Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva, ICTconsequences
“Emerging technological and societal developments have brought new challenges for the protection of personal data and individuals’ rights.
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Vivek Wadhwa, The Washington Post
“The Internet and social media are capturing the public’s attention, but some of the most significant advances today are happening in medicine. Technology and medicine are converging in new ways to make possible the types of innovations that could be seen on “Star Trek.” Consider this: We spend the majority of our health-care dollars on treating chronic diseases. Technological advances will enable us to shift those investments into improving our health and preventing disease.
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Suzanne Bohan, Contra Costa Times
“A team of Bay Area researchers faced a Herculean challenge 15 months ago: Sequence the DNA of more than 100,000 Kaiser Permanente members joining an unprecedented study linking health to genetics and environmental conditions.
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Eric Barnes, AuntMinnieEurope.com
“Planning for the era of personalized medicine — a science and an art that combines genetics and patient histories with imaging and population-based atlases — is finally giving way to real treatment of real patients, according to a presentation on the first day of the Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS) meeting.
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El Emam K. Genome Medicine, 3(4)
Electronic health records are increasingly being linked to DNA repositories and used as a source of clinical information for genomic research. Privacy legislation in many jurisdictions, and most research ethics boards, require that either personal health information is de-identified or that patient consent or authorization is sought before the data are disclosed for secondary purposes. Here, I discuss how de-identification has been applied in current genomic research projects.
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Common Ground
“Should we be concerned about DNA testing of our babies in BC or anywhere else for that matter?
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Ritchie, Marylyn D. et al, The American Journal of Human Genetics, 2010
Large-scale DNA databanks linked to electronic medical record (EMR) systems have been proposed as an approach for rapidly generating large, diverse cohorts for discovery and replication of genotype-phenotype associations. However, the extent to which such resources are capable of delivering on this promise is unknown. We studied whether an EMR-linked DNA biorepository can be used to detect known genotype-phenotype associations for five diseases. Twenty-one SNPs previously implicated as common variants predisposing to atrial fibrillation, Crohn disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, or type 2 diabetes were successfully genotyped in 9483 samples accrued over 4 mo into BioVU, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center DNA biobank. Previously reported odds ratios (ORPR) ranged from 1.14 to 2.36. For each phenotype, natural language processing techniques and billing-code queries were used to identify cases (n = 70–698) and controls (n = 808–3818) from deidentified health records.
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EMR Daily News
“A new study reveals an exciting potential benefit of the rapidly accumulating databases of health care information, the ability to make unprecedented links between genomic data and clinical medicine.
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David Weisbrot, The Australian
“The remarkable advances in genetic science and technology enabling such questionable activities also hold great benefits in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of serious illnesses.
However, these rapid advances also challenge our capacity to regulate research and clinical practice in the public interest. In particular, we must ensure that we carefully protect human dignity as well as health.
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Jon Hoeksma, e-Health Insider
“The government has been urged to place the development of a national electronic health record system at the top of its agenda to secure the full benefits of genomic medicine.
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El País
“Científicos españoles han desarrollado un chip de ADN para precisar el riesgo cardiovascular teórico a largo plazo, según informa el Hospital del Mar de Barcelona.
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“Researchers in Japan have demonstrated one part of an envisaged molecular level system that might one day enable cell phones to keep a regular watch on their owners’ health.
NTT DoCoMo hopes some future cell phones will contain “DNA chips,” devices capable of analyzing molecules from the user’s body, to provide a warning about a possible virus, high levels of stress or other factors that might affect health.”
Article
Martyn Williams, Computerworld, 28 March 2008
“Victoria Grove wanted to find out if she was destined to develop the form of emphysema that ran in her family, but she did not want to ask her doctor for the DNA test that would tell her.
She worried that she might not be able to get health insurance, or even a job, if a genetic predisposition showed up in her medical records, especially since treatment for the condition, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, could cost over $100,000 a year. Instead, Ms. Grove sought out a service that sent a test kit to her home and returned the results directly to her.”
Article
Amy Harmon, The New York Times, 24 February 2008
