Godel Technologies Europe Helps NHS Save Lives With Online Training Technology, UK

Manchester based software engineering company, Godel Technologies Europe Ltd, is to implement a virtual learning portal for the NHS.


The online system will help NHS employees from across the country to receive high quality Masters training whilst continuing their professional careers by studying at their own convenience.


Aimed specifically at health care professionals working in the field of major incident response, the new Masters course, MSc Health Incident Command, is being organised by the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust (UHSM), in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University and the Department of Health.


Terry Bland, managing director of Godel Technologies commented: "We are delighted to have been involved in such a worthwhile project. Using virtual learning environment technology enables a national rollout of on - the - job training for this new qualification. Paramedics and doctors from any location can complete the course, receiving fantastic training that fits in with their busy professional careers. Ultimately, by enabling widespread high level learning, the online portal will help the NHS to save more lives."


Godel, who specialise in NHS contracts won this latest project after completing a similar Sharepoint intranet portal, which was used to train staff at UHSM.


Dr David Macklin, educational research fellow at UHSM commented: "We have a good long term working relationship with Godel Technologies and it is fantastic to see that their systems will, yet again, be able to support the NHS' educational needs. The virtual learning environment implemented by Godel will enable health care professionals working in the field of major incident response to take part in this Masters level programme whilst continuing their normal work, which will be of great benefit to the NHS."




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Focus Narrows On Genetic Cause Of Kawasaki Disease Following International Research Collaboration

Researchers from Japan's RIKEN SNP Research Center, collaborating with a team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have discovered a new genetic variation that affects a child's risk of getting Kawasaki disease (KD), an illness characterized by acute inflammation of the arteries throughout the body. The genetic variation influences immune activation and the response to standard treatment, as well as the risk of developing coronary artery aneurysms - a swelling of the artery that can result in blood clots and heart attack - as a complication of KD.



Lead author, Yoshi Onouchi, M.D., Ph.D., SNP Research Center, RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan, used DNA from hundreds of U.S. children and their parents, collected through the Kawasaki Disease Research Center at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego (RCHSD), Department of Pediatrics, UCSD School of Medicine.



"This was a wonderful collaboration," said co-author, Jane Burns, M.D., professor and chief, Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology, UCSD Department of Pediatrics. "Dr. Onouchi used our DNA to make this observation. Now we are building on that observation."



Kawasaki Disease, a pediatric illness characterized by fever and rash, is not a rare illness but it is most prevalent in Japan. In San Diego County, 20 to 30 children per 100,000 children less than five years of age are affected each year. More than 50 new patients are treated annually at RCHSD. The illness is four to five times more common than some more publicly recognized diseases of children such as tuberculosis or bacterial meningitis.



If untreated, KD can lead to lethal coronary artery aneurysms. KD tends to run in families, suggesting that there are genetic components to disease risk. It is also 10 to 20 times more common in Japanese and Japanese American children than in children of European descent.



Researchers identified a region on chromosome 19 linked with the disease. In particular, a series of variants across four genes in the region appeared more frequently in individuals with the disease than those in the healthy control group.



The team focused on one of these genes, ITPKC, which appeared to be the most likely candidate. The gene lies in a signaling pathway that affects the activation of T cells, one arm of the body's immune response system. ITPKC encodes an enzyme that is part of a signaling pathway with a critical role in T cell activation. The authors showed that one of the risk variants reduces the expression of ITPKC, and that lower levels of ITPKC lead to over-activation of T cells.



"This single gene jumped out as an obvious candidate because it is involved in immune activation, and KD is a disease of immune over-activation," said Burns. "This was great detective work to decipher the function of this variant."



Study authors suggest that the association of ITPKC with Kawasaki disease may have immediate clinical implications. Up to 20% of children who have KD are resistant to the standard treatment with intravenous immunoglobulin. This therapy is more likely to fail in individuals with the ITPKC risk variant. If these individuals could be identified with a genetic test, they could be offered alternative, more intensive therapies.



Further studies will identify additional sites of genetic variation and may capture enough of the genetic influence that a diagnostic test can be devised to identify children at increased risk. These children with KD would be candidates for more aggressive therapy.



"A significant number of KD patients suffer irreversible coronary artery damage, which can lead to heart attack, heart failure, or require transplant," noted Burns. "Our goal at RCHSD is to create a genetic test for KD patients that will indicate whether the patient is at increased risk. If that's the case, we can use additional treatments and potentially reduce future complications."



In addition, the finding may have implications for understanding the genetic thermostat that regulates the intensity of a person's immune response to inflammation. Investigators are now looking at what impact this genetic variation might have on initiating other inflammatory conditions, such as atherosclerosis and myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle often caused by a viral infection.







The Kawasaki Disease Research Program is a joint collaboration between the Departments of Pediatrics and Sociology at University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the Climate Center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Rady Children's Hospital San Diego. The Program was created to help foster excellence in care for patients with Kawasaki Disease (KD) and to support clinical, laboratory, and epidemiologic investigation into the etiology, pathophysiology, and natural history of the disease. The program brings together investigators from more than 15 countries with diverse research interests and expertise to work together to further our understanding of this enigmatic disease.



Kawasaki Disease is often accompanied by the following symptoms: high fever and irritability; rash; swelling and redness of the hands and feet; bloodshot eyes; red mouth, lips, and throat; and swollen lymph nodes in the neck. It affects children almost exclusively; most patients are under 5 years of age. For reasons still unknown, males acquire the illness almost twice as often as females.



Source: Kimberly Edwards


University of California - San Diego


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The Importance Of Protecting Your Health Records From Medical Identity Theft

Many consumers take precautions against identity theft, but what about medical identity theft? In addition to financial peril, victims can suffer physical danger if false entries in medical records lead to the wrong treatment.



"The crime occurs when someone uses a person's name and sometimes other parts of their identity -- such as insurance information -- without the person's knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods," said Laurinda B. Harman, PhD, RHIA, associate professor and chair of the health information management department at Temple University's College of Health Professions.



"A person's identity information can also be used to make false claims for medical services or goods. This is not a common event, but patients need to be aware of it," Harman said. She discussed the growing concerns of medical identity theft as more medical facilities move to electronic records during the 79th Annual American Health Information Management Association Convention Exhibit on October 9 in Philadelphia.



The World Privacy Forum, a non profit, non partisan research group, said it has received 20,000 reports of medical identity theft in the past 15 years.



Medical identity theft frequently results in erroneous entries being put into existing medical records, and can involve the creation of fictitious medical records in the victim's name at various medical facilities. This trail of falsified information in medical records can plague victims' medical and financial lives for years.



In Pennsylvania, two men were convicted of health insurance fraud, theft by deception, identity theft and forgery in 2006. Galen Baker stole a coworker's identification to obtain nearly 40 individual prescriptions for Viagra, a drug typically prescribed to treat erectile dysfunction. Daniel Sullivan stole a man's medical identification to pay for more than $140,000 in hospital charges. In other cases, health care employees stole medical records to sell to third parties or file false claims.



The entire health care system needs to be careful in its hiring. Ethical principals need to be taught and enforced for all employees, Harman said.



"As more patients begin maintain their own personal health record, they will become more aware of the fraud," she said.



Harman suggests the following tips from the World Privacy Forum to prevent theft, these include:



* Review all "Explanation of Benefits" notices and any other correspondence from insurance providers describing the services that have been received, the provider charges and payment allowances. Report suspicious transactions to your health insurer's special investigations unit.



* Request a complete list of annual payments your insurance company has made for medical care. Sometimes, thieves change billing address and phone number, which means a patient may not see all of the bills.



* Get a copy of medical records, in case they're tampered with in the future.



* Keep track of medical and prescription benefits cards and keep them in a safe place.



Harman, a health information management professional for over 35 years, said those in her field take the issue very seriously.



"We need to take the role as the patient advocate. We need to help them protect their patient information and privacy. There aren't the same protections in place for medical identify theft as financial identify theft," she said.







Virginia L. Mullen, RHIA, director of regulatory Effectiveness at Loma Linda University Medical Center, also co- presented with Harman.



Source: Renee Cree


Temple University



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GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis Found Guilty Of Overcharging Alabama Medicaid Program, Must Pay State $114M

An Alabama state court jury on Tuesday found pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis guilty of defrauding the state Medicaid program by charging artificially high prices for medications and ordered the two companies to pay more than $114 million in restitution, the AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. GSK was ordered to pay the state $80.8 million and Novartis about $33.7 million in compensatory damages.

State attorneys claimed the companies charged the Medicaid program one price for drugs while offering discounted prices to private insurers from 1991 to 2005 and asked that the companies pay as much as $800 million in total damages. Lawyers for GSK and Novartis argued the companies followed proper procedures in setting drug prices. Jere Beasley, a lawyer representing the state, said, "I think the jury looked at the evidence and decided the fraud was substantial but that the compensatory damages plus interest was enough." Beasley added that the decision could help other states settle similar lawsuits with pharmaceutical companies.

Attorneys for both firms said they were considering appealing the decision. "It's been our position all along that GSK reported true and accurate prices," Don Jones, an attorney representing GSK, said. Harlan Prater, an attorney representing Novartis, said, "We're grateful that the jury did not find the punitive damages were warranted. We believe we reported appropriate prices" (Johnson, AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, 7/1).


Reprinted with kind permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

© 2008 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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European Parliament Recommends Stricter Safety Limits For Cell Phones

University at Albany,
Institute for Health and the Environment - The European Parliament
has voted 522 to 16 to recommend tighter safety standards for cell
phones.В  In light of the growing body of scientific evidence
implicating cell phone use with brain tumors, the Parliament says,
"The limits on exposure to electromagnetic fields [EMFs] which have
been set for the general public are obsolete."



The European Parliament "is greatly concerned at the Bio-Initiative
international report concerning EMFs, which summarises over 1500
studies on that topic and which points in its conclusions to the
health risks posed by emissions from mobile-telephony devices such as
mobile telephones, UMTS, WiFi, WiMax and Bluetooth, and also DECT
landline telephones."В  Further, it points out the need to "address
vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, newborn babies and
children."



The Mid-Term Review of the European Environmental and Health Action
Plan recommends 36 specific points for improving human health.В  It
points to changes that can improve air and water quality, and reduce
exposures to toxic chemicals and EMFs that have been linked to health
risks.


BioInitiative author Dr. Martin Blank, Columbia University professor
and researcher in bioelectromagnetics says, "Cells in the body react
to EMFs as potentially harmful, just like to other environmental
toxins such as heavy metals and toxic chemicals.В  The DNA in living
cells recognizes EMFs at very low levels of exposure, and produces a
biochemical stress response. The scientific evidence tells us that
our safety standards are inadequate, and that we must protect
ourselves from exposure to EMFs due to powerlines, cell phones and
the like."



Lennart Hardell, MD, PhD and Professor at University Hospital in
Orebro, Sweden who wrote on brain tumors and cell phones in the
BioInitiative Report, says,В  "The evidence for risks from prolonged
cell phone and cordless phone use is quite strong when you look at
people who have used these devices for 10 years or longer, and when
they are used mainly on one side of the head."В  At a conference in
London last week, Dr. Hardell noted that exposure to children poses
even greater risk than to adults, a fact of concern since so many
children now regularly use cell phones.



Noting the already lowered exposure limits of some European countries
the EU Parliament is now calling on the EU Council to amend
Recommendation 1999/519/EC for all equipment producing emissions in
the 0.1 MHz to 300 GHz frequency range.В  This would include cell
phones as well as other wireless devices.В  Wireless technologies that
rely on microwave radiation to send emails and voice communication
are thousands of times stronger than levels reported to cause some
health impacts.



Reports: Mid-Term Review of the European Environment and Health
Action Plan 2004-2010, September 4, 2008



BioInitiative: A Rationale for a Biologically-based Public Exposure
Standard for Electromagnetic Fields (ELF and RF) August 31, 2007
bioinitiative


University at Albany

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Oregon Children's Insurance Expansion Fails To Obtain Three-Fifths Majority In Legislature

The Oregon House on Thursday voted 32-24 in favor of a plan to expand health coverage to all children in the state by increasing the state cigarette tax by 84.5 cents per pack, but the proposal failed to win approval because a three-fifths majority is required to pass a tax increase, the Oregonian reports. The Healthy Kids Plan, which all Democratic lawmakers and one Republican voted in favor of, would have provided state-subsidized health insurance to children in families with annual incomes less than $62,000 for a family of four. About 116,000 children in the state are uninsured, according to the Oregonian.

Anna Richter Taylor, a spokesperson for Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D), said, "This is not a defeat; this is just a delay." Taylor added, "There is still plenty of time this session to get this done, and the governor is going to keep pushing this." Democratic and Republican lawmakers said that they plan further discussions on funding an expansion of children's health insurance. Kulongoski and other lawmakers "left open the possibility" of introducing a revised version of the measure or proposing a state ballot measure to address the issue, the Oregonian reports. Some Democrats said they are optimistic that a plan can win approval this year (Colburn/Hammond, Oregonian, 4/27).

"Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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Health Choice Network Implements Sage Intergy CHC Community Health Management System And EHR Across Nation

Health Choice Network (HCN), a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)-sponsored health center controlled network (HCCN) and a national model of a successful collaboration among 54 community health centers (CHC) is implementing Sage Intergy CHC and Sage Intergy EHR for member community health centers (CHCs) across the nation.


The first implementations were made at West Hawaii Community Health Center in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, Flint Hills Community Health Center in Emporia, Kansas and Wayne Community Health Center in Bicknell, Utah. These community health centers use Sage Intergy CHC for all practice management needs, including familiar tasks such as appointment setting and billing. The system also meets the specialty needs of a community health center, such as sliding-fee schedules based on Federal poverty guidelines, automatic insurance plan assignment, UDS reporting to HRSA, and much more.


The community health centers are using Sage Intergy EHR and Sage Practice Analytics to provide proactive patient wellness care, participate in disease collaboratives, extensive clinical and financial data analysis, and much more.


The implementation schedule continues, with more than 26 community health centers within Health Choice Network expected to implement over the course of the next two years.


Kevin Kearns, CEO of Health Choice Network, said the network looks forward to further expanding the technological sophistication of its member community health centers.


"Technology will be a key component for allowing community health centers to achieve their goals of expanded healthcare access to uninsured and underserved populations," Mr. Kearns said. "HCCNs like Health Choice Network provide the sophisticated operational and technological systems that allow the member community health centers to focus fully on care. Sage Intergy CHC meets the specialized needs of this community."


"For more than 20 years, Sage has been committed to the community health mission of providing high-quality care for all Americans," said Lindy Benton, Chief Operating Officer, Sage Software Healthcare, Inc. "We've aligned with HCN for nearly that long. We're proud that HCN has allowed Sage Intergy CHC to be a part of its community health centers across the nation."


About Health Choice Network


Health Choice Network (HCN) is a national model of a successful collaboration among 54 community health centers (CHCs) and one of several HRSA-sponsored Health Center Controlled Networks.


HCN is addressing health care disparities, providing health information technologies and strengthening the financial position of the community health care system.


Founded in 1994 as a 501c(3) organization, HCN was created and is governed by its members who comprise a minority-based Board of Directors. Network members maintain their vital community orientation by retaining their local-governing, consumer-majority Boards of Directors.


Community Health Centers that own and control the Network operate more efficiently, can deliver care more effectively and are working together to care for more patients.


About Sage Software Healthcare, Inc.


Sage Software Healthcare, Inc., provides integrated electronic health records, EDI applications and practice management systems to thousands of ambulatory care practices throughout North America. These systems enable physicians and practice managers to better manage their practices and improve profitability. Sage Software Healthcare, Inc. is based in Tampa, Fla., and is a division of Sage North America.


About Sage North America


Sage North America is part of The Sage Group plc, a leading global supplier of business management software and services. At Sage, we live and breathe business every day. We are passionate about helping our customers achieve their ambitions. Our range of business software and services is continually evolving as we innovate to answer our customers' needs. Our solutions support accounting, operations, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking, merchant services and the specialized needs of the construction, distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit and real estate industries. Sage North America employs approximately 4,800 people and supports nearly 2.9 million small and medium-size business customers. The Sage Group plc, formed in 1981, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and now employs more than 14,500 people and supports 5.8 million customers worldwide.


(C) 2009 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage, Sage Software, Sage logos and the Sage product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc. or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


Source: Sage Software Healthcare, Inc


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