Just thought y’all would like this video of the spiral over Australia caused by the Falcon 9 second stage booster. This really shows you the motion of the spin, as well as the bulk motion of the object across the sky; it moves just as you’d expect something in orbit to move. Shocking, I know.
Apparently, a lot of people saw it; Aussies must be early risers. Man, I’d love to see something like this. So cool.
Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to The Plane Talking blog.
Oh, it’s so hard to maintain my long-standing feud with Stephen Colbert when he does stuff like this.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Failure to Launch – Atlantis Crew | ||||
| http://www.colbertnation.com | ||||
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I suppose I could take him to task for saying Obama is canceling the manned space program — sigh — but even with that this is still a terrific clip. And I’m over my Colbert obsession anyway. I have new sights to set… Craigy? Craig? Oh, Craiiiigggg…?
"Hacking for Humanity", OSTP
"Hacking for Humanity"--never thought you'd hear that phrase, right? Well, Google, Microsoft, NASA, The World Bank, and Yahoo! have joined forces to turn that into a reality and bring us Random Hacks of Kindness, an initiative that brings together the sustainable development, disaster risk management, and software developer communities to solve real-world problems with technology."
Keith's note: Nice idea. Sounds like a worthy cause. I have always wanted to see how one of these events works. Too bad no one outside of a small group of digerati at NASA knew about it until the last minute. This notice was posted at OSTP's blog at 5:05 pm on 3 June 2010 regarding an event that runs from 5-6 June. That's little more than 36 hours notice. On the event link referenced by the OSTP posting they make mention of a reception at the State Department on 4 June that required registration on 31 May i.e. 4 days prior to the first official posting at OSTP. In other words, only a select few even knew about this event. And even if you saw this posting at OSTP and followed the subsequent link to the event registration page you'd need a time machine in order to attend the reception.
In addition, there is no mention of this event at NASA's main home page, news page, NASA CIO page, NASA IPP, Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, International and Interagency Relations, Office of the Chief Technologist, etc. even though CIO and CTO staff at NASA HQ and several field centers are participants in the event -- and all of these offices would certainly seem to have some interest in an event with the State Department, OSTP, and the World Bank - one with a global outreach context. Yet if you go to the RHOK website you see NASA's logo.
Clearly, based on OSTP's posting and the NASA branding on the RHOK website, this is an activity officially sanctioned by NASA. Yet no one at the agency seems to have been at all interested in getting people outside a small circle of usual suspects to participate. Yet another example of closed openness and minimal transparency at NASA. When this sort of stealth planning is standard fare at NASA, how the agency ever expects to practice what they preach with regard to being "open" and "responsive" to the public simply escapes me.
This isn't the first time I've blogged about earthquakes and the major infrastructure damage they can cause. But in light of the recent catastrophes in Haiti, Italy, Chile, and elsewhere, many engineers and designers feel that reeducating themselves on earthquake-resistant engineering has become mis
Despite all the bad publicity about Toyota's quality, the Japanese automaker's models are ranked among the top three cars in 10 of the 19 categories on the J.D. Power 2010 Vehicle Dependability Survey. The study asks owners of cars purchased new in 2007 to identify problems that have arisen during t
The complex sequencing of thousands of microbial genomic DNA strands may be getting a faster and cheaper tech upgrade, thanks to a new QC tool featured in this embedded video. The tool, known as the Gene Prediction Improvement Pipeline or GenePRIMP, identifies errors in the sequencing process, allo
How a Silly Phone for Teens Reveals Microsoft's Plan for Us All Wired News The KIN phone's list of missing features is too long to list here, but highlights include no calendar, no instant message, and unable to upload photos to ... |
(HealthDay News) -- Brain development in very young boys with fragile X syndrome differs from that in boys without the genetic disorder, a new study has found.
Fragile X syndrome, which is triggered by a mutation in a gene on the X chromosome, is the leading cause of inherited intellectual disability and autism. Though the syndrome affects about one in every 4,000 people, males with the disorder experience more significant symptoms than females.
U.S. researchers used high-resolution MRI to monitor long-term changes that differentiated the brain anatomy of 41 boys with fragile X syndrome and a control group of 21 healthy boys and seven other children who were experiencing developmental delays not caused by fragile X syndrome. Read more...
Definiens is proud to announce the First International Definiens Symposium in Madrid, Spain.
When: October 7?8, 2010
Where: CNIC ? Melchor Fernández Almagro, 3, 28029 Madrid, España.
The annual Definiens Symposium serves as the premier forum for developers and users of the Definiens image analysis platform and applications from around the world to present their latest techniques and research in life science image analysis. Speakers and attendees will attend from international institutions, bio?pharmaceutical companies, industry partners, and the healthcare industry.
The Definiens Symposium 2010 will be the place to exchange the latest ideas related to state of the art image analysis and to meet international experts from the Definiens community. It will be hosted by Dr. María Montoya, CNIC.
Sessions will include:
? Digital Pathology Image Analysis
? Cell, Confocal, and Small Animal Image Analysis
? The Developer Perspective: Life Science Image Analysis Solution Strategies
Definiens is now accepting applications for speakers. Participate in the Definiens Symposium 2010 in Madrid alongside image analysis thought leaders from industry and academia; and Prof. Gerd Binnig, Nobel Laureate and Founder of Definiens.
Speaking slots are limited. Talks will be 20 minutes in length, followed by a question / answer period. Speakers are encouraged to submit papers for the conference proceedings.
Due Dates:
Speaker Titles and Abstracts Due: June 30, 2010
Submit Title, Abstract, and .PDF of slide deck to:
The Definiens Academy
Email: academy@definiens.com
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to revise the conditions of participation (CoPs) for both hospitals and critical access hospitals to allow a new credentialing and privileging process for physicians and practitioners providing telemedicine services.
The proposed rule, published in the May 26 Federal Register, would apply to all hospitals and critical access hospitals participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
“CMS has become increasingly aware, through outreach efforts and communications with the various stakeholders in the telemedicine community…of the urgent need to revise the CoPs in this area so that access to these vital services may continue in a manner that is both safe and beneficial for patients and is free of unnecessary and duplicative regulatory impediments,” stated the NPRM.
The proposed revisions to the hospital CoPs for the credentialing and privileging of telemedicine physicians and practitioners are contained within two separate CoPs: “Governing body” and “Medical staff.”
According to the NPRM, the governing body CoP would require the hospital’s governing body to ensure that, when telemedicine services are furnished to the hospital’s patients through an agreement with a Medicare-participating hospital (a "distant-site hospital"), the agreement must specify that it is the responsibility of the governing body of the distant-site hospital providing the telemedicine serves to meet the existing requirements in regard to its physician and practitioners who are providing telemedicine services.
“The proposed requirements would allow the governing body of the hospital whose patients are receiving the telemedicine services to grant privileges based on medical staff recommendations[;] a more efficient means of privileging the individual distant-site physicians and practitioners providing the services,” the NPRM stated.
The proposed “medical staff” CoP requirement would provide a basis on which the hospital’s governing body could choose to have its medical staff rely on information furnished by the distant-site hospital when making recommendations on privileges for individual physicians and practitioners providing such services.
“This option would allow the hospital’s medical staff to rely upon the credentialing and privileging decisions of the distant-site hospitals…and not prohibit a medical staff from continuing to perform its own periodic appraisals of telemedicine members of its staff, not would it bar them from continuing to use the traditional credentialing and privileging process required under the current regulations.”
According to the NPRM, the proposed requirements for critical access hospitals are modeled after the hospital requirements with little difference in regulatory language. "[W]e would make a minor change to the critical access hospital CoPs that do not have an equivalent provision in the hospital CoPs," the NPRM said. "We are proposing...a new requirement that would allow the distant-site hospital to evaluate the quality and appropriateness of the diagnosis and treatment furnished by its own staff when providing telemedicine services to the critical access hospital."
CMS will receive public comment on the NPRM until 5:00 pm Eastern Time July 26.
According to a recent Dark Daily story, hospitals, clinical labs and pathology groups will soon adopt location numbers and advise that pathologists and clinical laboratory managers take time to learn about GS1 Global Location Numbers
The GLN system was created by GS1, an international non-profit organization that works to standardize supply chain systems. Remember the familiar UPCs? Universal Product Code (UPC) bar codes were a product of GS1, as were other supply chain innovations.
The goal is to provide a uniform, global system that healthcare suppliers and healthcare purchasers can use to identify physical locations where goods are delivered or where bills and invoices are received. These numbers can help track medical supplies and devices through the supply chain, even to the patient bedside if needed. Another benefit is that GLNs will be used to ensure that invoices and payments go to the correct location.
This actually sounds like a good idea. Anyone who has spent anytime in a hospital knows that often the signage is extremely poor and can be misguiding. Good luck finding loading docks or the appropriate office for shipping or accounts receivable. Ditto for mail rooms. Somehow the gift shop and cashier one can always find.
For hospital based physicians such as pathologists and radiologists, the office address may be a floor designation or building number with little reference to a specific suite number or appropriate directory infomation.
Managers of clinical and pathology laboratories that receive supplies directly from vendors should take steps now to be sure that their facilities are in compliance with the new system. For stand-alone laboratories, the first step is to contact GS1 USA for a prefix and information on how to use the system. For medical laboratories that are part of larger legal entity, such as a hospital, health system or corporation, now would be a good time to discuss with administration whether your laboratory needs a unique identifier.
Very nice collection of pathology images of many diseases and conditions from numerous organ systems at Penn State Hershey College of Medicine with searchable database. Scans up to 40x and one can compare different slides at the same time.
From the FAQ section of website:
What is Neuroinfo?Neuroinfo is a software package which was developed by MicroBrightField, Inc. to provide digital microscopy to intranets and the Internet. It provides a web server, and image server, an embedded database as an integrated package which is easy to customize and extend. The images you see are very large. They were created using a microscope with a motorized mechanism which scans many fields of view, and combines them into a large montage which we call a digital slide. Images may represent as much as 80 Gigabytes of uncompressed image data. The system provides access to any field of view at any magnification from any web browser instantly. The web siteneuroinformatica.com is an example of the functionality that Neuroinfo provides. Neuroinfo features include
How does the Neuroinfo viewer display huge slide files so quickly?Neuroinfo acts as an image server, with a Java-based slide viewer technology to serve ultra-high-resolution images rapidly and interactively on the Web. The viewer requests image data from the server one field of view at a time. As the viewer pans and zooms, additional tiles of the image are transferred. Virtual slides can be extremely large; file sizes of tens, even hundreds of megabytes, are impractical to download for viewing. The Neuroinfo technology stores these large images in a pyramidal file format, which stores multiple resolutions from the original source resolution of the microscope lens used for acquisition, down to a macro view of the entire slide or a thumbnail only a few kb in size. Each resolution level is cut into many small tiles. This enables navigating to any region of the slide at any magnification quickly. Why is a system like Neuroinfo important?The advent of virtual slide technology has allowed for the widespread sharing of information contained on glass microscope slides. This is a significant technological advance, as previously the only way to share information from slides was with photomicrographs that only contained a single field of view at a single magnification. Virtual slide technology allows remote viewers to examine slides with a functionality similar to that of a microscope; users can pan to regions of interest and zoom in and out freely. Advantages to virtual slides include remote access to slides, access to slides without a microscope, and the ability to see macro overviews of slides not attainable with a traditional microscope. However, the virtual slide cannot stand alone. Information about how the slide was prepared is essential to an understanding of the material; for example, information about the stain used, species, organ, scaling information, and orientation of the tissue section is germane to any information that is to be gleaned from examination of the slide. It is necessary is to present the digital slides along with enough detail about what the slide represents to give the viewer the feeling that they are in the 'presence of an expert'. How can Neuroinfo be used in teaching?Neuroinfo can be used to set up teaching web sites for students of histology and pathology, providing not only virtual slides and an interactive web-based viewer, but also information about the slide, instructional notes, links to sources of further information, and annotations overlaid on the slide image. The University of Iowa is using MicroBrightField Technology to present a student with a slide that does not contain any annotations and is asked to explore and interpret the material. The student makes their own annotations to indicate the locations of the diseased regions of the tissue (if there are any.) The teachers can later verify that the student caught all signs of disease. How can Neuroinfo be used in research?Neuroinfo is also a powerful tool for scientific collaboration and cataloguing of slide materials. Remote workgroups can be set up allowing multiple researchers to simultaneously view slide material, add annotations to the slide, and write comments to one another. Using the bioinformatics database that is a part of Neuroinfo, slide material can be quantified, analyzed and compared to other sets of data as a means to support or negate hypotheses about the experimental results contained in the slides. Neuroinfo can be used to create atlases that show the actual tissue at a cellular level, and demark regions that correspond to a controlled nomenclature. Atlases of many more species and variations will soon be available to the scientific community. These atlases can incorporate changes through the developmental stages of a species and side-by-side views of different developmental stages can easily be created. How is your technology any different than the online atlases that exist today?Other atlasing web sites have a wealth of photomicrographs and descriptions. Neuroinfo is unique in the integration of the very-large-image digital microscopy, annotation features, group-oriented exploration and documentation of features and the ability to include additional information including controlled nomenclatures. Our technology can store images that have cellular detail. It doesn't just store one field of view, but an entire slide at full magnification. The contents of Neuroinfo are authored using the web interface by authorized collaborators anywhere on the Internet. Since the entire slide is available the microscopic material can be explored and features discovered in a manner analagous to a traditional microscope. Isn't it true that data, and not images lead to progress in science?Traditionally, yes. A researcher's published data and conclusions are the cornerstone of scientific progress. Neuroinfo enables the sharing of primary data when it is required. A paper in the PDF or HTML format can be created which links from black and white images to the full color full resolution microscopic material. Any question that the researcher was measuring the appropriate cells in the correct region can be conclusively verified. Other researchers with other specialties may notice and quantify phenomena that they see on the slide, adding to the wealth of information in Neuroinfo, and available to the scientific community. The microscopic material becomes the gateway to a wealth of information about a specific region of a brain whether it's at the level of gross anatomy or at the cellular level. Back How does sharing large image sets lead to new discoveries in neuroscience and other research?Quoting the NIH Draft Statement on Sharing Research Data: "There are many reasons to share data from NIH-supported studies. Sharing data reinforces open scientific inquiry, encourages diversity of analysis and opinion, promotes new research, makes possible the testing of new or alternative hypotheses and methods of analysis, supports studies on data collection methods and measurement, facilitates the education of new researchers, enables the exploration of topics not envisioned by the initial investigators, and permits the creation of new data sets when data from multiple sources are combined. By avoiding the duplication of expensive data collection activities, the NIH is able to support more investigators than it could if similar data had to be collected de novo by each applicant." (NIH 2002. NIH announces draft statement on sharing research data. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-02-035.html.) The Report on Neuroinformatics from the Global Science Forum Neuroinformatics Working Group of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (June 2002) states: "A very large number of researchers working on many thousands of projects world-wide are accumulating these data. But measurements made by individual groups in the context of distinct research projects are often difficult to share in a form easily exploited by the rest of the neuroscience community. Journal publications - the current method of sharing data - present results in a highly condensed format of representative data or average values. The community urgently needs a way of sharing primary data." (23. The Report on Neuroinformatics from the Global Science Forum Neuroinformatics Working Group of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (June 2002)) How are Virtual Slides created?The partner technology to Neuroinfo is the Virtual Slice Module in the Neurolucida and Stereo Investigator software products from MicroBrightField. This Virtual Slice module allows for automated image acquisition of an entire microscope slide at any magnification available on the microscope. The software drives the motorized stage to acquire all fields-of-view contained in the region of interest, then seamlessly stitches the fields into a single image montage. Using innovative technology from Zoomify, the images are compressed and stored in the pyramidal format described above. If acquisition systems are not available, MicroBrightField offers slide scanning services. MicroBrightField does not use its own proprietary file formats for its virtual slides; all slide files are industry standard formats viewable by 3rd party software. Can permission to view slides be restricted?Neuroinfo handles authentication and permissions. Permission groups let the designated administrators create groups of users that have permission to view and edit the virtual slides and database. These users can be granted permission on a view-only basis, or can be granted permission to view, edit, and make entries in the database. How is the Neuroinfo database organized?Data about slides, groups of slides, and contributors is stored in a relational database. The database architecture scales to track new kinds of information easily. The information is stored as small chunks of data, each of which correspond to a carefully crafted Definition. The different small chunks of data can be linked to each other to form groups or to one another in any combination, allowing for the creation of rich sets of connected data. All textual data is also indexed for powerful text searching. Example: Adding A Category In order to categorize slides by ethnicity of the subject, then a definition would be created using the web interface for "Ethnicity" and then this could be populated with all the different ethnic groups. Ethnicity would automatically show up on the search page as a filter, and each ethnic group would have a page that shows all of the corresponding slides. If one researcher enters "White" and later another enters "Caucasian", there is an administrative tool to remove the unwanted duplicate, and move all associations to the correct value. There are three distinct types of definitions that Neuroinfo uses for all contents and allows you to create.
What classification scheme do you use to index serial sections?We support any indexing scheme by means of our innovative database structure. If the image represents pixels in an X,Y metric coordinate system, each slide also stores the Z position of the section. Additional stereotaxic parameters and relationship to gross structures are easily specified and immediately available for categorizing and searching. What curatorial mechanism exists to ensure data quality?Every modification of the database updates a timestamp associated with the data. At the moment, we show recently modified database contents in a list on the home page. These can be reviewed and edited by a system administrator, or a collaborator who has editing privileges for the project the data belongs to. Mechanisms such as sending e-mail to a curator whenever data is edited can be provided. Can Neuroinfo provide for the Bioinformatics need for my entire project?Definitions of bioinformatics and neuroinformatics are broad and varied. The central figure in bioinformatics is the biologist, and like a microscope the computer is now an essential tool for the biologist's understanding and research. Neuroinfo's unique capabilities will have a role in the inevitable revolution of access to microscopic material and the understanding of that material over the next decade. Neuroinfo provides the foundation for a rich integration of digital microscopy, metadata necessary for the correct interpretation of the microscopic material, and all analysis results of the microscopic material. Resources from external databases and XML files can easily be incorporated and links to relevant genetics databases can be created. External web sites and mediator applications can be written in almost any programming language to query Neuroinfo using the XML-RPC protocol. What skills do I need to tailor Neuroinfo to my needs?Changing the look of the web pages can be done easily with any html editor. We recommend Dreamweaver from Macromedia. Skills in graphic design are also desirable and can have a dramatic impact on the enthusiasm surrounding your site. Since Neuroinfo provides a simple interface to the SQL database, no database expertise is needed. The Neuroinfo database is seeded with the most common categories likely to be used, including: staining technique, tissue, species, and section plane. New categories can be easily added from the administrative interface, and new items can be added to a category at any time. An innovative feature allows for the combination of redundant entries, so that a structure with several different names can be found with a single search of the database (for example, the word "putamen" can be combined with "lenticular nucleus" and "basal ganglia"). A basic facility with a computer is all that is needed to set up your own custom database. Can I use the Neuroinfo viewer in my own institutional or personal web page?Yes. The viewer can be used with existing web sites. The viewer does require an image server, and there are several methods of integrating resources to enable virtual microscopy on your pages. We provide templates of database access from external web sites written in ASP, and PHP to do text searches, browsing contents by category, and virtual slide viewing and annotation. How do you handle the massive volume of data that these large slides require?One of the largest sets of teaching material that is currently available to anyone in the world is the teaching collection at the University of Iowa. The collection consists of about 650 slides stored in the FlashPIX format which uses JPEG compression internally. The entire collection takes about 70 GB of hard drive space in it's compressed form. In just the last year, the price of a hard drive that can store 70GB of image information has dropped to about $80 US. A high performance web server that uses a RAID array to speed access and provide fault tolerance and salability might cost $3,000. Images are single files, and can be copied from computer to computer just like any other computer file. Is Neuroinfo actively being developed?MicroBrightField, Inc. was recently awarded an NIH SBIR grant which will fund the continued development of Neuroinfo. MicroBrightField's customers drive the priority of new features and we will go out of our way to develop functionality necessary for a particular project. How much does Neuroinfo cost?Neuroinfo is available from MicroBrightField, Inc. at a low one time cost plus a yearly maintenance contract. The cost is very low compared to the cost of having a software developer reinvent the technology. Day to day use of Neuroinfo does not require any technical support staff or programming skills. If you do have a programming staff and would like to extend Neuroinfo for your needs the Neuroinfo database layer makes complex modifications easy. Maintenance includes the customization of web page functionality for specific purposes by MicroBrightField's staff. What are the system requirements for Neuroinfo?Neuroinfo will run on any machine running Windows 2000, Linux or Solaris. The power of the machine controls the number of simultaneous users you need to serve images to at one time. A 1GHz server with 256MB of RAM will handle about 12 simultaneous users all panning across virtual slides at once. Since users typically zoom in and examine the features of one location before moving on to another location, dozens of users can use a low end server at once. We highly recommend (and will configure and resell) Dell servers with 1GB of RAM, a 2.8GHz processor and a RAID array for fast disk access. When a customer needs to handle hundreds of simultaneous viewers at once it will probably require more than one image server. For example, a class of 160 students needs to do some work just before (or during) exams. We want to ensure that the students can all see one field of view in two seconds. The server will have to be able to serve about four thousand tiles per minute. One high end server can service about 800 FlashPIX tiles per minute or about 1600 Zoomify tiles per minute. (Zoomify version 106 files are optimized for quick serving.) You will need three to five servers to handle the peak load. We provide the mechanism to delegate the image serving process to multiple machines. Since the peak load only happens a few times a semester, regular lab computers can be set up as supplemental image servers when necessary. Can I create 3D models of the serial sections on Neuroinfo?Not Directly. MicroBrightField, Inc. also creates Neurolucida which has a 3D Solid Modeling module. You can see some of the results of the solid modeling module in the Neurolucida Gallery. Using Neurolucida in conjunction with virtual microscopy makes the 3D modeling process as well as quantification of your serial reconstruction very efficient. What aspects of Neuroinfo are open to the community and which are proprietary to MicroBrightField?All data stored using Neuroinfo is available to anyone with sufficient permissions using a variety of data formats and software tools. The images that store the microscopic material are stored in formats that can always be converted to standard nonproprietary formats. In special cases, a source code escrow can be established in the event that MicroBrightField can no longer support the product. The only proprietary parts of Neuroinfo are the viewer, the image server and the database layer which make it easy to specialize and extend. Even the internals of Neuroinfo such as the embedded database and the tools which create the charts on the Image Server Statistics are all open source tools. The .jsp pages that format and present your data are also provided in full and we encourage you to modify them for your specialty. Can dial-up modem users access the digital microscope?Yes-- if they are patient. A good modem connection gives about 48,000 bits per second. One tile of one image is typically 80,000 bits, and one field of view is about nine tiles... so a modem user might have to wait about 18 seconds for one small field of view. There is no technical problem to solve to support modem users, modems are simply limited in their transfer rate. Any viewer with DSL or cablemodem will load single fields of view within about two seconds. Using the technology on a Local Area Network gives lightening fast panning and zooming. How are annotations stored (what format?)Annotations are stored in an XML-based format which describe the parameters specified when the label is drawn. Coordinates are stored in microns so that lengths and areas can be calculated without any conversion. When a boundary contour is drawn, there are several parameters which pertain not only to what is drawn, but what the region indicates, and how it behaves. Other labels such as arrows store the range of magnifications at which the arrow should be drawn. An arrow drawn at the low magnification gross view isn't useful when viewing the region at the cellular level. The architecture of the viewer allows any number of annotation tools to be added in the future. The annotation format is designed to grow as new annotation tools are needed. Can I use your annotation capabilities on my collection of JPEG files?Yes. The viewer can load and pan around .jpg files by loading the entire image at once. The annotation and quantification tools are identical to those used for virtual slides. This enables researchers who already have large collections of photomicrographs to use the collaboration and quantification capabilities of Neuroinfo. Does it work with Zoomify?Yes. We are completely compatible with Zoomify file formats, viewers and annotations systems. Neuroinfo provides a complete environment for people interested in Zoomify's flash-based viewer and annotation system. The annotator will even store annotations in our embedded database. We are continuing to use Java technology for our own web-based microscopy development. Neuroinfo would replace Tomcat in the zoomify instructions. Does it work on the Macintosh?Yes and no. The Neuroinfo server software will run slowly on Mac OSX 10.2.2 w/ Java 1.4.1. The Java team at Apple are actively working on improving Java support, and we expect that OS X will make a good server someday, but it is not supported yet. People who are viewing Neuroinfo content from a Macintosh will have no problems if they are running OS X version 10.2 (or later) with Java version 1.3 (or later) and the Mozilla 1.2 (or later) web browser. Mac users who are using Microsoft Internet Explorer will be able to view slides, but annotations will not control the viewer properly because IE does not support LiveConnect on the Macintosh. Viewers will see a yellow link at the top of every Neuroinfo page that encourages using the Mozilla browser for this reason. |
What if a Ritz-Carlton executive ran your hospital?
If you've ever been lucky enough to stay at the Ritz, you've experienced their first-rate customer service, attention to detail, inviting atmosphere, unique gift shops and scrumptious food. Could such luxurious pampering and quality translate over to the hospital environment?
It could, and it does. Bill Taylor, cofounder of Fast Company magazine, blogs for the Harvard Business Review about Henry Ford West Bloomfield, a suburban Detroit hospital that's run by former Ritz-Carlton executive Gerard van Grinsven.
It "truly must be seen to be believed," Taylor writes. The newly built hospital has 300 private patient rooms to which patients are immediately assigned upon admission. Why waste their time in the lobby filling out forms?
It also features an atrium with 2,000 live trees; a menu designed by a hot-shot chef; a concierge to assist frazzled loved ones; weekly classical concerts and a 90-seat demonstration kitchen where patients and family members can learn tips on preparing healthy meals.
It's so glam, in fact, that the hospital is hosting its first wedding next month.
If your first reaction is skepticism and even a bit of eye-rolling, you're not alone. Grinsven's ideas weren't exactly welcomed by Motor City's healthcare establishment. Sure, private rooms are great in theory, but how can a hospital maximize revenue that way? What the heck did this guy know about running a hospital?
Turns out, Grinsven's experience was more applicable to healthcare than most folks imagined. Though private rooms appear to be a fancy luxury, they actually save money in the long run: "They significantly reduce rates of infection in the hospital and add to the personal privacy of patients," he told Taylor.
You can read the full interview and article at the HBR Blog.
Wendy Johnson is the publisher of FierceHealthcare and a longtime healthcare journalist. She can be reached at wjohnson@fiercemarkets.com.
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Reimbursement and commercialization are significant challenges in this era of personalized medicine and comparative effectiveness. Many traditional clinical laboratories and early stage startup companies are trying to enter this space and are struggling to evaluate both the market and its offerings. According to Gene Tests, a publicly funded medical genetics information resource, the availability of new diagnostic tests increases 10% annually. However, there is a 20% increase in the utilization of genetic tests per year versus a 1% to 3% increase in non-genetic diagnostic tests per year.
In 2007, for example, genetic tests cost Aetna 70 cents per member per month as an aggregate. These numbers are increasing. In 2005/2006 genetic testing comprised 17% of Aetna’s testing dollars; in 2006/2007 it was 21%.
Some view genetic testing technologies as disruptive to traditional physician practice patterns as well as to pharmaceutical companies, who may now have patient criteria limitations on their next potential blockbuster. Depending upon the source, it is believed that only between 9% and 21% of physicians use genetic tests. Many physicians say they don’t understand genetic tests well enough to use them effectively. It is imperative, therefore, that the molecular diagnostic industry improves its messaging and ability to educate physicians. There are many misperceptions regarding the capabilities of well validated genetic tests. Because genetic testing has proven to be valuable for the prognosis, diagnosis and management of many diseases, the commercial potential is quite significant.
The Dark Report is happy to offer our readers a chance to download our recently published White Paper “A CEO’s Guide to Molecular Diagnostic Reimbursement: Navigating the Many Challenges of Reimbursement and Commercialization” at absolutely no charge.
The following are some of the questions to consider when creating a business plan for commercialization of a genetic test:
Table of Contents:
Preface - Page 3
Chapter 1. Considerations for Commercialization and Reimbursement of a New Molecular Diagnostic - Page 5
Chapter 2. The Road to Coverage - Page 10
Chapter 3. Reimbursement Options for Molecular Tests - Page 15
Chapter 4. Coverage and Contracting for Molecular Tests - Page 18
Chapter 5. Conclusions - Page 23
Appendices:
A-1 About Rina Wolf - Page 25
A-2 About XIFIN Inc. - Page 26 A-3 About DARK Daily - Page 27
A-4 About The Dark Intelligence Group, Inc., and THE DARK REPORT - Page 28
A-5 About the Executive War College on Laboratory Pathology Management - Page 29
A-6 About Karen Appold - Page 31
Terms of Use - Page 35
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Courtesy of labsoftnews.com:
The Pathology Informatics 2010 (PI-2010) conference will take place in Boston. MA, on 19-22 September, 2010. Abstracts for scientific sessions and e-posters are being solicited in connection with the conference with a firm deadline of July 30 for both categories. PI-2010 is the largest and most comprehensive pathology informatics CME event in the country and has been created by the merger of two predecessor conferences of long standing, APIII in Pittsburgh and Lab InfoTech Summit in Pittsburgh. The former has a 14 year history in Pittsburgh and the latter was presented for 21 years and Las Vegas and Ann Arbor. The latter event was known as AIMCL. The conference web site is now up-and-running. Details about the three content tracks (applied informatics, imaging informatics, and advanced/experimental informatics), plenary lectures, and workshops are availableas well as on-line registration.
Here is an overview of the scientific sessions:
The Scientific Sessions will consist of a series of 15 minute talks, each of which is immediately followed by questions which are posed by the audience. Researchers interested in presenting as part of these sessions should submit a 350 word abstract. There is particular interest in submissions that focus on three main areas of sub-specialization: pathology informatics, biomedical informatics, molecular pathology and imaging.
Here is a summary of the e-posters being solicited:
E-poster presentations are similar to traditional poster presentations but are presented directly from the Internet using a PC. E-posters may take several forms including a PC-driven PowerPoint presentation, a live demonstration of a Web site, or other Web-based media.
A total of 36 exhibitor have now committed to participation in PI-2010 and it is anticipated that more that 40 or more will be present by the time of the event. Make your plans now to submit an abstract or register for this mega-event. I am a member of the conference planning group and am sure that you won't be disappointed.
I was recently asked to write an editorial for Cancer Cytopathology on "Telecytopathology for immediate evaluation of fine-needle aspiration specimens" for an upcoming edition of the journal when an article looking at implementing a solution for this purpose will be published.
This article has been published in electronic form ahead of print. If you can access the journal the DOI is 10.1002/cncy.20079.
In the course of writing the editorial, I reference an article written by multiple authors about 10 years ago as part of a consensus panel with guideline for the practice of cytology with "new" technologies that existed then. The questions raised by that group involved field selection, resolution, focus, z-stack focusing, liability concerns with diagnoses made at a distance, reporting requirements, etc...
While the technology is no longer "new" many of these issues and concerns persist unfortunately for the cytology community in particular. The article the editorial is based on reviews nearly 500 FNA cases reviewed remotely with very high diagnostic concordance that is important for several reasons. Namely, the inexpensive nature of the system, ease of use, and clear situations where false negative cases may be encountered.
If I am able to do so, will provide copies of the articles when they are published.
From Digital Pathology Insights
Date: June 10th, 2010
Time: 11am EDT / 4pm GMT
Join us for a webinar: SOX2 Evaluation in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer using Definiens Tissue Studio.
In this talk, a study on SOX2 amplification in non-small cell lung cancer with a special focus on IHC assessment using Definiens Tissue Studio image analysis software will be presented.
The aim of the study was to verify SOX2 amplification and protein over-expression in non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) and to compare these results with patient and tumor characteristics. A total of 940 NSCLCs from two independent population-based cohorts containing predominantly adenocarcinomas of the lung and squamous cell lung carcinomas, were assessed by fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) to study SOX2 amplification and expression level. For protein expression analysis, the expression level was explored by utilizing Definiens Tissue Studio.
Speakers:
- Sven Perner: Assistant Professor – Institute of Pathology, Comprehensive Cancer Center, University Hospital Tuebingen
- Theresia Wilbertz: PhD Candidate – Institute of Pathology, Comprehensive Cancer Center, University Hospital Tuebingen
- Peter Duncan: Director of Marketing and Business Development – Definiens
Space is limited. Reserve your webinar seat now at:
During a recent discussion with one of my colleagues he asked me if I could think of 5 people who I have worked with, done business with, worked for or supervised that would constitute my "A team".
He then gave me a couple of names on his "A team". Among them was a former chairman, former hospital administrator and a couple of pathologists, past and current that would make up the team.
5 names quickly came to mind from my perspective that would be solid leaders, administrators, managers and diagnosticians whose ethics and integrity were beyond reproach.
One of the key people on my dream "A team" was also a former chairman and prior chair of anatomic pathology in the same department many years ago while I was at Walter Reed.
One of the many important lessons I learned from her was the ability to work with people you many not normally choose to work with in an environment where there was little control regarding new hires, transfers and folks moving to other assignments when their time came.
Important lessons for any organization, particularly one on a large scale, but equally valuable or more valuable even in smaller organizations.
A few of her key attributes among many was also the ability to know what she did not know, delegate when necessary and know when certain goals were not going to be measurable or achievable. She was also wiling to listen to any idea or criticism but you needed the data to back it up for anything to move forward. If you had strong justifications, the support would be there. If anything appeared misleading, she could detect it.
Who is on your "A team"?
The deadline to submit abstracts for oral and poster presentations has been extended to June 15! To submit your abstract, click here.
Poster presenters will be given a two-day display opportunity. Outstanding posters will be eligible to receive complimentary conference registration.
As a presenter, you can share your experiences and discuss potential uses for digital pathology in the future. Submission topics include:
To submit your abstract, click here.
ABOUT PATHOLOGY VISIONS
Pathology Visions is the annual meeting of the Digital Pathology Association, held October 24-27, 2010, at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina on the beautiful San Diego bay. Enjoy thought-provoking discussions on digital pathology applications and enrich your conference experience through the following:
ABOUT THE DIGITAL PATHOLOGY ASSOCIATION (DPA)
The mission of the DPA is to facilitate awareness of digital pathology applications in healthcare. Members are encouraged to share best practices and promote the
use of the technology among colleagues in order to demonstrate efficiencies, awareness, and its ultimate benefits to patient care. To learn more or apply for membership, visit http://www.digitalpathologyassociation.org.
For more information, visit
http://www.pathologyvisions.com
The first edition of JPI has been published. Congratulations again to Liron Pantanowitz and Anil Parwani for making this happen as quickly as they did.
Please open the following link to view it:
http://www.jpathinformatics.org/browse.asp
| Stepwise approach to establishing multiple outreach laboratory information system-electronic medical record interfaces | ||
| Pantanowitz Liron, LaBranche Wayne, Lareau William J Pathol Inform 2010, 1:5 (26 May 2010) |
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| Cytologic evaluation of image-guided fine needle aspiration biopsies via robotic microscopy: A validation study | ||
| Cai Guoping, Teot Lisa A, Khalbuss Walid E, Yu Jing, Monaco Sara E, Jukic Drazen M, Parwani Anil V J Pathol Inform 2010, 1:4 (26 May 2010) |
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| Overview of laboratory data tools available in a single electronic medical record | ||
| Kudler Neil R, Pantanowitz Liron J Pathol Inform 2010, 1:3 (26 May 2010) |
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| Development and use of a genitourinary pathology digital teaching set for trainee education | ||
| Li Li, Dangott Bryan J, Parwani Anil V J Pathol Inform 2010, 1:2 (26 May 2010) |
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| Introducing the Journal of Pathology Informatics | ||
| Pantanowitz Liron, Parwani Anil V J Pathol Inform 2010, 1:1 (26 May 2010) |
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