Cloud technology to combat cancer

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2010) — Cloud services provided over grid technology are helping to treat cancer patients, thanks to an enormous effort by European researchers working closely with industry.

Cancer is Europe's second largest killer and one of the most difficult diseases to treat. There are dozens of therapeutic protocols designed to respond to the vast diversity of cases that confront doctors.

Radiotherapy has proven a particularly effective treatment. Here a linear accelerator, or Linacs in the jargon, attacks the cancer directly by delivering radiation from several directions. But treatment is complex. The direction, size and duration of dosages are all tailored to each case, and must be recalculated every time via simulation.

It is a phenomenally complicated computation, requiring lengthy processing time, so much so that it can mean delays and this has the knock-on impact of lowering the number of patients who can be treated by each Linacs machine.

Faster diagnoses would help, but the required computing power is expensive, dramatically increasing the Linacs installation and operation costs. It is a critical bottleneck.

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BEinGRID project (http://www.beingrid.eu/)

Latvia puts ehealth services online

11 Nov 2010

Latvia has made its first eHealth services available online to provide users with information on their own or their family’s medical health.

The information, which is stored in public registers and is accessible free of charge to all Latvians, has been made available online at the national eGovernment portal 'latvija.lv' .

The eHealth services include 'My state-funded health care services’, which uses the current health payments centre’s database and provides users with information on their own or their children's medical visits and diagnoses.

It also includes 'My data in the register of diabetic patients' providing information that is stored electronically in the register of patients with diabetes mellitus.

In addition it provides newborn baby data which is electronically stored in the register of neonatal information systems.

The portal is the main online source of government information for the Latvian state institutions, the local government and the citizens.

So far, 29 eServices have been made available, which are implemented in collaboration with the government and the local authorities.

Sarah Bruce

eHealth Europe

Latvia National eGovernment Portal

E-Health Europe: NHS PHR HealthSpace fails to deliver

17 Nov 2010

Patients have found the government’s personal health record project HealthSpace neither useful nor easy to use and only a tiny percentage have so far signed up for it, according to a study published today.

Researchers led by Prof. Trish Greenhalgh from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry reported that just 0.13% of those offered the chance to open an advanced HealthSpace account had done so and that the functionality was poorly aligned with patient expectations.

The study said patients were disappointed with the amount and type of data available, the need to enter data themselves and the limited options for sharing this data with their clinician.

Read more at eHealth Europe

e-Development - Global CIO Dialogue on the Future of Government Transformation

When: November 8, 2010, 8:30 – 10:45 a.m. Washington DC time

Where: Room J 1 - 050 (701 18th Street, N. W.), RSVP please to edevelopment@worldbank.org

Watch live webcast!

Ask questions or make comments on Twitter (hashtag is #WB-CIO)

This workshop is organized by World Bank ICT Sector Unit as part of the eTransform initiative and will feature a keynote presentation by Mr. John Suffolk, Government CIO of UK, who will share the experience of United Kingdom and will speak of the latest technology trends and how they impact government transformation. This will be followed by a panel discussion with senior government officials and CIOs from leading countries on their vision of how online tools and advanced technology can be used to make government processes more transparent, to encourage informed public participation, to foster collaboration across government and with other sectors of society, and to make government administration more cost-effective during the next 5 years. The panelists will discuss the ways in which the cutting edge technologies, such as cloud computing, web 2.0, mobile technology and open data are pursued as tools for government transformation, as reflected in e-government strategies in their respective countries.

The workshop will also introduce the Moldova Governance e-Transformation project as an example of an innovative government transformation initiative leveraging the latest technologies in the context of a transition country and launched with assistance of the World Bank and other development partners. The high-level participants from invited countries will be offered an opportunity to share their countries perspective and ask questions.

Agenda

08:30 – 08:45 Coffee & Registration

08:45 – 08:50 Philippe Dongier, Sector Manager, Sector ICT Unit, The World Bank

Opening remarks - Introduction of speakers and country audiences

8:50 – 9:05 Keynote Address by John Suffolk, UK Government CIO

9:05 – 9:15 World Bank Project Example: Moldova Governance eTransformation by Stela Mocan, Executive Director of e-Government Center, Moldova

09:15 – 09:45 Panel discussion on the future of government transformation

Moderator: Randeep Sudan, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, the World Bank

Panelists:
James Kang, GCIO, Singapore
Bryan Sivak, CTO, Washington DC
Dona Scola, Deputy Minister of ICT, Moldova
Bill Dorotinski, Sector Manager, Public Sector, Europe and Central Asia, WB (TBC)

09:45 – 10:20 Perspectives and questions from participating country audiences (Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Russia and others, TBD) as well as the Washington audience. Moderated by Deepak Bhatia, Head of e-Gov Applications Practice, Global ICT, The World Bank (TBC)

10:20 – 10:40 Answers and comments from the speakers

10:40 – 10:45 Closing remarks by Samia Melhem, Senior Operations Officer and Chair of the e-Development Thematic Group, The ICT Sector Unit, the World Bank

Doctors who use EHRs are fiscally better off than paper records users

Medical practices that use electronic health record (EHR) systems are doing better financially than those that are still paper records-based, according to a report by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) in Englewood, Colo. The study found that practices that were not owned by hospitals or integrated delivery systems reported almost $50,000 in greater total medical revenue per full-time-equivalent (FTE) physician than practices with paper medical records. These practices also reported greater expenses, at about $105,000 per FTE physician, but had almost $180,000 greater median revenue per FTE physician than practices with paper medical records. And, after five years of EHR use, independent physician practices had a median operating margin that was about 10 percent higher than physician practices in their first year of using EHRs, the report notes.


Telemedicine and e-Health, October 29,2010