Spending bill includes $50 million for healthcare data initiative

PARCA eNews – Dec. 31, 2019 – Lost in all the other things going on in Washington, D.C. at the end of 2019 was the $1.4 Trillion spending package Congress passed and the president signed to fund the US Government through September 2020.

Included in the bill was $50 million for the first year of the Data: Elemental to Health Campaign, a multi-year initiative aimed at modernizing public health data systems, including surveillance and analytics at the CDC as well as state and local health departments.

Researchers produce first laser ultrasound images of humans

Photo courtesy MIT News

PARCA eNews – Dec. 19, 2019 – MIT engineers have demonstrated an alternative to conventional ultrasound that doesn’t require contact with the body to see inside a patient.

In a paper published Dec. 19, 2019 in the Nature journal Light: Science and Applications, the researchers scanned the forearms of several volunteers and observed common tissue features such as muscle, fat, and bone, down to about 6 centimeters below the skin. The images were judged comparable to conventional ultrasound, but were produced without patient contact using remote lasers focused on a volunteer from half a meter away.

Risks of AI pose complex challenges to deployment in healthcare

Professor Nicholson Price, University of 
Michigan. Credit Petrie-Flom Center - 
Harvard University

Nicholson Price is a professor of law teaching and writing in the areas of intellectual property, health law, and regulation, particularly focusing on the law surrounding innovation in the life sciences. He previously was an assistant professor of law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, an academic fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Previously, he clerked for the Hon. Carlos T. Bea of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received a JD and a PhD in biological sciences from Columbia University and an AB in biological sciences from Harvard College.​  PARCA eNews spoke to Mr. Price following an article he wrote for Brookings about the risks and remedies for AI in healthcare to get his perspective on those risks with regard to radiology and PACS administrators.

RSNA launches initiative to boost imaging sharing

Credit RSNA 2019

PARCA eNews – Dec. 4, 2019 – The RSNA and Carequality announced the addition of a supplement to the Imaging Data Exchange Guide at a town hall event at its 2019 RSNA’s 105th Scientific Assembly and Annual meeting in Chicago in December. 

The supplement expands the scope of the Carequality Interoperability Framework to detail technical standards for exchanging medical images.