Rachel Kelly

Here's What Is Wrong With the National Academies' Long COVID Definition — Overly broad criteria won't help patients in the long run By Leonard Jason, PhD The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has just proposed a new case definition for long COVID. The criteria specify that the condition "is present for at least 3 months as a continuous, relapsing and remitting, or progressive disease state" and the condition can be defined by "single or multiple symptoms" that "can range from mild to severe." We are also informed that there are "more than 200" possible symptoms. Finally, although "some individuals with long COVID are severely affected," there are no specific limitations in functioning. In practical terms, this ensures that the criteria have good sensitivity, meaning that everyone who has long COVID will probably be included. That's good news for making certain that struggling patients are not left behind. However, the specificity is rather poor, which translates into inaccurately diagnosing many who do not have long COVID. This has implications for medical billing, disability benefits, and social accommodations, not to mention the consequences that can come from slapping a chronic illness label on a patient. Overly Broad Criteria Here is the problem: a person can meet these proposed long COVID criteria by merely having one symptom that is not a burden to the person or does not have any negative impact on the person's functioning. If a person has trivial pain in the toe for 3 months following COVID infection, with no negative consequences to the person's functioning or quality of life, that person would still be eligible for a long COVID diagnosis. The failure to list any thresholds of frequency or severity of symptoms, so that the symptoms are not trivial, has major consequences for an infection that is as widespread as COVID. The authors of this report even note, "It is reasonable to estimate that 80-to-90 percent of all adult Americans were infected at least once between 2020 and the end of 2023 (CDC, 2024b)." Had the authors applied their criteria to a data set, such findings might have provided them with some of the implications of their recommendations. For example, I just examined a group of 100 healthy individuals who had completed a 54-item symptom questionnaire that listed clear frequency and severity criteria. If I had instead applied a simple formula in my data set identifying individuals who had at least a minor severity of symptoms -- which is all the proposed long COVID symptom criteria would require -- then 99% of the sample would be eligible for a diagnosis. The Implications ......cont'd ***Please click on the image below in the banner to access entire opinion piece. Posted by Larry Cole

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Cleveland Clinic CEO, Dr. Tom Mihaljevic, delves into the critical role of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. In a recent video, he discusses the transformative impact of AI technology on patient care, stressing its potential to revolutionize healthcare services. Dr. Mihaljevic highlights the numerous benefits of AI, including improving patient outcomes, enhancing operational efficiency, and reducing costs in healthcare. He underlines how AI empowers healthcare professionals to make informed decisions, streamline workflows, and deliver personalized care to patients. At the forefront of AI adoption in healthcare, the Cleveland Clinic focuses on developing AI-powered tools for diagnosis, treatment, and patient engagement. Dr. Mihaljevic envisions AI as a key player in shaping the future of healthcare, enabling more effective and efficient care delivery. #AI #ClevelandClinic #HealthcareInnovation #PatientCare #HealthcareTechnology

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In their new Forefront article, Christopher P. Chen, Hardeep Singh, Joseph Bialowitz, and Jodi D. Sherman from the Washington State Health Care Authority, Baylor College of Medicine, and the Yale School of Public Health discuss how, as the health care sector transitions to a more resilient, environmentally sustainable system, payers can take more action to accelerate progress, given their role in facilitating health care system transformation. "We propose five strategies that payers can deploy to achieve a more environmentally sustainable and climate resilient health care system, including: Reduce low-value care, accelerate health care’s transition to clean energy infrastructure, provide access to environmentally preferable health care services, support a transition to a circular economy, and enable whole-person care that enhances climate resilience. We also discuss the dynamics of these five strategies and levers in different US public and private payer sectors. These strategies and sector dynamics highlight a number of motivating factors on why payers should feel compelled to act on climate change, including an opportunity to improve value of care, the need to mitigate the increasing risks of climate change on human health and the health care delivery system, and compliance with emerging regulations on greenhouse gas emissions." Read the full article here: https://bit.ly/3KinInT

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If you are a keen company, individual, academic or student ready to present your paper on space in 2025, Submissions for ASCEND technical papers & session proposals are open! The technical papers & session proposals should emphasize how the work done is relevant to current and planned missions and capabilities across national and international civil, defense, and commercial space sectors. The Call for Content is organized in seven Core Topic Areas. --Space Science and Exploration --Human Spaceflight --Space Security and Protection --Space Economy --Space Technology Development --Space Policy, Law, and Governance --Space and Society Key Dates and Deadlines Submission Deadline: 21 November, 8 p.m. ET Notifications: 10 March Manuscript Deadline: 16 June, 8 p.m. ET 2025 ASCEND: 22–24 July AIAA Andrew Neely Sonya A Brown Nathan K. Long Ramzel Liwanag Tjasa Boh Whiteman Charles Hoke Lindsay Mitchell KC Wong Boomee Kim UNSW Aerospace Society - AIAA Student Branch UNSW Rocketry Team Bluesat UNSW USYD Rocketry Team UTS Rocketry Team Antriksh AU Cees Bil Australian Space Agency HEO Deneb Space Saber Astronautics

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📣 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐒 𝐀𝐫𝐦𝐲’𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭! 📣 They're on the hunt for cutting-edge tech to transform our Military Health System (MHS). Their goal? To enhance patient experiences and keep up with advancements in health sciences. Imagine seamless digital tools like mobile platforms and wearables, making healthcare more accessible for our troops and their families. With a focus on integrating TRICARE contractors and streamlining patient management, this initiative aims to revolutionize how we approach military healthcare. It's all about creating a "digital front door" for easy access to care and harnessing tech like machine learning and chatbots to personalize the healthcare experience. Plus, they're calling on vendors to step up with innovative, secure solutions that meet our military's unique needs. Let's see where this journey takes us! #MilitaryHealthcare #Innovation #TechRevolution Full article here! https://lnkd.in/g6K87pxf

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced the formation of our Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity (HAND) Engineering Research Center (ERC)! ERCs are among the largest of NSF’s investments, typically over $5M/year for 10 years, and are the result of a rigorous two-year competition. Our new Center will revolutionize the ability of #robots to augment human labor by developing versatile dexterous robot hands along with AI-powered skills and intuitive interfaces that make robot manipulators useful “out of the box.” Our mission extends beyond research to encompass workforce development, ethics, and policy so that the benefits of dexterity may be widely and equitably shared. HAND is the work of many people at Northwestern University (HAND headquarters), Carnegie Mellon University, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Syracuse University as well as a broad ecosystem of companies, national labs, educators, civic organizations, and others. More information will be available via our website, hand-erc.org. #Haptics #RobotDexterity #DexterousRobots #TactileRobotics

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