Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

FTC Exploring Privacy: Rountable Series

Over the next couple of months the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be hosting the Exploring Privacy: A Roundtable Services.

The roundtable discussions are day-long public roundtable discussions to explore the privacy challenges posed by the vast array of 21st century technology and business practices that collect and use consumer data.

The FTC indicates that the "roundtable discussions will cover topics including social networking, cloud computing, online behavioral advertising, mobile marketing, and the collection and use of information by retailers, data brokers, third-party applications, and other diverse businesses. The goal of the roundtables is to determine how best to protect consumer privacy while supporting beneficial uses of the information and technological innovation."

More information can be obtained on the FTC's Exploring Privacy website, including the dates and locations of the upcoming roundtable events in Berkeley, CA and Washington, DC, submitted public comments and other information.

The first roundtable was held this week in Washington, DC. Details of the event are available on the website including two interesting charts -- Data flow chart (personal data ecosystem) and Data flow charts (medical, social networking, mobile, behavioral advertising, and retail loyalty card).

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Visualizing HR 3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act

Below is a visual of the top 500 words used in HR 3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act. Since most people (including many of our representatives in Washington) haven't read all 1,990 pages of the Health Care Reform Bill, I thought a visual aid might be helpful.

I had been thinking of creating the word cloud of the Bill since it was introduced on October 29, 2009, however, yesterday a couple of tweets by Vince Kuraitis caught my eye and I finally got around to creating the HR 3962 Wordle Cloud this morning. Vince's tweets looked into the word count of a couple of key words in the Bill. His tweets:
  • @VinceKuraitis "medical home" referenced 67 times in latest House #healthreform leg
  • @VinceKuraitis "pilot program" referenced 106 times in latest #healthreform leg -- lots of experimentation
In creating the cloud I was able to look at the use of some other words in the Bill. Here is what I found:
  • Privacy referenced 28 times
  • Insurance referenced 552 times
  • Physician referenced 182 times
  • Hospital referenced 330 times
  • Consumer referenced 36 times
  • Consumer-directed referenced 1 time
  • Consumer-oriented referenced 1 time
Click graphic for larger/clearer version. Thanks to Wordle (www.wordle.net) for the cloud.


    Tuesday, November 3, 2009

    West Virginia H1N1 (Swine) Flu Resource Center

    The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) unveiled a website for sharing information and updates specific to West Virginia about the H1N1 Flu also known as Swine Flu. The website has information for prevention, schools, businesses, parents and providers.

    The new West Virginia H1N1 (Swine) Flu Resource Center can be found at www.wvflu.org. The website also has includes a link to the federal Flu.Gov website with national information.

    Please spread the word about the new website (but don't spread the flu).