Featured Post

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 Research Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research Ethics. 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









Friday, September 1, 2017

NIH’s All of Us Research Issues Initial Research Protocol

NIH’s All of Us Research Issues Initial Research Protocol

August 8, 2017
by Heather Landi
The National Institute of Health’s All of Us Research Program, previously called the Precision Medicine Initiative, released its initial research protocol, or research plan.
The All of Us Research Program’s 61-page protocol includes information on consent forms, the ethical issues associated with the project and explanations for how participants will be able to provide secure access to their electronic health records (EHRs).

The goal of the All of Us Research Program is to gather health-related information from one million or more diverse participants to detect association between genetic and environmental exposures and a wide variety of health outcomes.

The NIH states that longitudinal tracking of health outcomes through EHRs is an important component of the program. Through a consenting process, participants will be asked to authorize linkage of their EHR information. EHR data may be sent directly by the participant’s health care providers to the DRC or sent by the participant to the program through Sync for Science.

Access to EHR data will be repeated regularly throughout the life of the program. The initial data types to be included are demographics, visits, diagnoses, procedures, medications, laboratory tests, and vital signs, but may be expanded to all parts of the EHR, including health care provider notes. The feed may include mental health data, HIV status, substance abuse and alcohol data, and genomic information stored in the EHR

Participants may need to complete and sign a separate informed consent module to authorize access to their complete EHRs.

“We will create an informatics infrastructure to clean and standardize data from disparate EHR systems across the United States; this broadly applicable system will be a key contribution of the All of Us Research Program to health informatics research efforts nationwide. For participants enrolled by their health care provider organization, the site will extract data from the participant’s EHR, format it according to the DRC’s data model (based on the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership [OMOP] Common Data Model version 5, and transfer it to the DRC using secure protocols,” NIH stated in a press release.
And, the NIH states that although obtaining EHR data from direct volunteers presents unique challenges, early pilot studies have demonstrated feasibility of such an approach. “For example, the Sync for Science (S4S) project launched by NIH and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is creating a technology that aims to make it easy and safe for people to securely share their EHR data for research. S4S has been adopted by the All of Us Research Program and initially will be enabled in a small pilot for DV participants at S4S-enabled direct volunteer sites,” the NIH states.

All of Us Research Program direct volunteer participants who have enrolled at one of these pilot sites will be able to sign into their healthcare provider’s patient portal using the S4S workflow and authorize sharing their EHR data with the program. Their health care provider’s system will provide a secure application program interface (API), which is used by the research program, rather than the provider sending out data, and transmitted to the Us of All Research program.

And, NIH notes that this is just the first version of its protocol. In future versions, NIH intends to include plans to pilot test wearable devices for real-time data collection.
Get the latest information on EHR and attend other valuable sessions at this two-day Summit providing healthcare leaders with educational content, insightful debate and dialogue on the future of healthcare and technology.

Learn More

Monday, February 29, 2016

BlueCloud clinical research informatics


I got this email from Dr. Greg Koski and the ACRES group the other day.  Dr. Koski is working in area which I have alluded to in a few previous blog posts on clinical research informatics.


ACRES Announces Second Phase of Collaborative IT Platform to Support Clinical Research
Cambridge, MA -- The Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES) announces a major advance toward a shared, open information technology platform for all-user integration across the biomedical research enterprise.   

 Follow us on Twitter @acresglobal
The Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES), the global public-interest collaboration building a comprehensive system to transform clinical research, today announced a major second step toward full implementation of a multi-stakeholder shared information technology platform.
Technology solutions to enhance clinical trial performance are multiplying rapidly, but their usefulness is limited by their lack of connectivity and inter-operability. The new platform, dubbed Apollo, provides a shared infrastructure to support the functional integration of existing technologies, including electronic health records (EHRs), electronic data capture (EDC) systems and clinical trial management systems (CTMS), and to enable data exchange and aggregation critical for development and implementation of “big data” analytics essential for next-generation methods for remote monitoring and auditing, real-time pharmacovigilance, and continuous quality improvement enterprise-wide. 

The first phase of the ACRES global IT platform, built on the BlueCloud® 2.0 Networking Technology developed by ACRES’ Austin-based strategic ally HealthCarePoint, provided a common platform for users worldwide to share vital research study documents, including training documentation and verifiable professional credentials essential for study start-up. 

With nearly 1,000,000 current member-users in healthcare, research, and industry globally, the BlueCloud® is already benefiting sponsors, CROs, investigators, research sites, regulatory agencies and ethics committees worldwide. Now, the second phase of this global collaborative platform, spearheaded by ACRES strategic partner HealthIDx, includes initial roll-out of a federated trust framework for secure enterprise-wide identity management and single sign-on access to multiple end-user applications on the ACRES Apollo platform. Apollo utilizes a proven cloud-based integration platform—originally developed by Detroit-based Covisint to support the complex supply chain, distribution and marketing logistics of the automotive industry—to enable seamless connectivity and inter-operability of multiple applications across the industry’s diverse stakeholders, including sites, sponsors, CRO/SMOs, regulatory agencies and supply chain providers and ethics committees.
“We are delighted to be working with ACRES and its many allies in this important effort,” said J. Scott Lowry, Founder and CEO of HealthIDx. “In this next phase, which includes secure cloud-based data exchange, aggregation, visualization, and analysis, we are addressing critical challenges of security, multi-user identity management, and fine-grain access control.” Lowry further noted that several technology applications, including the BlueCloud®, have been integrated via open APIs onto the ACRES Apollo platform and more such integrations are planned, including platforms of other organizations, thereby extending their power, connectedness and effectiveness. 

“The ability to acquire and exchange data seamlessly among a wide array of EHR, EDC and CTMS platforms within a secure cloud-based environment and move them into shared data vaults where they can be used in real-time will support clinical research performance, quality, safety and oversight as never before,” said Greg Koski, ACRES co-founder and CEO. “Apollo provides the ability to achieve true connectivity among the many applications already in use, as well as new applications being developed, across the entire drug development and clinical trials endeavor, saving time and money for all, while creating innovative opportunities for creativity, efficiency and effectiveness.” 

“This is a collaborative effort,” added ACRES COO Matt Whalen. “Rather than create a proprietary platform, ACRES is deploying a robust integration platform that can connect all stakeholders, whatever applications they currently use, in a timely and cost-effective manner. The power of this approach lies in what can be done through the application of soft systems engineering and the use of standards developed by organizations like OASIS, ICE, CDISC, GS1 and SAFE Biopharma.” 

The Apollo platform also incorporates an “app store” to take advantage of the several technologies and point solution capabilities available to users, working in parallel with second-level integrations of EHR, EDC, CTMS and data management systems. A live demonstration of the Apollo’s robust systems capabilities for multiple high-value use-cases is planned in the second quarter of 2016. Click here to obtain a diagram of the ACRES Global System supported by the Apollo platform or to submit information regarding integration of your application into the system.
---
ACRES Press Release Logo - smallestThe Alliance for Clinical Research and Excellence (ACRES) is a non-profit leveraging the expertise of stakeholders worldwide to collaboratively build a shared global system for clinical trials that are responsibly conducted according to the highest standards of safety, quality and efficiency, based in principles of Accountable Research™. Adapting lessons from industries that have successfully implemented principles of systems and safety engineering, this global system will employ integrated information technologies as well as interoperable standards, policies and practices to enhance clinical research safety, quality and efficiency worldwide. For more information, please contact Dr. Mary F. Tobin or call +1 (844) 60-ACRES (22737).
iiBIG_smalliiBIG (International Institute for Business Information & Growth LLC) is a boutique conference organization dedicated to producing business-to-business conferences and seminars for senior-level executives in three (3) business verticals: (1) Financial services/Investment; (2) IT/Cloud technology; and, (3) Life sciences/Clinical research sectors. We provide learning and networking settings for BIG thinkers – those who occupy the highest levels in their companies and organizations. iiBIG is also proud to be an ACRES Strategic Ally.

Anti-SPAM Policy: iiBIG does not support or condone SPAM. This information is provided as a B2B service to our clients and their counterparts to assist and facilitate learning, networking and business development opportunities. To be removed from future e-mail messages, please: Opt-Out.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Clinical Research Informatics

American Medical Informatics Association
https://www.amia.org/applications-informatics/clinical-research-informatics

Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network:
 http://cpcssn.ca/

IRB Class Model
 http://irb-dam.bmi.utah.edu/v1/index.htm?goto=3:1:181



Clinical research informatics: a conceptual perspective


Abstract

Clinical research informatics is the rapidly evolving sub-discipline within biomedical informatics that focuses on developing new informatics theories, tools, and solutions to accelerate the full translational continuum: basic research to clinical trials (T1), clinical trials to academic health center practice (T2), diffusion and implementation to community practice (T3), and ‘real world’ outcomes (T4). We present a conceptual model based on an informatics-enabled clinical research workflow, integration across heterogeneous data sources, and core informatics tools and platforms. We use this conceptual model to highlight 18 new articles in the JAMIA special issue on clinical research informatics.
Keywords: Clinical research informatics, clinical and translational research, visualization of data and knowledge, knowledge representations, methods for integration of information from disparate sources, data models, data exchange, knowledge bases, knowledge acquisition, knowledge acquisition and knowledge management

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Ethics boards for Google/Deepmind: The end of computer programming?

Hat tip to the folks on the LinkedIn CAREB group who posted this story from Forbes "Inside Google's Mysterious Ethics Board". OK. Here is my initial impression. The ethics surrounding new technology is becoming as serious as stem cell bioethics. One of the authors of Forbes article also contributes to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology - appropriately.

It was actually an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company that Google bought called Deepmind, that insisted on the technology ethics board as a condition of the sale. More about the founder of that company, Demis Hassabis is interesting to follow. This "technology ethics board" is not, I think, at all the same as an Institutional Review Board, or Research Ethics Board. It is more of an internal ethics review committee, probably examining agile developments of new technology. Might just be corporate whitewash, or it might actually be driven by social and moral responsibility, as well as a dash of liability insurance, to paraphrase the IEET author.

Deepmind, which has the most minimalistic website I have ever seen, is advancing AI into computers that can learn and program themselves. Must be the vanguard to the end of programming, as current Brain research is predicting. Try reading this paper about how Deepmind programmed a computer to win Atari games "Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning". Understand now why programming might come to an end when computers learn how to program themselves?

What possible relevance could this have for ehealth, as is the primary purpose of this blog? Well, as this article on Recode says about the founder of Deepmind: "(Demis) Hassabis has closely studied how the brain functions — particularly the hippocampus, which is associated with memory — and worked on algorithms that closely model these natural processes." Apparently, the Journal Science says this research was one of the top scientific breakthroughs one year (this from Wikipedia):

Hassabis then left the video game industry, switching to cognitive neuroscience. Working in the field of autobiographical memory and amnesia he authored several influential papers.[14] The paper argued that patients with damage to their hippocampus, known to cause amnesia, were also unable to imagine themselves in new experiences. Importantly this established a link between the constructive process of imagination and the reconstructive process of episodic memory recall. Based on these findings and a follow-up fMRI study,[15] Hassabis developed his ideas into a new theoretical account of the episodic memory system identifying scene construction, the generation and online maintenance of a complex and coherent scene, as a key process underlying both memory recall and imagination.[16] This work was widely covered in the mainstream media[17] and was listed in the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year (at number 9) in any field by the journal Science.[1

Still, that really isn't about health informatics really. Sorry. Except if the ethics of new technology in health and medicine is important? There is a real intersection I believe between health informatics and health technology assessment.








Friday, January 3, 2014

Research Ethics Board Decision Making Maximers or Satificers

A fellow McMaster eHealth M.Sc. graduate, Yervant Terzian, has an interesting post on his blog "Yervant's Musings: Healthcare Through a Patient's Lens". He sent me an email asking what I thought because I attended the same conference of research ethics board professionals - the Canadian Association of Research Ethics Boards (CAREB). Yervant is now a community member of a research ethics board and I would like to welcome him to my world! I have been a research ethics board administrative professional for coming up to 14 continuous years.

Here is the link to Yervant's post:
http://yterzian.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/are-reb-members-maximizers-or-satisficers-ethics/

The talk given by Dr. Ivor Pritchard was aimed at REB professionals. Dr. Pritchord is well known in US bioethics and research ethics professional organizations (acting director of US Human Health Services Office of Human Research Protections) , but has been invited to speak at Canadian REB conferences before.  I believe that he holds a PhD in Philosophy. His theory revolves around research on decision making aiming to illustrate how REB members make decisions when they review research projects for clearance. I don't believe the basis of the talk was on his own research into this subject though I may be wrong.

Let me first say that I think there needs to be more research on REBs - on all aspects of it. Research by Dr. Will van den Hoonaard on Canadian REBs was very valuable on describing the kinds of REB cultures that exist in Canada, as well as arguing how a biomedical basis formed the basis for the ethics policies - not easily extended to social science and qualitative research. There has been some research by Rachel Zand, current CAREB president, on how to educate, train and retain REB members. My colleague Dr. Brian Detlor and I presented on own research on REB information systems used by Canadian REBs at this very same conference. We have just recently posted the results on our website <here> but this will also be posted to the CAREB website this month I am told.

I agree with Yervant that the Maximizer vs Satisficer notion on REB decision making might not be the best way to describe the behaviour of REB members because it comes from a consumer behaviour model. Members of REBs are mostly volunteers, and some ethics board gurus have argued that unpaid volunteer membership on REBs is the only way to preserve ethical integrity in this work. True though, that REB members need incentives to do the ever increasing work load. True though, that altruism alone ought to be the guiding light for contributing to the integrity of research. True it is, that the behavioural effectiveness of REB members is needed more often than the efficiency of REB systems.

Applying an economic "Rational Choice Theory" to REB metrics is one way to approach an analysis for insight. However, I think the real effectiveness for this line of reasoning is more applicable for the ethics of healthcare resource allocation, which is the subject of extensive bioethical debate. Rational choice, as well as maximizers and satisficers, can be applied there, and the scenarios are very similar. Making decisions for how healthcare resources can be allocated, especially in underdeveloped countries, is heart breaking at the best of times. Should one patient be allowed a million dollar support system for an extremely rare condition when the same money can be allocated to improve the quality of life for thousands of others? Closer to home, why is physiotherapy not covered by Ontario health insurance? Why are dental services not covered? etc.

The scenarios for decision making used in our break out groups at the conference that Dr. Pritchard presented and that Yervant discusses are life and death decision scenarios. Not all REBs review research that involves life or death risks. Mostly it is medical REBs that review clinical trials involving experimental drugs for persons with terminal or chronic illness that need to decide on risks of living or dying. The risks in social science and qualitative or behavioural research are not so overtly black or white or of that nature.

Another way to look at this is that REB members as Maximizers are more likely to engage in "ethics creep" - spending a disproportionate amount of time on the minutiae of a protocol instead of the major issues. On the other hand, it would be good to have Maximizers when there are research proposals that do have major issues. For the 90% of social behavioural research reviewed by social science/qualitiatve/behavioural REBs, being a Satisficer is the way to go, because this 90% will be research that is not greater than minimal risk, or risk experienced by participants in their everyday life. Ethics review can be done on a Satisficers'  "it is good enough" basis, even though it is not desirable to do so for the purposes of maintaining high academic standards of research quality.

Yervant proposes a "Traits" approach to examining how REB Members make decisions in the review of ethics applications. Perhaps that might be interesting, but I am not sure how it would improve the effectiveness of REB review. Would REB administrators start to recruit new members based on certain "traits"?

The book You Are What You Choose by Scott De Marchi and James T. Hamilton introduces the TRAITS model and identifies 6 categories for an individual’s decision-making process: Time, Information, meToo, Altruism, Stickiness, and Risk

Certainly, we don't want REB members who will try to exert their own agendas, biases, etc., or who would otherwise be disruptive at meetings, or totally non-present wrapped in a cocoon of silence.  In fact, REB members are assigned research ethics applications to review based on their disciplinary expertise first of all, and secondly, according to known personal interests or other areas of knowledge that they might possess. A theory of "Expert Systems" might also be applicable here in case REB members are ever replaced with IBM Watson type systems.

Anyway, I could probably write more like this for a while, but the relevance for eHealth is drifting away. Thanks very much Yervant for applying your insights to the work of REBs!









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.


Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Models for Information System Success for eHealth?

I am doing some research on electronic systems used by Research Ethics Boards in Canada. One of the models we are using to determine if systems are liked by ethics boards and their respective research communities is the DeLone and McLean model. This model has been used a lot in information systems success studies and there is a lot of literature on it.

What there is not a lot of (to my knowledge), is how the model can be applied to eHealth applications. A little bit of searching on the internet and I discovered it has been used by the eHealth people at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and I think it is very interesting what they have done. Roughly expressed by them is a Benefits Evaluation model. The team at UVic has applied this to evaluating Canada Health Infoway projects, called the Infoway BE Framework. Coincidentally I recently read a CBC article that Infoway had saved a billionaire dollars by implementing Electronic Medical Record systems for physicians in Canada. After reading some of the comments by the public on the CBC website for this story, I reminded again of the old adage that the Return on Investment in healthcare is improve in quality of life.









 

E-health records saved medical system $1.3B in 6 years

Use of electronic records more than doubled from 2006-2012, from 23% to 56%

Posted: Apr 22, 2013 11:04 AM ET

Last Updated: Apr 22, 2013 4:22 PM ET

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq (right), seen with Richard Alvarez, CEO of Canada Health Infoway in 2009, announced $500 million in funding four years ago to improve the implementation of electronic medical record systems, but the funding was held back for a year until the government received more information about how it would be spent. Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq (right), seen with Richard Alvarez, CEO of Canada Health Infoway in 2009, announced $500 million in funding four years ago to improve the implementation of electronic medical record systems, but the funding was held back for a year until the government received more information about how it would be spent. (Handout/Health Canada/Canadian Press)


Facebook

76


Twitter

61


Share

137


Email

A study done for Canada Health Infoway, the federally funded organization set up to monitor and improve the use of information technology across Canada's health care system, has found that increased use of electronic medical health records has saved $1.3 billion over the last six years.
The study by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) examined the switch to electronic medical records (EMR) by family doctors from across Canada between 2006 and 2012 and found:
  • $800 million in administrative efficiencies (less time by staff pulling and filing charts or processing finding lab test results, less time by doctors reading and maintaining paper files).
  • $584 million in health system benefits (reduced duplicate diagnostic testing, reduced adverse drug events).
  • Improved chronic disease management and illness prevention (higher mammogram screening rates, higher pneumonia and flu vaccination rates).
  • Improved communication amongst care providers and with patients (less time spent repeating patient histories among care providers, electronic alerts prompting follow-up care for things like medication recalls.)
The study's methodology included a review of current research, national survey and cost data and interviews.
"In some cases, it's the sum of a lot of little things, " said Jennifer Zelmer, senior vice-president with Canada Health Infoway.
"When you're using electronic medical records, staff in a medical practice tend to spend less time … pulling charts, and they're able to use that time for clinical services," she added. "
And when you add that up those kinds of efficiencies, both in terms of chart pulls and in terms of tracking down test results, actually the value of that is quite significant."
The study's findings don't surprise Stephen McLaren, a family physician in Markham, Ontario. He says many patients already understand the efficiency of an electronic record, especially if their paper record or test results were ever misplaced.
"Their visit with their provider is a very inefficient, unproductive visit and very often means you have to come back," Dr. McLaren said.
McLaren says there's also better treatment of chronic illness because electronic medical records allow a doctor to easily spot trends in a patient's tests, over time.
"In the paper world, you have to flip through pages and pages and pages, hoping to catch onto a trend if there was one there to see."

Use of electronic records still growing

Despite the growing use of electronic medical records, only 56 per cent of patients have one. McLaren says their use continues to grow, as more and more patients ask for them.
Meanwhile, he says the next big step in this area is to link up health care institutions — hospitals, labs, nursing homes, and doctors offices — so that a patient's information can be shared more easily, while still protecting the privacy of the data.
In a press release, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq encouraged provinces, territories and other stakeholders to keep working to increase the adoption of electronic medical records and other e-health technologies "so that Canadians can benefit from a better integrated health care delivery system," added Minister Aglukkaq.
"We expect significant additional gains as adoption grows, use matures, and connections to other care settings expand," said Richard Alvarez, Canada Health Infoway's president and CEO, in the same release.
Canada Health Infoway had set a target for half of Canadians to have electronic health records by the end of 2010. The federal government delayed $500 million in funding for the agency by one year, seeking more information about how the contribution would be spent.
A 2009 report from the federal auditor general found contracting and reporting problems in early efforts to move more Canadian health records online.



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:

  • 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

The view from a west-facing window inside the media center of the new Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School, which opens in the fall.
The view from a west-facing window inside the media center of the new Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School, which opens in the fall.


photo
Evergreen Public Schools Director of Facilities Susan Steinbrenner, left, and Public Information Specialist Kathryn Garcia-Stackpole tour the new Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School, the only such school in the state.
photo
Henrietta Lacks' cancerous cells were harvested without her knowledge and cultured for medical research to create an immortal cell line. Her story was told in the nonfiction book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Portland author Rebecca Skloot. HeLa High is the first school building in the nation to be named for her.
photo
Evergreen Public Schools spokeswoman Carol Fenstermacher stands inside the school's simulated hospital nursing station, where students will get hands-on, real-world experience on their way to pursuing careers in health care.
MAP
Map data ©2013 Google - Terms of Use

Map
Hybrid

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.