Pharmageek
L'Institut Pasteur et IBM collaborent pour trouver un antiviral capable d'empêcher le virus du SARS-CoV-2 de pénétrer dans les cellules des muqueuses respiratoires humaines. Pour accélérer cette découverte, ils misent sur deux systèmes utilisant l'IA : Deep Search permet d'automatiser l'extraction de données importantes dans des publications scientifiques tandis que InDeep est capable de prédire le potentiel de fixation d'un futur médicament sur une protéine.
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As vaccination programmes are gradually launched by various jurisdictions, post-trial surveillance with real-world evidence is of utter importance for close monitoring of their safety and effectiveness. This paper introduces a vaccine passport concept implemented with blockchain technology. In the following, the methods of contact tracing and vaccine efficacy monitoring with intact personal privacy protection will be discussed.
Vaccine passports with health records
Data are an indispensable and valuable commodity in dealing with global health crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, a global public health emergency as declared by the WHO on 30 January 2020, has highlighted the importance of health data sharing. Data sharing at the early phase of an outbreak enabled healthcare professionals, researchers and policy makers in mastering information required for formulating strategies. Trusted dissemination channels are primarily government official records, peer-reviewed journals and authorised open online databases. Capitalising on these dissemination channels, governments and global scholars share important information for public health measures, from release of full viral genome sequences, pathological features and clinical phases of COVID-19 presentations, to development of diagnostic tests and potential medications, and potential therapeutic and prophylactic agents,to name but a few. Contact tracing is a vital strategy in finding out potential and hidden cases. A convincing showcase was made by Taiwan, where the authorities have used PCR alongside contact tracing in assessing the COVID-19’s transmission dynamics from the initial 100 confirmed cases This approach has much contributed to Taiwan’s success in keeping its health system intact with less than 900 cases even after a year into the pandemic.
Aside from contact tracing for infected patients, daily monitoring among community dwellers could be useful in infection control and resumption of normal social activities. Vaccine passports and digital contact tracing applications (apps) could be widely adopted in recording personal health profiles, contacts, and more importantly vaccination status in later stages. Inevitably, the concept of a vaccine passport led to a heated debate among people from all walks of life over its scientific evidence and ethical concerns.
Application of blockchain
Data sharing as an infection control measure only works on wide acceptance and adoption among citizens. Invariably, data security and integrity would come to the spotlight regarding data access and sharing issues; apart from data storage infrastructure, non-functional requirements such as availability, confidentiality and integrity are also fundamental to data storage, communication and mobilisation. Availability refers to the organised input of required data. Confidentiality is tantamount to authentic data access and usage authorisation, while data integrity ensures data safety against breaches.
Electronic health records and personal health records account for an immense portion of data in this digital era, with a 46% growth in 5 years. Nevertheless, solutions for data protection remain limited, primarily stored via content management system with encryption, in designated host servers. According to the Department of Health and Human Services of the USA, at least 3054 healthcare data infringements were observed from 2009 to 2019, involving leakage of 230 954 151 electronic medical records.A solution for data sharing with robust privacy protection is of paramount importance as well as urgently needed, and blockchain technology seems to be a qualified candidate.
Vaccine passport, as a form of portable health data, with adoption of blockchain technology, can be a promising tool for health monitoring and alerts while protecting personal privacy.
more at https://innovations.bmj.com/content/7/2/337
Lire l'article complet sur : innovations.bmj.com
The fast transmission of bad information is dangerous. A new approach employs “infodemiologists” to fight outbreaks.
Infodemiologists will be new public health champions that can be deployed to any infodemic of misinformation. Thinking about misinformation as an infodemic suggests that [misinformation] is communicable—it transmits from one person to another.
How will it work?
First, they will focus on scale by training as many infodemiologists as possible. Taking a cue from the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), the CDC’s model of training a large number of epidemiologists at the state level, who then monitor and report local outbreaks, a cadre of “disease detectives” would be ready to respond to any possible outbreak of bad information when it arises. This isn’t their full-time job. Instead, Critica plans to train infodemiologists within professional scientific societies.
Once they train a critical mass of people able to intervene positively and professionally, their hope is that they will help to elevate society’s discourse on social media. Finally, they plan to develop trust over time, with infodemiologists seen as a consistent presence online who are regarded as trusted public figures in their communities.
“It takes time to build a reputation, especially online, so this isn’t—and shouldn’t be seen as—a flash-in-the-pan solution. This is the start of a long, slow, hard slog out of the pit of misinformation that social media platforms have gotten us into,” says Scales.
With a problem this complex, there is no magic pill to cure misinformation. Instead, with his doctorate in sociology and a medical degree, Scales integrates science with society in a “social ecological model of health” to combat infodemics on three levels.
One is to target individual behaviors, such as our tendency to share clickbait without even reading the article, questioning its accuracy, or taking ownership for endorsing its contents.
Second is to reinforce norms at a community level. “In the circles I run in, posting clickbait or even bringing it up in conversation in a non-ironic way is frowned upon,” Scales says. “In other circles, people posting such attention-getting content on Facebook may get positive reinforcement from their community. So they keep doing it.”
Third is to intervene at the structural level, by adopting laws, policies, and regulations for social media platforms that achieve systemic changes.
Watchdog organizations can play a role—as they already do. Scales’ infodemiologists work in partnership with the Annenberg Public Policy Center, whose surveillance system gives it weekly updates on what and where misinformation is circulating. Not all misinformation goes viral, and when and if it does, it doesn’t always do so immediately, Scales says.
“You don’t want to be debunking misinformation that nobody’s talking about because then all you’re doing is spreading the misinformation,” Scales says. This is something known as the “illusory truth effect,” in which we come to believe false information because it’s repeated again and again.
read the entire post at https://neo.life/2021/06/misinformation-is-a-public-health-crisis-so-lets-treat-it-that-way/
Lire l'article complet sur : neo.life
The QCovid population-based risk algorithm performed well, showing high levels of
discrimination for COVID-19 deaths in men and women for both time periods. QCovid
has the potential to be dynamically updated as the pandemic evolves and, therefore,
has potential use in guiding national policy.
Lire l'article complet sur : www.thelancet.com