Brian Wheeler, BBC News
“Sickweather claims to be different because it operates in real time using data from social networks, rather than news reports or internet search terms, and is designed for use by individuals, rather than public health officials. It has already been dubbed “Facebook for hypochondriacs”.
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Seeman N et al, Healthcare Quarterly, 13 Spec No
The perceived safety of vaccination is an important explanatory factor for vaccine uptake and, consequently, for rates of illness and death. The objectives of this study were (1) to evaluate Canadian attitudes around the safety of the H1N1 vaccine during the fall 2009 influenza pandemic and (2) to consider how public health communications can leverage the Internet to counteract, in real time, anti-vaccine sentiment. We surveyed a random sample of 175,257 Canadian web users from October 27 to November 19, 2009, about their perceptions of the safety of the HINI vaccine. In an independent analysis, we also assessed the popularity of online flu vaccine-related information using a tool developed for this purpose. A total of 27,382 unique online participants answered the survey (15.6% response rate).
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Mark Curtis, The Cross-Border Biotech Blog
“We have been following innovative uses for social media in the biotech and healthcare industry here on the blog. Recently, a comprehensive paper was published in PLoS ONE outlining the use of “infoveillance” tools on the web to track the public response to the H1N1 epidemic. Dr. Gunther Eysenbach and Cynthia Chew, both researchers at Toronto’s Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, mined and archived over 2 million Twitter posts between May 1 and December 31, 2009.
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Chew C, Eysenbach G. PLoS ONE, 5(11)
Surveys are popular methods to measure public perceptions in emergencies but can be costly and time consuming. We suggest and evaluate a complementary “infoveillance” approach using Twitter during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Our study aimed to: 1) monitor the use of the terms “H1N1” versus “swine flu” over time; 2) conduct a content analysis of “tweets”; and 3) validate Twitter as a real-time content, sentiment, and public attention trend-tracking tool.
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Khiabanian H et al, PloS One, 5(9)
Background
In June of 2009, the World Health Organization declared the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century, and by July, New York City’s New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH) experienced a heavy burden of cases, attributable to a novel strain of the virus (H1N1pdm).
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Francisco J Grajales III
“With the H1N1 Pandemic still fresh in our minds, the Winter Olympics have zeroed the spotlight on Vancouver. With 70,000 visitors per day, 5,000 athletes and staff, 1,350 Paralympic athletes, 10,000 media, 25,000 volunteers, and 8,000 security personnel, a single disease outbreak can become catastrophic. Historically, mass gatherings have been particularly sensitive to vector outbreaks.
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Deborah Yao, Mercury News
“A tap on the HealthMap iPhone application brings up a cluster of red pins on a map, representing nearby cases of swine flu. Another tap brings up a form for ordinary Americans to add to the collection by reporting bouts they have or know about.
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e-Health Europe
“The US Centres for Disease Control is to use online social media tools, including Twitter and YouTube, to help spread flu-protection messages.
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Perry Goodfriend, Atlanta Public Policy Examiner
“The surprise swine flu outbreak last spring moved the conversation about electronic health records from theoretical to practical, according to local, national and international public health monitoring agencies attending the Public Health Information Network Conference, this week, in Atlanta.
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Neil Versel, FierceMobileHealthcare
With wireless technology so ubiquitous in society today, you’d think that someone would figure out a way to set up field clinics and triage units to respond to, say, an outbreak of the H1N1 virus, where caregivers would have complete, secure access to data for any patient who happens to come by.
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Steve Hamm, BusinessWeek
“The promise of digital medicine has been trashed by skeptics, including some at BusinessWeek. Call me crazy, but it seems to me that warning against digital health records today is like railing against the dangers of the automobile in 1900. Or like urging people to keep reading magazines on paper rather than reading the same material online. It might ruin the paper publishing industry!
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Sarah Bruce, e-Health Insider Primary Care
“NHS Wales is using software developed by Informatica Systems to monitor pandemic flu on a daily basis.
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Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News
“Although the government’s pandemic plans rely on telework to carry out their functions, several federal, state and local agencies reported little or no testing of their information technology capability, according to the Government Accountability Office.
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“More than 2,000 GP practices are to receive software to help them complete pandemic flu contingency plans.
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“Ontario’s Smart System for Health Agency marked its five-year anniversary this week by laying out its blueprint for the future. The strategic plan, among other things, presents strategies aimed at fostering the growth of electronic communication between practitioners, enabling increased use of electronic patient health records, and helping to avert any future pandemic outbreaks.”
Article
Greg Enright, InterGovWorld.com, 6 March 2008
“There has been a flurry of debate in the military, industrial, and privacy sectors on “smartdust” and the concept of “souveillance” – but no one has yet realized this technology is poised to springboard into medicine and transform medical diagnostics. Here I wanted to give you an overview of what this idea is and why you should keep your eye on it.”
Article
Steven F. Palter, Docinthemachine, 25 February 2008
Last week the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has declared Health informatics as one of the grand engineering challenges of our time.
They list a number of aspects that are part of that challenge, to start with interoperability and medical records. Their next comment is on the availability of information to professionals: “Doctors suffering from information overload need systematic electronic systems for finding information to treat specific patients and decision support systems to offer “just in time, just for me” advice at the point of care“. This sounds very much like the inventories and knowledge centres ICMCC has been focusing on during the almost 4 years of its existence.”
Article
Lodewijk Bos, ICMCC Blog, 20 February 2008
Last week the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has declared Health Informatics as one of the grand engineering challenges of our time.
They list a number of aspects that are part of that challenge, to start with interoperability and medical records. Their next comment is on the availability of information to professionals: “Doctors suffering from information overload need systematic electronic systems for finding information to treat specific patients and decision support systems to offer “just in time, just for me” advice at the point of care“. This sounds very much like the inventories and knowledge centres ICMCC has been focusing on during the almost 4 years of its existence.
Monitoring information is mentioned next as one of the tools to improve healthcare. I should have been presenting at the German KIS meeting today, but due to medical problems I was unable to attend. I was supposed to talk about “Mobile devices from a patient viewpoint” and one of the issues I wanted to raise was the fact that these devices should be unobtrusive, easy to handle and if possible self-explanatory. The NAE even completely focuses on micro technology and interoperability once more is a key element: “Seamlessly integrating the input from such devices into a health informatics system raises the networking challenge to a new level“.
In the next part of their declaration the focus changes to public health emergencies, firstly the environmental monitoring to signal possible chemical and biological attacks, followed by a large chapter on disease surveillance to tackle pandemics, one of the other focussing points in the ICMCC history.
“From an orbit hundreds of miles above Earth, NASA’s constellation of climate-research satellites may not be able to spot a flea in the desert Southwest.
But a program that uses space observations to pinpoint the habitats of rodents carrying plague-infected fleas could warn of disease outbreaks in vulnerable areas of New Mexico.”
Article
Andrea Stone, USA Today, 12 December 2007
“IBM today announced a series of emerging innovations that have the potential to dramatically shift the landscape of healthcare and life sciences solutions for patients, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and the general public. These innovations are based on new research breakthroughs and emerging technologies from IBM’s Labs as well as through a legacy of storage, server and technology innovation and deep roots in the healthcare industry.”
Article
CNN Money, 24 September 2007
