Cerner Corporation, a global health platform and technology company, announced a multi-faceted, strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, to accelerate health care innovation across the globe. As part of this agreement, Cerner is naming AWS its preferred cloud provider. This expanded relationship is expected to power enhanced clinical experiences, increase efficiencies by lowering operational burdens for health care organizations and accelerate Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and other cutting-edge innovations thereby advancing better patient health outcomes.

“Our work with Amazon and AWS is a key component for the next chapter at Cerner,” said Brent Shafer, chairman and CEO, Cerner. “As we work to transform Cerner, we are joining forces with Amazon and AWS to help fuel our strategy of making Cerner more agile in order to deliver faster, more scalable and secure solutions to clients and patients. We expect this collaboration with Amazon and AWS will enable a new wave of innovation that can lead and transform the future of health care.”

Increasingly, consumers are expecting high-quality, accessible health care balanced with affordable costs and increased transparency. Today’s announcement solidifies how Cerner plans to ready itself for this changing health care landscape. Cerner’s legacy of innovation over the past 40 years helped drive the digitization of patient data – inventing, building, developing and implementing world-class electronic health records (EHRs). As Cerner pivots to the future, the company is focused on driving a high order of benefits from digitized platforms, and its collaboration with AWS will help provide consumers with more power by enabling greater access to their own health care information than ever before.

Leveraging AWS’s broad and deep portfolio of cloud services, Cerner expects to usher in a new era of health system interoperability and data portability to ensure the best health outcomes across the continuum of care. Cerner clients should expect a new velocity of advancements while experiencing a lower operational and financial burden.

For example, through its existing collaboration with the Amazon ML Solutions Lab, Cerner has quickly developed new ML capabilities for clients and with greater scale. Cerner will continue to advance its health prediction capabilities to uncover important and potentially life-saving insights within trusted-source, digital health data. Cerner’s ongoing work with AWS, and use of Amazon SageMaker, has allowed researchers to query anonymized patient data to build complex models and algorithms that led to earlier detection of congestive heart failure. AWS’s ML capabilities, including voice recognition and natural language processing technologies, will have an immediate impact on the Cerner technology roadmap and help to redefine experiences in health care.

“Health care and life sciences companies trust AWS with their mission-critical workloads, knowing that they can securely and easily invent new ways to interact with their patient populations and quickly scale the approaches that are effective,” said Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS. “AWS is providing Cerner with the broadest portfolio of innovative analytics and machine learning services that will empower them to gain new clinical and business insights that have the potential to transform patient care delivery.”

Earlier this year, Cerner announced a renewed commitment to relentlessly focus on clients’ success, whether it’s a large health system, a community hospital or a consumer having a better experience or outcome. The power of AWS’s global infrastructure and breadth and depth of services, coupled with Cerner’s health care technology acumen and source for data can bring significant benefits to Cerner clients. With AWS, Cerner HealtheDataLab™ was built and has allowed researchers to take de-identified patient data, transform the data sets into research-ready formats and build complex models and algorithms to give providers more information to make more informed patient decisions.

“Our health system has reaped the benefits of Cerner’s HealtheIntent® platform for many years, improving the care we provide to our patients,” said Dr. William Feaster, chief health information officer, Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC). “Transforming the HealtheIntent data and loading it on AWS has allowed us to leverage big data and sophisticated data science tools, along with the elastic compute environment on AWS. This has accelerated our data science work at CHOC.”

As part of the agreement, AWS and Cerner have committed to an overall strategic framework that will allow for joint teams to drive accelerated innovation and enable increased speed-to-market. Since Shafer’s arrival to Cerner, the company has moved down a path of strategic relationships that could change health care. Cerner’s work with Amazon and AWS is an important step.

“Announcing AWS as our preferred cloud provider is an important move for Cerner. We live in a connected world and should work together to solve the quadruple aim of health care — improving the health of individuals and populations while reducing costs and increasing clinician satisfaction,” said Shafer. “We’re looking forward to tapping into Amazon’s expertise to further help Cerner improve patient satisfaction and drive our client success around the globe.”

All statements in this press release that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of Cerner’s management with respect to future events and are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties. The words “expect”, “expected”, “plans”, “will,” “should,” “can” or the negative of these words, variations thereof or similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. In addition, our forward-looking statements include statements regarding the expected benefits of our collaboration with Amazon and AWS.

Aircuity, creator of measurably better environments, is excited to announce the addition of BACnet Client capability to the Aircuity platform. This critical interoperability feature is designed to give customers a cost-effective way to view a broad picture of their facility’s operation. The company has also announced a newly released set of enhancements to the MyAircuity platform.

BACnet Client allows the Aircuity platform to integrate additional points available on the network from building systems and present them alongside Aircuity’s data, reducing integration costs and gives clients an easy way to get a holistic view of all key building parameters. BACnet Client is currently available on all new Aircuity projects and can be remotely loaded on customers’ existing systems.

“We believe that BACnet Client allows Aircuity to cost effectively bring more valuable information into our dashboard analytics,” stated vice president, sales, Pete Hmelyar. “Now our customers can view more data in one place which saves time and helps when diagnosing any sort of issue within the building.”

In addition, Aircuity recently released a series of enhancements to its MyAircuity platform that include:

• Chinese Language now supported in customer web pages
• Additional graphs from the Graphing and Exporting feature added to dashboard
• Flow driver dashboard updated to be based on rooms rather than on test areas, making data easier for users to identify
• System will now publish a points list and save it to the web in user’s document directory
• Graphing and Exporting now allows user to zoom into less than a 24-hour period
• Flow reductions dashboard now supports rooms with multiple supply devices

LogiMed (16th– 17th October) Is the only dedicated annual gathering of European medical device and diagnostics supply chain leaders
In Q2 of 2018, LogiMed surveyed 100 Directors of supply chain professionals from across Europe to find out more about the challenges they’re facing and the innovative solutions being brought to the table.

Inside you will discover:

• Single biggest challenge being faced in the supply chain
• Advantages of supply chain IT systems to enhance operations
• Type of technology software businesses are investing in
• Main collaboration areas with customers
• End-to-end visibility in the supply chain

Key findings include:

• 43% risk management and continuity of supply increasing regulatory pressures
• 59% of respondents are investing in Track and Trace solutions

16% of respondents mentioned that they do not yet have a full end-to-end visibility

DOWNLOAD REPORT

Download the agenda here to find out exactly who is speaking, what the hottest topics are and how LogiMed can benefit you.

Then, take a look at the bookings page to get 15% off your ticket price with code: HHM19

We look forward to seeing you in Rotterdam in October!

Camstent Ltd’s coated catheter, which has been developed to limit attachment of bacteria to its surfaces, a known source of Catheter Acquired Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI), has been awarded approval for a new claim to be made under the CE mark by its notified body in relation to its unique bacteria-phobic properties. This new claim* adds to the existing approved claim** for the catheter’s silky-smooth surface which reduces tissue trauma on insertion and withdrawal.

The polymers originally reported to have bacteria-phobic properties and that are used in the Camstent coated catheters were discovered in 2012. They have since been developed by Camstent into a silky-smooth and bacteria-phobic coating for silicone or silicone-based medical devices. Unlike other coatings that are designed to kill bacteria adhering to the surfaces, the passive non-stick property of Camstent’s coating aims to deter bacteria from attaching to the catheter surfaces at all. This novel approach has been demonstrated to reduce formation of biofilm that, in turn, can lead to CAUTI. It has the added advantage of having no potential of creating antibiotic resistant organisms.

“The approval of the “bacteria-phobic” claim is a significant landmark in the commercialisation of Camstent’s coated catheter product as our device can now claim two unique benefits which are very attractive to health care providers,” said Dave Hampton, founder and CTO of Camstent.

“The bacteria-phobic feature has the potential to reduce the cost of care that can result from catheter related complications such as infection and longer hospital stays. The silky-smooth surface is equally important since patient comfort cannot be understated, as anyone who has had a catheter administered will testify. To add to this there is a potential long-term public health benefit which may come about as a result of fewer of antibiotics being prescribed to patients and the resulting danger of the creation of super-bugs,” added Dave.

Camstent soon plans to apply for similar regulatory approval in the United States with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

*The Camstent bacteria-phobic coating limits the attachment of bacteria to the catheter lumen as compared to uncoated surfaces. Fewer bacteria results in less biofilm, which can cause CAUTI.

**The Camstent Coated Foley Catheter is intended for the drainage of urine from the urinary bladder; the coating enhances lubricity, significantly reducing insertion force.

About Camstent
Camstent’s mission is to address the problem of hospital-acquired infections that affect 1 in 25 patients (300,000 people in England and 1.7 million in the US). Thirty-eight per cent of these are the result of catheter associated urinary infections, increasing patient morbidity and length of hospital stays. In the US, as many as 99,000 patients die from these infections every year; 37,000 in Europe and almost 10,000 in the UK. After extensive development by Camstent, the bacteria-phobic polymers, which were first discovered at the University of Nottingham in 2012, have been formulated as a coating for catheters and other silicon/silastic medical devices. Camstent-coated catheters are available for sale in the UK and EU.

Apart from being annoying for your sleeping partner, snoring comes with health hazards that not everyone is aware of. Some of these can have a significant effect on people’s lives, including the chance of an earlier death. Here we will mention just a few of the possible problems your snoring could cause.

Strokes
Snoring is caused by breathing through your mouth when you sleep. This can cause a narrowing of the arteries in the neck, which can result in a stroke. Research has shown that the louder you snore, the more chance there is of this happening. This is particularly the case if you suffer from high blood pressure.

You can stop breathing through your mouth by using non-invasive sleep aids from this company. These stick to your lips but still allow natural jaw movement, and ensure that you breathe through your nose instead.

Arrhythmias
Long-term snoring can increase the risk of developing an irregular heartbeat. Research has shown that snoring can affect the conductive system of the heart, which over time can create an enlargement of the left atrium.

Acid Reflux
It is very common for people that snore to suffer from acid reflux. It is thought this is because of the way air moves in and out of your throat while you are sleeping. This can cause pressure changes in your airways and can suck the contents of your stomach back into your esophagus, thus creating the acid reflux.

Lack of Proper Sleep
You do not sleep so soundly when you are constantly snoring. Even after being in bed all night you can wake up exhausted because of this. There is more than one problem associated with not having enough proper sleep.

Anxiety and stress are both made worse by tiredness and if it goes on for too long, that could turn to severe depression. Recent research has shown that the more tired people are, the more likely they are to have mental health issues.

When you are tired, you can become a danger to yourself and people around you if you are driving or operating machinery. Just imagine the possible outcome of falling asleep at the wheel of your car, and how many people could be injured or lose their lives because you had not had enough proper sleep.

Headaches
Studies have found a link between snoring and morning headaches. The almost 300 people involved in the study complained that waking up most days with a headache is affecting their quality of life.

Sexual Problems
Research involving more than 800 older men showed that the louder they snore, the less sexual satisfaction they felt. Their health was well in all other areas, and if the snoring was reduced, their normal sexual feeling returned.

Excess Weight
More than half of overweight people snore, and it is said this is because of the extra weight that collects around the neck, making it harder to breathe when they are asleep. The beauty of weight causing the problem is that reducing what you weigh reduces the snoring too.

Snoring can also happen in the final stages of pregnancy because of the extra weight the mother-to-be is carrying, and if this is a problem you should talk to your doctor or midwife about it, as you will have more than enough interrupted sleep after the baby has been born.

Family and friends may well tease you about your snoring, especially if it is really loud and can be heard by everyone in your home. In reality, it can be quite dangerous and not something you should ignore.

If you are planning a holiday, one of the most important things to get sorted before travelling is your vaccinations. The kind you need will depend on where you are going and where you might have already been before.

Vaccinations
Vaccinations are essential to gain immunity from a variety of harmful things. You should already be up to date with your regular vaccinations, but if you are travelling to different parts of the world, there are different things you might need to be vaccinated against. There are a few places you can go, but if you live in Canada, a travel clinic based in Ottawa is a good example – they can make sure you are fully protected before your trip abroad. You should ask your healthcare provider about travel vaccinations and find your nearest travel clinic to see if they offer the full travel vaccination package. It is also possible that some vaccinations will be covered by insurance, or if you are living in the UK, you could be entitled to some vaccinations free from NHS providers.

Importance
Whilst vaccinations can be an issue for some faith beliefs, the fact is, you are much safer with them than without. Vaccinations all have to be approved and are completely safe, so you should not have any doubts about getting them done. If you don’t get vaccinated, you are putting yourself at risk of death or lifelong illness. If you are unsure about what vaccinations and medicines you may require, sites such as travelhealthpro can be used to check based on the country you are visiting. Vaccinations exist for a reason, keeping you safe from deadly infections and diseases such as Yellow Fever, Typhoid, and Hepatitis A and B. Some countries require proof of vaccinations before you can visit them, so make sure you check this. Even if they don’t require an ICVP (International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis), it is still a good idea to carry one with you.

When to Get Them
You should get your vaccinations as soon as possible, but at least eight weeks in advance is recommended. Some vaccinations take time or require multiple doses before your body can develop full immunity. If you are working as an aid worker or in a medical setting, you are more likely to be in contact with serious diseases and viruses, so this is something you should discuss with your travel clinic or health provider. If you are working with animals, then you will definitely need your rabies shot.

For those with pre-existing conditions, immunodeficiencies, or pregnant/nursing mothers, you will have to speak to your doctor more about this for advice, as some vaccinations may not be possible.

General Health and Safety
Whilst vaccinations are incredibly important, you should also remember to keep your general health and safety in check. This includes things such as using hand sanitizers when using public restrooms, and before eating and drinking. Good hygiene will help to prevent against stomach bugs and should be part of your regular routine anyway, but can be even more important in countries where there are poorer sanitation levels.

Making sure that you only drink safe water from a genuine source is is essential if you are travelling to most places, as tap water is often unsuitable for drinking for a variety of reasons. Whilst some areas may have tap-water that locals drink and is not polluted or ‘dirty’ in any way, it could still be bad for you if your body is not used to it. Water can carry lots of harmful microorganisms and cause diarrhoea and sickness, or much worse.

Before visiting any country, do your research and learn about the risks and dangers, so you can be fully aware and keep yourself safe. Travelling is great fun, but it’s much more fun when you can enjoy it without putting yourself at risk. Don’t forget to use good sun-protection too!