Category «Health Care»

Why you shouldn’t tell AI chatbots your health concerns

Wshington Post: “Search bots have answers — but can you trust them with your questions? Since OpenAI, Microsoft and Google introduced AI chatbots, millions of people have experimented with a new way to search the internet: Engaging in a conversational back-and-forth with a model that regurgitates learnings from across the web. Given our tendency to …

Subjects: Health Care, Internet, Privacy, Search Engines

Nearly a Year After Roe’s Demise, Americans’ Views of Abortion Access Increasingly Vary by Where They Live

Pew Report: Nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs ruling overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that had guaranteed a national right to abortion, overall public support for legal abortion remains largely unchanged. However, a growing share of Americans living in states where abortion is prohibited say abortions are hard to obtain in their …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Health Care, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

Mifepristone is under scrutiny in the courts, but it has been used safely and effectively around the world for decades

Via LLRX – Mifepristone is under scrutiny in the courts, but it has been used safely and effectively around the world for decades – A flurry of court rulings in April 2023 has left the future of the abortion pill mifepristone in question. For now, a U.S. Supreme Court decision on April 21 allows the drug …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine, Privacy

Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report Paperback

“What went right and wrong in our nation’s response to the pandemic? What can we do to avoid the next one? In Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report, the nonpartisan Covid Crisis Group offers crucial recommendations to prepare for the inevitable next public health crisis. The Covid Crisis Group—led by UVA history professor Philip Zelikow, the …

Subjects: Health Care, Medicine

Change in Monthly Abortions Since Roe v. Wade Overturned

Data is Beautiful – this statistic is for legal abortions. See also Washingtonian – The Abortion Battle on Virginia’s Border. When Roe fell, an abortion clinic moved from Tennessee to Virginia. Providing care has been complicated, but the staff won’t back down…Bristol is a twin city, half in Tennessee and half in Virginia, bisected by …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Health Care, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

The Municipal Drinking Water Database

Hughes S, Kirchhoff CJ, Conedera K, Friedman M (2023) The Municipal Drinking Water Database. PLOS Water 2(4): e0000081. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000081 “Drinking water services in the U.S. are critical for public health and economic development but face technical, political, and administrative challenges. Understanding the root cause of these challenges and how to overcome them is hindered by …

Subjects: Economy, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Health Care, Search Engines

WHO releases the largest global collection of health inequality data

“Today, WHO is launching the Health Inequality Data Repository, the most comprehensive global collection of publicly available disaggregated data and evidence on population health and its determinants. The repository allows for tracking health inequalities across population groups and over time, by breaking down data according to group characteristics, ranging from education level to ethnicity. The …

Subjects: Environmental Law, Health Care, Knowledge Management, Medicine, Poverty

Long COVID Is Being Erased—Again

The Atlantic: “…Most Americans simply aren’t thinking about COVID with the same acuity they once did; the White House long ago zeroed in on hospitalizations and deaths as the measures to worry most about. And what was once outright denial of long COVID’s existence has morphed into something subtler: a creeping conviction, seeded by academics …

Subjects: Economy, Health Care, Medicine

HHS Making Ownership Data for All Medicare-Certified Hospice and Home Health Agencies Publicly Available

CMS – “The Biden-Harris Administration has made promoting competition and protecting consumers a top priority. Today, in support of the President’s Executive Order on promoting competition and the Administration’s commitment to transparency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is releasing ownership data for all Medicare-certified hospice and home health agencies. For the …

Subjects: E-Government, Government Documents, Health Care, Medicine

GPT-4 will hunt for trends in medical records thanks to Microsoft and Epic

ars technica – Generative AI promises to streamline health care, but critics say not so fast. “On Monday [April 17, 2023], Microsoft and Epic Systems announced that they are bringing OpenAI’s GPT-4 AI language model into health care for use in drafting message responses from health care workers to patients and for use in analyzing …

Subjects: AI, E-Records, Financial System, Health Care, Medicine, Privacy

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 15, 2023

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 15, 2023 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly …

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Financial System, Health Care, Privacy, Search Engines

Libraries are under attack and so are library workers

Fast Company: “Libraries are increasingly being targeted by local and state legislators and protestors trying to ban books and block LGBTQ content. How is that affecting the people who work in them? Scratch nearly any kind of story—political, social, economic, cultural, and so on—and you’ll find a labor story. No matter what’s happening, whether it’s …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Free Speech, Health Care, Libraries