Health Systems News and Research

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Information sharing crucial to healthcare

Much has been written about the enormous effort required to take scientific discovery from the laboratory bench to the patient's bedside.

9 Mar 2006

Fighting the battle against disease - Leeds researchers take on the world

The five-year project will help ensure that the best treatments reach those in most need as quickly as possible, and that effective healthcare systems are established to prevent the spread of disease.

1 Mar 2006

New Australian bird flu research

University of Queensland researchers will lead two projects announced as part of the Commonwealth Government's $6.5 million bird flu research program.

23 Feb 2006

World's poor at huge risk from bird flu

ActionAid International, one of the UK's charity largest development charities which works with over five million of the world's poorest people, has warned that when it comes to the fight against bird flu, in the developing world, making plans is not enough.

22 Feb 2006

Guidelines for International Breast Health and Cancer Control

Specific recommendations for improving breast-health care and cancer treatment in countries with limited resources have been published by the Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI), an international coalition of doctors, scientists, policy makers and advocates led by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

25 Jan 2006

HIV viral load down T-cells up

In her latest update of the 'Case Health - Health Success Stories' website, Cris Kerr features an HIV health success story.

15 Dec 2005

Urgent call to save lives of 30 million under fives over next decade

Unprecedented opportunity to reduce child mortality in poorest countries must not be missed

15 Dec 2005

Analysis of the regulatory hurdles in European Diagnostics

In a move aimed at harmonising diagnostics regulations, the European parliament amended the medical devices directive (MDD) of 1993 to bring in the IVD directive (98/79/EC) in 1998.

6 Dec 2005

Imperial public health expert to head up WHO Tuberculosis Task Force

Dr Rifat Atun, Director of Centre for Health Management at Imperial College's Tanaka Business School has been appointed to chair a new World Health Organization (WHO) Task Force on Health System Strengthening and Tuberculosis Control. The initiative is led by the WHO's Stop TB Department.

30 Nov 2005

Drug stops multiple sclerosis - but sufferers can't get it!

Cris Kerr highlights Naltrexone in her latest issue of 'Case Health - Health Success Stories'.

29 Nov 2005

WHO wants more info on bird flu from China

Following pressure from world health bodies China on Friday to provide information on the death of a 12-year-old girl, Chinese officials now say the child died of pneumonia.

30 Oct 2005

Global fund to tackle bird flu

The World Bank vice president, Jim Adams, says that officials from all over the world will meet in Geneva in early November to discuss setting up a global fund to tackle the threat of the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus.

27 Oct 2005

U.S. health inequalities cause 84,000 extra deaths every year

Research estimates that health inequalities between white and black Americans cause 84,000 extra deaths every year – equating to a virtual hurricane Katrina every week, says an editorial in this week’s British Medical Journal.

20 Oct 2005

Putting things in prespective - help the world's children to fight bird flu

Amid the escalating panic in Europe centered around attempts to halt the spread among the bird population of bird flu, a senior health expert has said that swift action against age-old child killers such as diarrhea and pneumonia could help the world get ready to combat a bird flu pandemic.

19 Oct 2005

High blood pressure is higher in many Asian countries than in Australia

A new study on risk factors in cardiovascular disease in Asia has found that blood pressure is more strongly related to coronary heart disease and stroke in Asia, as compared with Western countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

16 Oct 2005

Hospitals alter billing and collection practices for uninsured patients

Many hospitals have adopted more generous charity-care guidelines for uninsured patients after a barrage of publicity about aggressive hospital billing and collection practices and a spate of lawsuits alleging hospitals overcharged uninsured patients, according to a study released today by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC).

12 Oct 2005

Paying clinicians to reach a common, fixed performance target may produce little gain in overall quality

...and may largely reward those with higher performance at baseline, according to a study in the October 12 issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.

11 Oct 2005

Grant for private, secure, electronic medical records search system

A Boston consortium has been awarded one of two national grants to form a CDC Center of Excellence in Public Health Informatics.

28 Sep 2005

Quality-improvement improves mortality in hospital

Heart attack death rates dropped significantly at hospitals that participated in a quality-improvement process that increased the use of evidence-based therapies, according to a new study in the Oct. 4, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

28 Sep 2005

Impact of prevention strategies and improvements in stroke healthcare

Coinciding with National Stroke Week in Australia (19 - 25 September 2005) is the release of results from two recent stroke studies from the George Institute for International Health that investigate both the causative factors as well as a little studied outcome of stroke, that of depression.

19 Sep 2005