Community patient care transformed by technology support

The iPads have been bought by Seaton and District Hospital League of Friends to assist patients struggling with the demands of speech and communication

(Devon, UK) Patients based in a South Devon town who have communication and swallowing difficulties are benefitting from the use of two iPads with a variety of specialised apps.

The iPads were purchased by Seaton and District Hospital League of Friends. The first one is intended for inpatients at Seaton Community Hospital requiring communication support, with extra applications to enhance staff training.

The second iPad will be utilised in the local community for assessment, ongoing communication therapy and education.

Seaton Community Hospital has a number of admissions due to medical events that can affect communication, such as motor neurone disease, stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, multiple sclerosis and dementia.

As a result of these conditions, it can be very difficult and frustrating for patients to communicate the most basic of needs.

Dr Rob Daniels, a Seaton GP, backed the purchase of the iPads and Sue Renyard, community speech and language therapist, will use the technology to help with assessment and ongoing support. For the full article click here 

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Snapshot of health in Greene provided

Greene County ranks in the top 25 percent of Virginia counties when it comes to health. That’s according to the seventh annual County Health Rankings, released last month by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

Those measurements are helping the Thomas Jefferson Health District, which oversees the Greene County Health Department, and local officials get a snapshot of how the county is doing.

“Within our planning district we see a lot of differences,” said Elizabeth Beasley, senior health promotion consultant for the TJHD.The Thomas Jefferson Health District is one of thirty-five health districts under the Virginia Department of Health. It is comprised of six health departments that serve the counties of Greene, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Louisa, and Nelson, along with the city of Charlottesville.

Greene County ranked 31 out of 134 localities in the Commonwealth in 2015. Albemarle County was fourth, Rockingham was 19^th, Madison County was 39^th and Orange County was 44^th.

When it comes to quality of life, Greene County ranked 40^th, with 13 percent of its residents in poor or fair health. Eight percent of Greene County newborns were reported as having a low birthweight. For the full article click here 

 

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Health Ministry Seeks Partnership in Strengthening Preventive Oral Care

Minister of Health, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, says there are plans to partner with the private sector on initiatives to encourage preventive oral care among Jamaicans.

Preventive care includes caring for the teeth through daily brushing and regular dental cleaning, in order to avoid cavities and gum disease.

“It’s about talking to persons about good oral health so we don’t run into the difficulties that we run into if we do not practise good oral health hygiene. We want to provide the infrastructure and guidelines for good oral health practices,” Dr. Tufton stated.

He was addressing the relaunch of Colgate’s Mobile Dental Unit on Thursday (April 7) at the Union Gardens Infant School in Kingston.

The unit, which was introduced in 2004 as part of Colgate’s Bright Smiles, Bright Futures School Programme, was temporarily out of service to facilitate repairs. For the full article click here 

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Aerial Pesticide Spraying To Kill Gypsy Moths In Portland, Vancouver

The Oregon Department of Agriculture plans to spray an organic insecticide across thousands of acres of North Portland and Vancouver, Washington, over the next month to eradicate invasive gypsy moths.

The state found three Asian gypsy moths and two European gypsy moths in traps last year in North Portland and across the Columbia River in Vancouver. According to ODA spokesman Bruce Pokarney, the moths pose serious risks to trees and forests, and so far the state has managed to prevent them from taking hold.

“It’s a tremendous defoliator,” he said. “In the caterpillar stage, the moth eats leaves right off the trees. The Asian variety is of more concern to us because it has a wider appetite. It actually eats coniferous trees. And unlike the European gypsy moth, the female Asian gypsy moth flies. She can lay a bunch of eggs, get up and fly several miles and then lay some more eggs. So, you can see how that would lead to a much more rapid and widespread infestation if it’s not taken care of early.” For the full article click here 

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Is Nicotine the Cure for Sugar Addiction?

Sugar is a delectable enemy. Once thought to hold the secret to health, it is now believed to be fueling an obesity epidemic that encompasses 640 million people worldwide.

Despite an abundance of evidence about its dangers, Americans just can’t quit sugar. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an average person in the U.S. consumes an estimated 128 pounds each year.

This seemingly infinite sweet tooth has led experts to suggest that sugar may have more control over the brain than we realize. A game-changing study published in Plos Oneprovides some of the strongest evidence to date that it does. For the full article click here 

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Forcepoint: Optimism Rises on Integrating Web Security, Data Loss Prevention, and Analytics Products

IDC Insight Report – January 2016

WHITEPAPER

Advances in cloud computing, mobility and other disruptive technologies create new ways to move your business forward – they also present new challenges as insider threats and targeted attacks look for new ways to exploit them.

Relying on a patchwork of security products means more complexity for your overtaxed and under-resourced security teams and more risk to your data.

In this report, International Data Corporation (IDC) showcases how Forcepoint solutions and their flexible delivery options let your organization safely leverage the Cloud, mobile devices and other advancements as well as eliminate the complexity of managing a patchwork of point products.

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Third-party libraries are one of the most insecure parts of an application

Much has been written to guide software developers on how to develop secure software. Despite this general awareness, we continue to see vulnerable software produced. One of the observations in the HPE Cyber Risk Report 2016 is that attackers have shifted their focus from servers and operating systems directly to applications.They see this as the easiest route to accessing sensitive enterprise data and are doing everything they can to do that—including exploiting third-party software components. After all, an attacker looks for any application weakness to gain access to an organization’s sensitive data and doesn’t care how it got there.

Let’s look at some of the research around third-party library security and some of the strategies and tools you can use to mitigate these risks.

Fast dev times, for a price

All categories of applications tend to use third-party libraries to accelerate the development process. Based on analysis of the Central Repository (one of the largest open source code repositories), Sonatype estimatesthat 90 percent of all software development requires the downloading of components. While most critical vulnerabilities in third-party libraries are disclosed as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), it is disconcerting to note that the applications that use them are not updated in a timely manner. Also, CVEs do not represent all of the vulnerabilities found in third-party software, and other unidentified weaknesses may exist.

HPE Cyber Risk Report 2016

A great example of this is the significant security flaw researchers recently discovered in the GNU C Library. A domain-name lookup function known as getaddrinfo() contains a buffer overflow vulnerability that could cause a system crash or allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code (CVE-2015-7547). This vulnerability went undiscovered for seven years and unfixed for seven months following its initial report in July.

 

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