February 26, 2009
New Guidelines for Protecting Wireless, Remote Access Data
While wireless access has untethered many laptops from only having access in an office or home, public networks in local coffee shops will not keep your data safe. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has updated its guide on maintaining data security while teleworking.
The revised guide offers advice for protecting the wide variety of private and mobile devices from threats that have appeared since the first edition appeared in August 2002. Together with the preponderance of dangerous malware on the Web, the vulnerability of wireless transmissions from mobile devices has created dramatic new security challenges.
NIST points out that when it comes to remote access security, everything has changed in the last few years. Many Web sites plant malware and spyware onto computers, and most networks used for remote access contain threats but aren’t secured against them. However, even if teleworkers are using unsecured networks, the guide shows the steps organizations can take to protect their data.
Among these steps is the recommendation that an organization’s remote access servers—the computers that allow outside hosts to gain access to internal data—be located and configured in ways that protect the organization. Another is to ensure that all mobile and home-based devices used for telework be configured with security measures so that exchanged data will maintain its confidentiality and integrity. Most importantly, an organization’s policy should be to expect trouble and plan for it.
The new guide provides recommendations for organizations. A companion publication offers advice for individual users on securing their own mobile devices.
Guide to Enterprise Telework and Remote Access Security (pdf)
User’s Guide to Securing External Devices for Telework and Remote Access (pdf)
February 11, 2009
Computerized Brain Exercises Improve Memory
A study in the upcoming April 2009 Journal of the American Geriatrics Society demonstrated that computerized brain exercises can improve memory and processing speed. Researchers from the University of Southern California and the Mayo Clinic used a commercially available software program to study cognitive changes via computer exercises.
The Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training (IMPACT) study was funded by the Posit Science Corporation, which owns the rights to the Brain Fitness Program, tested in the study.
487 healthy adults over the age of 65 participated in a randomized controlled trial, half used the Brain Fitness Program for 40 hours over the course of eight weeks. The other half of participants spent an equal amount of time learning from educational DVDs followed by quizzes.
Those who trained on the Brain Fitness Program were twice as fast in processing information with an average improvement in response time of 131 percent. The active control group did not show statistically significant gains. According to the researchers, participants who used the Brain Fitness Program also scored as well as those ten years younger, on average, on memory and attention tests for which they did not train.
Many participants also reported significant improvements in everyday cognitive activities such as remembering names or understanding conversations in noisy restaurants.
The researchers commented that the changes seen in the experimental group significantly larger than the gains in the control group. Not only did people get better at the tasks trained but "those improvements generalized to standardized measures of memory and people noticed improvements in their lives. What this means is that cognitive decline is no longer an inevitable part of aging. Doing properly designed cognitive activities can enhance our abilities as we age."
Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training (IMPACT) study
February 07, 2009
Using EMRs To Study Drug Efficacy
For years controversy has surrounded whether electronic medical records (EMR) would lead to increased patient safety, cut medical errors, and reduce healthcare costs. A new study suggests that there is another bonus from the implementation of electronic medical records: testing the efficacy of treatments for disease. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine evaluated if patient data, as captured by EMR databases, could be used to obtain vital information as effectively as randomized clinical trials, when evaluating drug therapies. Their findings were published this month in the British Medical Journal.
Dr Richard Tannen, lead researcher and his group recognized that the large EMR databases containing compiled medical information could potentially give researchers the ability to study groups reflective of the total population, not just those who participate in clinical trials, and circumvent studies too costly or unethical for clinical trials. However, such databases contain observational information, which critics argue do not offer the same level of control as randomized trials.
“Our study cautiously, yet strongly, suggests that enormous amounts of information within electronic medical records can be used to expand evidence of how we should or shouldn’t manage healthcare,” Tannen says.
To address criticisms of observational studies, Tannen’s group had to first determine a way to use EMR databases for insights on therapy efficacy and then prove the results they found were valid. Beginning six years ago, the research team selected six previously performed randomized trials with 17 measured outcomes and compared them to study data from an electronic database -- the UK general practice research database (GPRD), which included the medical records of roughly 8 million patients. After using standard biostatistical methods to adjust for differences in the treated and untreated groups in the analysis of the database information, Tannen found that there were no differences in the database outcomes compared to randomized clinical trials in nine out of 17 outcomes.
In the other eight outcomes, Tannen’s group used an additional new biostatistical approach they discovered that controlled for differences between the treated and untreated groups prior to the time the study began. By using the new biostatistical method instead of the standard approach, the researchers showed there were no differences between the outcomes in the EMR database study compared to the randomized clinical trials.
“Our findings show that if you do studies using EMR databases and you conduct analyses using new biostatistical methods we developed, we get results that are valid,” states Dr Tannen. “That’s the real message of our paper — this can work.”
The authors warn that the ability to use EMR databases from the United States to measure the efficacy of therapies will take more than 10 years of national data, the results of this study should serve as a catalyst for more researchers to explore the accuracy of the information that can be obtained using EMR database studies.
“An appropriately configured EMR database could offer an invaluable tool, but we need to get to work now on how to configure it properly,” Tannen says. “If we don’t worry about this issue right now and promote a higher investment in the area of EMR research, we’ll lose an opportunity, an enormous health opportunity.”
BMJ Article
(full text)