Chinese health experts warn that the number of bird flu cases in humans will increase over the next several months—already, more than 70% of bird flu cases occur in the winter and spring months. Following the recent death of a teenager in Hunan, officials from the National Centre for Disease Control and Prevention agree that China must work harder at preventing such outbreaks.
The e-Health 2009: Leadership in Action conference is scheduled for May 31 to June 3 in Québec City, Canada. Some topics for the 2009 include Access and New Models of Care, Balancing Workforce and Technology, and Innovation and Sustainability.
Interactive Supercomputing Inc. has added new imaging capabilities to its Star-P technical computing software. The Star-P imaging function library was developed with the help of Anona Labs, an Israeli software company specializing in advanced image processing technologies for interactive numerical analysis environments. The library can be used for life sciences, defense and any other application involving complex imaging problems with high computational requirements or with extremely large data sources, such as medical imaging, microscopy, surveillance and biometrics, according to a release.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced it has put the finishing touches on the ICD-10, a new set that will allow for more specificity and precision in the way doctors and hospitals bill insurers for tests, procedures, and other types of care. But after receiving more than 3,000 comments on its earlier ICD-10 proposal, the feds now say medical providers will have until Oct. 1, 2013, before they have to use ICD-10, rather than a prior proposal of Oct. 1, 2011. Many comments requested more time to comply, citing costs and the need for training and testing, according to CMS.
With increasing instances of data breaches and the introduction of HIPAA and other state and federal mandates, closer attention is being paid to privacy concerns. But the challenges are daunting: Access to healthcare records can come from hospital staff tapping into the database, or from malicious outsiders hacking their way into the database mining for the valuable personal information.
Wired.com gives a broad overview of President Barack Obama's use of technology throughout his campaign and what we can expect to see during his "Government 2.0" presidency. The article notes that Obama's presidency will likely utilize technology more than any president before him, with Obama saying he would expand government transparency by putting more data up on the Web, streaming meetings live, and letting the public comment on most legislation for five days before he signs it.