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Digital medicine? High-tech health care on the way

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"We still rely on desktop computers and pagers. The NHS has more functioning fax machines that the rest of industry in Britain put together," he said. "Digital health is the idea that we use mobile phones and tablet devices to make health care delivery more effective and cost effective."

Saving lives

And it goes beyond communication, with Kelsey highlighting that technology can help reduce the thousands of avoidable deaths recorded by the NHS each year: "It is quite genuinely about saving lives."

One key way of doing this is by tracking diseases digitally. Patients have been monitoring their blood pressure or blood-sugar levels at home for some time now, this data can be automatically synced to smartphones and doctors' databases. Glooko, for instance, is an app which allows users with diabetes to download their blood glucose readings to their smartphones, and share it with their health care team.

It's not just small start-ups getting in on the act. Samsung and Apple are also offering health-tracking apps, with Apple Health allowing users to log and keep track of cholesterol readings, blood work data and more.

"There are dozens of companies who are trying to do things directly with the consumer - almost taking doctors out of the equation," King said. "They're offering apps which allow people to manage their diabetes without ever having to go to a hospital unless things go dramatically wrong."

Risky business?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has led to some concerns about the potential consequences of "taking doctors out of the equation".

Bleddyn Rees, head of health care at law firm Wragge Lawrence Graham, highlighted concerns about the accuracy of healthtech devices. Generally, even if you provide doctors with data collected from such a device, they will repeat the test.

Read MoreThe future of medicine means part human, part computer

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Digital medicine? High-tech health care on the way

Cross border health care inquiry comes to Hereford

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CROSS-border health care is on the agenda as a special Welsh Affairs inquiry rolls into Hereford next month.

In July, the Hereford Times revealed the Wye Valley NHS Trust has to find around 12 million a year to cover the cost of Welsh patients who cant go home because care packages arent in place.

Last year, when the Hereford Times highlighted the postcode lottery that pushed NHS patients on the Herefordshire side of the border into NHS Wales for treatment, the row went all the way to parliament.

As a result, the Welsh Affairs Committee inquiry into cross-border health care is coming to Hereford and a venue yet to be confirmed on Monday, November 24.

The committee is looking to take evidence from patients, medical professionals and social care practitioners.

The five years since the committee last examined the issue in 2009 have seen an increasing divergence between the healthcare systems of England and Wales, which has implications for patients in border areas.

In April last year, NHS Wales and the NHS Commissioning Board (CB) England agreed a Protocol for Cross-border Healthcare Services but it is not clear how well this has been functioning to date.

The Silk Commission has also made recommendations to improve cross-border health delivery, and the Government is preparing its response.

The Committee is inviting written evidence on some, or all, of the following issues:

* The impact of the increasing policy divergence in the health systems of England and Wales on cross-border healthcare services, and on medical practitioners and patients in border regions in England and Wales.

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Cross border health care inquiry comes to Hereford

Looking at early 1900s health care in a different light

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Even a little light reading about what Sir Wilfred Grenfell found in his travels around the northern end of the province a century ago paints a picture of a bleak existence, particularly when it comes to the health of the people living there. But a talk given at a symposium at The Rooms during the weekend called 100 years of the international Grenfell association and the delivery of healthcare in Newfoundland and Labrador looked at whether the situation was truly that bad.

MUN medical historian Jim Connor didnt try to paint a picture of a health-care paradise, but he raised some evidence that perhaps things were alright in our end of the world.

You have to understand things in the context of (their) time, Connor said.

Comparing the pre-Confederation health care to todays wouldnt paint an accurate picture. But comparing it to that of other larger areas during the same period does offer some surprising insight.

Grenfells hospital on the Northern Peninsula brought people from all over the island who had certain health needs, although the majority treated did come from the region. Typically, any patient who was admitted stayed for 30 days and, according to Connors, that is comparable to if you stayed elsewhere in the U.S. or U.K. during that period.

At Grenfells hospital, you sometimes also ended up helping to run the place as you recovered. But the conditions for which you could be admitted ran the full spectrum of ailments, much as you would find available in other hospitals.

This question of infectious disease, tuberculosis, malnutrition all get rolled into a very, very bad picture of poor health, Connor said.

Surprisingly, iridium treatments werent unheard of during Grenfells time here up through the pre-Confederation 1900s. The only place on the island where you could get the treatment for cancer was in St. Anthony, Connor said.

Infection played a large role in ending many peoples lives. The age of antibiotics was close, but not yet a reality. Tuberculosis was also an ordeal. Orthopedic surgeries were very common as many accidents happened on boats.

This (hospital) was a busy place, said Connor.

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Looking at early 1900s health care in a different light

Incompetent Leaders – 2nd Health Care Worker Tests Positive For Ebola At Dallas Hospital – Video

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Incompetent Leaders - 2nd Health Care Worker Tests Positive For Ebola At Dallas Hospital
Incompetent Leaders 2nd Hospital Health Care Worker Tests Positive For Ebola At Dallas Hospital Second Health Care Worker Tests Positive For Ebola At Dallas ...

By: Charles Walton

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Incompetent Leaders - 2nd Health Care Worker Tests Positive For Ebola At Dallas Hospital - Video

Mercy Health saves $1.2 million by moving to the cloud

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Health-care provider saved money by migrating two data centres into Dimension Data hybrid cloud

Victorian-based health care provider Mercy Health has saved an estimated $1.2 million following the migration of production workloads into a hybrid cloud environment.

Mercy Health CIO Dmitri Mirvis said the cost savings resulted from not having to upgrade aging servers and IT infrastructure. The health provider was running two physical data centres in Melbourne and Sydney.

I joined Mercy Health at the end of 2012 and I performed a review of the situation in our IT space. It was obvious that a lot of infrastructure was crumbling and was getting in the way of us implementing new systems, he said.

The majority of Mercy Healths servers were seven years' old. It was also running older versions of system software like Windows Server 2003.

Instead of looking at service improvements, most of my infrastructure team was spending their time juggling pieces of hardware, said Mirvis.

It was clear that we had to build our technical foundation as the first step of IT strategy. The way forward would be to go to the cloud. I was fairly comfortable with the cloud concept because in my previous job, I was exposed to utility computing as it was called in the early 2000s which had similar principals to the cloud.

After going to tender, the health provider selected Dimension Data. In June 2014, the vendor completed a nine-month migration of Mercy Healths entire data centre environment to the cloud, providing the organisation with improved agility, reliability and operating efficiencies.

Mercy Health now uses Dimension Datas Melbourne managed cloud platform (MCP) for production workloads and the vendors Sydney MCP as its disaster recovery site.

According to Mirvis, it chose Dimension Data as they were a good match for a mid-size organisation like Mercy Health. The health care provider has 5500 staff and runs 31 sites across Australia.

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Mercy Health saves $1.2 million by moving to the cloud

Cruise ship bearing quarantined health care worker returns to port

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Galveston, Texas A Texas-based cruise ship carrying a Dallas health care worker who is being monitored for signs of Ebola returned to port early Sunday, company officials said.

The unidentified woman who is being monitored disembarked the Carnival Magic with her husband shortly after the ship returned to Galveston, Texas, about 6 a.m. EDT, said Vicky Rey, vice president of guest care for Carnival Cruise Lines. Rey said the couple drove themselves home, but offered no further details.

Company and federal officials have said the woman being monitored for Ebola poses no risk because she has shown no symptoms and has voluntarily self-quarantined.

Petty Officer Andy Kendrick told The Associated Press that a Coast Guard crew flew in a helicopter Saturday to meet the Carnival Magic and retrieved a blood sample from the woman. He said the blood sample was taken to a state lab in Austin for processing.

Kendrick had no further details about how the sample was taken. He said the decision to take the sample was made in coordination with the federal, state and local health authorities.

Obama administration officials said the passenger handled a lab specimen from Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola who died at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital earlier this month. Officials said the woman poses no risk because she has shown no signs of illness for 19 days and has voluntarily self-quarantined on the cruise ship.

US officials had been seeking ways to return the woman and her husband to the US before the ship completes its cruise on Sunday.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that when the woman left the US on the cruise ship from Galveston, Texas, on Oct. 12 health officials were requiring only self-monitoring.

Carnival Cruise Lines said in a statement that the woman, a lab supervisor, remained in isolation "and is not deemed to be a risk to any guests or crew."

"We are in close contact with the CDC, and at this time it has been determined that the appropriate course of action is to simply keep the guest in isolation on board," the statement said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Cruise ship bearing quarantined health care worker returns to port

Cruise Ship Carrying Health Worker Monitored for Ebola Returns

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Passengers on a cruise ship carrying a Dallas health care worker who handled specimens of an Ebola-infected patient expressed mixed feelings today after arriving at the Port of Galveston in Texas.

The Carnival Magic reached the port about 5 a.m. The health care worker and her travel partner were allowed to disembark with restrictions, according to the Galveston County Health Department.

The health care worker had been self-quarantined on the ship and hasn't shown signs of the virus for 19 days, officials said.

One passenger on the ship, Chris Perry, said the experience reminded him of the AIDS scare in the late 1980s, "Where people were just fearful of anybody around it."

"Outside of that, you know, once everybody kind of started understanding, it wasn't that big of a deal," Perry said.

Another passenger, John Cascio, said he was not too concerned.

"I really wasn't worried about it," Cascio said. "I knew they would take care of what's supposed to be taken care of."

But one passenger who chose to speak anonymously had some concerns.

"I was worried because if she did have Ebola, you'd be quarantined on the boat," the passenger said.

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Cruise Ship Carrying Health Worker Monitored for Ebola Returns

Second Health Care Worker Who Cared For Thomas Eric Duncan Has Tested Positive For Ebola – Video

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Second Health Care Worker Who Cared For Thomas Eric Duncan Has Tested Positive For Ebola
http://www.dailyrx.com/new-ebola-case-dallas-has-health-officials-working-identify-potential-contacts Four days after Dallas nurse Nina Pham tested positive for Ebola, a second health care...

By: dailyRx

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Second Health Care Worker Who Cared For Thomas Eric Duncan Has Tested Positive For Ebola - Video


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