Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

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New Site Lays Down the (Health IT) Law

John Pulley | Nextgov | June 5, 2012

Rapid adoption and innovation of health information technology presents a bewildering and uncertain legal landscape. A new online guide seeks to map the terrain and identify legal implications for health IT.

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"Open Humans" Launches Online Platform to Share DNA and other Medical Data

Press Release | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Knight Foundation, PersonalGenomes.org | March 24, 2015

A group of top university scientists just launched a project to build a community of researchers and participants who want to benefit medical progress – by using technology to open up health data. The “Open Humans Network,” created by researchers from Harvard, New York University and the University of California San Diego, is backed by a $1 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, each of which contributed $500,000 in separate grants.

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2012 Health Datapalooza: Open health data is no longer a government initiative, it's an American initiative

Dylan Scott | Governing Newsletter | June 6, 2012

One hundred applications and websites, all powered by open data, took center stage at the [Health Datapalooza]. In their honor, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park announced a revamped HealthData.gov during his opening keynote address Tuesday. “More and more innovation is happening with more and more data being made available,” Park said. “Health data is no longer a government initiative. It is an American initiative.”

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Clinical Decision Support Strategies for Electronic Case Reporting and its Open Source Connection

A key element of public health surveillance is the reporting of infectious and certain non-infectious conditions to state, local, and tribal public health agencies (PHA) around the United States. Historically, there have been a number of key challenges with the process of case reporting that is pervasive in the United States today. To help overcome some of these barriers, an effort has been underway to move the process of case reporting to electronic. A key component of the emerging electronic care reporting (eCR) strategy is the use of clinical decision support (CDS) to help clinical care organizations determine if a reportable condition is present in a patient's record. Multiple approaches have been identified for this CDS service, including a centralized model being implemented today, and several distributed options which will likely become equally viable. Given the size, diversity, and decentralized nature of healthcare enterprises, it is likely that all three approaches for CDS discussed in this article will be deployed simultaneously.

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Does Healthcare Need More Programmers? Or, More MacGyvers?

Health care is full of black boxes.  As much as we think we've learned about the human body over the last hundred years, we're still constantly reminded about how little we actually understand its working (e.g., the microbiome). As much time and money we spend training physicians, much of how they diagnose and design treatments for patients remain a mystery.  And does anyone know why we always have to fill out so many damn forms? The many organizations working on applying AI to health care are trying to figure out some of these black boxes, although their solutions may come at the price of new black boxes.  I hope, though, that we don't just turn things over to AI.  We still need people to figure out the problems.

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Even NPR Agrees That Obamacare Has Failed

William Tate | American Thinker | March 2, 2016

A thorough repudiation of the (un-)Affordable Care Act comes from, of all places, state-run National Public Radio.  Timed to be buried by Super Tuesday coverage, NPR this week released a new study that indicates that Obamacare has failed on almost all levels. The poll, by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, shows that three quarters of Americans think health care in their state has not improved under Obamacare...

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Health Tech Hatch Chosen As Test Platform For Healthfinder.gov Mobile App Challenge

Eric Wicklund | mHIMSS | December 18, 2012

A California-based crowdfunding and development resource for mHealth entrepreneurs has been selected to provide the testing platform for the healthfinder.gov Mobile App Challenge. Read More »

Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients

Atul Gawande | New York Times | January 24, 2011

Can we lower medical costs by giving the neediest patients better care? Read More »

mHealth’s Missing Link: Technology That Helps the Caregiver

Eric Wicklund | mHealth Intelligence | May 25, 2016

A recent study finds that more than 70 percent of family and friends providing care to a loved one at home are interested in using mHealth technology to support their caregiving tasks, and roughly 60 percent would use whatever’s available now. But only 7 percent are actually using it. This disconnect is often seen as a missing link in developing mHealth for the senior population – and a missed opportunity to reach what’s expected to be 45 million Americans caring for some 117 million people by 2020...

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New Big Kid On The Block: VA Joins OpenNotes As A Partner. Tipping Point?

Susan S. Woods | Shared Health Data | June 5, 2013

Today the MyOpenNotes website announced the Veterans Health Administration joining the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative as a partner. Providers partners [...] are fully committed to give patients online access to clinical notes. Read More »

New Patient-Focused Commitments to Advance the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative

Press Release | The White House | July 8, 2015

Today, marking six months of progress to advance [Precision Medicine Initiative] PMI, the White House is hosting a Champions of Change event honoring extraordinary individuals from across the country who are making a difference in the lives of patients and driving precision medicine forward. In addition to celebrating these Champions, Federal agencies and private-sector groups are stepping up to the President’s call to action to advance the PMI by making important commitments to... Read More »

New State Commission To Focus On Healthcare Costs

Chris Anderson | Government Health IT | January 10, 2013

A new healthcare commission announced last week will focus on developing state-level policies aimed at reducing the cost of care while improving quality. Read More »

ONC Must End Opposition to Behavioral Health EHRs

Because our policy makers in Washington, DC, wield words as weapons, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT has categorized behavioral health providers as “post-acute care,” thus excluding them from MU funding that has driven EHR adoption elsewhere. While the ONC has created one reality by lobbing definitions, behavioral health advocates are promoting THE reality of mental illness as acute and costly; as debilitating as any disease or condition, if not more so; and as a major co-morbidity factor exacerbating acute illnesses and driving up health care costs. Read More »

Sage Bionetworks Releases First-of-its-Kind Data from Parkinson’s iPhone Study

Press Release | Sage Bionetworks, mPower | March 3, 2016

Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit biomedical research organization, today released an unparalleled dataset that captures the everyday experiences of more than 9,500 people to help speed scientific progress toward treatments for people with Parkinson’s disease. The dataset, which consists of millions of data points collected on a nearly-continuous basis through the iPhone app mPower, will provide researchers with unprecedented insight into the daily changes in symptoms and effects of medication for people with Parkinson’s.

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The Health Disparity of Information Access

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | Healthcare IT News | January 23, 2017

Access to healthcare is underpinned in large part on a health consumer’s access to information about available health care services, their location, price, and if the patient is very fortunate to glean, quality. As people take on more responsibility for managing their health care utilization and financing in America, their access to information that is easy-to-find, clear, comprehensive and current is critical to personal and public health outcomes...

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