Friday 1 November 2013

Building an innovation ecosystem in Madrid with the support of the MIT

This is the vision of the Madrid m+vision Consortium, whose IDEA² Madrid program targets the region’s emerging innovators—particularly scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs early in their careers—to give them the connections and resources needed to realize their ideas and to develop as professionals.

Last Wednesday (30 October) ,we presented the project to the m+vision as finalists for IDEA² Madrid.
 Keep watching: Awardees of the IDEA² Madrid will be announced in November 2013

Here I am, close to the end of the presentation. It was exiciting to be in front of the panel and defend the project. The reception was good and now it is time to wait for the outcome


Saturday 26 October 2013

Web running

Yourhealthbox has given one step beyond the blog
and now we already have a proper domain  :
www.yourhealthbox.org

obvious choice. What else?

Currently the web is quite lean (I would say spartan),
but that will improve soon.

Friday 25 October 2013

Tengo mi SW...y ahora como me protejo de los posibles piratas



Las diferentes interpretaciones entre EU y EEUU sobre el software y las patentes
hace que en ocasiones uno piense que a este lado del charco, estamos en desventaja.

Sin embargo, recordemos que existen protecciones del software alternativas como

−Secreto industrial o empresarial
−Depósito notarial 
- Envio de burofax , carta certificada
 
Que son muy sencillas de llevar a cabo y que llegado el momemto nos podemos
 lamentar de no haberlas llevado a cabo.
 
Y si no, siempre podemos registrar nuestro software como libre, crear una comunidad
de usuarios que lo desarrolle y actualice , de lo cual, nos beneficiamos todo.

Y además, siempre podemos identificar pasos en nuestro SW que sean críticos,
innovadores y por tanto susceptibles de  patentarse como métodos.
 
Os dejo aqui un interesante link en el que tratan estos temas
http://www.zbm-patents.com/pdf/ZBM_Modalidades_de_proteccion_software.pdf

Thursday 11 July 2013

is healthcare going digital?

After I few days out...there are a couple of tweets that i have received this days that i'd like to comment on

On the one hand, i'd like to bring forward a very old tweet from Accenture (@Accenture) stating that  74% of doctors surveyed agree that #EHR are integral to effective patient care today. #healthIT http://t.co/Pc6Yar5tYu .

This is the take-home-number from the 2012 survey among 3,700 doctors in eight countries (Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the United States). This  reveals that today’s doctors are going digital or at least the are being forced to it in a search for higher productivity.

Based on this year’s findings that show increasing levels of adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) and health information exchange (HIE). Globally, the number of physicians who describe themselves as “routinely” accessing clinical data about patients has increased by 42 percent (rising from 33 percent of doctors surveyed in 2011, to 47 percent in 2012). This is a very high and promising number.

Another key indicator of the overall rise in healthcare IT is the fact that 91 percent of the physicians surveyed report that they are active users of EMR either in their own practice or in a hospital/clinic. More than half of doctors surveyed (60 percent) report using EMR in their own medical practice.

This indicates that more and more doctors are going paperless.

On the other, Deloitte Health Care (@DeloitteHealth) tweeted a few days ago that their perspective on #bigdata is its potential for more effective #patient solutions. This consulting firm foresees that Health systems will prepare their data management environments for the era of big data, whatever it means...as big data is becoming the has-to-be-used word whenever two ideas are put toghether.

However it is true that, through more effective data capture, management, higher transparency, and multi-channel delivery of data assets as a shareable enterprise service to the many secondary data use cases, health systems can seek to bend the cost of data trajectory. This statement, that i have almost copied from their brochure on health informatics.

Pulling the string of this second tweet, one can find further insight in the previous idea: data as a service . Why is it that similar ideas are bubbling everywhere? i guess because techonology is now ripe enough to pursue them.

The health care industry has been focused on the eHR  journey , and everyday new sources of information are being added to the pool, includeing the increasing availability of genomics and proteomics data. These emerging data sources are pushing health systems into the reality of having to store and manage lots and lots of data, eventually even processing and mining them in the search of new evidence and knowledge.

The conclusion is that healthcare is  going digital in many aspects... even if we are not able- yet- to mail patients around.




Thursday 4 July 2013

Healthcare and big data ...this is buzzing everywhere

Deloitte Health Care (@DeloitteHealth) twitteó a las 11:34 PM on mié, jul 03, 2013: How might informatics help #lifesciences unlock the power of #bigdata to aid development of new therapies? http://t.co/UzYl25QtKi (https://twitter.com/DeloitteHealth/status/352540776695214080) Obtén la aplicación oficial de Twitter en https://twitter.com/download

Wednesday 3 July 2013

The healthcare system seen by its clients

Deloitte Health Care (@DeloitteHealth) twitteó a las 8:41 PM on mié, jul 03, 2013: A majority of #consumers consider the #health system wasteful, inefficient, and difficult to navigate. http://t.co/9UUBUEuVJL #CHSblog (https://twitter.com/DeloitteHealth/status/352497413812006913) Obtén la aplicación oficial de Twitter en https://twitter.com/download

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Friday 21 June 2013

We are on a hot topic: "Nothing will be as powerful as a patient-powered data liberation movement".


After reading a tweet from the Harvard Med Schooland the corresponding link where Prof. Isaac Kohane discusses the potential of surveillance and patient-powered data, I get more and more convinced that the time has arrived for a revolution in the approach to the use and safeguard of medical records.





In his article, Prof. Kohane estates that the the "vast majority of your health care data remains unused, discarded and ignored" and I would add that this data is scattered, if not lost, among multiple providers.

Even in those cases where a significant amount of data is digitally stored, this data sits idle when it's been shown than it could be applied today to improve the delivery of health care to individuals and  to the advance of medical science.


But if the technology is mature enough to enable the analysis of such massive data and it has been proved that  keeping an eye on health care records could help in so many ways, what’s preventing us from such endevour?
Privacy is probably the main concern? I'm sure a properly protected database is at as safe as the safest  room where physical documentes have been to date  under custody at hospitals. The point is in the digital realm, once the back door opens tons of data can be taken effortlessly and this is a real risk.
Imagine we could solve the safeguard of data.  Even then,  not everyone would agree in letting a third party to  use his personal records to advance biomedical care and science. Therefore individuals have to be able to opt out or opt in, and in the latter case to select and isolate pieces of data he wants to exclude from the scientific scrutiny. 
In a practical system, where inviolable protection is difficult to guarantee ( otherwise there would be less leaks in the intelligence services )  informed consent for data-sharing would be needed and it should be madecrystal clear what the risks are of accidental or malicious disclosure and also  substantial legal penalties for anyone abusing your data.
However, I fully agree with  Prof. Kohane that, unbelievably "Perhaps a bigger obstacle than privacy is the parochial attitude that treats patient data as belonging to particular institutions, from hospitals to health insurers to vendors of health care information systems". 
As patients we have the right to get a  copy of our own data, but the reality is that in general this right is not reinforced  healthproviders with policies of their own. And sometimes the best we can get is a printed hard copy of the original record.
  
The sad outcome is that due to fragmentation, inproper labelling or storage, information of unfathomable value is being lost and this is something our society cannot afford.
    Many things are required to revert this situation: 
  • Political support is needed for public policies to promote and enable  sharing  our data for research and analysis with appropriate security measures.
  • Actors in the Healthcare industry have to understand this is a win-win situation.
  • Citizens have to understand the great benefit of opting in versus being out.

Standarized open and safe access to personal data : a win-win scenario 


Too much noise on the web...but not enough music

Post of a tweet by Alejandra Fernández (@ALFEAL)
 Caregivers are top digital health users, but only 59 percent find online tools helpful 

 

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Tweet on the use of genetic data

Accenture (@Accenture) twitteó a las 10:00 AM on mar, jun 18, 2013: Personalized Medicine uses genetic traits to identify and treat disease. What does this mean for future #healthcare? http://t.co/1unv1ceeas