Again, in the last week, I have come across a few reports and news items which are worth passing on.
These include first:
Online tool to help women calculate the risk
Natasha Wallace Health Reporter
October 22, 2007
WOMEN aged over 20 will for the first time be able to assess their risk of developing breast cancer with an online calculator designed to also debunk the myths surrounding the disease.
The interactive tool launched in Sydney today by the federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, asks questions about age, family history of breast and ovarian cancer, genetic factors, height, weight, alcohol intake, menstrual and reproductive history. .
The calculator, developed by the National Breast Cancer Centre, tells women if they are at "low or average risk", "moderately increased risk" or "potentially high risk" of developing breast cancer. It also suggests what might have contributed to that risk.
Women were generally confused about the causes of breast cancer, and one in three wrongly thought alcohol was not a risk factor but a knock to the breast was, Dr Helen Zorbas, the director of the National Breast Cancer Centre, said yesterday.
Dr Zorbas, a breast physician at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, said the tool would also be useful for GPs but stressed it was not a guarantee against developing breast cancer even if women actively reduced their risks.
"We had some very high-level epidemiologists working on developing algorithms which actually sit behind the workings of this tool, so there's some very high-level science which supports it," Dr Zorbas said.
Continue reading here:
The web site can be found at the following URL:
nbcc.org.au
Given that one in eight women will develop this awful disease in their lifetime – knowing where you stand from a properly researched calculator seems like a useful e-Health initiative to me.
Second we have:
Patents bid quietly laid to rest
Karen Dearne | October 23, 2007
THE federal Health Department has quietly halted a controversial Pharmacy Guild bid to patent key aspects of a national medical record sharing network.
In July, the guild assigned its interest to the commonwealth and, in August, the department withdrew the application ahead of a formal determination by the patents body, IP Australia.
A spokesman for the department said a dispute with the guild over a contract for the Better e-Dispensing and e-Claiming project had been resolved through mediation, "in a manner satisfactory to the parties".
The project was established to develop a draft data standard for communications between pharmacies, consumers and government agencies.
The project, which blew out to $4.5 million from the original $3 million, was funded by the Department of Health. The guild-engaged consultancy CR Group for the development work.
Then, in 2002, the guild and CR Group jointly applied for worldwide patents for a "method and system for sharing personal health data".
The patent bid sparked outrage from doctor, consumer and industry groups also collaborating on local e-health initiatives.
If successful, the guild could have charged royalties on government IT systems such as the proposed MediConnect and its replacement, the now-languishing HealthConnect.
Continue reading here:
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22630718-5013040,00.html
This really is good news – but frankly it should not have ever got this far. There exists what is termed ‘prior art’ talking about these sort of approaches going back at least a decade before that.
What these people were thinking is very hard to determine – good this silliness has gone forever.
Third we have:
IBA Health closer to $411m UK takeover
October 26, 2007 - 2:15PM
IBA Health Ltd has cleared one of the final hurdles for its $411 million takeover of ailing UK counterpart iSOFT plc, after receiving approval from a British court.
The million-dollar acquisition, making IBA the world's fourth largest e-health group, is now expected to be completed on October 30 when iSOFT is delisted from the London Stock Exchange.
The High Court of Justice for England and Wales still needs to confirm capital reduction before the takeover, but this was expected to take place, IBA said.
Continue reading here:
Given the sudden jump of a little over 8.5% on Friday 26th October in Australia one has to assume the market has decided this is really over (at last)!
The following provides a useful perspective on the iSoft saga from an iSoft perspective.
Chairman reveals his iSoft low point
23 Oct 2007
iSoft chairman, John Weston, has revealed he reached the lowest point in his tenure at the healthcare software company when apparent accounting irregularities came to light.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Weston recalls his personal nadir in the iSoft saga. In July 2006 he was just six weeks into the job when newly-appointed auditors, Deloitte, discovered what appeared to be accounting irregularities in previous years’ figures.
He jokes with the FT that he will not be joining companies that have just appointed a new finance director, a new set of auditors and a new chairman of audit all at the same time.
Weston reveals that in early board meetings he chaired there were some tensions between executives and non-executives over Lorenzo, the software being developed for the National Programme for IT. In particular, he recalls: “I had some uneasy feelings about the lack of information available about the cost to complete development”.
He quickly learned that delays in the development of iSoft’s Lorenzo system covering three regions of England’s NHS were at the heart of the problems.
Continue reading here.
http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/3142/chairman_reveals_his_isoft_low_point
Fourth we have:
White House order puts HHS in charge of biosurveillance efforts
A new White House directive orders the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a national biosurveillance system to detect threats to human health and says the system should rely, where possible, on e-health records.
The directive, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 21, covers many aspects of public health and medical preparedness for a naturally occurring or deliberately induced health emergency on a large scale. The directive states that it “will transform our national approach to protecting the health of the American people against all disasters. “
For the most part, the directive gives HHS authority over the response to health emergencies. It appears to come down on the side of HHS in a number of areas where there has been uncertainty over whether HHS or the Department of Homeland Security was in charge. Both DHS and HHS have biosurveillance programs, for example.
Continue reading here:
http://www.govhealthit.com/online/news/350075-1.html
This is an important move and reminds us that in Australia we have the Australian Sentinel Practices Research Network (ASPREN). This system has about a hundred general practices around the county who report weekly the cases of influenza like illnesses, gastroenteritis, shingles and chickenpox. The reporting is done electronically using a web site at the University of Adelaide. It seems to me that while this is a very small start – Australia could be doing a great deal more in this area!
Lastly we have:
Ask and ye shall receive: study
By: Joseph Conn / HITS staff writer
Story posted: October 19, 2007 - 5:59 am EDT
Part one of a two-part series
Many Americans will do their part when asked to allow their heath records to be used for medical research, but the operative phrase is "when asked."
And, for a plurality of those who do volunteer, that means being asked each and ever time their records are to be used, according to a recent study whose author said that it may be the first of its kind, specifically focusing on patient attitudes about healthcare privacy in the area of clinical research.
A pair of preliminary reports and two PowerPoint presentations about the study conducted by veteran privacy researcher Alan Westin, emeritus professor of public law and government with the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, were presented during two days of meetings earlier this month in Washington before the Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information: The HIPAA Privacy Rule. The committee operates under the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science.
Among its goals, the committee is to "consider the needs for privacy of identifiable personal health information and the value of such privacy to patients and the public," according to explanatory material about it on the IOM Web site. The committee is to make recommendations about retaining or changing the status quo and seeking to balance "the needs and benefits of patient privacy ... against the needs, risks and benefits of identifiable health information for various kinds of health research."
Continue reading here:
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071019/FREE/310190004/1029/FREE
Part 2 of the Article is here:
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071022/FREE/310220003/1029/FREE
Striking a balance between privacy and health
This is a useful review of public attitudes to the use of health information for research. Reading the two articles and visiting the IOM web site are very worthwhile for those interested in the area.
All in all not a bad start to the week!
More next week.
David.
4 comments:
That the Guild’s patent has been laid to rest demonstrates common sense prevailing all round. The Department of Health and Ageing has excelled itself in the way in which it has resolved this appalling matter.
That the Guild should ever have contemplated lodging a patent, let along taking action to do so, demonstrates extreme stupidity. The Guild’s actions could not be justified on any grounds whatsoever and can only be accounted for by greed. Whether the equivalent medical body would have taken such a course, had it been able to, will never be known. What is known however, is the Guild broke the trust that had been put in it.
The Government needs at all times to keep a very close weather eye open to ensure nothing similar ever happens again.
Pharmacists are one of the most highly trusted groups in our society and so are doctors. The Guild’s actions have reflected adversely on all of us. The Guild claims to represent all pharmacists and negotiates on our behalf with Government and other bodies. A public apology on this matter would go a long way to reassuring us all that the Guild has learnt some valuable lessons from this and made changes to its Policy and Procedures Manual to ensure something similar does not happen again.
The Guild is a formidable negotiator. It needs to be as its job is to represent members’ interests. The viability of pharmacies is constantly under threat from supermarket chains. The Guild must do everything it can to protect members’ interests. So it is most likely that the motivation behind the patent was not greed but a simple attempt, albeit clumsy, to preserve pharmacy as we know it today, by applying for a patent which would enable it to exercise control over the way ehealth is used in pharmacies. Whether or not the potential for millions of dollars of royalties was involved in this decision is a moot point.
How naïve can you be. A lot of us pharmacists are not members of the guild. It was a money grab plain and simple.
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