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Hacking Health in Hamilton Ontario - Let's hear that pitch!

What compelled me to register for a weekend Health Hackathon? Anyway, I could soon be up to my ears in it. A pubmed search on Health Hack...

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Tri-corder XPrize News from Canada

Recently there were some CBC news stories about a local company that has entered the Tricorder XPrize.  I have been blogging about this XPrize many times, and here is a link to the collected news stories from this blog <here>. I heard an interview on radio and picked-up the story on one of my voluminous RSS newsfeeds. I heard a joke the other day that Youtube, Twitter and Facebook will merge together as one company some day and it will be called YouTwitFace.

So, there actually is a website called YouTwitFace.com, and they had a story with eHealth relevance, called "Will Your Doctor Friend You Back on Facebook?

Here is the link to the  CBC news story about Biosign's entry into the XPrize:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/tricorder-x-prize-eyed-by-toronto-based-biosign-1.2649258

Biosign is an interesting company and I once did a lot of research on it. They were developing a "pin-prickless" blood sugar reading device for diabetes. This is one of the holy grails of biomedical device research. Unfortunately, their "cuff" did not fully measure blood sugar levels accurately and never obtained FDA clearance, as far as I know. I still don't think there are any devices developed yet that are "pin-prickless", but it is a fascinating science, and well worth the time to look into the controversial developments, frustrations, and failures in this area.


Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Tapestry: Enabling eHealth for the Elderly Through Community Volunteers

I have signed up as a volunteer with a McMaster Family Medicine program called Tapestry. The purpose of this clinical trial is exactly what I have been advocating for - enabling those who might benefit from using eHealth technology. The novel approach in this research is using community volunteers to do the leg work of bringing the personal health records to the elderly participants via health surveys on iPads which are linked to the patient's EMR.

I have my police check and am just waiting for the first meeting of volunteers for training. Will be paired with a partner. This is also a good opportunity for health science students to become engaged with community health and ehealth, as this article testifies < here >.

I am sure many elderly are savvy about technology, but it is towards the digital natives of the future that this evidence-based research will really provide important data. Looking forward.



Sunday, April 13, 2014

Awesome Wearable Intelligence Google Glass in the ER Video


http://geekdoctor.blogspot.ca/2014/04/google-glass-details.html

John Halamka posted this video on his blog about the Wearable Intelligence software using Google Glass technology for healthcare (ER). It is awesome to see this from a Health Informatics perspective. They are experimenting with Google Glass in their ER. I like that he said:

"After several months of testing, we have deployed the product to clinical providers in the ED and are completing the first IRB approved study (to our knowledge) of the technology’s impact on clinical medicine."

The devices using the Wearable Intelligence software are medical devices and need to be tested clinical and cleared by the IRB. Evaluating the efficacy and patient safety over a longer term will also be interesting. I wonder how how they designed the clinical trial methodologically.

One commenter on the blog post on their experience with the efficacy of Google Glass over EHR/EMR has an excellent article:
http://www.acutecarecontinuum.com/Home/tabid/84/entryid/245/Slow-Death-by-EMR-or-How-I-Learned-to-Stop-Clicking-and-Love-Google-Glass.aspx


There are other stories on Google Glass I have picked up recently:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/7/5589940/google-glass-and-the-specter-of-instant-facial-recognition

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/04/prweb11740581.htm

The International Association for Privacy Professionals had this news item posted:
https://www.privacyassociation.org/publications/google_glass_surgeon_saves_lives_with_it_bar_bans_it


FACIAL RECOGNITION
Google Glass: Surgeon Saves Lives with It, Bar Bans It
Livestream has released its first piece of Glass software, PC Magazine reports, which allows users to tap the headset and say, “Okay Glass, Livestream,” and then livestream the event to viewers. Meanwhile, The Verge reports on the multitude of facial recognition apps on the market today, including “NameTag,” which links a user’s face to “a single, unified online presence.” And The New York Times reports on both the opportunities and the challenges inherent in Google Glass, with some welcoming the technology enthusiastically—such as one lung surgeon who recently used Glass to help perform a procedure—and others banning it entirely, such as one California nightclub.
Full Story


Friday, April 4, 2014

Semantic webTag Cloud at Bioethics website http://www.bioethics.net

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Coursera, Health Hacking, Diagnosis Apps, and Interoperability

There has been a lot happening and this is just briefly some of the things I have been tracking. A lot of my time is being spent taking a Coursera online course taught by Dr. Peter Singer (the Australian, not the U. of T. Ethicist) called "Practical Ethics". It is a 12 week course and there are about 25,000 people taking this MOOC. There are writing assignments, peer evaluations of such, video lessons, guest lecturers, discussion forums, essential background readings - I am very impressed and at the same time, very busy just trying to hang on.

COACH recently had a webinar on Health Hacking, facilitated by some of the founders of this fascinating organization. I would strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in healthcare technology and informatics, take a serious look at their website, and / or attend one of their hackathons. It is becoming so popular the next eHealth conference will have a Hackathon. During the webinar they mention how even the Canadian Medical Association thought highly of the concept. I was trying to find the article the CMA wrote about it but could only find this one:

We all know what happened to Google Health, and I am not sure today where Microsoft Healthvault is these days, so I am skeptical about any buzz we might hear about Apple Healthbook.

The Kuzweil Accelerating Intelligence news reported on a new Do It Yourself Medical Diagnosis App.  I have not had time to look into the details of this, but it might be a software candidate for an integrated Tricorder project.

The last item is really a gem, and it is the keynote talk given at HIMISS interoperability showcase, by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm uses 3 examples in the evolution of technology to make comparison to how new standards in interoperability can transform healthcare technology: shipping containers, Israeli military technology example called the Bekaa Valley Turkey Shoot, mp3 players.




Friday, March 21, 2014

ImmunizeCA app helps people keep track of vaccinations

Ottawa Hospital researchers have developed a free app to help Canadians store, manage and access immunization information.
Dr. Kumanan Wilson of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute said the ImmunizeCA app will also alert users if there's an issue in their area, such as the recent measles outbreak in Ottawa.

"So that would be in the outbreak section, they would see how close they are to the where the report is," he said.

"They could see if their family is up to date. They may say, 'Oh, time to get Johnny vaccinated. It's time to get catch up the vaccine.'"

The app is privacy-protected and not accessible to any health agency.
It's meant to empower people to control their own health by helping them keep track of when vaccinations, boosters and flu shots are due, Wilson said.

Wilson said the concept could also be reworked for similar public health applications.
"So another place I think it could be really helpful is in blood donations. And I think the blood donor app would be a really great idea to do booking online for their appointments, track donations, be notified when they can donate again," he said.

The Public Health Agency of Canada funded the app. It's available to residents in every province.

ImmunizeCA can be downloaded from iTunes, GooglePlay or BlackBerry World.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Autosave with Coldfusion and CKEditor

Autosave is an essential feature for online forms. Web-based EMR or PHR systems should probably have it for physician and other administration notes. I would say it would probably be an essential service to have as a default, with no other option. Well, having an option to save and store regular drafts of the text would be great, and which could be deleted when the text is finally saved or submitted. The next best feature to have would be a system that regularly stores versions of the text input into a form or page. You have probably noticed autosave functions in current email systems like Gmail, and I think some word processing applications have them as a feature, but maybe not a default feature. Gmail stores draft versions regularly. Very useful to have.

From my experience with a Coldfusion application that uses CKEditor, there is nothing worse than having a user loose 2 hours of textual notes, especially on a system that times-out after one hour. The forms I developed have a manual save button and a button to submit the data to be saved. The latter function just sends email confirmations. CKEditor does have a plugin for autosave, and I have tested it, but was not happy with the way it notified about reloading saved data. I upgraded to a higher version of CKEditor and the autosave plugin, but now it doesn't work at all, so I am twice as unhappy (: (:

So there are programming alternatives to autosave without CKEditor and I have tried several (like the dynamic drive one) and they are just not working. The most promising one I have tried is a coldfusion demo version from a coldfusion tutorial. I tried this demo on my coldfusion server and the demo version works but when I program it into my coldfusion pages - nothing. The downside of that is that it doesn't look like it integrates well with CKEditor. You know the autosave works if you type some text into a comment box and do a page refresh and the text doesn't disappear.

Another promising one looked like Sisyphus which integrates into the javascript for the CKEditor. Even though the developer of Sisyphus was very kind to answer my emails, I still have not been able to get it work. This is going to be one of those trial and error experiments that I will have to return to many more times before, almost by chance,  I get it to finally work.