Press Release

Press releases from open source and health IT organizations about their products and activities.

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uBiome Awards Microbiome Impact Grant to Explore Effects of Heavy Drinking and Smoking on Oral Microbiome

Press Release | uBiome | December 3, 2016

Microbial genomics leader uBiome is awarding in-kind scientific grants to ground-breaking microbiome studies. A microbiome impact grant award has been made to Dr. Renato Polimanti of Yale University School of Medicine, who will study the effect of heavy smoking and drinking on the oral microbiome. Grant proposals have been vetted by the company’s scientific review committee. Dr. Polimanti is a genetic epidemiologist working in the Division of Human Genetics of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine...

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uBiome CEO Dr. Jessica Richman to Deliver Opening Keynote at American Medical Informatics Association Symposium

Press Release | uBiome | November 11, 2016

Jessica Richman, PhD, co-founder and CEO of the leading microbial genomics company, uBiome, will present the opening keynote address at the 2016 American Medical Informatics Association’s (AMIA) Annual Symposium, to be held in Chicago from November 12 - 16. The AMIA and its members aim to transform healthcare through trusted science, education, and practice in biomedical and health informatics. Jessica Richman, PhD, will join two other keynote speakers at the AMIA Symposium – Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, Director of the NIH National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland and Eric Horvitz, MD, PhD, Technical Fellow and Director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Redmond...

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uBiome Reveals Details of Clinical Screening Test for Gut Health

Press Release | uBiome | November 3, 2016

Leading microbial genomics company uBiome has released a preprint of a publication submitted for peer review, entitled “16S rRNA Gene Sequencing as a Clinical Diagnostic Aid for Gastrointestinal-related Condition.” Details are available to the public in a preprint on the online archive BioRxiv. The pre-print comes alongside the announcement of the world’s first sequencing-based clinical microbiome test, SmartGut™. SmartGut™ enables physicians and patients to access a comprehensive microbiome screening test with a simple, at-home sample collection, to identify important commensal and pathogenic microorganisms...

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UC Libraries Make Open Science Framework Tool Available for Researchers

Press Release | University of Cincinnati | May 19, 2017

The Researcher Services group, an initiative of the University of Cincinnati Libraries along with the IT@UC Research & Development Team, is pleased to announce a new tool for managing research projects: OSF for UC. OSF, or the Open Science Framework, is an open-source workflow management tool developed by the Center for Open Science. Appropriate for any discipline, OSF enables researchers to manage workflows, share files, view project analytics, and more. Available at osf.uc.edu, OSF for UC is the portal for students, faculty, staff and others to manage project files and documents...

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UC San Diego Bioengineers Create First Online Search Engine for Functional Genomics Data

Press Release | University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering | April 28, 2016

University of California San Diego bioengineers have created what they believe to be the first online search engine for functional genomics data. This work from the Sheng Zhong bioengineering lab at UC San Diego was just published online by the journal Nucleic Acids Research. This new search engine, called GeNemo, is free for public use at: http://www.genemo.org. GeNemo addresses a pressing challenge: effectively searching functional genomic data from online data repositories...

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UCL Press Releases Innovative Open Access Book Formats to Improve Scholarly Research

Press Release | UCL Press | June 16, 2016

UCL Press is delighted to present its open access books online in three new distinct and innovative formats: enhanced digital editions, monographs with scholarly functionalities, and BOOCs (books as open online content). Developed by Armadillo Systems (producers of the award-winning Turning the Pages system and Digital Bodleian), UCL’s platform offers new ways of publishing digital scholarship and responds to the needs of scholars working in non-traditional formats...

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UCSF Researcher to Investigate Diabetes and the Microbiome in Filipino Populations with uBiome Microbiome Impact Grant

Press Release | uBiome | December 26, 2016

Microbial genomics leader uBiome has awarded a Microbiome Impact Grant to Dr. Mark Seielstad of the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Seielstad will investigate how patients’ risk of developing type 2 diabetes is affected by where they live. In partnership with the Philippine Genome Center, Dr. Seielstad will study the gut microbiome of Filipino type 2 diabetes patients in Manila and San Francisco, comparing them with an equivalent number of healthy control subjects in each city...

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UCSF | Health Hub and HLTH Announce Partnership to Host All-Star 2022 Digital Health Awards Grand Finale

Press Release | HLTH, UCSF | Health Hub | February 10, 2022

UCSF | Health Hub, producer of the UCSF | Health Hub Digital Health Awards, announced today a new-multi year agreement with health transformation platform HLTH, (pronounced "health"), to host its 2022 Digital Health Awards Grand Finale event at HLTH 2022. HLTH 2022 will take place in Las Vegas from November 13 through 16, 2022, gathering top health industry leaders, government officials, policy experts, politicians, tech industry influencers, and impassioned celebrities to solve healthcare's most pressing problems and spark true change.

UK Doubles Support for Neglected Tropical Diseases - To Protect 200 Million People

Press Release | UK Department for International Development | April 16, 2017

The UK will protect over 200 million people from the pain and disfigurement caused by treatable tropical diseases, International Development Secretary Priti Patel announced today. Neglected Tropical Diseases, such as trachoma, Guinea worm and river blindness, are avoidable infections but can deform, disable, blind and even kill if left untreated. They affect over a billion people in the poorest and most marginalised communities in the world, stopping children going to school and parents going to work - costing developing economies billions of dollars every year in lost productivity and reducing overall global prosperity...

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UMD Researchers Develop Tool to Counter Public Health IT Challenges

Press Release | University of Maryland | August 9, 2016

Front-line protection of U.S. communities against disease epidemics relies on seamless information sharing between public health officials and doctors, plus the wherewithal to act on that data. But health departments have faltered in this mission by lacking guidance to effectively strategize about appropriate “IT investments. And incidents like the current Zika crisis bring the issue to the forefront,” says Ritu Agarwal, Robert H. Smith Dean's Chair of Information Systems and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business...

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UNICEF Airlifts Lifesaving Supplies to Yemen to Combat Cholera as Cases Surpass 200,000

Press Release | UNICEF | June 28, 2017

Three UNICEF charter planes have delivered 36 tons of lifesaving medical and water purification supplies to Yemen to scale up efforts to combat the world’s worst cholera outbreak. The supplies included, 750,000 sachets of Oral Rehydration Salt (ORS) enough to treat 10,000 people,   10.5 million water purification tablets and other sanitation items...

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UNICEF launches Cryptocurrency Fund to Support Open Source Technology Benefiting Children

Press Release | UNICEF | October 9, 2019

UNICEF will now be able to receive, hold and disburse donations of cryptocurrencies ether and bitcoin, through its newly-established UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund. In a first for United Nations organizations, UNICEF will use cryptocurrencies to fund open source technology benefiting children and young people around the world. Under the structure of the UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund, contributions will be held in their cryptocurrency of contribution, and granted out in the same cryptocurrency. "This is a new and exciting venture for UNICEF," said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. "If digital economies and currencies have the potential to shape the lives of coming generations, it is important that we explore the opportunities they offer. That's why the creation of our Cryptocurrency Fund is a significant and welcome step forward in humanitarian and development work." Read More »

University of Chicago Awarded $20 Million To Host COVID-19 Medical Imaging Center

Press Release | University of Chicago | August 7, 2020

A new center hosted at the University of Chicago-co-led by the largest medical imaging professional organizations in the country-will help tackle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic by curating a massive database of medical images to help better understand and treat the disease. Led by Prof. Maryellen Giger of UChicago Medicine, the Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center (MIDRC) will create an open-source database with medical images from thousands of COVID-19 patients. The center will be funded by a two-year, $20 million contract from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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University of Oklahoma Researcher Asks Twitter Users to Help with Research

Press Release | Oklahoma University Gallogly College of Engineering | May 26, 2017

Did you ever consider that your tweets could be used for scientific research? Researchers at the University of Oklahoma are taking to the Twitterverse to help them investigate the use of Twitter for public health research. Christan Grant, a computer science researcher in the Gallogly College of Engineering, is asking active Twitter users over the age of 18 to complete a quick two-minute online survey...

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University of Utah Health and Intermountain Healthcare Receive $3.8 Million to Develop Advanced Open Source Cancer Screening Tool

Press Release | Intermountain Healthcare, University of Utah Health | August 30, 2017

Researchers from the University of Utah Health, Intermountain Healthcare, and Huntsman Cancer Institute received a grant for $3.8 Million from the National Cancer Institute to develop an advanced cancer screening tool. The new tool will couple electronic health record technologies with advanced clinical decision support (CDS) tools to screen for several types of cancer and identify and manage high risk patients within primary care settings and the broader care delivery system.

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