The article about Pediatric Associates in CA has a nugget with a potentially outsized impact: the implication that VFC vaccines…
News 6/11/18
Top News
Pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD recounts in The New York Times her personal and professional struggle to get to the bottom of lead-induced illnesses that were plaguing her patients after the city of Flint, MI switched water sources in 2015. She’ll release a book recounting the experience, the effects of which are still impacting the community, in the coming weeks.
A few snippets:
“Most of my professional life as a pediatrician and medical educator had been pretty predictable. Clinics, meetings, presentations, red tape, training sessions and lots of talking with faculty members and residents and patients. But I’d always seen my work through the lens of social justice. To put it simply, health is justice, especially for the youngest among us.
Now I was coming to see that my work couldn’t stop with treating patients and training other pediatricians. I was becoming something new — an activist, and a detective.
So, along with a growing team of doctors and scientists, I held a news conference to release our findings and demand action. It was an unusual thing for a local pediatrician to do. But that’s what you do when nobody’s listening. You get louder.”
Webinars
June 12 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Blockchain in Healthcare: Why It Matters.” Sponsor: Quest Diagnostics. Presenter: Lidia Fonseca, CIO, Quest Diagnostics. Blockchain technology is gaining traction in many industries, including healthcare. It’s not only a hot topic, but is also showing promise with real-world applications. This webinar will share how blockchain may play a key role in the future of healthcare IT by helping to solve some of the industry’s challenges, distinguishing the hype from reality by discussing how it works, how it can impact healthcare providers, and its future application in healthcare IT.
June 21 (Thursday) noon ET. “Operationalizing Data Science Models in Healthcare.” Sponsor: CitiusTech. Presenters: Yugal Sharma, PhD, VP of data science, CitiusTech; Vinil Menon, VP of enterprise applications proficiency, CitiusTech. As healthcare organizations are becoming more adept at developing models, building the skills required to manage, validate, and deploy these models efficiently remains a challenging task. We define operationalization as the process of managing, validating, and deploying models within an organization. Several industry best practices, along with frameworks and technology solutions, exist to address this challenge. An understanding of this space and current state of the art is crucial to ensure efficient use and consumption of these models for relevant stakeholders in the organization. This webinar will give an introduction and overview of these key areas, along with examples and case studies to demonstrate the value of various best practices in the healthcare industry.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.
Announcements and Implementations
Kareo announces GA of Engage, practice and patient relationship management software that includes online patient intake and scheduling, secure messaging, reputation management, and analytics.
Chicago-based direct primary care practice ImagineMD leverages Best in Class Care’s online referral and transparent pricing network.
Government and Politics
In California, the Long Beach Dept. of Health develops an online reporting system for food-borne illnesses. Local health officials hope that new system will result in better oversight of eateries, and help them to understand just how many patrons end up seeking medical care for their symptoms. Its previous telephone-based reporting system averaged just 72 calls a year.
Research and Innovation
Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Center in Holland find that breast cancer patients can recall their health data with remarkable accuracy up to 18 months after surgery – a boon to patients and the physicians who want to foster shared decision-making during follow-up care. Researchers also point out that such recall can help cut down on time spent on explaining procedures, and can benefit researchers by helping them “decide which information to obtain from patients or medical records.”
Telemedicine
Epic Health develops Carie, a mobile app that offers virtual consult and in-office scheduling capabilities.
Other
In Australia, a media outlet calls out online physician scheduling and review website HealthEngine for tampering with patient reviews. Media analysts found that over half of the nearly 48,000 reviews had been edited in some way, with many being changed to more positive wording. HealthEngine Chief Executive and GP Marcus Tan at first defended the company’s practices, pointing out that it publishes only positive reviews to “celebrate” the art of medicine. He quickly recanted after the news broke and has vowed to launch an internal audit of review editing processes.
The beta version of Apple’s latest software update, iOS 12, will give users the option to turn their AirPods into hearing aids via the new Live Listen feature, which amplifies sound through built-in earbud microphones and an accompanying Made-for-iPhone hearing aid device.
Contacts
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