Emergency Preparedness and Utility Infrastructure in Healthcare
As the COVID-19 vaccines roll out across the country and around the world, healthcare organizations can now pivot from frontline surge preparation and focus on futureproofing their facilities. While hospitals successfully implemented emergency facility upgrades and stopgap measures to meet pressing pandemic demands, now is the perfect time for healthcare leaders to take a more comprehensive approach to their utility infrastructure capacity and capabilities.
Targeted Genetic Sequencing: Changing the Way We Think About Chronic Disease
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that six in 10 adults in the U.S. have a chronic health condition such as heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, or Alzheimer’s, while four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. And Americans with five or more chronic conditions, who make up 12% of the population, account for an astounding 41% of total healthcare spending. That’s nearly $1.6 billion each year.
Wellness and Awareness: A Look at the State of Health in 2021
Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent with CNN and a practicing neurosurgeon, spoke with attendees at the recent Health Experience Design Conference 2021 to talk about his observations as a correspondent, his takeaways from the COVID-19 pandemic, and his views on where we go from here.
Democratizing Healthcare: The Wait Is Over
A growing number of communities have proven that data democratization improves health structures and overcomes barriers to help communities of color respond to the health challenges of COVID-19. The inconsistencies at state level have demonstrated how the pandemic has disproportionately impacted people of color. The spread of the pandemic has been a shared concern for all of the American public as the mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.3 times as high as white Americans.
Conducting Field Visits During COVID-19
Shannon Ford, senior manager of human-centered design with Alluma, spoke at Health Experience Design 2021 recently to discuss how her team used technology and adaptability to conduct field visits when in-person observation became untenable. The field visits were part of in-context observation, shadowing, and interviews, all meant to help put together an application and implementation enrollment process for a healthcare coverage system.
Physicians Urged to Prepare for Mental Health Crises
Physician burnout is widespread in the United States. In a survey The Physicians Foundation conducted in spring 2020, 58% of physicians reported feelings associated with burnout compared to 40% of physicians in a survey the organization conducted in 2018.
The COVID Vaccine Pause: A Case for Greater Patient Engagement
In several early cases of J&J vaccine blood clotting, patients were treated with heparin, which is a normal treatment for blood clots; however, in these cases the heparin worsened the situation. The pause helped educate hospitals and health systems going forward on how to treat similar symptoms in those with the J&J dose.
A Year of COVID-19 Data: Lessons Learned
Researchers have begun to dig into the results of this data collection and identified trends that have helped them understand mortality rates during the pandemic and beyond. BD recently published two papers on specific data discoveries during COVID-19, and Kalvin Yu, MD, FIDSA, senior medical director with BD, discusses some of the key takeaways from that research.
PSQH: The Podcast Episode 29 – Automation and the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout
On episode 29 of PSQH: The Podcast, Jason Warrelmann, global director of healthcare and life sciences at UiPath, talks about how automation is helping with COVID-19 vaccination rollouts.
CDC Mask Guidelines are Based on ‘Incomplete Data,’ Nurses Union Says
New mask guidelines issued last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) are based on incomplete data and dangerous assumptions, National Nurses United (NNU) said in a press conference Wednesday.