Jun 5, 2009 | Laboratory News
Social networking services gain acceptance by healthcare organizations
Late last April, during the A/H1N1 influenza outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began using a social networking service called Twitter as a way to provide instant updates on H1N1 cases and developments. By the middle of May, more than 130,000 Twitter users were signed up to receive these updates!
If social networking is not on your clinical laboratory’s radar screen yet, it will soon be. The CDC’s use of Twitter as a valuable resource to instantly communicate news about the H1N1 influenza outbreak demonstrates how people, companies, and government agencies are rapidly finding useful ways to use social networking Web services.
Twitter is a simple concept. Wikipedia defines Twitter as a “free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers).” In the pathology profession, pathologist Bruce Friedman, M.D.—known for his blog Lab Soft News has been “tweeting” for over a year. @LabSoftNews & @Dark_Daily
Probably the best known social networking Web sites in the United States are Facebook and MySpace. For business, LinkedIn has become popular. Nexopia is big in Canada. In Europe, such sites as Bebo, Hi5, and Skyrock have high traffic. For South America, it is social networking Web sites such as Orkut and Hi5.
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Apr 29, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Officials in Mexico were criticized as being slow to respond to the spread of A/H1N1 swine flu on Tuesday, April 28. Mexico was reported to have failed to deliver medicine to the families of the dead, two weeks after the first confirmed death from the flu, the Associated Press reported. Also, the government had not determined where the outbreak began or how it spread, the AP said. In Mexico, 159 people may have died of swine flu, but only seven of these deaths have been verified as A/H1N1 by laboratory tests, the New York Times reported today (April 29).
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Apr 27, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
More confirmed influenza cases in the United States
This Dark Daily follows up the special ALERT distributed last Friday afternoon about the emergence of a new strain of influenza in Mexico. The following day, Saturday, the World Health Organization issued a statement declaring that the new strain of flu virus is “a public health emergency of international concern.” Medical laboratories should be informed about these events.
In the United States, on Sunday the Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency in the United States. At the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano downplayed this declaration, characterizing it as a “standard operating procedure.” The clearer truth of the situation was acknowledged by Richard Besser, M.D. Acting Chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who told the press that “We do think this will continue to spread but we are taking aggressive actions to minimize the impact on people’s health.”
These are just two of the many remarkable developments. In the 48 hours since the first Dark Daily ALERT, the running total of deaths attributed to the A/H1N1 influenza virus in Mexico has climbed regularly, as has the total number of confirmed cases. For example, at one point on Sunday, the Associated Press said that Mexican health authorities were reporting 1,614 suspected cases of swine flu that included 103 deaths. It is likely that, whenever you read this Dark Daily e-briefing, there will news of a greater number of swine flu cases in Mexico.
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Apr 24, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Similar cases reported in the California counties of San Diego and Imperial, as well as in San Antonio, Texas
Mexico is dealing with what experts believe to be a new strain of influenza which has a combination of genes not previously identified with either human or swine flu. However, this emerging strain-described as A/H1N1 in news reports-seems to be most similar to a flu virus circulating in pigs since 1999. A troubling number of deaths connected to this virus have caught the attention of Mexican health authorities, along with the World Health Organization (WHO), health officials in Canada, and, as of this afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC).
Dark Daily is the first laboratory news resource to alert medical laboratories, pathology laboratories and experts in laboratory medicine to this situation, which has only caught the attention of news outlets in recent hours. In particular, clinical laboratories in states bordering Mexico, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, will want to be particularly vigilant.
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Apr 1, 2009 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
As more attention is paid to reducing the number of healthcare-associated infections (HIAs), hospitals and health systems respond with proactive programs to eliminate many obvious sources of such infections. In turn, this affects hospital laboratories, since they play a key role in every hospital’s infection control program.
The basic statistics are stunning. Hospital-acquired infections (HIAs) affect nearly 2 million Americans annually, resulting in 90,000 deaths and up to $6.5 billion in extra costs, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
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