Healthcare Supply Chain Reaches Master [Level Ranking]

Annual Gartner Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25 list recognizes Intermountain Healthcare for initiatives to provide highest quality products and services at the lowest possible cost.

Intermountain Healthcare has reached a “Masters” designation in the annual Gartner Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25 list. The Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25 ranking and designation, recognizes manufacturers, providers, distributors and retailers from across healthcare that demonstrate leadership in improving human life at sustainable costs. After being ranked in the top five over the past seven years, Intermountain is recognized in Gartner’s new Master classification, an additional dimension of achievement. Gartner is a national business consulting company who has issued the ranking the past ten years.

Intermountain earned the Master level based on sustained supply chain performance over a period of time. Intermountain was ranked #1 on the Gartner list in 2016 and 2017 and #3 the two prior years. Intermountain’s strong bond rating, its supply chain organization’s initiatives to improve value and lower healthcare costs, the health system’s comprehensive approach to serve the patient, and innovative problem solving are among the factors to achieve the newly created title.

“Our supply chain team does an outstanding job to ensure we’re using the highest quality products and services at the lowest possible cost,” said Marc Harrison, MD, president and CEO of Intermountain Healthcare. “This team continually raises the bar in quality and affordability and demonstrates—year upon year—their commitment to making a difference for those we serve. We are honored to be on this prestigious list as a Master.”

John Wright, vice president of Supply Chain and Support Services for Intermountain, adds, “This is a humbling experience to now be ranked as a Master and a designation which I’m very appreciative. Intermountain Supply Chain leaders before me staged us for this honor long ago and I’m proud to have led us the past year to continue our work forward. Recognition of this type validates our passion and conviction within the supply chain to make a difference for our patients. I know that when we move initiatives forward, we do so with the dedication and commitment to improve value.”

 

The importance of bringing technology into learning in healthcare

Technology has undoubtedly and irreparably changed all aspects of our lives, from personal to professional. Unsurprisingly, it has also extended to many areas of healthcare, with research by the World Economic Forum (WEF) showing that between 2018 and 2022 there is an expected 87 percent adoption of user and entity big data analytics and 67 percent of Internet of Things, among others, in global health and healthcare.

This indicates widespread uptake of technology in the coming years and illustrates the need to incorporate technology in health education to ensure that the future workforce is adequately equipped, as well as to fully harness the power of technology to disrupt and improve the way individuals learn as we move deeper into the digital economy.

The disruptive and transformative power of technology in education is driven primarily by the fact that technology has the ability to make learning more interactive, collaborative and interesting. It also provides much-needed skills like critical thinking, analysis and problem-solving that people need in a rapidly evolving world.

Nursing and health sciences are, of course, not immune to the transformative capabilities of technology in education.The health industry is recognising more and more that it is critical for modern nurses and health practitioners to be highly trained and well-educated critical thinkers able to make complex clinical decisions – and there is an increasing recognition that the most effective way to produce these kinds of practitioners is to utilise technology in their education.

The transformative power of technology in nursing education

The Life College of Learning, which was established by Life Healthcare in 1998, has made technology and innovation its strategic focus for this reason and continuously implements programmes and initiatives that make use of the latest and most advanced technology.

Since 2013, for example, the college has upgraded the simulation rooms and digital education systems at each of its seven learning centres across the country so that innovative teaching and learning methodologies are used to promote student theory practice integration and improved cognitive thinking.As a result, the college now makes use of an advanced electronic learning programme that is conducive to learning and self-study as it is visual and interactive. The programme is a 3D human anatomy and physiology software used for teaching, learning and presenting.

Simulation, which is a vital part of healthcare training because of the ability to create real-world scenarios in a controlled and non-threatening environment, benefits broadly from the use of technology because tech facilitates the simulation of specific characteristics or behaviour of patients or illnesses.This allows students to get much-needed exposure to and practice life-saving skills without adverse consequences. These skills include basic and advanced nursing capabilities, a variety of wound care procedures, and labour, delivery and midwifery skills.

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Health on the menu at Nature’s Goodness in Welland

Health-conscious individuals may want to take a trip down West Main Street.

Nature’s Goodness Health Foods and Wellness opened this week at 98 West Main St., kicking off seven days of prize giveaway running until Saturday as part of the store’s grand opening. Establishing a shop of her own — specializing in a full range of vitamins, supplements, essential oils, organic foods and more — has long been the dream of owner Sarina Giansante, who has spent three years preparing to head out on her own after a career working in the health food industry.

“I thought I would finally give it a shot,” said Giansante, who is paring the products offered on her shelves, ranging from organic and natural beauty and bath products to dietary supplements, with in-house organic tea and coffee products. She has set up a seating area, replete with Himalayan salts to provide guests a relaxing environment to enjoy their beverages, such as organic cappuccinos, and as she moves forward, organic food offerings.

The field is a passion for the certified biofeedback technician, who aims to find natural remedies for ailments that might otherwise require medication.

6 artificial flavorings with cancer-causing properties – (FDA bans)

The announcement from the U.S. Food And Drug Administration carries a yawn-inducing title: “FDA Removes 7 Synthetic Flavoring Substances from Food Additives List.” It sounds like a regulatory move aimed at food-makers, and it is. But it’s one that has a slightly alarming backstory: The FDA is effectively banning these artificial substances because they have been shown to cause cancer in animals.

Under a provision of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act known as the Delaney Clause, the FDA cannot approve ingredients for use in food that have been found “to induce cancer in humans or animals at any dose.” Six of the substances “delisted” (effectively, banned) by the FDA have been found to cause cancer in animals exposed to very high doses. The seventh ingredient was delisted because it is no longer used at all by the food industry, the FDA says.

The six other artificial flavorings — benzophenone, ethyl acrylate, eugenyl methyl ether, myrcene, pulegone, and pyridine — are now no longer permitted for use in food, even though the FDA states that previous testing found “they do not pose a risk to public health under the conditions of their intended use.” Eager to not incite any kind of a panic, the FDA is stating the animals that developed cancer did so after exposure to very high levels of these flavorings — much higher doses than any human would likely ingest: “The FDA is only revoking the listing of these six synthetic flavorings as a matter of law. The FDA has concluded that these substances are otherwise safe.”

This latest FDA mandate comes on the heels of two other moves away from non-natural ingredients: In January, Dunkin’ announced it would phase out artificially derived coloring in its products by the end of the year, and last month, McDonald’s pledged that it would remove all artificial colorings and preservatives from its classic burgers (minus those pesky pickles). Taken together, these individual developments suggest the movement away from artificial colorings, preservatives, and flavorings is gaining serious traction.

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Solid Evidence That Attending Medical Devices Training Is Good for Your Career Development

Training is the foundation to producing products and services that meet regulatory and quality expectations and industrywide acceptance. This is generally true for all products and services, but in particular, for medical devices. Why? Medical devices are not in the same league as any other ordinary product that can be handled by anyone in any manner.

Training is the only means by which medical device companies that manufacture medical devices and the staff that handle these products on a daily basis and administer them on patients, can ensure patient safety. Training that imparts a degree of understanding of the methods, processes and technologies in this field is the means to this and to meeting the quality requirements.

Training ensures safety and quality in the manufacture and use of medical devices

Medical devices are highly specialized products that require extreme care and diligence when handling. A slight error or carelessness can result in far-reaching consequences that have the potential to cause anything from physical harm to death for the patient or the user. This explains the criticality of training for medical devices because an untrained person is more likely to cause errors in using these high-specialty products than a trained one.

Another core factor in medical device training is that it is part of regulatory expectations in most markets. Getting trained in the prescribed manner is very crucial for medical device professionals because training is indispensable in helping them meet regulatory requirements. The main purpose with which regulations are made is to ensure that the products that complying organizations produce and the processes they employ meet the required quality standards.

Since medical devices are an area in which one cannot take chances, regulatory agencies such as the FDA and the EMA, and standards bodies such as the ISO have made training mandatory for medical device professionals. These bodies also state the nature of the regulations and the requirements that medical device and healthcare organizations need to adhere to in order to meet their expectations.

Professionals and organizations that meet these standards are assured regulatory approval. They are also more likely to win public confidence for the quality of their products. Medical device training is what helps assure that stay updated in their professions.

Regulations mandate training in medical devices

The role of training in medical devices can be understood from the fact that it is not just another desirable, nice-to-have feature, but one that is made mandatory by regulations in this area. These are some of the regulations that make training for medical devices mandatory for companies in the medical devices field:

–       ISO 13485:2016 – Medical Device Quality Management System Requirements

–       ISO 14971

–       Medical Device Single Audit Program (MDSAP)

–       New Requirements set out by the EU Medical Device Regulation and In Vitro Diagnostics Regulations

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Healthcare Trainings That Everyone Went Crazy Over It?

Healthcare compliance trainings are undertaken to get a clear idea about the regulatory compliance requirements in the industry. Healthcare is a highly regulated industry, which means that the regulatory bodies keep issuing regulatory guidelines, standards or requirements from time to time, as the regulations come in. One question that could arise in the minds of readers is: is it necessary to get trained about these regulations?

The answer is, yes. Healthcare compliance trainings are necessary because of the nature of the regulations. These regulations are very specific and strict. Healthcare organizations cannot take their implementation casually. Noncompliance invites enforcement actions such as citations or Warning Letters to, depending on the gravity of noncompliance and the consequences it causes to the public, even abrogation of the business.

These are the reasons for which healthcare compliance trainings are very important for organizations. Obviously, no organization likes to face a situation arising out of noncompliance. Healthcare compliance trainings are the only antidote and alternative to noncompliance. One may wonder if the high price at which compliance trainings are offered-from a few hundred dollars to a few thousands for a session-is justified. These words of Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul Mc Nult best counter such skepticism: “If you think compliance is expensive, try non‐compliance”.

CHI garden targets families with little access to fresh food

The antiquated Greek thinker Aristotle is credited with saying that nature loathes a vacuum.

For Thomas Strawmier, the vacuum was the vacant field he continued driving past on the grounds of the year-old Creighton University Medical Center-University Campus at 24th and Cuming Streets.

“I figured, ‘We should put something there,’ ” said Strawmier, a medical caretaker specialist at the facility.

Realizing that the facility serves an assorted gathering of patients, some of whom experience difficulty getting new veggies, he proposed a network plant.

It could give some deliver to patients — even offer beds for neighbors who need to become their own — and fill in as a showing site for nutritionists, physical advisors and social wellbeing experts. There they could convey exercises on adhering to good diet, damage free planting and stress administration.

So half a month prior, Strawmier and a bunch of facility associates — and their children — filled and planted five raised garden beds, introduced by accomplice City Sprouts, on the site.

“Everyone cherished the thought immediately,” said Nicki Blodgett, a therapeutic aide at the facility who brought child Ryder, 6, and little girl, Lexi, 7, to encourage plant. “We do as such numerous things here to connect the network with assets. This was simply one more advance in that.”

Neighborhood wellbeing frameworks long have upheld and joined forces with network cultivate gatherings. Be that as it may, the garden has all the earmarks of being the first specifically settled by a wellbeing framework.

Such endeavors are a piece of a developing spotlight on keeping individuals well, a concentration that goes past advising individuals to eat solid eating methodologies — now medicinal services suppliers are demonstrating to them generally accepted methods to do it through cooking classes and so forth. In a few sections of the nation, a couple of human services designs even have started giving medicinally custom-made suppers through “nourishment as drug” programs.

Audrey Matthews, more advantageous networks facilitator for CHI Health, said the association needs the University Campus garden to develop. While the first beds will be planted by staff, the wellbeing framework would like to include more for neighbors and turn into an undeniable network plant where inhabitants and staff can work and get to know each other.

“The more open doors we can accommodate the network to go to the property and be locked in, the better,” she said.

Independently, Matthews stated, CHI Health likewise is working with City Sprouts, the Latino Center of the Midlands and OneWorld Community Health Centers to help enhance access to new create in South Omaha.

In light of a model created in a Denver suburb, the South Omaha program calls for procuring a network wellbeing laborer to distinguish and work with families confronting nourishment weakness, implying that they may not generally know when or where they’ll eat their next dinner.

The laborer, who will make home visits, will instruct families about urban farming and help them plant cultivates in their own particular lawns or at City Sprouts South, the network cultivating gathering’s greenery enclosure close twentieth and N Streets.

The $326,000 venture is financed by a two-year allow from CHI Health’s parent organization, and also extra gifts and in-kind commitments.

Establishment of the University Campus plant cost about $2,000, with stores originating from CHI Health’s people group advantage office.

Matthews said coordinators intend to start distinguishing families in South Omaha this fall. While the underlying concentration is sustenance get to, authorities with the Denver-region program have discovered that the connections the wellbeing laborers work with families inevitably enable them to recognize and address other social needs — say, worry over having the capacity to pay lease — that can influence wellbeing.

Generally, she stated, medicinal services has been directed inside healing facilities and centers. In any case, inquire about demonstrates that human services suppliers need to go past those dividers.

“We’re eager to have the capacity to go and meet the families where they’re at and give those administrations,” Matthews said.

Albert Varas, official executive of the Latino Center of the Midlands, said network cultivating has turned out to be prevalent in north Omaha yet at the same time is genuinely restricted in South Omaha.

An evaluation of the middle’s customers demonstrated a requirement for sustenance instruction and stress administration, he said. Cultivating can address both, notwithstanding helping individuals save money on basic supply bills.

The Latino Center, as a major aspect of a different exertion, as of now has an exhibition garden to demonstrate inhabitants how it’s done — raised beds set up by City Sprouts and supported by CHI Health. “Our beds are ablaze,” Varas said. “They’re stacked.”

Under CHI Health’s South Omaha venture, a property holder has consented to plant a home show cultivate so would-be plant specialists can perceive how a patio plot functions.

Roxanne Draper, City Sprouts official executive, said the local gathering will give training to the individuals who need it. Its cultivating classes are offered in Spanish.

“We’re anticipating a great deal of development in South Omaha,” she said.

Strawmier and his partners at the University Campus, interim, have a lot of thoughts of their own for their garden.

Suppliers there observe loads of patients with ceaseless diseases who could profit by cultivating, he said. Having neighbors develop vegetables from their nations of origin would include some social enthusiasm too. Inevitably, he’d jump at the chance to include some organic product trees.

“A great deal of conceivable outcomes,” he stated, as he completed the process of scooping soil into the new beds. “Yet, this is the place we begin.”

What Big Pharma pays your doctor

Members of Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC), the lobby group for the large pharmaceutical companies, recently released their voluntary reports of payments to health-care professionals and health-care organizations.

Altogether, the 10 reporting companies paid out more than $75 million in 2017.

This is the second year of these disclosures. When they started, Russell Williams, then the IMC president, said on CBC’s The Current: “We’re open to continually improving and monitoring” the disclosures. According to the new president, Pamela Fralick, the 2016 revelations were only a first step and she expected more companies to disclose payments in 2017.

Come the 2017 disclosures, and there are still the same 10 companies. Moreover, the disclosures are actually not on the IMC website, they are on the individual companies’ websites and are not easy to find. It takes at least a couple of mouse clicks to locate the material. Nor is there any more detail this year than last year about how the money is used.

IMC touts these disclosures as “part of our commitment to high ethical standards and enhancing trust.”

But all that the companies have disclosed are gross figures — with no information about what they paid for.

Paid to promote opioids?

Why did Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin and a host of other opioid products, give almost $1.9 million to health-care professionals in 2017?

All Purdue’s website says is that the money was for “services.” Were some of those services speeches made by doctors on behalf of Purdue? In the past Purdue has paid doctors $2,000 a talk.

Amgen Canada gave more than $6 million to health-care organizations, but we don’t know what these organizations did with that money.

Novartis spent $350,000 on travel expenses so that doctors and possibly other professionals could go to international congresses and/or global stand-alone meetings.

Who were these health-care professionals? What meetings did they go to? Where were the meetings?

Canada lags behind

Big Pharma here in Canada is far behind the curve when it comes to disclosing where the money is going. The federal government doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to force the companies to make more information public either.

Just over a year ago, then Health Minister Jane Philpott’s position was that forcing the disclosure of payments to individual doctors was, “in principle…an important concept” but should be left to the provinces.

In the United States, companies have had to disclose any payment of more than $10 to a doctor since 2013. The doctors are named.

In Australia, an analysis of information that companies must disclose found that, from October 2011 to September 2015, 42 companies sponsored 116,845 events for health professionals.

In nine European countries, disclosure is either mandatory or voluntary. Many of the European voluntary codes allow doctors to opt out of having their names disclosed.

IMC justified not linking doctors’ names to payments on the grounds of Canadian privacy laws but Ontario’s recently passed legislation will require disclosures to include the names of all health-care professionals who receive money or any other “transfer of value.”

Later this summer, British Columbia will hold public consultations about the same type of legislation.

Point-of-care ultrasound: a reliable bedrock of the general hospital

Point-of-care ultrasound is at the heart of Frimley Park Hospital’s anaesthesia department, guiding procedures such as vascular access and nerve blocks. Dr Tim Pepall, a consultant anaesthetist at Frimley Park, explained: “It’s essential to use ultrasound for central vascular access because of NICE guidelines, but we also use it occasionally for difficult peripheral vascular access and arterial lines.

Ultrasound has transformed regional anaesthetic practice and we were relatively early adopters of it – it made sense to see the nerves, rather than going in blind. There is so much variation in nerve and vascular anatomy that you realise your previous techniques were really feeling in the dark. Nowadays, I would be very reluctant to do a plexus block without an ultrasound machine.”

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Tim continued: “We’ve been using FUJIFILM SonoSite point-of-care systems for the last 10 years. There are five SonoSite instruments in the anaesthetic department and we’ve stayed with the one manufacturer because we’ve been very happy with it – we like the back-up service, as well as the simplicity of the systems and the quality of images it provides.

The SonoSite S-Nerve interface is very intuitive, and it is great for portability, we can transfer it onto the wards and take it wherever we need to use ultrasound. With the new SonoSite X­Porte, we’re also doing more echocardiography than before – which saves us having to discuss preoperative cases with the cardiologists as often – and we can see dynamic changes as they occur, and responses to our interventions.”

SonoSite, the SonoSite logo, S-Nerve and X-Porte are trademarks and registered trademarks of FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc. in various jurisdictions. FUJIFILM is a trademark and registered trademark of FUJIFILM Corporation in various jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Copyright (c) 2018 FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc. All rights reserved. Subject to change.

Medical scope of practice can vary by state, country and/or local jurisdiction.

FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc., is the innovator and world leader in bedside and point-of-care ultrasound, and an industry leader in ultra high-frequency micro-ultrasound technology. Headquartered near Seattle, the company is represented by a global distribution network in over 100 countries. SonoSite’s portable, compact systems are expanding the use of ultrasound across the clinical spectrum by cost-effectively bringing high-performance ultrasound to the point of patient care.

Quo vadis blockchain in health and healthcare?

You may be familiar with blockchain as the technology powering bitcoin cryptocurrency. But blockchain’s potential goes far beyond this, with healthcare being just one of the industries set to be revolutionized. In an editorial published today in the International Journal of Health Geographics, Maged N. Kamel Boulos and colleagues discuss how we could soon see blockchain technology securing patient and provider identities, managing medical supply lines, enabling public and open geo-tagged data and much more.

The last couple of years have seen a growing interest in blockchain technologies among the health and healthcare research and practice communities. Blockchain is the core distributed ledger technology powering the well-known bitcoin cryptocurrency. However, the interest of our communities in blockchain goes far beyond bitcoin.

In March 2018, a consortium of scholarly publishers, including Springer Nature, launched Phase 1 of Blockchain for Peer Review “to make the peer review process more transparent, recognisable and trustworthy.” Earlier, in 2017, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started experimenting with blockchain for sharing public health data to help public health workers respond faster to a crisis.

At the time of writing (20 June 2018), a PubMed query using the term ‘blockchain’ retrieved 41 indexed papers. Blockchain solutions are currently being explored in different parts of the world for securing patient and provider identities, for managing pharmaceutical and medical device supply chains, for medical fraud detection, for medical data sharing among researchers, for research data monetisation, and in crisis mapping and recovery scenarios using blockchain-enabled augmented reality.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the foundation of the smart healthy cities and regions of today and tomorrow. The market for IoT devices and apps that negotiate with, and pay, each other for secure, safe operation and services is expected to grow in the near future. Examples of these IoT devices include mobile and wearable devices that pay for public transportation, and autonomous connected devices and vehicles for smart city emergency/disaster response, such as a drone defibrillator, or a drone for the delivery of ordered medicines and medical supplies, or a self-driving ambulance car (or helicopter).

The blockchain-powered, distributed peer-to-peer apps powering these smart devices, drones and vehicles would cut out the ‘middleman’ and the dependence on third-party centralized providers for navigation and other geospatial data, and would mitigate the possibility of an IoT-powered autonomous vehicle being hijacked and driven to a wrong location.

The challenges facing blockchain technologies today include interoperability, security and privacy, as well as the need to find suitable and sustainable business models of implementation. However, these challenges are not insurmountable, and I expect blockchain technologies to get increasingly powerful and robust, as they become coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) in various real-word healthcare solutions involving AI-mediated data exchange on blockchains.

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