There’s plenty of health tech news to start the week with – from the Ministry of Defence’s primary medical care contract, to openEHR in the Caribbean – catch up on anything you might have missed, by reading our news bites this morning.
MOD contract for PMC solution delivery
The software company Cegedim Healthcare Solutions has been awarded a contract to deliver a Primary Medical Care (PMC) Information Service solution for the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD).
The DMS will use the solution to provide an ‘occupationally focused primary healthcare service’, while it also aims to improve information exchange with national healthcare systems and services across the UK. Functionality includes recorded consultations, prescriptions and medications managing and dispensing, test ordering, referrals, access to shared tasks and workflows.
Implementation of openEHR in the Caribbean
Caribbean Member States and the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) are to tackle the lack of set of standards for health data and achieve universal interoperability through openEHR – a virtual community with a primary focus on electronic health records (EHR) and other related systems.
Developed by Jamaica’s Ministry of Health, the project aims to ‘build capacity and competence’ in openEHR among Caribbean Member States and to ‘establish core archetypes’.
The overall goal will see Caribbean IS4H (Information Systems for Health) personnel ‘gain knowledge and competence’ in the openEHR Reference Model, create technical documentation for core archetypes such as demographics and implement these in electronic health records.
The project is said to be the first formal training and implementation effort for openEHR in the Caribbean, providing a new way to develop a data dictionary via an international standard that integrates with electronic health records by using an open framework and being ‘vendor independent’.
Several countries have already adopted OpenEHR, such as Brazil, and it’s hoped it will now advance Caribbean Member States’ journey towards interoperability.
CGI gets OLM’s ECLIPSE software platform for Glasgow City Council
CGI, an IT and business consulting firm that provides services for Glasgow City Council, has invested in OLM’s ECLIPSE platform for Glasgow City’s Health and Social Care Partnership.
The software can provide a single view of ‘client’ or family information, giving healthcare workers the opportunity to view an integrated client record that covers case management, citizen engagement, financial information, and activity and reporting requirements, including the operation of self-directed support.
ECLIPSE fits with the Scottish Government’s Cloud First agenda and is also in line with the Scottish Digital Health and Care Strategy on Cloud.
Sharon Wearing, Chief Officer, Finance and Resources, Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, said: “We look forward to working with CGI and OLM to implement ECLIPSE. A single cloud platform covering case management, citizen engagement, finance and commissioning will be more convenient and efficient. ECLIPSE will help deliver better services by improving our strategic response to service users. The platform supports our needs now and is adaptable for future requirements.”
UCL researchers use data to find links between genetics and age-related diseases
A team of researchers, including experts from University College London (UCL), has used human genetic and medical data from the UK Biobank to provide what the University says is the ‘first data-driven classification of multiple diseases’.
Published in Nature Aging, the team found that seemingly unrelated diseases that ‘typically begin at similar ages’ appear to have genetic similarities.
Researchers at UCL and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) used data to investigate the ‘genetic associations of 116 diseases’ – such as cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases, anaemia, deep vein thrombosis, thyroid problems and depression. The diseases were then grouped based on age of onset to define the relationship between disease incidence and age, revealing genetic links that suggest they may share a common cause.
The data used came from blood, urine and saliva samples, as well as details about participants’ lifestyles and health.
Co-author Professor Linda Partridge of the UCL Institute of Health Ageing and Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, said: “Advancing age is the main risk for major diseases, including cancer, dementia, and cardiovascular disease. Understanding the molecular links between the ageing process and age-related diseases could allow them to be targeted with drugs to improve late-life health.
“The striking finding from the study was that diseases with a similar age of onset were genetically more similar to each other than they were to diseases in the other three clusters.”
Co-lead researcher Professor Dame Janet Thornton, Director Emeritus of EMBL-EBI, added: “Having access to human health and genetic data made this study possible. We couldn’t have done anything like this without the UK Biobank. Many studies have used model organisms to look at ageing and disease but humans are so much more complicated. If you really want to know about human ageing you need access to human data.”
