April 30, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in H1N1, Pan Flu, Twitter.add a comment
Twitter community aggregates feeds on swine flu
April 30, 2009 | Molly Merrill, Associate Editor
Tom Stitt
TUSCALOOSA, AL – The Health Care Communication and Social Media community from Twitter has launched a Web site to aggregate information feeds from social, government and traditional media concerning the swine flu.
HCSM is a Twitter conversation community that collaborates each week to discuss best practices from social media leaders and movers and shakers in healthcare communications and marketing fields.
“After discussing 2009 H1N1 (swine) flu communication strategies on Sunday night, the HCSM Twitter conversation community decided that having related social media and news feeds aggregated in one place would be useful for HCSM members and organizations,” said HCSM co-founder and moderator Dana Lewis.
The 2009 H1N1 (swine) flu Web site requirements were suggested by the HCSM community and implemented by Tom Stitt and Stew Apelzin, managing directors at Aperial, which develops BlokCast, an RSS feed aggregation service focused on healthcare markets.
HCSM participants include physicians, administrators, public information managers, Web services managers, editors, bloggers, writers and consultants.
“We thought it would be useful for healthcare organizations and state/local healthcare departments as well as local government offices that manage emergency services to have one Web Site that aggregated relevant RSS news and social media feeds about the 2009 N1H1 (swine) flu,” said Stitt.
The 2009 H1N1 (swine) flu Web site was built using Drupal, an open source content management framework. Followers in the HCSM community suggested authoritative RSS news feeds from governmental organizations and traditional media as well as social media feeds from Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
“We’re excited to use technologies like Drupal to build BlokCast and work with HCSM to showcase the benefits of social media for addressing real-time healthcare communication requirements,” said Stitt.
SOURCE: HealthCare IT News
Tech companies tout their power against swine flu April 30, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in Pandemic Flu.1 comment so far
April 30, 2009 | Bernie Monegain, Editor
Richard J. Boxer, MD
DALLAS – Dallas-based TelaDoc Medical Services, a nationwide network of primary care physicians who provide services on demand, is among several IT companies touting their technology and services as ways to help track and combat swine flu.
“The TelaDoc model is particularly applicable to pandemic preparedness since consults are conducted via telephone, insulating physicians from patients and possible exposure to germs,” said Richard J. Boxer, MD, chief medical officer of TelaDoc. “Furthermore, physician telephone consults can be conducted at any time and from anywhere, obviating the need for patients to leave home in order to access quality medical attention.”
Minneapolis-based Quinnian Health, which is partnering with TelaDoc, announced its “Rapid Influenza Response” module to enable employers to quickly deploy medical countermeasures (antiviral medications and personal protective equipment) to employees, dependents and suppliers.
“It is critical that employers do all they can to protect their most important asset – their people,” said Quinnian Health President and CEO John Brownlee.
Executives for Orion Health, a New Zealand-based healthcare IT company with an office in Santa Monica, Calif., sayt the company’s Rhapsody technology is providing the mechanism for state health departments to collect data from medical laboratories and share data to support early detection and rapid response on infectious disease outbreaks such as the swine flu.
EBSCO Publishing and the editors of the point-of-care resource DynaMed have made the DynaMed Swine Influenza clinical summary available free to healthcare providers and institutions throughout the world.
The Nashville-based Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) points to its CareAlign technology as a key to identification of disease.
“CareAlign exemplifies the important role of information technology in helping our country to address pandemics and other healthcare challenges occurring after natural disasters such as hurricanes or floods,” said Gary Zegiestowsky, ICA’s CEO. “With CareAlign in place, the aggregation of clinical data across a community allows for quick identification of trends. Today, one ICA installation is graphing emergency room visit discharge data to determine if there is a higher incidence of high fever and flu-like incidences throughout the community.”
SOURCE: HealthCare IT News
Local Health Agencies, Hurt by Cuts, Brace for Flu April 30, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in H1V1, State Budgets, Swine Flu.1 comment so far
April 30, 2009
By KEVIN SACK
The recession has drained hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of workers from the state and local health departments that are now the front line in the country’s defense against a possible swine flu pandemic.
Health officials in affected states said they had thus far been able to manage the testing and treatment of infected residents and mount vigorous public education campaigns. But many said they had been able to do so only by shifting workers from other public health priorities, and some questioned how their depleted departments might handle a pandemic.
“I’m very concerned,” said Robert M. Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “Local health departments are barely staffed to do the work they do on a day-to-day basis. A large increase in workload will mean that much of the other work that is being done now won’t be done. And depending on the scale of an epidemic, capacity may be exceeded.”
At a news conference on Monday, Dr. Richard E. Besser, the acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the public health system was in “a tough situation.”
“We hear about tens of thousands of state public health workers who are going to be losing their jobs because of state budgets,” Dr. Besser said. “It is very important that we look at that resource because this outbreak was identified because of a lot of work going on around preparedness.”
Mr. Pestronk’s group estimates that local health departments lost about $300 million in financing and 7,000 workers in 2008, a year when more than half of all agencies shed employees. There were about 160,000 health department workers in 2005, according to the group. Mr. Pestronk said he expected to lose at least another 7,000 jobs this year.
State public health agencies lost an additional 1,500 workers through layoffs and attrition from July 2008 to January 2009, according to the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. The group anticipates 2,600 job losses in the coming fiscal year.
South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, which also staffs local health departments, has lost $30 million in state money and a third of its 6,000 employees over the last decade, said Thom W. Berry, a spokesman. The department is currently investigating several “probable” cases of swine flu.
In New York City, which has the highest concentration of confirmed flu cases, federal grants for emergency preparedness have fallen to $23 million, from $28 million a year ago, said Andrew S. Rein, the city health department’s executive deputy commissioner.
In California, which has 14 confirmed cases, the Department of Public Health recently absorbed a 10 percent budget cut ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to help close a huge budget gap. It did so without laying off workers, instead reducing grants to local health departments, said Dr. Bonnie Sorensen, the chief deputy director of policy and programs. During the flu scare, about 100 state health workers have been diverted from other duties, Dr. Sorensen said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency that calls for all California agencies to assist the health department. It gave the department special powers to enter into contracts, suspend competitive bidding and waive certification requirements for laboratories. The federal disease control agency has shipped equipment and chemicals used to test for swine flu to California so the state can hasten its laboratory work without sending samples elsewhere.
“The bottom line is, we are prepared,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said this week.
The White House asked Congress on Tuesday to provide $1.5 billion in emergency financing to battle the swine flu outbreak, but it is not clear how that money might flow downstream.
Public health officials said Congress had missed an opportunity by excising nearly $900 million in proposed financing for pandemic flu preparation from this year’s stimulus bill. It was to be the final installment of President George W. Bush’s request for $7 billion in federal spending on vaccines, medical equipment and planning. Congress last allocated money for pandemic planning by state and local governments in 2006 — about $600 million over two years, said Dr. Paul E. Jarris, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
“The entire system is lining up to decrease resources at the time we need them most,” Dr. Jarris said. “We have to realize that we’re at the starting line. The stress will come if this escalates.”
Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, said the financial strain made “it more important that we luck out” with a mild outbreak.
Dr. Alvin D. Jackson, the state health director in Ohio, which has one confirmed case of swine flu, said his agency’s state appropriation had declined by about $10 million over the last two years. Dr. Jackson said his budget to prepare communities and hospitals for an influenza pandemic had dropped to $34 million, from $55 million in 2004.
“Right now we’re O.K.,” he said. “We feel that we can do an excellent job protecting our citizens. But looking forward, we do understand that some additional resources would be appreciated.”
In Cleveland, Dr. Terry Allan, the Cuyahoga County health commissioner, said the decline in state and federal money had prompted a 25 percent cut in spending on pandemic preparedness over the last two years. That had cost the department at least 10 workers, Dr. Allan said, and further cuts are expected.
“Those are people we would have had available to expand and build on our plans for social distancing, for mobilizing antivirals,” Dr. Allan said. “Our plan is not adequate. It’s barely started.”
SOURCE: NY TIMES
Swine flu cases suspected in Miami-Dade April 30, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in H1VI, Miami-Dade, Swine Flu.add a comment
BY FRED TASKER
ftasker@MiamiHerald.com
Twenty possible but unconfirmed swine flu cases have been identified in Miami-Dade County, and an undetermined number in Broward, health officials said Wednesday. But it could be several days before the test results come back to confirm them.
The cases are considered ”suspect” because the patients have flu symptoms and have traveled to Mexico or other areas where the swine flu has been identified, said Dr. Vincent Conte, chief epidemiologist with the Miami-Dade Health Department.
”If they have fever and respiratory symptoms and they’ve traveled, they meet the definition [for testing],” Conte said.
Also on Wednesday, the World Health Organization took the unprecedented step of raising the infectious disease alert level to Phase 5, setting the stage for increased efforts to combat the infection.
The virus ”must be taken seriously because of its ability to spread to every country in the world,” WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan said at a news conference. Phase 5 is considered a situation in which the likelihood of a pandemic ”is very high or inevitable,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general.
The increased level came as the swine flu outbreak in the United States spread to four more states overnight, bringing the total to at least 92 cases. Texas authorities also announced the first U.S. death from the new virus, a 23-month-old who died in a Houston hospital.
LOCAL CASES
The Miami-Dade viral samples, collected over the past few days, have been sent to the Florida Department of Health lab in Tampa, he said. Virologists there will analyze them to see if they can identify them as regular seasonal flu. If they can’t, they will send them on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for final analysis. Results might take five days or more, they said, because of a backlog of cases in Atlanta.
Suspected cases in Broward are also sent to a state lab in Miami, but Broward County Health Department spokeswoman Candy Sims wouldn’t discuss numbers.
”There may have been many samples submitted for testing, but that’s all I can say,” she said.
The Dade health department is not seeking to quarantine the suspect individuals.
”We’re asking their families and doctors to have them remain in voluntary isolation,” said Dr. Fermin Leguen, an epidemiologist for the health department.
He said the individuals were identified by private physicians, hospitals and health clinics.
”The CDC is the only lab in the country that can do the analysis, and they’re inundated with samples from the whole country,” Conte said.
The boy who died in Texas was from Mexico City, and had traveled to Matamoros on a commercial flight with his family to visit relatives in Brownsville, Texas. The boy, who had an unspecified ”underlying health condition,” developed symptoms shortly after arriving and was taken to a hospital in Brownsville before being transferred to Houston.
Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan and Nevada joined the list of states with new cases. Texas said its total has climbed to 16 cases, New York has 51 and California has 15. A Marine at the Twentynine Palms, Calif., base has been confirmed to have the virus, the Marine Corps said Wednesday. About 30 men at the base who have come into contact with him have been quarantined.
New cases also have been reported in Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria and New Zealand, among other countries.
”It’s clear that the virus is spreading, and we don’t see any evidence of it slowing down at this point,” WHO’s Fukuda said at a morning news conference in Geneva.
Mexican health officials said the number of confirmed cases of swine flu had risen to 49, from the previous official tally of 26. Mexican authorities say seven people have died.
FEAR SPREADS
At Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, about 30 people with flu symptoms had showed up by mid-day Wednesday at the emergency room seeking treatment, according to Dr. Yolangel Hernandez Suarez, the hospital’s chief administration officer.
The patients were given masks and expedited service.
The situation frightened Beatriz Suarez, who visits the hospital up to four times a week for her 3-year-old’s dialysis treatments. The mother of three fears contracting flu could be fatal for her son, Luis Anthony Suarez, who was born without a working kidney.
”I’m frightened. It’s worse for my children. They touch everything, so I keep washing his hands,” she said.
Doctors at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale have seen an increase in the number of parents bringing their kids in to the emergency room over the last couple of days.
Some are coming in with runny noses or basic cold symptoms, said Dr. Marc Arel, who works in the hospital’s pediatric emergency department.
”Some people aren’t coming in with anything at all,” he said. “They just want to be sure.”
Miami Herald staff writers Hannah Sampson and Jose Pagliery contributed to this report, which was supplemented by wire services.
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© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
Laboratory health professionals work behind the scenes to keep Floridans safe April 29, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in Florida Dept of Health, H1N1, Swine Flu.add a comment
Submitted by DOH Communication Office
Originally posted 4/29/2009
TALLAHASSEE, FL – Laboratory test results nationwide constitute an estimated 70 percent of patients’ medical records and are vital to diagnoses, treatment and medical decision-making.
Every year, the Florida Department of Health’s (DOH) Bureau of Laboratories produces over 10 million results per year at five sites located in Jacksonville, Lantana, Miami, Pensacola and Tampa. This testing is critical in ensuring that Floridians are healthy and that their environments are safe.
For example, the Bureau screens all babies born in Florida for 34 medical disorders so that treatment, if necessary, can begin as soon as possible.
Florida’s public health laboratories test clinical samples for viruses, bacteria and parasites and toxins that can cause disease in humans. These diseases include anthrax, smallpox, rabies, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The laboratories provide supporting data for food and waterborne outbreaks by checking for chemical and biological contaminants. The Bureau also has the capability to identify more than 150 chemicals in case of a terrorist attack and to detect drug resistant organisms such as methicillin-resistant (MRSA); multiple drug resistant and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis.
The DOH Bureau of Laboratories is a national leader in public health. The Bureau was one of the first state public health laboratories to implement electronic laboratory ordering and also one of the first to rapidly integrate nucleic acid amplification (NAA) testing for tuberculosis. The Bureau is a member of the World Health Organization Influenza Surveillance Network of Laboratories to alert world leaders of potential pandemic flu strains.
Factors increasing the demand for medical laboratory testing include an aging U.S. population, medical advancements such as organ transplants, and unprecedented increases in international travel and immigration resulting in the importation of rare or previously unknown diseases. With the stronger emphasis on preventive medicine both nationally and here in Florida, medical laboratory professionals in clinical and public health laboratories become even more important in the rapid detection, treatment and statistical assessment of chronic and emergent diseases such as AIDS, West Nile virus and hepatitis C and the resurgence of old diseases such as tuberculosis.
DOH promotes, protects and improves the health of all people in Florida. To learn more about the DOH Bureau of Laboratories, visit www.doh.state.fl.us/lab/index.html.
Poor Use Of Data Integration Tools Can Waste $500,000 Annually: Gartner April 29, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in Data Integration, gartner.add a comment
The analyst firm recommends adopting a standard tool for each of the three main categories of data-integration tools and using open-source software and tools that are provided at no additional cost with database management systems.
By Antone Gonsalves
April 27, 2009
Large companies using multiple and functionally overlapping data-integration tools can reduce costs by more than $500,000 annually by getting rid of duplicating software and adopting a shared-services model,Gartner says.
“Organizations often purchase and implement new data integration tools in a fragmented way without considering extending investments already made in other parts of the business, resulting in multiple tools from various vendors,” Gartner analyst Ted Friedman said in a statement.
To correct the problem, Gartner recommends adopting a standard tool for each of the three main categories of data-integration tools: extraction, transformation and loading; data replication and data federation. Deciding on which tools to keep should be based on the business context and requirements, rather than purely on cost.
In addition, organizations should consider using open-source data-integration tools and those that are provided at no additional cost with database management systems, the analyst firm said. However, before taking such approaches, organizations must also consider the investment required in re-design, re-development and testing to migrate existing data-integration processes from onetool set to another, as well as the relative immaturity of many of these lower-cost alternatives in comparison to incumbent products.
Organization with multiple data-integration tools typically deploy each tool on separate hardware, resulting in redundant servers and storage that range from a total of $50,000 and upward for each tool. Therefore, substantial savings is possible by implementing shared computing infrastructure for data-integration workload,Gartner says. In addition, there’s substantial savings in productivity and time to delivery, because each new project team in need of infrastructure for data-integration workloads can leverage, or pay to expand, the shared hardware.
Finally, Gartner recommends that organization centralize skills involved in data integration into a shared services team model to reduce staffing costs directly by 50% or more each year.
“Rationalization limited to one business unit may not optimise cost savings,” Friedman said. “For organizations to achieve savings of more than $500,000 per year, CIOs and data integration teams should work together to lead the rationalization and shared-services program.”
Gartner’s full report entitled “Reduce Costs of Data Integration by Rationalizing Tools and Infrastructure, and Centralizing Skills” is available on the firm’s Web site.
World Health Organization raises alert to second-highest level, indicating swine flu nears widespread human infection. April 29, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in Pan Flu.add a comment
http://www.cnn.com/
Obama wants $1.5 billion for pandemic preps April 28, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in Obama, Pandemic Flu.add a comment
* White House spokesman: Request comes “out of an abundance of caution”
* At one point, an $870 million request for pandemic flu preparations was in stimulus
* Michael Steele defends stimulus opposition, says no way to know of pandemic
* Sen. Susan Collins says no evidence efforts hampered by a lack of funds
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The White House asked Congress for an additional $1.5 billion for pandemic flu preparations Tuesday as the head of the Republican Party defended its opposition to an earlier request.
President Obama requested the money be attached to an $83 billion war-spending bill now before lawmakers, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. The request comes “out of an abundance of caution” sparked by the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, Obama wrote in a letter to congressional leaders.
“These funds should be provided with maximum flexibility to allow us to address this emerging situation,” he wrote. “Among the uses of these funds could be supplementing antiviral stockpiles, developing a vaccine, supporting the monitoring, diagnostic, and public health response capabilities, and assisting international efforts to stem this outbreak.”
At one point, an $870 million request for pandemic flu preparations was in the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus bill that Obama signed in February. But it was cut out of the final bill after Republican objections. Congress included about $156 million for flu preparations in a later spending bill.
Asked about the opposition to that spending, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele told CNN on Tuesday, “Did we know this at the time of the vote?”
“When this package of spending was presented to the Congress and the American people, what was the presentation that was given by this administration? This was to create jobs,” Steele said. “This was to restore our economy. It had nothing to do with why pigs stink. It had nothing to do with any of the stuff we spent money on.”
At the time, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the money “doesn’t make sense” in a bill aimed at creating jobs. Collins is the former chairwoman of the Senate’s homeland security committee and had held hearings into U.S. preparations for a pandemic, but said Monday that the funding “should go through the regular appropriations process.”
“There is no evidence that federal efforts to address the swine flu outbreak have been hampered by a lack of funds,” she said in a statement issued by her office. “It is, however, a problem that the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services still do not have top positions filled.” She urged senators to confirm Kathleen Sebelius as health secretary, which they did Tuesday.
A top Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer, also lumped flu research in with “all those little porky things” added by the House of Representatives. But Rep. David Obey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said Monday that the United States remains unprepared for a flu pandemic and that he would request additional money in the war-spending bill.
CNN’s Elaine Quijano contributed to this report.
Source: CNN.com
Swine Flu Outbreak Revives Controversy Over Stimulus Funds April 28, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in Department of Health and Human Services, Swine Flu.add a comment
Note: Uber Operations has been involved in a Pan Flu Grant sponsored by the CDC, APHL, FDOH, and TDSHS.
By Ben Pershing
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee announced today it will hold a hearing this Wednesday on the federal government’s response to the swine flu outbreak, even as a controversy is brewing over the role a senior member of the panel played in blocking funds for just this kind of public health emergency.
The liberal blogosphere has been percolating this morning with criticism of Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top Republican on HSGAC, for having helped to strip close to $900 million for pandemic influenza preparedness from the economic stimulus package back in February. That bill passed with the crucial support of Collins and just two other Republicans after a handful of controversial or arguably non-stimulative items were removed, including the pandemic funding.
“Everybody in the room is concerned about a pandemic flu,” Collins said at the time, referring to the stimulus negotiations. “But does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill? No, we should not.”
Now that the swine flu outbreak has precipitated an official public health emergency, critics are piling on. John Nichols writes in The Nation that Collins and her fellow flu funding opponents — including Karl Rove — “were just playing politics, in the exceptionally narrow and irresponsible manner that characterized the Republican response to the stimulus debate.” Another blogger put it more simply: “Way to have foresight, Susan.”
But Collins’s office is pushing back against the charge that she somehow put the nation at risk by opposing the inclusion of pandemic money in the stimulus. The record does show that the Maine senator is a longtime proponent of increased funding for flu preparedness, and in December, her office points out, Collins wrote to Senate leaders asking for a $905 million increase for the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Even during the stimulus debate, Collins said repeatedly that she backed the idea of boosting the preparedness budget, but just didn’t think it made sense to include the money in the stimulus measure because it was a stretch to consider it stimulative (though some analysts have pointed out that a widespread outbreak right now would make a bad economy even worse). Instead, Collins wanted the money added in the regular appropriations process, and the omnibus spending bill that was approved in March did include a small increase in funding for pandemic flu research.
To be fair, Collins wasn’t the only senator who criticized the pandemic funding back in February. At the time, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) referred to the flu money as “one of the little porky things” that the House had put in the stimulus measure but the Senate had taken out.
Most importantly, Collins’s spokesman points out, “There is no evidence that federal efforts to address the swine flu outbreak have been hampered by a lack of funds.” And at the moment, the outbreak is not actually a pandemic. Collins and the others who led the fight to axe the flu money three months ago can only hope that doesn’t change. If it does turn out the government doesn’t have enough cash to fight the problem, Wednesday’s hearing could get interesting.
By Ben Pershing | April 27, 2009; 2:45 PM ET Purse Strings , Senate
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National Swine Flu Situation Page April 28, 2009
Posted by gonzalezloumiet in Swine Flu.add a comment
Link: http://www.vuetoo.com/vue1/Situationpagenews.asp?rc=&cc=&af=&sit=4540&z=&np=
