US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
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uBiome Awards Microbiome Impact Grant to Explore Effects of Heavy Drinking and Smoking on Oral Microbiome
Microbial genomics leader uBiome is awarding in-kind scientific grants to ground-breaking microbiome studies. A microbiome impact grant award has been made to Dr. Renato Polimanti of Yale University School of Medicine, who will study the effect of heavy smoking and drinking on the oral microbiome. Grant proposals have been vetted by the company’s scientific review committee. Dr. Polimanti is a genetic epidemiologist working in the Division of Human Genetics of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine...
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US and UK working to strengthen use of health IT for better patient care
As the use of health information technology (health IT) grows in both the United States and the United Kingdom, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.K. Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt today signed a bi-lateral agreement for the use and sharing of health IT information and tools. The agreement strengthens efforts to cultivate and increase the use of health IT tools and information designed to help improve the quality and efficiency of the delivery of health care in both countries.
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US Defense Think Tank Calls for DoD to Adopt the Open Source VistA EHR and Avoid Closed and Proprietary EHRs.
One of the most prestigious U.S. defense think tanks, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), issued a white paper Thursday calling on the Department of Defense (DoD) to replace their existing dysfunctional “vendor-lock” medical records system with an electronic health records system (EHR) that is "extensible, flexible and easy to safely modify and upgrade as technology improves and interoperability demands evolve." The white paper warns that a "closed and proprietary" commercial EHR - such as the ones offered by Epic, Cerner or Allscripts - will lead to "vendor-lock” and isolation of health data. Read More »
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Using Open Technology To Build a Biodefense Against the Coronavirus
As the number of US cases of the coronavirus rises, how will healthcare professionals be able to tell the difference between which panicked patients with similar symptoms has what? Even if the patient hasn't traveled to Wuhan or China recently, what if they sat at a Starbucks with someone who did? With the incubation time-lag before symptoms appear, who would even know? The challenge of monitoring 330 million people for infectious disease outbreaks is daunting. Take the flu as an example. During the last flu season which, as already discussed, was not as complex as this year's season, approximately 35.5 million Americans had flu symptoms, 16.5 million received medical care, 490,600 were hospitalized and 34,200 died.
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Using the Latest Advances in Data Science to Fight Infectious Diseases
One of the most dramatic shifts in recent years that is empowering epidemiologists to be more effective at their jobs is occurring due to improvements in data technologies. In the past, the old "relational" data model dictated that data had to be highly structured, and as a result treated in distinct silos. This made it difficult, if not impossible, to analyze data from multiple sources to find correlations. Epidemiologists would spend many minutes or even hours on each query they ran to get results back, which is unacceptable when you need to test dozens of hypotheses to try to understand and contain a fast-moving outbreak. (Imagine how you would feel if each one of your Google searches took 45 minutes to return!) By contrast, using newer technologies, the same queries on the same hardware can run in seconds. Read More »
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VA and VistA: Can they be fixed?
pivoting away from VistA, the agency's homegrown electronic health record system, would be a major shift for the VA. Former VA CIO Roger Baker said VistA is the only EHR designed by doctors, not technologists. "That is the real power of VistA, and it remains the real power of VistA," he added. The system, rooted in 1970s code, is designed to assist doctors in their daily work. Providers at the various VA medical facilities nationwide customize it for their specific needs.
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VA Announces New Veterans Health Application Programming Interface
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently launched its first Health Application Programming Interface (API) that will power the next generation of Blue Button features by enabling Veterans to interact with their own personal health data within innovative mobile and web-based apps. Introduced on Dec. 4, at the White House Executive Forum on Healthcare Data Interoperability, Health APIs will power the next generation of Blue Buttonfeatures by enabling Veterans to interact with their own personal health data within innovative mobile and web-based apps. Sponsored by the White House Office of American Innovation, the forum brought together senior health care leaders from both the public and private sectors. Health APIs will also support new clinician-focused applications, and can also serve as a foundation for data sharing between health systems to support Veteran care.
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VA Care: Still The Best Care Anywhere?
...[A]s the author of the title Best Care Anywhere, Why VA Health Care would be Better for Everyone, it’s been dispiriting to have it confirmed by a preliminary inspector general’s report that some frontline VA employees in Phoenix and elsewhere have been gaming a key performance metric regarding wait times. But what’s really has me enervated is how the dominant media narrative of the VA “scandal” has become so essentially misleading and damaging to the cause of health care delivery system reform...
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VA CIO Stephen Warren on The State of Open Source at the VA
Stephen Warren, the acting VA CIO was recently interviewed on the topic of giving continuity to an open source initiative started by the previous CIO Roger Baker. The VA CIO oversees more than 8,000 IT professionals and manages an annual budget of $3.3 billion. When interviewed at WJLA in the ABC channel, Mr. Warren shared the following insights. Read More »
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VA Investigation: No Proof That Falsified Data Led to Vets' Deaths
Claims that 40 veterans might have died because of delayed care and manipulated waiting lists at a Department of Veterans Affairs health center in Phoenix, Ariz., are unsubstantiated, according to an internal investigation, the New York Times reports. Read More »
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VA Is Competing for the Pentagon’s Electronic Health Record Contract
The Veterans Affairs Department plans to enter its next generation electronic health record into the competition for the Defense Department’s EHR job, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki told a hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee Thursday. Read More »
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VA picks Systems Made Simple to head new scheduling system
Systems Made Simple has been picked by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to create its new scheduling system. The Lockheed Martin-owned company will be responsible for the VA's Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS), which is "one component of the department's strategy to provide state of the art electronic health record, scheduling, workflow management, and analytics capabilities to front line caregivers serving veterans," according to an announcement.
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VA Poised To Kick-Off Contract For New Scheduling System
The Department of Veterans Affairs has completed a series of one-on-one meetings with companies interested in taking on what is perhaps the biggest, most complex and important government IT challenge since the rollout of healthcare.gov — replacing VA’s antiquated patient scheduling system with commercial technologies that will enable veterans to see doctors and receive treatment when and where Read More »
VA program to schedule patient appointments on verge of collapse
An eight-year-old, $167 million project to develop a core computer application to schedule patient appointments at hospitals run by the Veterans Affairs Department has all but collapsed, and senior executives are worried about the repercussions it could cause on the Hill and in the White House, according to an internal memo obtained by Nextgov. Read More »
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VA Purchases an Additional 20 ReWalk Exoskeleton Systems for First Ever Multi-Center Exoskeleton Clinical Trials
ReWalk Robotics Ltd...announced that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs ("VA") has purchased an additional 20 ReWalk Personal Systems to support initiation of their national multi-center clinical trial. The VA clinical trial is the first-ever U.S. study to examine the impact of exoskeleton use in the home or daily life setting. The study will include 160 participants across the country, with six VA medical centers participating in the first phase across California, Florida, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia...
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