Tag: tech

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Public Health

Are you subscribed to my newsletter yet?

Having a weekly newsletter isn’t an easy task especially when not selling anything. For the past 13 weeks, I have curated conversational and important updates to public health, healthcare, and technology intersectional space.

Our growing newsletter community is now over 800 people strong, and thank you for your supportive emails, comments, and messages! We are building a newsletter that constantly empowers and connects all the various ways we strive for a clean bill of health.

In the latest ‘A Clean Bill of Health’ newsletter, we discuss briefly past week’s well-attended and wonderful Zoom webinar on the mental health research of emergency management and public health professionals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you for everyone joining us!

We also share the neat healthcare technology case in hospitals for improving patient experiences with the partnership of Feedtrail & Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

Please continue to help me spread the word!

Quote of the week:
“We all get scared and want to turn away, but it isn’t always strength that makes you stay. Strength is also making the decision to change your destiny.”
~ Zoraida Córdova, Labyrinth Lost #quoteoftheweek #dailyquote

Categories
Public Health Research

How can we create frictionless experiences to connect the elderly populations to their healthcare teams?

There is an ongoing assumption that elderly communities are averse to technology, but that is not true. Could it be that the digital health companies are just not designing for their needs and/or improving educational outreach efforts to teach new tech advancements?

In past years, colleagues and I have been discussing the practicalities of using emerging technologies to address the growing issue of elderly loneliness and its implications and adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Technological advancements have offered remarkable opportunities to deliver care and maintain connections despite the need to stay physically separated. These tools can be integrated into crisis communications, public health responses, and healthcare programs to help the elderly communities. However, it must be done strategically and informed by the type of loneliness at play, environmental factors, socioeconomics, and technological literacy (including feedback to improve tech design and function).

What are ways your teams are creating frictionless experiences to connect to the elderly populations?

Categories
Mental Health Research

Reducing the Mental Health Weight on the Next Generation

Unaddressed mental health issues have been weighing on the young generation well before the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. An estimated 13% of 10-19-year-olds live with a diagnosed mental disorder globally.

ONLY 2% of government health budgets are allocated to mental health spending globally, (UNICEF)

Continue reading “Reducing the Mental Health Weight on the Next Generation”
Categories
Mental Health Research

Addressing the Mental Health Burden of the Next Generation

Can technology help to meet the mental health needs of the young (next) generation?

Recent news of $1.7 billion of student loans will be forgiven of US Public Service Workers and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen providing testimony to US Senate Commerce Committee show an opportunity for better engagement to help the next generation through financial and technological efforts.

Continue reading “Addressing the Mental Health Burden of the Next Generation”
Categories
Mental Health Research

Mental Health Impact – UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children

COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about mental health impact among everyone especially children and young adults. As we lead to the World Mental Health Day (Oct 10), let’s discuss latest thought leadership and global mental health reports this week.

Today’s discussion question:
How can healthcare and technology help to meet the mental health needs of the young generation?

Continue reading “Mental Health Impact – UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children”
Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic Global Health

British Columbia released New Vaccine Passport Program

Are you using vaccine card or digital vaccine passport where you live?

More and more cities and regions are opting into using technology with vaccine passports. British Columbia, Canada just released its new program requiring people to show in order to enter non-essential business activities. There are plans in Alberta, Canada to create a proof of vaccination card and QR code coming soon in upcoming weeks, as well.

Continue reading “British Columbia released New Vaccine Passport Program”
Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic

15 million COVID-19 vaccine doses ruined!

A simple mix up of ingredients for the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca/University of Oxford coronavirus vaccines was said to occur at Emergent BioSolutions plant.

Continue reading “15 million COVID-19 vaccine doses ruined!”
Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic

Covid-19 Vaccine R&D Update

A constant question to me – where are the Johnson & Johnson vaccines?

Continue reading “Covid-19 Vaccine R&D Update”
Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic

“Vaccine for the world” found to be 79 % effective

“Vaccine for the world” – COVID-19 Vaccine by Oxford University and AstraZeneca was found to be 79 % effective against symptomatic COVID-19 and 100 % effective against severe illness. New clinical study data was released from recent studies carried out in United States, Chile and Peru. Including 32,449 adult participants in all age groups (most from United States), the study participants received either two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine or a placebo between four-week time. The two-shot system was completely effective at preventing severe cases of illness in the new studies. Five cases of severe illness were found in the new studies – all of them had received a placebo.

Continue reading ““Vaccine for the world” found to be 79 % effective”
Categories
Research

Keeping Elderly Loneliness at Bay! Now published on Public Health Post

Sonny Patel's article

Keeping Elderly Loneliness at Bay! If you missed reading the previous publications or webinars on this topic which featured myself and colleagues such as Aaron Clark-Ginsberg, Kristina Conroy, Stacy Mittelstaedt & Simone Bacchini, don’t worry – check out the latest research article on Public Health Post published today (link below & can be found here: https://hoo.be/sonny).

Kristina and I did our best to succinctly summarize what we found in our past research and highlighted ways that technology could help to reduce loneliness. Thanks to Michael Stein, Jennifer Beard, Nicholas Diamond, & rest of the team at Boston University School of Public Health for showcasing our work.

Link: https://www.publichealthpost.org/research/keeping-elderly-loneliness-at-bay-during-covid/