epidemiology

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Researchers To Investigate If Farming Practices Are Increasing Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs

Staff Writer | Somerset County Gazette | January 19, 2015

Projects to track antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the livestock sector are being conducted by researchers at Colorado State University in the United States...

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Scientists Launch Open Source Computational Platform to Study Biological Processes

Press Release | University of Surrey | September 20, 2021

Agent-based simulations (ABS) are powerful computational tools that help scientists understand complex biological systems. These simulations are an inexpensive and efficient way to quickly test hypotheses about the physiology of cellular tissues, organs, or entire organisms. However, many ABS do not take full advantage of available computational power, and the majority of ABS platforms on the market are designed with a particular use case in mind.

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Some U.S. Hospitals Weigh Withholding Care To Ebola Patients

Julie Steenhuysen and Sharon Begley | Reuters | October 22, 2014

The Ebola crisis is forcing the American healthcare system to consider the previously unthinkable: withholding some medical interventions because they are too dangerous to doctors and nurses and unlikely to help a patient.  U.S. hospitals have over the years come under criticism for undertaking measures that prolong dying rather than improve patients' quality of life...

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Superbugs Spread Across U.S.

Brian Hughes | Washington Examiner | October 6, 2014

As Americans worry about Ebola, the swiftly spreading virus that has traveled from West Africa to Texas, a more silent killer poses a greater danger...Drug-resistant bacteria killed 23,000 people in America last year and caused 2 million illnesses...

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The Food Gap Is Widening

James Hamblin | The Atlantic | September 2, 2014

Nutritional disparities between America’s rich and poor are growing, despite efforts to provide higher-quality food to people who most need it. So says a large study just released from the Harvard School of Public Health that examined eating habits of 29,124 Americans over the past decade...

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This Man’s Simple System Could Transform American Medicine

Sarah Fallon | WIRED | October 14, 2014

...Developed by a trio of epidemiologists back in the ’80s, the NNT describes how many people would need to take a drug for one person to benefit...It’s unfortunate, then, that the NNT is not a statistic that’s routinely conveyed to either doctors or patients...

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Tracking An Ebola Outbreak In A City Without Maps

Sarah Zhang | Gizmodo | April 11, 2014

If you Google Map Guéckédou, the Guinean city smack dab in the Ebola virus's deadly domain right now, you'd see just an abstract blotch of beige and yellow. Zoom all the way in on satellite view, and you can barely make out the outlines of buildings.

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Transforming Health Care Through A 360-Degree View Of Data

How medical care can be substantially improved through a full spectrum view of all factors that affect health was the topic of Payam Etminani's presentation at the 2019 IDGA Veterans Benefits Conference in Washington D.C. Etminani, the CEO of Bitscopic, argued that the ability to view all health data including social, environmental and genomic information in addition to the traditional clinical measures (vital signs, blood work, history of illness etc), would lead to significant improvement in care. Etminani described how recent advances in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) make combining and using these large and widely varied sets of information possible. Read More »

U.S. Travelers Return Home With Tropical Disease. Will It Spread In The States?

Maryn McKenna | Wired | June 19, 2014

...Three states — Rhode Island, North Carolina and Tennessee — all said that they have identified residents who have been diagnosed with the mosquito-borne tropical disease chikungunya...

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University Of Minnesota Study Finds Iraq, Afghan Vets Struggle With Access To Food

Mark Brunswick | Star Tribune | May 7, 2014

Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are far more likely to have trouble getting enough food to eat than the average U.S. citizen.  More than one-fourth of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans don’t have consistent access to sufficient food, says a new study by the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital...

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Up To Half Of Antibiotics 'Fail Due To Superbugs' Study Finds

Rebecca Smith | The Telegraph | September 26, 2014

GPs are increasingly handing out antibiotics that turn out to be useless, as up to half of courses of the drugs 'fail' and result in further treatment, a study has found.
Groundbreaking research has analysed 11m courses of antibiotics prescribed to British patients over the last 22 years covering the most common diseases areas including tonsilitis, pneumonia and ear infections...

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US And UK Share Health Data Via Cloud

Anthony Brino | Healthcare IT News | November 15, 2013

About half a century after epidemiology studies in Massachusetts and the United Kingdom helped build the world’s understanding of cardiovascular disease and health risks, public health and population data is being opened up by the U.S. and joining international datasets. Read More »

Using Open Technology To Build a Biodefense Against the Coronavirus

As the number of US cases of the coronavirus rises, how will healthcare professionals be able to tell the difference between which panicked patients with similar symptoms has what? Even if the patient hasn't traveled to Wuhan or China recently, what if they sat at a Starbucks with someone who did? With the incubation time-lag before symptoms appear, who would even know? The challenge of monitoring 330 million people for infectious disease outbreaks is daunting. Take the flu as an example. During the last flu season which, as already discussed, was not as complex as this year's season, approximately 35.5 million Americans had flu symptoms, 16.5 million received medical care, 490,600 were hospitalized and 34,200 died.

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VA Selects Bitscopic's Praedico for Public Health Surveillance

Press Release | Bitscopic | March 20, 2015

Bitscopic Inc., a leading provider of health analytics tools, announced today that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has selected its Praedico platform to detect and monitor infectious disease outbreaks across the country. In addition, the VA is going to pilot Bitscopic's advanced analytics software for the early detection and management of hospital acquired infections (HAI) and other clinical informatics applications. Bitscopic's Praedico scans data from electronic health records (EHRs), laboratories, pharmacies, and other sources in seconds. It has been used to analyze infectious disease data including influenza, dengue, Hepatitis C (HCV), etc. Praedico is a modular, highly configurable, and customizable platform. It can detect and monitor large-scale events such as antibiotic resistance trends and potential major disease outbreaks. In addition, it monitors more localized events and tools, such as patient monitoring devices, and surgical site infections. Read More »

Web-Based Tool Was First To Spot Ebola

Mike Miliard | Healthcare IT News | August 12, 2014

Crowd-sourced technology saw the [Ebola] outbreak taking place in real-time, before WHO announcement...

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