Your morning abstract of digital well being information, info and occasions to learn about if you wish to be “within the know”.
👇 Information
🧫 Genomic surveillance laboratories within the UK and South Africa, famend for his or her work figuring out new variants throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, have joined forces to establish rising threats from infectious ailments. The Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Genomic Surveillance Unit (GSU) and Stellenbosch College’s Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI) have introduced a brand new partnership to coordinate the genomic surveillance of infectious ailments globally. This shut relationship will permit groups within the UK and South Africa to share assets, coordinate methods, and powerfully assist companions in illness surveillance globally, together with viruses carried by mosquitoes, water-borne ailments, respiratory viruses and different ailments with pandemic potential.
⚗ Final January, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, in partnership with STAT, revealed that at the very least a dozen manufacturers of asparaginase, a key childhood chemotherapy drug, had failed high quality checks, placing an estimated 70,000 youngsters in additional than 90 international locations in danger. A yr later, virtually nothing has modified, STAT stories. The WHO has issued no alert in regards to the problematic most cancers drug and nationwide drug regulators around the globe haven’t taken significant motion, with each side claiming communication breakdowns and an absence of proof.
🔐 The Personal Healthcare Info Community – the unbiased, not-for-profit firm which collects information to assist sufferers make extra knowledgeable selections – has achieved Cyber Necessities accreditation as a part of its ongoing work to make sure the healthcare information it collects is saved safe. The federal government-backed, Cyber Necessities Scheme covers the fundamentals of cyber safety in an organisation’s IT system. Implementation of those controls can considerably scale back the danger of prevalent however unskilled cyber-attacks. The Scheme is reported to assist improve safety in opposition to frequent cyber-attacks by 80%.
🦿 A Scottish medical paper exploring the prospect of 3D printing hip and knee joint replacements combined with a affected person’s personal organic cells into the physique has gained worldwide recognition. The analysis paper, co-authored by orthopaedic specialists at NHS Golden Jubilee in collaboration with the College of Strathclyde, investigated using third-dimensional organic printing (3D bio-printing) know-how with affected person stem cells and different substances present in bones like calcium with a purpose to create “scaffolds” that might assist regenerate bone defects within the physique.
🖥 UK well being options supplier Simplyhealth is utilizing Salesforce Einstein, Service Cloud, and Gross sales Cloud to energy productiveness throughout its enterprise via AI-powered buyer experiences, enabling its companies to change into extra accessible and straightforward to make use of. Simplyhealth is now utilizing Einstein for Service to remodel agent effectivity with conversational AI. Time to answer to buyer e mail inquiries with a information GPT-enabled response, with the suitable human checks in place, has lowered from 12 minutes to only one minute since its launch. Salesforce AI is already credited with resolving round 10% of Simplyhealth emails that had been despatched throughout November and December 2023. With the discount in work time to ship these emails, service brokers are utilizing this additional time to give attention to extra engagement with prospects, with a selected give attention to their most susceptible prospects.
❓ Do you know that?
No less than three in 5 A&E departments in England at present fall under the ready requirements pledged beneath the NHS Structure, a research by Claims.co.uk has discovered. The East of England, North East and Yorkshire, and London have the very best variety of A&E departments which have sufferers wait over 4 hours. The analysis is predicated on a three-month common of the NHS information from July to September 2023. It has discovered that at the very least 122 out of 203 A&E departments in England miss the goal of having 95% of all A&E sufferers admitted, discharged or transferred inside 4 hours from arrival.
📖 What we’re studying
Enhancing outpatient care – particularly as a part of elective restoration efforts – is a key precedence for the NHS, with an ambition for well being techniques to cut back follow-up outpatient attendances by 25% from 2019/20 ranges by March this yr. One intervention is patient-initiated follow-up, which permits folks to request an appointment as and once they want one, reasonably than following a hard and fast appointment schedule. Though the variety of sufferers on PIFU pathways has steadily elevated month on month to over 200,000 in September 2023, it’s nonetheless solely a small proportion of all outpatient exercise, equating to roughly 3% of individuals attending outpatient clinics altogether. This Nuffield Belief weblog seems to be at how PIFU may affect affected person care.
🚨 Subsequent week’s occasions
Monday 29 January, Home of Commons Well being and Social Care Committee – Future most cancers inquiry
Thursday 1 February, College of Oxford – Digital Care Hub, the Institute for Ethics in AI and Reuben Faculty, Oxford, and Casson Consulting, co-host an AI roundtable occasion
