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Hacking Health in Hamilton Ontario - Let's hear that pitch!
What compelled me to register for a weekend Health Hackathon? Anyway, I could soon be up to my ears in it. A pubmed search on Health Hack...
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Interfaith Dialogue on Avatar Immortality
The Avatar project created by Russian Billionaire Dmitry Itskov has a remarkable website, including this Interfaith Dialogue on the spiritual future of humanity as it approaches the technological ability to:
- A robotic copy of a human body remotely controlled by BCI - 2015 - 2020
- An Avatar in which a human brain is transplanted at the end of one's life - 2020 - 2025
- An Avatar with an artificial brain in which a human personality is transplanted at the end of one's life - 2030 - 2035
- A hologram like avatar - 2040 - 2045
There is a lot of heavy weight endorsement for this project if you look at the list of names in their letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon . There are a lot more names from the religious traditions on that letter as well, than are included in this video of interfaith dialogue. One of the names I had to look up was Dr. James Martin — "British author and entrepreneur and the largest individual benefactor to the University of Oxford in its 900-year history". I probably should have heard of him, A) because I have worked with computer information technology for 30 years, and B) because I work in a university where large donations by benefactors is the essential component for driving research and keeping university infrastructure and education alive. I read the biography of Dr. William Osler several times, the masterful version written by Michael Bliss. When Osler was enticed to go to Johns Hopkins, one of the first hospitals combined with a teaching university level medical school, it was just an architectural blue print at the time. But it owed it's existence to visionary philanthropic benefactors and it was a turning point in philanthropic largesse. Millionaires were starting to seek immortality for their names by given money to universities instead of churches, except for eccentrics like Carnegie, who thought building free libraries and educating the massess was more worthy of the life energy contained in his horde of lucre. It now seems like giving money to immortality projects is the ultimate form of philanthropic immortality.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays
This was from the mailing list of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology. Quite a frightening list of chapter titles when I first read it. The future will be stranger than we think, but now that I think about it, maybe the future will just be normal, because it seems to be kind of normal now. Isn't that strange?: http://ieet.org/
NEW BOOKS BY IEETers
The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays (2013)
by eds. Max More and Natasha Vita-More
Table of Contents
Part I Roots and Core Themes
1 The Philosophy of Transhumanism, Max More
2 Aesthetics: Bringing the Arts & Design into the Discussion of Transhumanism, Natasha Vita-More* 3 Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up, Nick Bostrom* 4 Transhumanist Declaration (2012), Various 5 Morphological Freedom – Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It, Anders Sandberg
Part II Human Enhancement: The Somatic Sphere
6 Welcome to the Future of Medicine, Robert A. Freitas Jr.
7 Life Expansion Media, Natasha Vita-More* 8 The Hybronaut Affair: A Ménage of Art, Technology, and Science, Laura Beloff 9 Transavatars, William Sims Bainbridge* 10 Alternative Biologies, Rachel Armstrong
Part III Human Enhancement: The Cognitive Sphere
11 Re-Inventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind, Andy Clark
12 Artificial General Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, Ben Goertzel* 13 Intelligent Information Filters and Enhanced Reality, Alexander “Sasha” Chislenko 14 Uploading to Substrate-Independent Minds, Randal A. Koene 15 Uploading, Ralph C. Merkle
Part IV Core Technologies
16 Why Freud Was the First Good AI Theorist, Marvin Minsky
17 Pigs in Cyberspace, Hans Moravec 18 Nanocomputers, J. Storrs Hall 19 Immortalist Fictions and Strategies, Michael R. Rose 20 Dialogue between Ray Kurzweil and Eric Drexler
Part V Engines of Life: Identity and Beyond Death
21 The Curate’s Egg of Anti-Anti-Aging Bioethics, Aubrey de Grey*
22 Medical Time Travel, Brian Wowk 23 Transhumanism and Personal Identity,James Hughes* 24 Transcendent Engineering, Giulio Prisco*
Part VI Enhanced Decision-Making
25 Idea Futures: Encouraging an Honest Consensus, Robin Hanson
26 The Proactionary Principle: Optimizing Technological Outcomes, Max More 27 The Open Society and Its Media, Mark S. Miller, with E. Dean Tribble, Ravi Pandya, and Marc Stiegler
Part VII Biopolitics and Policy
28 Performance Enhancement and Legal Theory: An Interview with Professor Michael H. Shapiro
29 Justifying Human Enhancement: The Accumulation of Biocultural Capital, Andy Miah* 30 The Battle for the Future, Gregory Stock 31 Mind is Deeper Than Matter: Transgenderism, Transhumanism, and the Freedom of Form, Martine Rothblatt* 32 For Enhancing People, Ronald Bailey 33 Is Enhancement Worthy of Being a Right?,Patrick D. Hopkins* 34 Freedom by Design: Transhumanist Values and Cognitive Liberty, Wrye Sententia*
Part VIII Future Trajectories: Singularity
35 Technological Singularity, Vernor Vinge
36 An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity, Anders Sandberg 37 A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept, David Brin*, Damien Broderick, Nick Bostrom, Alexander “Sasha” Chislenko, Robin Hanson, Max More, Michael Nielsen, and Anders Sandberg
Part IX The World’s Most Dangerous Idea
38 The Great Transition: Ideas and Anxieties,Russell Blackford*
39 Trans and Post, Damien Broderick 40 Back to Nature II: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century, Roy Ascott 41 A Letter to Mother Nature, Max More 42 Progress and Relinquishment, Ray Kurzweil
*IEET Fellow, Scholar or Staff
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Medical records should follow patients, health staff say
The CBC is a huge news source for me, and I posted the last one on Nano technology straight through the Blogger icon on the CBC website. This story did not have a blogger icon (it was missing in the deck of 35 other icons). Anyway, here is my commentary on this story, as a person who has studied Personal Health Records academically, but in not in actual implementation practice nor within a healthcare environment:
1. everyone should have an electronic health record that is interoperable
2. not everyone might need one, and the most vulnerable and those with chronic conditions are those who most need them and probably are also those least technologically inclined to learn how to use them or even access them, but I am overgeneralizing
3. at least physicians should grant an "access level view" of their EMR records to patients - from anywhere
4. personal health records should be the master record for all patients - one version is the clinically legal one, and the other is the version patients themselves control and annotate
5. a provincial or national architecture won't work successfully, as has been discussed elsewhere on this blog
6. we should all get started by insisting with our family physicians for a personal health record - the technicalities on how they can be interoperable or mobile to other healthcare clinics can be left to later (if it can't ideally be built into the system from the start)
7. start keeping your own electronic records of your health information
8. subscribe to a "stand alone" personal health record if all else fails
1. everyone should have an electronic health record that is interoperable
2. not everyone might need one, and the most vulnerable and those with chronic conditions are those who most need them and probably are also those least technologically inclined to learn how to use them or even access them, but I am overgeneralizing
3. at least physicians should grant an "access level view" of their EMR records to patients - from anywhere
4. personal health records should be the master record for all patients - one version is the clinically legal one, and the other is the version patients themselves control and annotate
5. a provincial or national architecture won't work successfully, as has been discussed elsewhere on this blog
6. we should all get started by insisting with our family physicians for a personal health record - the technicalities on how they can be interoperable or mobile to other healthcare clinics can be left to later (if it can't ideally be built into the system from the start)
7. start keeping your own electronic records of your health information
8. subscribe to a "stand alone" personal health record if all else fails
Medical records should follow patients, health staff say
Thunder Bay medical professionals struggle to get accurate data with new patients
CBC News
Posted: Mar 14, 2013 12:42 PM ET
Last Updated: Mar 14, 2013 12:59 PM ET
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Health care providers in Thunder Bay say they often have to play detective to piece together new patients' medical histories.
The head of the Anishnawbe Mushkiki Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic said a lot of new patients had family doctors who retired or left their practices. The patients never received their medical records and often don't know how to get them.
"And then when some attempts are made to get their records, there's a fairly often hefty cost associated with it that some people just can't afford to pay,” Deborah McGoldrick said.
She noted clinics don't have the money to pay for the medical files either.
Health-care workers track down information, with a patient's permission, from electronic hospital records and from labs, pharmacies and specialists.
Patient information can be vague
They also take a thorough history from patients themselves.
However, the medical record is an important tool to ensure the information is complete, McGoldrick said.
"[Patients] just may say, 'I know I have diabetes,' but they're very vague about ... the course of it and what's been done for it,” she said.
“So having some kind of record to … refer to is always good and always backs up ... what a client has been telling you."
McGoldrick added that medical records can also save time in diagnosing health issues.
"You've done some ... general screening and all of the sudden you find ... this client's got an abnormality that has been well-documented in the past and there's been a lot of investigation done on it,” she said.
“The client didn't relate this to you and now you've sort of duplicated things to find out stuff that we already knew."
Better system needed
Health centre manager Kristin Shields says medical records are especially important for patients with chronic conditions(Nicole Ireland/CBC)
Kristin Shields, a manager with the NorWest Community Health Centre, agreed it's a challenge to get a comprehensive picture of a new patient's health background without access to previous medical records.
"The difficulty really is it takes provider time,” Shields said.
“But more importantly, it really requires that the patient is able to recall exactly who they've seen, approximately when and for what types of service."
Shields said it's especially important for health care workers to have past records for clients with chronic conditions.
"They have very complex cases,” she said.
“They've often seen a lot of different care providers, whether that's other primary care providers or specialists."
McGoldrick added that a better system is needed for accessing patient records. She said medical records should be considered part of patient care and suggested the cost of transferring them be covered by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
The Nano Revolution: More than Human
CBC -The Nature of Things with David Suzuki - - The Nano Revolution: More than Human
This video apparently is only viewable in Canada. It is an excellent view of the future of nano technology at the "point of care" in medicine. It also has an excellent scenario of "post humans". It is worth watching just for the computer graphics effects on nanotechnology models.
This video apparently is only viewable in Canada. It is an excellent view of the future of nano technology at the "point of care" in medicine. It also has an excellent scenario of "post humans". It is worth watching just for the computer graphics effects on nanotechnology models.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Medicine Buddha
Scientific information on medicine is essential but sometimes no information is the best information - the kind of consciousness that is only concerned about awareness of breathing.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Cochrane Reviews for Patients Seeking Health Information?
I heard a story on CBC radio about "Plain Language" summaries available for patients (or healthcare consumers) who need to make decions on health information via Cochrane Reviews. I tried to google to find a textual piece on this story and there was "nada", which means the radio and the internet don't always interface or there is no automatic speech to text translation between the two media. A woman who I believe was also a volunteer with a Cochrane Review was describing how helpful it was for her to search the Plain Language summaries to find exactly the information she was seeking on the new research for her own health condition.
Anyway, it has been a year or two since I have visited the Cochrane Library website and I think there have been some improvements in the website and it's usability. Still, I am not sure how it can become one of the more trusted sources of health information on the net for the general public (like Mayo Clinic, WebMD, Medline) but I fully endorse it as a gold mine of health information. They now have a blog called Evidently Cochrane, and they are starting to use social media a lot more.
In fact, based on one of their reviews for acupuncture for shoulder pain, I have decided to cancel an appointment and rethink future treatment options.
Anyway, it has been a year or two since I have visited the Cochrane Library website and I think there have been some improvements in the website and it's usability. Still, I am not sure how it can become one of the more trusted sources of health information on the net for the general public (like Mayo Clinic, WebMD, Medline) but I fully endorse it as a gold mine of health information. They now have a blog called Evidently Cochrane, and they are starting to use social media a lot more.
In fact, based on one of their reviews for acupuncture for shoulder pain, I have decided to cancel an appointment and rethink future treatment options.
Cochrane Reviews
How do you know if one treatment will work better than another, or if it will do more harm than good?"
Cochrane Reviews are systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy, and are internationally recognised as the highest standard in evidence-based health care. They investigate the effects of interventions for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. They also assess the accuracy of a diagnostic test for a given condition in a specific patient group and setting. They are published online in The Cochrane Library.Each systematic review addresses a clearly formulated question; for example: Can antibiotics help in alleviating the symptoms of a sore throat? All the existing primary research on a topic that meets certain criteria is searched for and collated, and then assessed using stringent guidelines, to establish whether or not there is conclusive evidence about a specific treatment. The reviews are updated regularly, ensuring that treatment decisions can be based on the most up-to-date and reliable evidence.“We care that you care enough to help us provide people all over the world, with a personal or professional interest in health care, with reliable information.”
- Sonja Henderson, Managing Editor of the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group, Liverpool, UK
Cochrane Reviews are designed to facilitate the choices that practitioners, consumers, policy-makers and others face in health care.No other organisation matches the quality, volume, scope and range of healthcare topics addressed by Cochrane Reviews.
As well as covering hundreds of medical conditions and diverse healthcare topics such as injury prevention and natural treatments, Cochrane Reviews have an international appeal through their global coverage of healthcare issues affecting people in all countries and contexts, including resource-poor settings, where it is vital to ensure that funds are used to maximum benefit.Without Cochrane Reviews, people making decisions are unlikely to be able to access and make full use of existing healthcare research.
“To ensure that the work of The Cochrane Collaboration is relevant to low and middle-income countries it is essential that people from those countries actively participate.”
- Jimmy Volmink, Director of the South African Cochrane Centre and Coordinator of the Cochrane Developing Countries Network, Tygerberg, South Africa
Why are Cochrane Reviews different?Cochrane Reviews enable the practice of evidence-based health care.
Health care decisions can be made based on the best available research, which is systematically assessed and summarised in a Cochrane Review.Narrative reviews of healthcare research have existed for many decades, but are often not systematic. They may have been written by a recognised expert, but no one individual has the time to try to identify and bring together all relevant studies. Of more concern, an individual or company might actively seek to discuss and combine only the research which supports their opinions, prejudices or commercial interests. In contrast, a Cochrane Review circumvents this by using a predefined, rigorous and explicit methodology.Users of the medical literature should start paying more attention to the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews [the database of Cochrane Reviews in The Cochrane Library], and less attention to some better known competitors."
Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet, July 2010A Cochrane Review is a scientific investigation in itself, with a pre-planned methods section and an assembly of original studies (predominantly randomised controlled trials and clinical controlled trials, but also sometimes, non-randomised observational studies) as their ‘subjects’. The results of these multiple primary investigations are synthesized by using strategies that limit bias and random error. These strategies include a comprehensive search of all potentially relevant studies and the use of explicit, reproducible criteria in the selection of studies for review. Primary research designs and study characteristics are appraised, data synthesized, and results interpreted.Each review is prepared by an 'author team' with support from specialist librarians, methodologists, copy and content editors, and peer reviewers, taking hundreds of hours of work from start to finish.
“The Cochrane Collaboration has consistently involved consumers in its editorial processes, in the firm belief that the more consumers are involved, the more health services and research will grow in democracy, and will be tailored to people’s needs.”
- Silvana Simi, Consumer Coordinator for the Cochrane Multiple Sclerosis Group, Pisa, Italy
Updated on: March 19, 2012, 13:36
Copyright © The Cochrane Collaboration
Comments for improvement or correction are welcome.
Email: web@cochrane.org
Comments for improvement or correction are welcome.
Email: web@cochrane.org
Sunday, March 3, 2013
HeLa High School will Teach Health Informatics
HeLa High School, opening in the Fall 2013 in Vancouver, Washington State USA is astonishing in a number of different ways:
digg0 points on reddit
- It has Health Informatics as major concentration in the curriculum
- It makes the term "pre-med" even more pre-med
- It honours naming the school after Henrietta Lacks, stem cell medical research participant who's cancerous tumours became the HeLa stem cell line
- It follows maybe the Swiss education model which is based more on apprenticeship and job training models?
I've read the book by Rebecca Skloot about the life of Henrietta Lacks, and it is highly recommended. Quite appropriate for ethical reasons to name a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) school for her. Well they named it for the stem cells too. I know some Canadian university Health Science undergrad programs have a reputation being thought of as "pre-med", but this is even more competitive. How are students chosen for admission? If students are studying Health Informatics that early, what will that do the applied M.Sc. in Health Informatics in the future?
New Vancouver high school will focus on health, bioscience
Evergreen Public Schools' HeLa High will open in fall
Photo by Zachary Kaufman
By Susan Parrish
Columbian staff writer
Columbian staff writer
Saturday, February 23, 2013
PHOTO GALLERY
Inside He-La High
A sneak peek in to Evergreen's new Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School.
MAP
HeLa High School
9105 N.E. Ninth St., Vancouver
• School opens: Fall 2013. •Total estimated construction cost:
$23.7 million.
• Maximum number of students: 500.
• Size: 60,000 square feet.
• Curriculum focus: A biosciences and health care curriculum that includes extensive partnerships with Peacehealth Southwest Medical Center and others to provide opportunities for hands-on learning.
Programs of study
• Nursing and patient services.
• Health informatics.
• Biotechnology.
• Biomedical engineering.
• Pharmacy.
The pharmacy is nearly ready. The state-of-the-art nursing station is down the hall. But this isn't a hospital. It's Vancouver's newest high school.
Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School — HeLa High for short — is such a rare model that a very small number of similar schools exist nationwide. When its doors open in September, students will experience hands-on learning with state-of-the-art technology and partnership opportunities with PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, just a block away.
"The state has a number of schools focused on STEM — science, technology, engineering and math, " said Julie Tumelty, the school's principal. "But we haven't heard about another school in Washington that is specifically focused on health and bioscience."
As baby boomers age, studies point to an increasing need for well-trained health care workers. An Evergreen Public Schools study indicated about 20 percent of its ninth-graders planned to pursue a career in health care. It seemed an opportune time to pursue the specialty school. PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center has worked with the school district for almost a decade to help plan the school. The medical center benefits by helping funnel more local students into health care fields.
How HeLa is funded
In 2002, Evergreen Public Schools received a $200,000 federal Workforce Investment Act grant to investigate how to develop employees to meet the growing demand for the health care industry. That led to the decision to build a heath-focused high school.
The total estimated construction cost is $23.7 million. To help with construction, the district received a $17.4 million Qualified School Construction Bond, federal stimulus money that is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The remaining money comes from a $1 million grant from the Washington State Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development (CTED), proceeds from the district's previous land sales and state matching money.
The fast-growing district qualified for matching money because it has more than 1,200 high school students taking classes in portables. Moving about 500 of the district's high school students to the new school will ease the overcrowding and prevent the district from having to build another large, comprehensive high school in the near future.
Small footprint
The school's footprint of 2.9 acres is miniscule compared with the district's comprehensive high schools with between 40 and 50 acres each, including large sports fields and much larger parking lots. The outdoor space at HeLa includes four basketball hoops but no sports fields. The parking lot is small. In a nod of cooperation to the neighborhood, the district agreed that all students would arrive at the school via school bus. That'll prevent traffic congestion.
The 60,000-square-foot building was designed by LSW Architects and constructed by Skanska USA. If needed, an additional 20,000 square feet may be added later. Its high-tech design is apparent both inside and out. Two levels of solar panels on the south side will help provide power. The floors on the first level are polished concrete, and in the student commons the floor is heated for comfort.
Students will learn real-world nursing skills in the four-bed nursing station, complete with a simulated, interactive robot patient called SimMan. A simulation pharmacy and well-equipped laboratories will provide more hands-on learning. The library, called the research lab, will be stocked with a combination of electronic books and traditional paper textbooks.
Not traditional
HeLa isn't a traditional high school. It won't have sports teams, so instead of a large gym, the school has a fitness room where students will learn lifelong fitness using resistance training, mats, Pilates and medicine balls. There won't be a marching band or pep band, but a scaled-down music program may offer orchestra or symphony.
The first school year, the student body will consist of about 125 freshmen and 125 sophomores. The next two years, 125 freshmen will be added each year, so that 500 students eventually will be enrolled there. Students interested in attending the school completed an application and are being chosen via a lottery system from the district's comprehensive high schools, with an equal number of students coming from each school.
Classes will be integrated to create an overall focus on health and biosciences, Tumelty said. As an example, she said in English class, students will use informational texts and literature that are science-based.
"The goal is for students to see the connections between the disciplines so that they get a better view of how the real world works," Tumelty said. "Teachers will be working on creating these connections in authentic ways for students."
Freshmen and sophomores will take anatomy and physiology along with chemistry and biology "to give them a really good base in science," said Elisabeth Harrington, the district's director of curriculum and instruction. Before they enter their junior year, students will have to choose one of five pathways: nursing and patient care; health informatics (data processing); biomedical engineering; pharmacy; or biotechnology.
"In the first two years, as they're doing A&P, there will be a heavy emphasis on medical terminology," Harrington said. "Once they've picked their pathway, as juniors they'll partner with PeaceHealth with job shadowing opportunities. Seniors will have internships at PeaceHealth."
Who was Henrietta Lacks?
The cancerous cells of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman from Virginia, were harvested in 1951 without her knowledge and cultured for medical research to create an immortal cell line. Her cells were used to develop the polio vaccine, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization and cloning, among other things. Although billions of her cells have been sold for research, her family can't afford health insurance. Her story was told in the nonfiction book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Portland author Rebecca Skloot. This is the first school building in the nation named after her.
Susan Parrish: 360-735-4515;http://www.twitter.com/Col_Schools;susan.parrish@columbian.com.
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