain skilled data scientists to use them.
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Healthcare Big Data Silos Prevent Delivery of Coordinated Care
Complaints about silos in healthcare are nothing new. For a patient to fill a single prescription, there are several disconnected groups that need to work together to move the process forward. The specialist and the primary doctor have to connect and share information, and the payer and provider need to be on the same page. Unfortunately, for patients across the country, these stakeholders are moving at different speeds and in different directions, preventing true collaboration across organizations...
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HealthMap Tracks Ebola’s Footprints Online, Preparing For The Next Big Outbreak
Since March, a group of data-savvy epidemiologists at Boston Children’s Hospital have watched Ebola slowly spread through West Africa, ominously lighting up their dials first as a trickle, then a torrent of mentions on social media and online news reports. The group, HealthMap, has been steadily ahead of the curve tracking this year’s outbreak. One day, they hope to be a step ahead of the next big disease...
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Hepatitis C Drug Costing VA, DoD Millions
One of the costliest drugs on the market threatens the Veterans Affairs Department's health budget — to the point that VA, which added the medication to its formulary in April, provides it to only the sickest patients who need it...
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Here's Why Africa's Ebola Epidemic Is Officially 'Spiraling Out of Control'
Health authorities admitted Tuesday that the West African Ebola virus epidemic is accelerating quickly and may soon outpace the ability of medical teams to contain it. Meanwhile, the grim situation is being made worse by a massive strike among Liberian health care workers, who have accumulated large amounts of unpaid wages while suffering from overwork and the constant risk of exposure...
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HLN Releases New Version of Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster
HLN released a new version (v1.11.1) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) on March 9, 2018. ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support (CDS) for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems. The release includes support for Earliest Date and Overdue Date for immunizations that are forecasted. If enabled, ICE will output two additional forecast dates along with the existing Recommendation Date...
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