At least half of modern students think about a healthy lifestyle. What do we mean by a healthy way of life? Proper sport exercises, a balanced diet, good sleep, self-care, and giving up bad habits are the main principles of healthy people. Today there is a wide range of devices to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Fitness Bracelets
They manage to count your heart rate and steps. Besides, they make sure that you don’t stay in the same sport for a long time and interrupt your activity to relax and do some sport exercises. If your smartphone is far away from you, you can use additional functions as sending messages and viewing notifications.
Smart Water Bottle
Keep up our fluid balance is important, but sometimes we forget to drink enough water in the modern pace of life. A smart water bottle is equipped with a sensor that counts how much water you drunk and reminds you if you don’t drink water for a long time. A smart bottle synchronizes with other devices and shows the history of water consumption and adjust a daily ration of liquid depending on your activity.
Medical waste is defined as waste that is a by-product of healthcare treatments at hospitals, doctor’s offices, and surgeries, dentists, and laboratories as well as veterinarian’s offices, tattoo establishments, and med spas. Medical waste management includes handling material that comes into contact with the patient’s body during research, diagnosis, drug administration, or other types of medical treatment.
Medical waste has high regulations regarding disposal because waste materials can transmit infectious diseases if not properly handled. There are many types of medical waste, and these are categorized by the kinds of materials used and waste disposal methods. In the U.S., medical waste is categorized as radioactive, hazardous, infectious, and general.
Radioactive Waste. Medical equipment and treatment used in cancer therapies or any other radioactive treatment.
Hazardous Waste. Sharps, scalpels, discarded surgical equipment, and other chemical waste used in treatment.
Infectious Waste. Waste that causes an infection, including human tissue, blood, or any implement contaminated with bodily fluids.
General Waste. Waste paper, gowns, masks, gloves, or medical office waste.
In 1988, the U.S. Federal Government passed the Medical Waste Tracking Act. This act set the standards of how medical wastes were disposed of and destroyed. It became necessary to regulate medical wastes when a 30-mile garbage slick composed of medical waste, including needles and empty prescription bottles, prompted closures of New York and New Jersey beaches. Concerned citizens immediately became incensed that such debris would be allowed to “just be thrown away.”
How To Dispose of Medical Waste
Medical waste administration depends on your staff, understanding the different types of medical waste, and your state or area regulations. There are different techniques to ensure that infectious waste is disposed of properly and cannot spread disease or infection to other areas.
No longer can medical waste be disposed of in a landfill. Regulations require specialized treatment. Treatment includes the use of a medical incinerator, which will ensure that all traces of pathogens are destroyed. Other types of medical waste administration include waste disposed of in specific containers, labeled in precise ways, and employees trained to handle medical waste.
There are two distinct categories of medical waste disposal. One is Red Bag, and the other is Sharps. Red Bag is used for contaminated medical material that contains blood or other potentially infectious materials. Medication is not to be disposed of in a red bag.
Mac computers truly are wonderful. For many reasons, you will often see people recommending Macs over PCs.
There is an incredible allure of Mac computers and this comes from the many great features that the computers have.
Mac’s, after all, have so many great features for software development, content creation, and general computing. And for those who still need some features of a PC, all you have to do is learn how to run Windows on Mac.
But to really enjoy your Mac, you need to get to know your Mac.
Whether you’ve just purchased your first Mac, or are a seasoned Mac geek, there are many hidden Mac features that you probably didn’t know about.
You Should Get to Know Your Mac
We’ve looked around, and we’ve found the hidden Mac features and things you didn’t know your Mac could do.
We encourage you to look into these features to make the most out of your experience with your Mac:
Taking a Trimmed Screenshot
Sometimes, you do not need to take a screenshot of your entire screen. You may want to choose a portion of your screen and take a screenshot of this portion.
Keep Command, Shift, and 4 pressed together. This will create a screenshot cursor. All you have to do is click and drag the screenshot cursor over the area you wish to capture. Once you let go of the cursor, the screenshot will be taken and will be saved immediately to your desktop.
Get That Dock Out of My Sight!
Okay, sometimes you need the dock out of the way. Instead of having to go to your System Preferences, all you have to down is press Command, Option, and D all at once. Your dock will immediately disappear.
We always set goals before the new year, but most of us able to stick to these goals for just a few months. Why we do this? Well, it is because these resolutions take time to show the results. To live a healthy life, you need to choose the positive habits and stick to them for the long term. So, instead of waiting for the new year, you can begin now to adopting the following daily practices:
Spare Time Than We Think
Most of us do not want to improve our lifestyle because of the excuse that there is not enough spare time. There is no doubt that we live a busy life, but we still have some extra time in our daily routine. We can use the time we use to surf social media and watching TV.
Eat Healthy Food
Well, we always want to eat our favorite food, it is a fun thing to eat whatever you want. But have you ever realized that eating junk food cannot provide nutrients that your body needs? I know that we feel stress-free when we eat things that we like. Furthermore, planning and eating favorite food is a huge deal for millions of people. Eating healthy makes us avoid our decision. But how could you tell which food is healthy and which is not? Well, some centers can help people adopt a healthy eating lifestyle. Many people face Gerd due to unhealthy diet. You can avoid it by following Gerd diet.
Surrounding
Another thing that can affect your habits is the people around you and their lifestyle. If you are living in a dynamic environment, then your lifestyle will be hazardous. Alcohol consumption is typical these days, and everyone knows that these things are not suitable for their health. These things are one of the reasons that our kids are prone to obesity and other risky diseases.
If a person is living with healthy people, then he will also want to look fit and healthy. Keep in mind that a group psychologically affects people involved in that circle.
Your hearing is a precious source of enjoyment in the world, and if you’ve ever had that experience damaged or interfered with in any way, you’ll understand just how valuable it can be.
While not everyone needs the ultra-capable abilities of the most modern hearing aid technology, some people have experienced a more significant degree of hearing loss, and would really benefit by using the very best devices available.
If you are one of those people whose hearing has been significantly damaged and it means a great deal to you, and you want to know which devices are the best available on the market, this discussion will help inform you.
What Brand of Hearing Aid is the Best?
During the year of 2019, an unusually high number of extremely capable hearing aid devices were made available on the market, by a number of different manufacturers, most of whom were firmly entrenched in the market already. One of the best of these was the Costco Kirkland 9, which offered a very affordable price, for a very strong listening device.
The Linx Quattro provided outstanding sound, and it was the first time a hearing aid had ever been made which was capable of working with your Android smartphone. The Phonak Marvel was a device which found broad acceptance all around the globe, and its versatility made it an excellent choice for people with varying degrees of hearing loss. You can learn more about Phonak hearing aids here.
The Starkey Livio device was the very first hearing aid capable of delivering integrated sensor sets, and this was a ground-breaking achievement for such devices. The Opn S hearing aid extended the success originally achieved by the Opn device, and included additional functionality for consumers that made it an even better bargain than its predecessor.
In the past few months, telehealth services have helped many to obtain medical services and avoid exposure to COVID-19 while freeing up resources for those facing graver conditions. This is a great example of an unexpected circumstance quickening the adoption of new technology that will remain after the crisis has passed, but the rapid adoption has also overwhelmed telehealth services, illustrating the importance of network resilience.
Telehealth is just one relatively new application of technology that’s part of a constantly growing repertoire of connected tools. To provide optimal patient care, healthcare ecosystems require constant connectivity to many other bandwidth-intensive applications, such as IoT devices, systems to process patient data via electronic health records (EHR) and picture archiving systems (PACS). With experts predicting the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) market to be worth $158.1 billion USD by 2022 (Deloitte), we can only expect this trend to grow.
With all these new advancements come new risks. Healthcare systems are comprised of multiple facilities, such as hospitals, labs and urgent care units that all have multi-point connectivity requirements. This requires higher capacity wide area networks (WAN) – often in the form of software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN). If one of these points loses connectivity for reasons like a cyber-attack, an interoperability issue or a bad SD-WAN router update, the entire network could go offline.
To keep healthcare networks running, organizations need intelligent systems and processes to monitor every piece of equipment, prevent issues, and recover from incidents quickly. This will ensure the secure, always-on availability needed to decrease costs, meet strict regulatory requirements, and improve patient experiences.
Top challenges that can bring your healthcare network down
Three large challenges healthcare organizations face are protecting data, staying online during network consolidations, and unexpected incidents like natural disasters or physical equipment disruptions. These could all bring the primary network offline.
Cyber criminals constantly seek to breach data networks and harvest patient data. In this regard, ransomware attacks, which are primarily transmitted through spam/phishing or other manipulations of unprepared users operating in the primary data plane, cause many healthcare enterprises to shut down computer systems, including their EHR. No topic is off limits to hackers, and even in the past few months, research has revealed phrases like “corona” or “covid” have been featured in spam emails (RiskIQ).
Weather a health system is seeking to modernize its infrastructure or a merger has led to a large transformation, consolidating networks can also be a challenge, requiring the migration of a multitude of apps and hardware components that must stay online at all times and integrate with one another in a cohesive system.
Lastly, unexpected outages from physical events can bring a system offline by disrupting vulnerable points like last mile connections. In this regard, a wide range of network components, such as cable interconnects, switches, power supplies, storage arrays, or chillers could present problems. To support new technologies, network environments are only becoming more complex, which means more software stacks that are frequently updated and susceptible to exploits, bugs and cyberattacks.
By Susan deCathelineau, senior vice president sales and services, Hyland Healthcare.
Susan deCathelineau
Much like the formation of New Year’s Resolutions, the prediction of technology trends for the coming year has become a tradition among pundits, analysts and vendors alike. As the calendar turned to 2020, Hyland, like many, took the opportunity to look into a crystal ball to predict what the future might hold for the software industry at large, as well as many of the key vertical markets in which it operates.
For example, Hyland leadership revealed six overarching trends for enterprise technology as well as key trends to watch for health IT. At the time, none of us could have foreseen that a global pandemic was coming that would turn all of these predictions on their collective ears.
Of course, the healthcare industry has been particularly impacted by COVID-19. Provider organizations have justifiably focused their attention on responding to the new patient care and staffing needs brought about by the virus. That said, all of the health IT trends Hyland outlined at the beginning of 2020 (interoperability, artificial intelligence and cloud adoption) still have relevance in today’s unprecedented landscape. Although, admittedly, the reasons these topics are trending are for vastly different reasons than we originally anticipated.
I want to revisit these trends under the lens of COVID-19 as well as add a few more to the list in light of current circumstances.
Interoperability
Original insight: Secure access to patient information at any facility throughout a care continuum is an imperative for delivering a longitudinal digital record that travels with the patient. The key is to ensure tight integration between disparate IT systems, and to include unstructured data in the interoperability equation. As much as 80% of essential patient information is in an unstructured format – such as digital photos and videos, or physician notes – and not natively included in an electronic medical record (EMR) system. When removed from a clinician’s view, the patient record is incomplete.
New relevance: Health IT interoperability was important prior to COVID-19, and it’s even more critical now. Providers, patients and public health officials need all-encompassing data in a standardized format to better understand this evolving illness and develop guidelines. The effort to identify risk, control spread and manage the treatment of afflicted patients is a coordinated effort among multiple healthcare providers and external care partners. The easier information can be shared among these varied stakeholders, the better equipped we’ll be to combat the virus.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Original insight: Realistic applications of AI are coming into focus in healthcare, showing where the technology will help providers optimize workflows and better analyze the vast amounts of information needed to support improved decision making. Experts view AI technology as complementary and a true asset when it comes to helping physicians analyze the overwhelming amount of patient data they receive daily. Physicians can implement AI to streamline or eliminate tedious tasks, such as manual documentation and data search, or cull information to help them focus on a key area of interest.
The medical imaging space in particular provides a tremendous area for the growth of AI and machine-learning technologies. Clinicians can use them to analyze thousands of anonymized diagnostic patient images to identify and detect indicators of everything from lung cancer to liver disease. These technologies are also being used to accelerate research.
New relevance: AI is being used in a number of ways to address the challenges of COVID-19. For example, AI algorithms have been used to identify the spread of new clusters of unexplained pneumonia cases. Other AI applications are being used to spot signs of COVID-19 infections in chest X-rays and identify patients at high-risk of coronavirus complications based on their pre-existing medical conditions. Still others are scanning the molecular breakdown of the virus itself as well as those of existing drug compounds to identify medications that can potentially target the virus and shorten the span of the illness or lessen the severity of the symptoms. In all of these scenarios, AI is quickly analyzing large segments of data to accelerate research and treatment. This automation is indispensable in an environment where medical staff are stretched to their limits, and the act of saving time could save lives.
By Nadia de la Houssaye, co-leader healthcare litigation team and head of the healthcare industry telemedicine team, Jones Walker LLP.
Nadia de la Houssaye
At its most fundamental, telehealth (or telemedicine) is nothing new. What is new is the confluence of technology development and the rapidly escalating demands being placed on healthcare providers in the face of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) — and regulators’ willingness to bend, loosen, or change rules that previously slowed the expansion of telehealth services.
Taken together, these three factors have created an opportunity to demonstrate the value of telehealth to providers, the public, and regulators, and to cement telehealth’s place in the delivery of healthcare services.
In particular, the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has taken an unprecedented position in its effort to utilize telehealth as one of the country’s greatest weapons to not only flatten the new-infection curve, but to also address return-to-work screening needs, including antibody testing. Americans desperately need to return to work and CMS’ encouraged use and expanded coverage for COVID-19 diagnostic testing, at no cost to the insured, will hopefully aid in expediting safe return-to-work policies.
The bottom line? CMS is granting providers a tremendous amount of leeway and it is imperative that we take advantage of this opportunity to change the face of telehealth post-COVID-19.
Since early March 2020, CMS and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Health and Human Services-Office for Civil Rights (HHS-OCR), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and numerous other federal and state agencies have issued a steady flow of guidance easing previous restrictions that constrained the use of telehealth technology. Taking a step further, many have also announced programs and procured funding to better support the use of telehealth to provide essential care to communities, families, and individuals.
As states and cities began announcing shelter-in-place requirements and guidelines, on Mar. 16, Mar. 17, and Mar. 20, 2020, HHS-OCR likewise began issuing bulletins, notifications, and FAQs announcing the decision by HHS Secretary Alex Azar to waive certain HIPAA and HITECH Act non-compliance sanctions and penalties against covered entities and providers using, among other options, telehealth and non-public facing technologies for remote communications (including good-faith use of video applications such as Zoom, Skype, and FaceTime).
The COVID-19 crisis is accelerating the future of healthcare. In fact, I’d like to argue that the future is here today as demonstrated in digital health. Within weeks, this pandemic spread across our healthcare system, shutting down the traditional care delivery model and forcing us to adopt technology.
Supporting patients in a social distancing time did not provide many options but to turn to the advancements that already exist. We simply had to turn to the existing technology available and flip the switch to deploy our future healthcare model.
This is most evident with the rise of telehealth usage in lieu of point-of-care facilities such as doctor’s offices. Since the coronavirus outbreak telehealth has experienced a surge of 1,700%, particularly supporting mental health patients.
But what do patients need during this crisis and will they adopt technology as future healthcare models? We recently surveyed Medisafe users to better understand their concerns and needs during this outbreak. What we discovered is that patients are extremely appreciative of the ability to touch base, acknowledge this crisis and ask “how can we help?”
Noting that this is a primary concern, and with more than 7,000 patients responding, a majority of whom are very concerned about the coronavirus and its effects, we need to think about how to best reach a community in need an empathetic solution is needed more than ever.
Additionally, with the recent surge in telehealth to compensate for social distancing it is evident that are gaps in the daily connections and check-ins required from patients managing medications.
A majority of patients are in some form of social distancing and 55% of patients indicated that they are concerned that the coronavirus will interfere with their medication regimens. Enter the role of the digital companions. From a telemedicine solution, digital companions can offer additional insights as well as aiding in isolation by deploying guidance in a rapid response while offering a human touch in times of isolation.
Digital health technologies also offer support beyond a virtual “check-in” that can digitally handhold patients with their everyday needs, especially those managing chronic conditions or multiple medications. Digital companions keep patients continuously connected with condition management and care givers. For example, patients on multiple medications or managing complex doses or even taking injections require additional support at while at home to remain adherent to their treatment.
Digital health platforms are adept to support patients during this time, bridging isolation and bringing healthcare support into their home. In fact, more than 42% of our patients indicated that they have changed their traditional treatment routines by adopting telehealth. In addition to telehealth, digital companions offer features to keep patients connected.
Following the survey, we opened unlimited Medfriend capabilities which digitally connects family or friends with the patient’s medication schedules. Immediately, we saw Medfriend engagement activity triple. In fact, one user replied, “My mental health isn’t great right now, so knowing that you’ll tell my Medfriend if I haven’t taken [my medication] is great.”
Connection to care givers is also critical to digitize the care support teams. Fewer field support home visits are also creating concerns with patients, “I appreciate the help you’re giving. My doctor put me in home isolation 2.5 weeks ago for my sake, the only people I see are my caregivers but now they are not allowed to visit.”
Digital health that connects the daily interactions of patients with care support teams fill a critical gap. Clinicians can monitor their patient panels by following tracked activities and in fact scale their monitoring capabilities of one to many. Digital companions keep patients on therapy but also notify care support teams when patients behavior is at-risk. The combination of high-tech and high-touch is quite powerful to support patients managing chronic conditions.
Ultimately, humanizing your digital capabilities goes a long way. Digital health at its core operates on sophisticated data-driven AI to deliver personalized interventions at time of need. It’s within each of these interactions that the digital support becomes more and more relevant for patients establishing a digital relationship, trust and loyalty. However, during a crisis we also need to make sure to “check-in.”
We are all human on each end of this digital connection and when dealing with medical conditions alone during a crisis a human touch goes a long way, best stated by a patient: “I’m good. Just knowing that you are out there is a good feeling.”
As the coronavirus outbreak limits individual movement across the country, organizations are turning to remote solutions to stay operational.
As a result, demand for telehealth has skyrocketed — prompting health insurance payers, who haven’t always covered telehealth services, to reconsider coverage.
In April, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made one of the most significant changes to Medicare/Medicaid coverage of the past few years. It announced it would expand coverage to more than 80 different telehealth services. Now, some insurers in the private sector are beginning to follow suit.
Here is how the pandemic is changing attitudes toward telehealth — and also the potential long-term impacts of coronavirus and telehealth service expansion.
Medicaid/Medicare and Telehealth Coverage Expansion
Many patients, wanting to reduce their chance of contracting or spreading COVID-19, are electing to avoid doctor’s offices. For some people — like the immuno-compromised and elderly — it’s no longer safe to have a checkup or routine visit. At the same time, many doctors have temporarily shut their practices and begun offering telehealth services to those who still need consultations and regular check-ins.
Others who have kept their practices open aren’t sure for how long it will be possible or responsible to do so.
The result has been an explosion in demand for telehealth services, as well as expanded offerings. Many of them, however, weren’t previously covered by Medicare or Medicaid, the public health programs that insure 34% of all Americans.
Early in April, the pressure pushed CMS to expand Medicare and Medicaid to cover 85 additional telehealth codes — including group psychotherapy, physical therapy evaluations and prosthetic training. The move came after Congress passed a coronavirus spending bill that included $500 million in telehealth coverage and several major private insurers announced they would waive copays for virtual doctor’s visits and other telehealth services.
Potential Impacts of Expanded Telehealth
The most immediate impact of the coverage expansion will be making medical services much more accessible. Current research shows that, while in-person visits are typically more effective, telehealth is great at expanding the availability of medical services. It may also help health care facilities reduce costs and improve patient satisfaction.
Your hearing is a precious source of enjoyment in the world, and if you’ve ever had that experience damaged or interfered with in any way, you’ll understand just how valuable it can be.
In the past few months, telehealth services have helped many to obtain medical services and avoid exposure to COVID-19 while freeing up resources for those facing graver conditions. This is a great example of an unexpected circumstance quickening the adoption of new technology that will remain after the crisis has passed, but the rapid adoption has also 
