May 29, 2006
New Pew Internet & American Life Reports
The Pew Internet & American LIfe Project has published two reports this month.
Technology and Media Use
Home Broadband Adoption 2006
Adoption of high-speed internet at home grew twice as fast in the year prior to March 2006 than in the same time frame from 2004 to 2005. Middle-income Americans accounted for much of the increase, along with African Americans and new internet users coming online with broadband at home. At the end of March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed at home, up from 30% in March 2005, or a 40% increase. And 48 million Americans -- mostly those with high-speed at home -- have posted content to the internet.
View PDF of Report
View PDF of Questionnaire
Finding Answers Online in Sickness and in Health
Recent research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that, as more Americans come online, more rely on the internet for important health information. Many Americans are deepening their connections to the internet, whether for entertainment or to help a loved one through a crisis. And though the audience for the latest DVD may be larger than the audience for clinical trial information, the impact on someone’s life in the latter case may be dramatically different in scale. Fully 58% of those who found the internet to be crucial or important during a loved one’s recent health crisis say the single most important source of information was something they found online.
May 28, 2006
New e-Tools for Canadian Mental Health
The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) in Canada will begin using technology to support mental health and addictions clinicians and patients in their treatment efforts. A $1.8 million investment from Canada Health Infoway's Innovation and Adoption program will assist VIHA in developing standardized electronic assessment forms and decision support tools specific to mental health and addictions needs.
Canada Health Infoway is a federally funded nonprofit corporation that spearheads e-health efforts in Canada. Currently, paper-based processes are being used to document clinical information and refer clients to community-based services, and the transfer of critical health information and treatment can take time-time that clients often cannot afford.
The initiative includes 3 elements:
* Ability to Access Care: Improved wait times and capacity to deliver needed services
* Patient Participation: Patient access to the electronic health record.
* Availability: Greater access to healthcare services in the home and community
EHR
Using the Electronic Health Record, Canadian patients will be able to capture their comprehensive and permanent health history and eventually link to their medical record in their physician's office or clinic. Under authorized conditions, important clinical events and test results can be shared, reminders for scheduled appointments and routine screening tests can be issued, and targeted patient education and management guidelines can be supplied. In this way, patients will be empowered to take a more active role in their health and only authorized healthcare providers will have access to confidential patient information. These tools will be particularly critical in the management of chronic disease for Canada's aging population and in disease prevention for everyone, translating to better health outcomes and a reduced burden on the health care system.
More about the The Electronic Health Record Solution
May 27, 2006
Video Games Improve Surgical Techniques
Researchers from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City in conjunction with the National Institute on Media and the Family conducted a study that showed that surgeons who warmed up by playing video games like "Super Monkey Ball" for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors than those who did not.
The research involved 303 surgeons participating in a medical training course that included video games and was focused on laparoscopic surgical procedures - which use a tiny video camera and long, slender instruments inserted through small incisions.
Doctors were measured on their performance of the "cobra rope" drill, a standard laparoscopic training exercise used to teach how to sew up an internal wound. Researchers found that surgeons who played video games immediately before the drill completed it an average of 11 seconds faster than those who did not. Any errors committed during the training lengthened the time it took to complete the task - indicating that faster finishers made fewer mistakes.
The results supported findings from a small study conducted by Rosser in 2003, which showed that doctors who grew up playing video games tended to be more efficient and less error-prone in laparoscopic training drills. That earlier study suggested that playing video games sharpened eye-hand coordination, reaction time and visual skills.
The lead investigator James Rosser, MD pointed out that "it's about time scientists started to recognize video games for their medical potential. You would think they would have gotten the hint when Life and Death, an extremely fun surgical sim for the Amiga, PC, and Mac, was released in 1988. If you're hankering for a surgical sim right now, you can try the surrealistic adventure game Trauma Center: Under the Knife for the Nintendo DS."
He also pointed out that ReMISSION was the first videogame scientifically shown to improve health-related outcomes for young people with cancer
National Institute on Media and the Family Press Release
Trauma Center: Under the Knife
May 17, 2006
Virtual Information Technology Lab
The American Health Information Management Association is testing its e-HIM Virtual Lab, with a goal of providing students with hands-on health information management technology experience.
Chicago-based AHIMA is piloting its e-HIM Virtual Lab with 1,900 students and instructors from 47 academic programs around the country. Its aim is to have 100 academic programs and 4,000 students participating by the end of 2007. The test "lab" includes applications for patient identification, administrative and reimbursement coding, data capture, and abstracting.
Additional applications scheduled for implementation this year include electronic document management, documentation quality management, dictation, transcription, speech recognition and natural language processing.
AHIMA announced the initiative May 11 during the Capitol Hill Steering Committee on Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics, a bipartisan initiative sponsored by members of Congress. AHIMA's Foundation of Research and Education funds the Virtual Lab project.
Related Health IT News
2006 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Annual Conference on Patient Safety & Health IT
June 4-7, 2006
National Health IT Day
June 7, 2006
HIMSS Summit
June 7-8, 2006
May 11, 2006
Blueprinting The Human Brain
There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.
Francis H. C. Crick, September 1978
At the Cognitive Computing conference this week at IBM's Almaden Institute, scientists from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland describe how a 3D computer simulation of 10,000 neurons firing in the human brain produces a terabyte of data--a fraction of what it would take to map the brain's billions of neurons in algorithms. The project is an attempt to create a blueprint of the human brain to advance cognition research.
Last year, EPFL bought a multimillion-dollar model of IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer for the two-year project, which is being conducted in Switzerland. The group only recently simulated the firing of 10,000 neurons in a single column in the neocortex, the largest area of the human brain governing high-level thinking and action. (A column typically contains 100,000 neurons.)
To deal with the enormous amount of data generated from the project, the group relies on visualization tools to locate and earmark interesting results in the computations for further research. Blue Brain bought a supercomputer from SGI to create a small media center to display the 3D simulations, which is described by scientists as "like sitting inside the brain."
The EPFL is trying to convince the Swiss government to buy two more Blue Genes to handle the data. They are quite expensive even with a generous discount from IBM. The goal is to compute the billions of neurons in the brain.
So far, Blue Brain has written two software packages for cognitive computing. The 3D simulation showed only about 10 percent of the 10,000 neurons firing, but the simulation is "going to get a thousand times better" with new technology. The software can now zoom in to a single cell and examine exactly how the neuron is firing.
Previous AATP Story on Blue Brain
Google Introduces Health Search Engine
Google on Wednesday at its annual Google Press Day announced several new search enhancements including a service that lets users sign up for health information at no cost, USA Today reports.
The service, called Google Co-op, lets users subscribe to health information from several organizations including the CDC, the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente. The search engine is expected to be able to categorize search results by treatment, research papers, symptoms, news and alternative treatments. It also will be able to divide data depending on whether users are health professionals or patients
Google introduced several new search enhancements, including a way to subscribe to health research from experts and tools that let people save portions of websites in a pop-up box that can be shared via e-mails.
The theme, says analyst Allen Weiner at research firm Gartner, was Google "moving the playing field back to its core strength — search — and all about fearing Microsoft (MSFT) as a threat."
In the past two weeks, MSN and Yahoo overhauled their search advertising programs in a bid to more effectively compete with Google. And Microsoft says it will feature desktop search in the new edition of its Windows software, Vista, expected in early 2007.
Google co-founder Larry Page said that 98% of what will exist in 10 years "has yet to be done, and we won't get there by looking at what other companies are doing."
New tools:
•Google Co-op. Users can sign up at www.google.com/coop/directory to subscribe to free health information from several organizations, including the federal Centers for Disease Control, the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente. Their tips on the best health data will show up in search results. Google Co-op also offers city guide information for more than 300 cities, including London and New York. Co-op is designed to let organizations label Web pages relevant to their areas of expertise. "We're going to take the Tom Sawyer view and see how our users paint the fence," said Google Vice President Marissa Mayer.
•Desktop 4. An extension of Google's tool to search for items on your computer now comes with more than 100 "Gadgets" — little widgets that do things such as list friends' birthdays, show videos and play music.
•Google Trends. Lets users examine searches for market trends. For example, a search for "surfers" will show that most searches come from Hawaii and Australia and link to news stories about surfing.
"For the first time ever, Google is making it possible to sift through billions of search queries from around the world to see what people are thinking about," said Mayer. Trends is targeted primarily toward marketers.
•Google Notebook. Available next week, it lets people save a portion of a website to a box that can be shared with others. Google showed an example of shopping for shoes, saving a certain pair and writing a note about it, then sending it to friends. The tool works in conjunction with Desktop 4.
Don't forget that Google Calendar is quite functional and popular.
May 08, 2006
Localizing Dread via fMRI
Recent scans show that brain activity related to dread has been localized in the areas of the brain associated with pain. Dread was found in the parts of the pain network linked to attention. This is important because it suggests that dread is not as simple as fear or anixiety, which are emotions controlled by different brain regions.
A team of Emory University neuroscientists tried to understand the reasons why we tend to deal with dreadful decisions as quickly as possible. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the team led by Gregory Berns, MD, PhD, has found the areas of the brain that are activated when someone experiences dread.
Trying to understand why people make rash decisions as a result of dread is a concept that the Emory team wanted to study. According the the scientists, "most people don't like waiting for an unpleasant outcome, and want to get it over with as soon as possible..the only explanation for this is that the dread of having something hanging over your head is worse than the thing that you are dreading." It is a commonplace experience, but the standard models of decision-making don't deal with this issue.
Each participant in the study was screened to determine their maximal pain threshold. While in the MRI scanner, participants underwent a series of 96 shocks. Before each shock, they were told how painful the shock would be (as a percent of their threshold) and how long they would have to wait for it. After the procedure, they were given the opportunity to choose between different intensity-delay combinations. The choice was always between more pain sooner or less pain later. The degree to which individuals chose more voltage sooner just to get a trial over was an indication of the dread they experienced from waiting. A total of 32 participants took part. Most of the participants preferred to speed up the waiting period and were deemed "mild dreaders", but 28% dreaded so much that they were willing to take more pain just to avoid waiting. These were labeled "extreme dreaders."
The findings showed that the mild and extreme dreaders had different patterns of brain activity. The extreme dreaders had more activity in the attentional parts of the pain matrix, and this activity was seen much earlier in each trial compared to the mild dreaders. The anatomical locations of dread responses suggest that the subjective experience of dread comes from the attention devoted to the expected physical response, and not simply a fear or anxiety response. The key factor seems to be that extreme dreaders devoted more attention toward the part of their body that was about to be shocked. This means that dread is not quite the same as fear or anxiety. These findings help to underscore the very real nature of dread. It also means that dread can be mitigated by diverting attention.
According to Dr Berns, "the dread associated with things like medical procedures or public speaking can probably be alleviated by diverting one's attention during the waiting period. The benefits could be substantial if it means that we act more rationally in terms of getting healthcare, or decreasing the psychological toll of dread and anxiety."
May 04, 2006
FDA OKs Electronic Notification
The FDA has published final guidance that encourages the use of electronic media to communicate safety information about FDA-regulated products.
According to the FDA, they are "making clear in this guidance that manufacturers and others may disseminate communications by electronic means, including e-mail or other electronic methods."
The FDA notes that electronic notification is a permissible alternative to telegrams and first class letters as long as there are appropriate safeguards and mechanisms to ensure that the information can be accessed by the recipients. In addition to e-mail, manufacturers may use fax or text messaging to communicate safety information. The FDA guidance is available online.