h2cm - My Blog

Food is the commodity after water that so many of us are able to take for granted. At the moment in the Horn of Africa a famine is raging. BBC Radio 4's Food Programme this week deals with Emergency Food. This provides great insight into the infrastructures, communications, technologies and developments that are being brought to respond to such crises. This programme takes us beyond the images of sacks being dropped by air, supplies being delivered by truck; chaotic situations that also demand crowd control to the actual foods, their form and content.



For nurses nutrition is a key element on the curriculum, a routine part of ward / community assessment and care delivery. Sadly meeting the nutritional needs of patients is a key nursing care activity that is the subject of marked criticism. How do you draw nurse's attention to nutrition beyond stating the obvious? How do you motivate students and assure competency is signed-off in that final year? Learning is a very personal thing what with self-directed study, lectures and blended learning ...  but it seems the emphasis on basic nursing care that includes nutrition can be lacking.





You know the real images that count: from rust coloured lands, the youngest skins and ravaged lands parched through to those infant's eyes that can still just wonder while so many others are closed.



I wonder if listening to this programme and reflecting on the very youngest-vulnerable might also help engage attention on the older-vulnerable - indeed all our patients?



Isn't increased awareness of nutrition AND global health what 21st century nursing should be about?



DEC: http://www.dec.org.uk/

I came across this item on twitter c/o Gregg Masters - many thanks Gregg.



2011 Benchmarks in Accountable Care Organizations: Metrics from Early ACO Adopter



A key part of this is the chart below - which is copied below:

New Chart: Top 5 Challenges of ACO Creation

SUMMARY: Accountable care organizations (ACOs) create integrated delivery systems that encourage teams of physicians, hospitals and other providers to collaboratively coordinate care for ACO members. We wanted to see the biggest challenges organizations face in creating an ACO.





I keep coming up against and apologising for the fact of geography that puts me on the UK side of the Atlantic (it's the place I call 'home'), the NHS 'market' and the different ways health care is debated and framed with respect to finance. Basically 'P'rivate medicine and 'S'ocial medicine.



My perspective is limited, but the same applies to many people whether East, West, Private or Social and of course in reality things are never that cut and dried.



The reason I've picked this up though is three-fold:



Firstly, this post was found in the summary above and is wrapped up in the three words - integrated, collaboratively and coordinated - icc. Looks like we've got an ACO alright.





The clue to the publication and survey is clearly vested in 'accountable', but in terms if icc where and with whom does accountability rest? No doubt accountability can - and must - be defined financially. What about the 'C'? When we think about 'care' - integration, collaboration and coordination there is a need to acknowledge and for me - reach out across the [h2cm's] humanistic axis.



Secondly, the graph 'speaks' volumes, but I wonder what I'm missing in not having the full copy? I wonder where the real human *care* factors are in this? If my colour vision is correct it would be worth checking the exact make-up of the 18% 'Other'.



Thirdly, I have a problem I admit. Residing in the UK working in the cocoon (and not so cosy at the moment) that is social medicine I see the US health care sector as a Matrix-like green ;-) haze of falling and tripping dollar signs - $$$ $$$. I know that's unfair as the N & S American continents are of course also fueled by those positives that charge and motivate health care workers the world over. In the chart though even when 'staff' are mentioned it's in terms of 'buy-in'. Yes it may be a cheap shot, but I'm versed in some dialects of consultancy speak...



There could be an account of the individual, nursing care, the therapeutic relationship, the quality of outcomes ... in the evidence-based care contribution 8%, but these days the search for evidence is fiscal too.



I just wonder here what might be lost in achieving integrated, collaborative and coordinated care if the people - the extended team - are lost amid the finance? Sometimes to see we need to rely on peripheral vision too. In fact it's a bit like looking down a telescope to 'see' you have to look off-center. If financial accountability is what colours your health care world, don't forget to avert your vision and take in the black and the white.



With no prospect of a 'study tour' (a scratch of the surface) there is much I need to learn of the organizational systems, commissioning and finance of health - not just in the USA, but here in the UK. I'll reflect some more in coming weeks....



*These issues apply globally.

Dear HIFA2015 colleagues,



Please find the Press Release below. The subject of the press release is an Editorial in the BMJ, calling for major funding agencies to commit to Healthcare Information For All by 2015.



The Editorial is freely available at: http://bit.ly/hifa2015-10



Please be sure to read the Editorial online and submit *your* comment to the BMJ (click on Rapid Response on the left side of the page). Your Rapid Response will be displayed on the BMJ website (after approval by the editors) and may be selected for publication in the print version of the BMJ. Thank you for your support.



We are informed that the Editorial itself will be in the print BMJ within the next few weeks.



Please distribute this message/press release widely to your contacts and networks!



Many thanks,

Neil Pakenham-Walsh

Coordinator, HIFA2015



PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



BMJ Editorial calls on major funding agencies to commit to 'Healthcare Information For All by 2015'



London, UK, 5 July 2011 - Every day, tens of thousands of people die needlessly, particularly in low and middle income countries, often for the simple reason that the parent, carer or health worker lacks the information and knowledge they need to save them. An Editorial in the British Medical Journal by Richard Smith [1] and Tracey Pérez Koehlmoos [2,3] asks why a major funding agency has not yet come forward to support Healthcare Information For All by 2015 (HIFA2015) [4].



HIFA2015 ( www.hifa2015.org) is a global campaign and discussion forum. Its members range from senior executives at the World Health Organization in Geneva to community health workers in rural Uganda. Together they are working for the HIFA2015 goal: 'By 2015 every person worldwide will have access to an informed healthcare provider - lack of relevant, reliable healthcare information will no longer be a major contributor to avoidable death and suffering.' [5]. But progress has been constrained by lack of funding.



The Editorial states: "Funders are much keener to put money into drugs, vaccines, and bed nets than they are into something as nebulous as information access. Yet information and the capacity to act on that information is the first building block of an effective health system".



The Editorial concludes, "the best way forward would be for a major funder to recognise that improved health information is fundamental to global health improvement and development and offer substantial support, not just funds, to HIFA2015.".



HIFA2015 Coordinator, Dr Neil Pakenham-Walsh, welcomes the editorial saying "When we launched HIFA2015 in 2006, we knew our goal was ambitious, but we also knew it could be achieved if all stakeholders work together. All stakeholder groups are now working together and our work is expanding rapidly - what is needed now is financial support from a major funding agency. We repeat the call to the Gates Foundation and others made by international health leaders in The Lancet in 2006: "The challenge is to ensure that everyone in the world can have access to clean, clear, knowledge - a basic human right, and a public health need as important as access to clean, clear, water, and much more easily achievable."[6].



In keeping with the sentiments of the editorial, the BMJ has made this editorial freely available online. To access the full text simply visit

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d4151.full?sid=55d7a166-946d-416c-bc47-8c294d5fb57d 



For further information or interview, please contact:



Neil Pakenham-Walsh, Coordinator HIFA2015, Co-director, Global Healthcare Information Network

neil.pakenham-walsh AT ghi-net.org



The authors of the Editorial have also kindly made themselves available for interview:



Richard Smith, Director, UnitedHealth Chronic Disease Initiative, UK

richardswsmith AT yahoo.co.uk



Tracey Koehlmoos, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh

Tracey AT icddrb.org



Notes for Editors:



1. Richard Smith is the former editor of the British Medical Journal and is now director of the UnitedHealth Chronic Disease Initiative.

2. Tracey Koehlmoos is Head of the Health & Family Planning Systems Programme, ICDDR,B, Bangladesh & Adjunct Professor, Department of Health Administration and Policy, College of Health and Human Services, George Mason University, USA.

3. Further to discussion on the HIFA2015 forum, Richard Smith and Tracey Koehlmoos published an editorial in The Lancet (22 January 2011) which led to a reversal of Elsevier's decision to withdraw free access to medical journals in Bangladesh.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60067-6/fulltext

4. Healthcare Information for All by 2015 is the flagship project of Global Healthcare Information Network - a non-profit organisation based in the UK. HIFA2015 is a global campaign and discussion forum that brings together more than 5000 health professionals, information technologists, publishers, librarians, researchers and policymakers from over 2000 organisations in 158 countries worldwide. HIFA2015 is supported by organisations such as the British Medical Association, Royal College of Midwives and Royal College of Nursing.

5. To achieve its goal, HIFA2015 has developed a three pronged strategy based on communication (bringing together a critical mass of interested parties in five global e-mail forums), understanding (of information needs and how to meet them set out in a database of evidence), and advocacy (persuading governments, funding agencies, and others to invest in cost effective health information services). For further details, see http://www.hifa2015.org

6. Tikki Pang (WHO), Muir Gray (NHS, UK), and Tim Evans (WHO): A 15^th grand challenge for global public health. The Lancet 2006; 367:284-286.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606680501/fulltext

http://www.humanrightsinhealthcare.nhs.uk/default.aspx

The aim of the website is to promote a human rights based approach in health and social care and be a web resource where people interested in, and preferably passionate about, a human rights based approach to healthcare can share experience, learn and make links on line.

My source: The Choice Forum - Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities

I have just registered for this event - see you there perhaps!



21 July 2011 10.30am - 6.00pm

Location: University of Westminster, Regent Campus, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW





FREE but register here: http://bit.ly/lv1LsT



In recent years significant changes in the technological, social and media landscapes have redrawn relationships between cultural producers of all stripes and the people previously called readers, audiences and users. In parallel with this, unprecedented amounts of information have entered the public domain as a result of both top-down policy pressures and ‘bottom-up’ social activism. This process in turn has given birth to new cultural movements, opportunities for creativity, forms of information visualisation, and modes of content production.



This free one-day conference brings together journalists, academics, developers, artists, activists and business people to reflect upon these phenomena, show work, exchange experiences and signpost future trends.



The conference will be followed by an exhibition opening of work produced as part of /Data Art/, an AHRC funded research project exploring how broadcast and news data can be reformatted, explored and navigated using information visualisations. The project is the result of collaboration between: the Centre for Research in Education Art and Media (CREAM), the University of Westminster; BBC Learning and BBC Future Media and Technology.



Invited speakers include:



Tom Corby, conference convener, artist, academic and writer working at the University of Westminster.

Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian Datablog and Datastore.

Ian Forrester, Senior Producer at BBC R&D and emergent technology expert.

Roland Harwood, co-founder of 100%Open an innovation agency.

David Gauntlett, writes and teaches on how digital media gives people new opportunities to create and connect.

Rob Myers, artist, writer, hacker and Chief Technology Officer for Philter Phactory.

Drew Hemment, associate Director of ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University, and Director of the FutureEverything Festival. (TBC)

Julian Tate, lead developer on the Manchester Open Data Cities project for FutureEverything.

Ruth Catlow, media artist and co-founder and co-director of Furtherfield.org media arts organization.

Santiago Ortiz, Co-founder and research director at Bestiario.



In addition a ‘show and tell’ session will feature art and design works by independent companies and developers including the Bestiario design company, Andy Littledale, Gavin Baily and Harry Robbins.