Columbia University

See the following -

How Analytics Are Changing Health Care

Reid Davenport | FCW | April 25, 2014

There is more to federal health IT than HealthCare.gov. And as agencies grapple with public health research and the care of their patient populations, innovators outside government are showing what's possible with improved electronic health records (EHRs) and predictive analytics.

Read More »

How Big Pharma Gets Away With Selling Crystal Meth To Children: By Renaming It ‘Adderall’

Staff Writer | Healthy Life and Fitness | February 19, 2016

In a recent appearance on All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, drug abuse and addiction expert Carl Hart of Columbia University made a shocking claim: There isn’t much difference between the demonized street drug methamphetamine (also known as meth or crystal meth) and the prescription drug Adderall...

Read More »

Infographic: Study Shows the Long-Term Impact of Teachers

Mary Ann Bitter | opensource.com | February 6, 2012

I don't think any of us are surprised to find out that teachers matter. That has always been obvious, but what I did find interesting--and even surprising--about the information coming from the study on a teacher's long-term impact on a student conducted by Raj Chetty and John Friedman of Harvard University and Jonah Rockoff of Columbia University is the degree to which teachers matter. Read More »

Mesh Networks Can Keep People Connected During Natural Disasters

Tina Trinh | VOA News | September 2, 2017

Natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey are a threat not only to human life but also to telecommunication systems. When they go down, entire cities and communities are cut off from each other. Mesh networks, however, can get people connected again, and during emergencies they can be a crucial link to information. "It really all boils down to the 'central point of failure' problem," said Daniela Perdomo. "If the central infrastructure goes down, everyone who plugs into it is also disconnected."...

Read More »

Open Access 2015: A Year Access Negotiators Edged Closer to the Tipping Point

It’s the year many negotiators got seriously tough on double dipping – charging for both the ability to read (via subscriptions) and for publishing (author processing charges, or APCs). Last year it was France getting tough on the toughest negotiator: Elsevier. This year, the Netherlands took it right to the brink of cutting Elsevier loose. It was summed up by a January headline: “Dutch universities dig in for long fight over open access.” Coming into the new year, other nations were taking up positions about the future they want to see too...Here’s a month-by-month roundup of some of the major action...

Read More »

Science Journal Examines Key Role of Open Source EHR in Ending Ebola Epidemic in Sierra Leone

The prestigious, open access, Journal of Medical Internet Research recently published a study looking at the effectiveness of OpenMRS’ use during the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The article highlights the work of a team who developed new user-interface components for OpenMRS and rapidly deployed the system in an Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC) in Sierra Leone. The team, composed of members from OpenMRS, Save the Children International, Thoughtworks, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Partners In Health, University of Leeds, and Columbia University. The team came together in response to an urgent request for healthIT from colleagues at Save the Children International to develop an EHR suitable for deployment in a new Ebola treatment Centre being set up in Kerry Town outside the capital, Freetown.

Smartphone, Finger Prick, 15 Minutes, Diagnosis—Done!

Press Release | Columbia University | February 4, 2015

A team of researchers, led by Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a low-cost smartphone accessory that can perform a point-of-care test that simultaneously detects three infectious disease markers from a finger prick of blood in just 15 minutes. The device replicates, for the first time, all mechanical, optical, and electronic functions of a lab-based blood test. Specifically, it performs an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) without requiring any stored energy: all necessary power is drawn from the smartphone...

Read More »

The Anvil Podcast: OpenMRS

Several weeks ago I went to the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon. The OpenMRS project was represented there by a number of the team members, and I was able to have a few informal conversations with them. After I got back home, I conducted an interview with Ben Wolfe, who actually wasn’t at the conference, but he talked to me about what the OpenMRS project does, and who is using it in the world, and where it’s going in the future. We also talked a little bit about their Google Summer of Code students. Here’s my conversation with Ben.

Read More »

When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes

David Epstein and Propublica | The Atlantic | February 22, 2017

Fiirst, listen to the story with the happy ending: At 61, the executive was in excellent health. His blood pressure was a bit high, but everything else looked good, and he exercised regularly. Then he had a scare. He went for a brisk post-lunch walk on a cool winter day, and his chest began to hurt. Back inside his office, he sat down, and the pain disappeared as quickly as it had come...

Read More »