Bloomberg: Deadly Abortion Misinformation Rings Alarm Bells for Doctors, TikTok. “TikTok and other social media platforms are attempting to clamp down on posts highlighting certain toxic herbs that some say might stop a pregnancy, as doctors sound the alarm over their potentially fatal effects for the person taking them.”
MIT Technology Review: How to track your period safely post-Roe. “The fear is that in the hands of law enforcement, this data could be used to bolster a criminal case against a person who attempts to get an abortion in a state where it is restricted or banned. Understandably, a lot of people are scared and confused. So here’s our guide to what you need to know about period-tracking apps, what the apps’ makers say about their often murky privacy policies, and what alternative methods you can use to track your menstrual cycle that don’t involve handing your data over.”
Motherboard: Facebook Is Banning People Who Say They Will Mail Abortion Pills. “Facebook is removing the posts of users who share status updates that say abortion pills can be mailed and in some cases temporarily banning those users. When exactly Facebook started removing these and similar posts is unclear. But Motherboard confirmed Facebook removed such posts on the same day that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States.”
The Guardian: Google misdirects one in 10 searches for abortion to ‘pregnancy crisis centers’. “One in 10 Google searches for abortion services in US “trigger states”, where the procedure is likely to become illegal if the US supreme court overturns Roe v Wade, are being misdirected to clinics known as ‘pregnancy crisis centers’ that do not actually provide care, according to a new study.”
Virginia Department of Health: The Virginia Department of Health in Collaboration with ESO Launches First-Ever Virginia Stroke Registry – Statewide View of Stroke Data will Improve Care for all People in Virginia . “The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) in partnership with ESO, today announced the launch of the first-ever Virginia Stroke Registry. ESO is the leading data and software company serving emergency medical services, fire departments, hospitals, state and federal agencies.”
University of York: Study reveals flaws in using social media to identify race and ethnicity for health research. “Mining social media to identify race and ethnicity as part of research into health disparities is unreliable and inconsistent, a new study has concluded.”
University of Alberta: App uses artificial intelligence to track healing wounds in real time. “Three U of A engineering students have developed a mobile app that tracks the progress of a healing wound. The app calculates whether treatments are working as they should based on descriptions of size, depth and shape along with more subjective impressions of pain and irritation, says programmer Connor Povoledo. Accurate tracking can predict infection and other complications and allow patients, particularly in remote areas, to decide whether urgent care is needed.”
PR Newswire: Employers’ Forum of Indiana Introduces Sage Transparency, Built Using New RAND Hospital Price Study (PRESS RELEASE). “Using data from the upcoming RAND 4.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study, Employers’ Forum of Indiana today launched Sage Transparency, a publicly accessible and customizable dashboard to demonstrate hospital value…. Sage Transparency is a free-to-use, customizable dashboard which allows the user to compare metrics of hospital price and quality across states, health systems, and facilities.” The fact that Employers’ Forum of Indiana did it makes you think it might be Indiana-only, but I was able to look up hospital information all over America.
Sky News: Google sued for using the NHS data of 1.6 million Britons ‘without their knowledge or consent’. “Google is being sued over its use of confidential medical records belonging to 1.6 million individuals in the UK. The company’s artificial intelligence arm, DeepMind, received the data in 2015 from the Royal Free NHS Trust in London for the purpose of testing a smartphone app called Streams.”
Click on Detroit: New tool helps Michigan residents find COVID treatments, therapeutics. “MDHHS launched a new tool for Michigan residents and health care providers to help locate COVID-19 treatments across the state. Users may search to find sites and locations that have therapeutic options available including monoclonal antibodies, oral antivirals and Evusheld, a preventative treatment for those who are moderately to severely immunocompromised. The site provides phone numbers, operating hours and information about which therapeutics are available.”
Washington Post: Another rare virus puzzle: They got sick, got treated, got covid again. “Infectious-disease experts agree that this phenomenon of the virus rebounding after some patients take the drug appears to be real but rare. Exactly how often it occurs, why it happens and what — if anything — to do about it remain matters of debate. What’s clear is that patients should be warned it is possible so they don’t panic — and so that they know to test again if they start feeling ill. More data is needed to understand what is going on. Paxlovid, made by the drug giant Pfizer, remains a useful drug, even though it has sparked a new mystery.”
Newswise: Social Media–Based Interventions for Health Behavior Change in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Systematic Review. “Despite the wealth of evidence regarding effective health behavior change techniques using digital interventions to focus on residents of high-income countries, there is limited information of a similar nature for low- and middle-income countries… The aim of this review is to identify and describe the available literature on effective social media–based behavior change interventions within low- and middle-income countries.”
NBC News: Hundreds are still dying from Covid every day. Why is Paxlovid sitting on shelves?. “More than 500 people are still dying of Covid-19 every day in the U.S., but an ample supply of a highly effectively antiviral drug is sitting on shelves, unused. The drug, Pfizer’s antiviral pill Paxlovid, was authorized for emergency use for high-risk people in December. Clinical trials found that a five-day course cut a patient’s risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent.”
CNN: With fewer cases and less demand, many Covid-19 testing sites are shutting down. “As Covid-19 numbers reach pandemic lows across the United States, many Covid-19 testing sites have begun closing their doors. Some testing sites have been open for almost two years, many seeing hundreds or even thousands of people a day. Now, home tests are more readily available, and demand for testing sites is falling.”
State of Delaware: DHSS Launches Site Comparing Health Care Costs for Select Episodes of Care, Services Based on Delaware Medical Claims “The Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) has launched a new website called CostAware to help Delawareans understand how their health care dollars are spent by comparing the variation of average costs for different episodes of care and medical services based on actual medical claims in Delaware.”
The ResearchBuzz Firehose is regular RB content presented as individual posts.
For digest-type posts a couple of times a day, please visit ResearchBuzz.
Want to know how to best use the Firehose for content discovery?
Check out this handy article.