What You Need to Know: - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard launch COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator to speed development and access to therapies for COVID-19, committing up to $125M in funding. - COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will coordinate R&D efforts and remove barriers to drug development and scale-up to address the epidemic. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard announced the launch of the COVID-19 Therapeutics
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eBola Outbreak
Rimidi Launches COVID-19 Screening App to Identify At-Risk Patients & Limit Exposure
What You Need to Know: - To limit the spread of COVID-19 in healthcare settings, Rimidi has developed a Coronavirus (COVID-19) screening application for health systems to identify at-risk patients and direct them to appropriate locations. - The EHR-integrated app is one of the first designed specifically to flag patients with possible Coronavirus symptoms, enabling health systems to mitigate the spread and optimize treatment. Rimidi, a cloud-based
software platform, today announced
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HHS’s Ebola Detection Kit Could Provide Diagnosis in 20 Mins
To assist doctors in diagnosing Ebola virus disease quickly, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) will pursue development of an Ebola virus diagnostic test for use in a doctor’s office, hospital, clinic, or field setting that will provide results within twenty minutes. Diagnosing Ebola virus infections quickly in resource-poor areas would enable health care providers to isolate and provide
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Could Ebola Survivors Blood Help Infected Patients?
Researchers are testing to find out if Ebola survivors blood could help infected patients to fight off the disease for patients in West Africa. An international research consortium led by the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp (ITM) will assess whether treatment with antibodies in the blood of Ebola survivors could help infected patients to fight off the disease. If proven effective, this straightforward intervention could be scaled up in the short term and provide an urgently needed
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Ebola Pushing EHRs in New Direction
Dr. Donald Voltz discusses how infectious diseases such as Ebola, enterovirus D68, and flu is pushing EHRs into the job of a central communications hub. The recent spate of infectious diseases identified in the US-whether Ebola, enterovirus D68 or just the beginning of the plain old flu season, healthcare has become increasing complex. It involves more players in terms of patients, providers, administration, insurance , governmental bodies and now CDC screeners at airports. This leaves
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The Critical Role of Health IT in the Ebola Outbreak
A recent article by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker describes the level of preparedness at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, as it encountered the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed in the U.S. The emergency department was as prepared as anyplace, and had rehearsed the scenarios, and reviewed the CDC checklist for Ebola preparedness. They had asked about fever in people who had traveled from the region of West Africa beset by Ebola, per the protocol. In fact, the triage nurse in the
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Infographic: ICD-10 Could Help Track Ebola Outbreak
As the Ebola outbreak heightens after a Dallas nurse was diagnosed with the virus after caring for Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan before he died at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital reveals a brewing public health concern. Currently, there is no specific ICD-9 code for Ebola and is classified as 078.89, Other specified diseases due to viruses. The lack of specificity in patient data limits the U.S.'s ability to immediately track and respond to the Ebola outbreak from a public health
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