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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...

Showing posts with label Global Health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global Health. Show all posts

Thursday, March 26, 2020

digital health initiatives in the wake of COVID-19


6. 17-year-old builds a website to closely track the Coronavirus epidemic and now millions are using it:https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/13/meet_the_17_year_old_behind

7. Flatten the Curve. Volunteer engineers and clinicians big data real-time heatmap of potential and confirmed COVID-19 cases: https://flatten.ca/

8. Ontario, Alberta, etc., billing codes for primary virtual visits: https://ontariomd.news/

9. Wildly Popular South Korean covid-19 tracker app: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wildly-popular-coronavirus-tracker-app-helps-south-koreans-steer-clear-of-outbreak-areas-2020-03-18

10. South Korean coronavirus tracking apps: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-south-korea-photos-apps-location-outbreak-where-2020-3#the-app-collects-data-from-public-government-info-including-the-korea-centers-for-disease-control-to-show-the-date-a-patient-was-diagnosed-with-covid-19-along-with-the-persons-nationality-age-gender-and-where-they-visited-2

11. WeDoctor - free consultation from medical clinicians: https://promo.guahao.com/en/global/pneumonia

12. Donate PPE in Canada: https://togetherwecandothis.ca/

13. National Emergency Library - Free books online: http://www.openculture.com/2020/03/the-national-emergency-library-makes-nearly-1-5-million-books-free-to-read-right-now.html

14. MIT Emergency Ventilator Project: https://e-vent.mit.edu/

15. Canadian MD Ventilator Hack 1 ventilator for 9 people: https://www.upworthy.com/canadian-doctors-brilliant-evil-genius-hack-turns-one-ventilator-into-nine

16. Nobel Laureate Leads Push for Made in Canada Ventilator: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-nobel-laureate-leads-push-for-simple-made-in-canada-ventilator/

17. Medical Futurist - COVID-19 Was Needed for Telemedicine to Finally Go Mainstream: https://medicalfuturist.com/covid-19-was-needed-for-telemedicine-to-finally-go-mainstream/

18. Project Northern Lights - Groups of Canadians using Slack to hack projects for COVID:  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadians-use-crowdsourcing-to-produce-medical-supplies-for-health/

19. SECDEV looking for Cybersecurity IT Professionals to volunteer to protect healthcare centres from disinformation, ransom ware attacks, etc:https://www.secdev.com/

20. FutureLoop - Pandemic Edition: https://futureloop.com/register/coronavirus/












32. How is my Flattening?  includes vaccination percentages for Ontario

33. Canada's Public Health Data Meltdown - MacLeans article by Justin Ling


35. ProMed - International Society for the Infectious Diseases









Sunday, October 8, 2017

the world is (still) better than you think - reposted from Peter Diamandis

Your mindset matters — now more than ever.
We are in the midst of a drug epidemic.

The drug? Negative news. The drug pushers? The media.

As I wrote in Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, we pay 10x more attention to negative news than positive news.

We are being barraged with negative news on every device. This constant onslaught distorts your perspective on the future, and inhibits your ability to make a positive impact.

In this blog, I’ll share new “evidence for abundance” -- charts and data that show the world is getting better. I’ll also share positive news and technological breakthroughs, all of which occurred in 2017 so far.

Note: This isn’t about ignoring or minimizing the major issues we still face around the world. It’s about countering our romanticized views of the world in centuries past with data.

My hope is that you’re able to see the world as it is — a world that is still getting better. My goal here is to help you protect your abundance mindset despite this barrage of negative news.

If you have a negative-minded person in your life, forward this blog to them so they can look at the actual data.

Let’s dive in...

1. Global Economy

The first area to explore is our global economy. Over the last 200 years, the world’s GDP has *skyrocketed* 100-fold. Humankind has never been more prosperous and productive.
World GDP Over the Last Two Millennia
world-gdp-over-the-last-two-millennia.png
The graph above depicts the economic output per person around the world over the last 2,000 years. Here we see exponential growth independent of war, famine or disease.
Technology drove much of this economic growth, and there’s no signs of slowing.

Banking the Unbanked: One especially promising area of economic growth involves empowering the “unbanked” — the 2 billion people worldwide who lack access to a bank account or financial institution via a digital device. In September 2017, the government of Finland announced a partnership with MONI to create a digital money system for refugees.
The system effectively eliminates some of the logistical barriers to financial transactions, enabling displaced people to participate in the economy and rebuild their lives.
Refugees will be able to loan money to friends, receive paychecks and access funds using prepaid debit cards linked to digital identities on the blockchain -- without a bank.
Blockchain & Government: Governments are investing aggressively in digitization themselves. The small country of Estonia, for example, already has an e-Residency program. The digital citizenship lets residents get government services and even start companies in the EU without ever traveling or living there.

In late August 2017, Kaspar Korjus, who heads up that e-Residency program, revealed the Estonian government’s exploration of creating an initial coin offering (ICO) and issuing crypto tokens to citizens to raise government funds.

That same month, the Chinese government announced its intent to use blockchain technology for collecting taxes and issuing invoices. This builds on previous experiments China’s central bank is conducting with its own cryptocurrency.

2. Health

No matter where in the world you are, mortality rates have dropped precipitously over the last 300 years.
The following chart shows life expectancy at birth in various countries. Just 100 years ago, a child born in India or South Korea was only expected to live to 23. Fast forward to today, and India’s life expectancy has tripled. South Korea’s life expectancy has quadrupled, and now is higher than in the U.K.
Global Life Expectancy
Life-Expectancy.png
Plummeting Teen Births: Another measure of a nation’s health is how it responds to preventable public health issues. Here in the U.S., teen births are down an impressive 51 percent over the last decade, going from from 41.5 births per 1,000 teenage girls in 2007 to 20.3 births per 1,000 teenage girls in 2016.

I share the following graph because, by the numbers, teen girls who have babies will have a harder life than their peers who delay motherhood.

As the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services notes, they’re more likely to drop out of high school, rely on public assistance, and have children with “poorer educational, behavioral and health outcomes over the course of their life than kids born to older parents.”
Since these statistics were first compiled in 1991, teen births have dropped 67 percent.
U.S. Birth Rates, by Age Group (1991 - 2015)
Teen-Births.jpeg
As exponential technologies continue to advance, we’ll see even more healthcare breakthroughs. Here’s a sampling from this year:

Exponential Tech Impact on Health:
 Most exciting these days is the tremendous impact that exponential technologies are having on Health.
  • Robotics: Last month, a robot dentist in China successfully implanted 3D-printed teeth into a female patient’s mouth with “high precision.” The only human medical staff involvement was to conduct light setup and a pre-test. Imagine when such robots are in every healthcare facility on the planet, delivering service for the cost of electricity.
  • Virtual Reality: VR is also entering the operating room. In July 2017, University of Minnesota doctors used VR to prepare for a challenging non-routine surgery -- separating a pair of twins conjoined at the heart. Not only was the life-saving surgery a success, the VR prep gave doctors unforeseen insights that prompted them to accelerate the surgery by several months. It won’t be long until we refuse to have surgery completed by any human who hasn’t prepared in virtual reality using a personalized 3D model.
  • CRISPR/Gene Editing: Finally, in August 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first-ever treatment that uses gene editing to transform a patient’s own cells into a “living drug.” Kymriah, a one-time treatment made by Novartis, was approved to treat B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia -- an aggressive form of leukemia that the FDA calls “devastating and deadly.” The FDA is currently considering over 550 additional experimental gene therapies. What happens to our healthy human lifespan as these life-saving treatments demonetize and become universally accessible?

3. Environment

Thirty years ago, the world signed the Montreal Protocol to prevent the depletion of the Ozone Layer. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) credits that agreement with preventing an estimated 280 million additional cases of skin cancer, 45 million cataracts, and 1.5 million skin cancer deaths between its signing in 1987 and the year 2050. Without the Montreal Protocol, the planet would have been about 4 degrees warmer by 2050 (...resulting in more extreme weather events like droughts, floods and hurricanes).

As the graph below clearly depicts, the global annual death rate from natural disasters has plummeted over the past century.
Global Annual Death Rate From Natural Disasters
Death-rates-from-natural-catastrophes-Final.png
Why has this happened?  It’s the impact of exponential technologies (satellites, sensors, networks, machine learning), which enable humans to better image, predict and model disasters. These models provide early warning systems, enabling citizens to flee to safety and for first responders to send supplies and food to remote areas in time.

Drones & the Environment: Previously, animals were counted manually by researchers who had to spot them from helicopter or prepositioned camera footage. Now, a drone captures footage, the machine learning system counts different types of animals, and human volunteers help train the algorithm by verifying detections.

Faster, cheaper, easier, and more accurate.

And in Bengaluru, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science are fighting deforestation with camera-equipped drones that drop seeds in areas they otherwise wouldn’t be able to explore. Their goal is to seed 10,000 acres in the region.

What becomes possible when thousands of teams — not simply individuals and a handful of research teams — leverage these tools to protect the environment?

4. Energy

A key measure of economic growth, living standards and poverty alleviation is access to electricity.

This graph uses data from the World Bank and the International Energy Agency’s definition of electricity access, which is delivery and use of at least 250 kilowatt-hours per year in rural households and 500 kilowatt-hours per year in rural households.

Simply put, more people around the world have access to electricity than ever, and the absolute number of those without access to electricity is dropping (despite population growth).

Take a look at the chart below to see how various regions of the world are meeting their energy needs.
Share of the Population With Access to Electricity
share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity.png
As you see above, India has gone from 45 percent access to electricity in 1990 to nearly 80 percent in 2014.
Afghanistan has seen an even more dramatic improvement, going from 0.16 percent of the population in 2000 to 89.5 percent of the population in 2014.
As renewable energy sources become cheaper and more accessible, we’ll reach total electrification.
Here too, we’re making great progress. In 2016, solar power grew faster than any other fuel source for the first time ever. Around the world, solar prices are still dropping.

The latest forecast from GTM Research reports prices of $2.07 per watt in Japan to $.65 per watt in India, with prices dropping across hard and soft costs.
Historical and Forecasted Utility PV System Pricing, 2013 - 2022E
Global_installed_solar_prices_2034_1230_80.jpg
In 2017 alone, we saw wind power become cheaper than nuclear in the U.K., with the cost of subsidies slashed in half since 2015.

As the BBC reports, during the U.K.’s 2015 subsidy auction, “offshore wind farm projects won subsidies between £114 and £120 per megawatt hour.” Just two years later, two firms committed to a guaranteed price of £57.50 per megawatt hour.

Looking stateside, the U.S. Department of Energy announced in September 2017 that utility-scale solar has officially hit its 2020 cost targets three years early — with generation costs of $1 per watt and energy consumption costs of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour.
US Commercial & Residential Solar Costs
solar-usa-costs.png

5. Food

Despite the headlines, we’re making steady progress in the realm of food scarcity and hunger.

This graph features World Bank data on the percentage of the population that has an inadequate caloric intake. Globally, 18.6 percent of the population was undernourished in 1991; by 2015, it dropped to 10.8 percent.
Prevalence of Undernourishment in Developing Countries
prevalence-of-undernourishment.png
Time and again, technology is making scarce resources abundant. I’ve written about bioprinted meat, genetically engineered crops, vertical farming, and agriculture robots and drones. Two more examples from 2017 so far:
  • Human-Free Farms: In a 1.5-acre remote farm in the U.K., Harper Adams University and Precision Decisions recently harvested their first crop of barley. The twist? The farm is run autonomously. Instead of human farm workers, Hands Free Hectare uses autonomous vehicles, machine learning algorithms and drones to plant, tend and harvest.  
  • Food From Electricity: Another big idea in the fight against food scarcity and undernourishment comes out of Finland, where researchers are creating food from electricity. The team, formed of researchers from the Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, have created a machine that runs on renewable energy to produce nutritious, single-cell proteins. The system is deployable in a variety of environments hostile to traditional agriculture, and future iterations will be able to produce food anywhere, from famine-stricken deserts to space.
Looking at the data, we truly live in the most exciting time to be alive.
And if your mindset enables you to see problems as opportunities, the future is even more exciting than the present.

Join Me

1. A360 Executive Mastermind: This is the sort of conversation I explore at my Executive Mastermind group called Abundance 360. The program is highly selective, for 360 abundance and exponentially minded CEOs (running $10M to $10B companies). If you’d like to be considered, apply here.
Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.
2. Abundance-Digital Online Community: I’ve also created a Digital/Online community of bold, abundance-minded entrepreneurs called Abundance-Digital.
Abundance-Digital is my ‘onramp’ for exponential entrepreneurs – those who want to get involved and play at a higher level. Click here to learn more.

Resources

  • U.S.: More wealthy people, fewer poor people. (Axiom)
  • Economic output per person around the world over the last 2,000 years (Our World in Data)
  • Finland: Digital money system for refugees (Medium)
  • China to experiment with collecting taxes via blockchain (MIT Technology Review)
  • Estonia considers ICO (Medium)
  • Mortality inequality by nation (inequality of life expectancy) drops (Sam Peltzman)
  • Teen births down 51% over last 10 years (Vox)
  • Vital Statistics - Teen Births, 2016 (CDC)
  • Teen pregnancy and childbearing (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services)
  • First robot dental surgery (Engadget)
  • FDA-Approved Gene Altering Treatment (NYTimes)
  • Doctors use VR in life-saving treatment for conjoined twins (Washington Post)
  • The Montreal Protocol is working (National Geographic)
  • Impact of the Montreal Protocol (EPA)
  • Annual number of deaths from natural disasters (Our World in Data)
  • Wildlife - Drones used to track wild animal populations (MIT Technology Review)
  • Reforestation - Bengaluru: Using Drones to plant forests (Your Story)
  • Share of the population with access to electricity (Our World in Data)
  • UK: Wind power cheaper than nuclear (BBC)
  • US: Solar costs beat government goals by three years (Quartz)
  • Solar costs are hitting jaw-dropping lows in every region of the world (Green Tech Media)
  • Prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries (Our World in Data)
  • Scientists make food from electricity (Futurism)
  • UK: “Hands-Free Hectare” robot farm plants, oversees harvests barley without humans (Digital Trends)

Sunday, April 23, 2017

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 Hackathons...https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28250965 came up with a research article that shows that Hacking Health does have very useful benefits. I am intrigue and would even like to do my own research on this.

I attended a pitch workshop and learned that intellectual property on ideas is not what it appears to be. From that perspective, and in the interests of ehealth promotion:

1. Medical School ePortfolio - So you want be a Doctor eh? [app, educational]
Problem:
Getting into medical school is like a lottery. Or is it? How can students best prepare so they don't become disappointed or feel like they are gambling getting in, or getting in and realizing it is not their ideal career choice?

Solution:
This app will be for students who want to be physicians. Maybe it could even be aimed at three levels; elementary, high school, and university. It would allow students to track their interest in a career in medicine from early days. Students are also getting into medical school after high school these days at Queens University. It could have tests and quizzes, links to schools, CV prep, volunteer opportunity suggestions, how to apply, what's involved in the actual application process at very schools. The book "So you want to be Doctor eh?" by Anne Berdl is an excellent resource to model this on. Also, many universities have learning portfolios and that is also a model. Possible mentor relationships or chats or talks with professionals in the field. By tests and quizzes, it could also have an educational role to survey student empathy, compassion training, aptitude, in addition to preparation for MCAT and other formal tests.

2.Smart Forms Builder for Healthcare [ app, software]
Problem:
Hospitals were faced with a crisis in screening patients and visitors for SARS at Ontario hospitals in 2003. The paper system they had was bogging down entry to the hospital. A LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) online screening system was eventually created to streamline the process. Healthcare administrators and even IT need to develop online forms quickly without programming skills as well as have access to useful data.

Solution:
There are smartform software systems like Google docs and commercial ones like Jotform, but they are not private and secure for personal health information. As well, smart forms need to be smart enough so people without programming experience can quickly develop an application. These kind of systems are evolving, but they just need something more akin to artificial intelligence to make them really smart and inexpensive to setup. API, mobile and REST applications would also be good integration components.

3. eHealth enabled browser [ browser, app, big data]
Problem:
Personal Health Records come in many different types, tethered, stand alone, and integrated. The  people who benefit most are those who need to monitor and access a lot of medical records and visits. However, tracking health, IOT, and fitness device data can be integrated into Personal Health Records to create an overall digital health snapshot. Not everyone likes to login to a portal and track their health data.

Solution:
The idea here is to integrate Watson IBM analytics, or google alpha Go search engine analytics built into a dedicated open source browser built on chrome (or chromium). While this might sound just like an app running on a smartphone, the idea is to build a Firefox, Chrome or Safari browser that is actually a dedicated health analytics and digital health single sign on personal health record browser. What you search and read in every day life is all fodder for personal health anlaytics. This is digital "google flu" writ larger for an individual. In a way, think of it is a browser add on or extension that is a personal health record data collector, storage, and dashboard, but it is actually the browser itself.

4. Universal Healthcare Observatory [Big Data app]
Problem:

The problem is that not everyone has access to free healthcare. Statistically, millions of people are rising out of poverty every year, according to the late Global Health researcher Hans Rosling. Access to free or affordable healthcare should be a basic human right.

Solution:
The purpose of the project is based on the scientific based belief of evidence based medicine that "for profit healthcare is hazardous to your health". The United Nations and even the WHO have many observatories, and this one would be similar to the European Observatory of Health Systems and Policies. It will be a big data app that pulls data and statistics from disparate sources to monitor the global healthcare systems in the world and promote any trends towards universal healthcare. It might be able to use the Trendalyzer software. The bold target would be to achieve universal access to free or affordable healthcare for everyone on the planet by 2050.

5. eHealth Garage [ infrastructure, service]
Problem:
In my neighbourhood there are two former automobile/gas stations that are now a Vietnamese restaurant and a Holistic Health Clinic. Gas stations used be found on almost every block in every neighbourhood in every city and town. Cars no longer break down because the technology is better and gas monopolies are pushing gas stations out of neighbourhoods. Needless to say, electric cars are moving in soon. Also in my neighbourhood is a legal Medical Marijuana Clinic. Why not an eHealth Garage?

Solution:
With an aging population living longer and a coming generations that might may well live easily way over 100 years of age because of advances in exponential medicine, preventive medicine and holistic health services need to be accessible with digital health services in the community. This is also a way to deconstruct medicine.The eHealth Garage could be a component of a Family Health Team but they might call it an eHealth clinic. I see the Garage being full of healthcare technology: x-ray machines, ultrasound, MRI, fitbits, resistance training gym machines, Transcranial Magnetic Stimluation (TMS) - almost any health technology that can be coupled with a digital health technology or record. DIY healthcare, though with options for professional healthcare oversight.



Monday, September 30, 2013

Future Med Conference at Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego


The future med conference this year is at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. The Core Track of the conference is very eHealth relevant:


  • Introduction to Exponentials on the topics of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, 3D Printing, and IT Data Driven Health 
  • Future of Oncology 
  • Personalized Medicine 
  • Mobile Health & Body Computing 
  • Design Thinking and Tech Integration (i.e. Google Glass in Healthcare) 
  • Future of Intervention 
  • NeuroMedTech 
  • Regenerative Medicine 
  • Future of Pharma & Clinical Trials
  •  Global Health Impact of Technology on the Practice of Medicine 

I had heard that San Diego is a great place for conferences, but what I think is the real star of this conference is the Hotel! The Del Coronado is made of wood - over a hundred years old - and it's on the beach!

Now, this conference is going to set you back $4500 as an ordinary registrant for the four days. The last time I went to a 4 day conference happened to be in Boston. Paid by my institution, it was over $1000. It had stellar presentations and I will never forget the keynote presentation by Dr. Judah Folkman who talked about how the Institutional Review Board at his university (Harvard), instead of doing it's usual rubber stamp bureaucratic handling of a research protocol, made recommendations to the scientist that actually lead to the permanent end of a terminal illness that affected kids. I digress. What I mean is, unless you are paying the VIP price of over $8000 dollars, you might get a valuable experience without feeling like you've been robbed at this conference.

And that VIP experience made me think of a TV program I was watching the other day - more and more digression but this has an eHealth element - CPAC channel actually, which is a dedicated Canadian politics channel, that featured a live broadcast from the United Nations on Maternal Health. On the same panel with our Prime Minister Stephen Harper was Melinda Gates. Melinda spoke about how she personally observed how simple cell phone and text messaging used by women in Kenya/Tanzania was leading to all kinds of health improvements. Exactly! It is Communications Technology that is needed, as well as the vaccines and the mosquito nets. There is your eHealth element.

But what this made me also think about - and there is no eHealth dimension to this really (except maybe the Science fiction movie Elysium again - is the book I am reading "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Eveyrone Else" by Chrystia Freeland. Maybe I thought, the Future Med conference is one of those Davos / TED / Gilded Age kind of meeting places on the Global circuit. Perhaps not, but digression will now cease.