Digital Health ID card for every Indian. 5 key points explained

Are you fed up going through your wallet each time you go to a provider for services to pony up your Medicare card, Private Insurance cared, Medicaid card, social security card and driver's license and more?

It turns out that India is way ahead of the U.S.A. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission that looks to provide easier access to integrated healthcare for citizens. 

Digital Health ID card for every Indian. 5 key points explained

Included with the Health ID are the following:

Key Facilities of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

Health ID: Every citizen will be allotted a health ID that will be used as their health account. The personal health records of the citizen will be linked to their respective Health ID. These records can be viewed with the help of a mobile application.

Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR): A repository of registered nurses, doctors, paramedical with their qualifications, experience, and other relevant details.

Healthcare Facilities Registry (HFR): A repository of all public and private healthcare facilities across both traditional and modern systems of medicine. This will ensure ease of doing business for doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare service providers.

Personal Health Record Application: A self-managed health record of an individual linked to the 

Aarogya Setu App.

iPhone

Google Play Store

FTC says health apps must notify consumers about data breaches — or face fines | TechCrunch

Is your fitness wearable ie, Fitbit, apple watch, or another device (such as a monitored pacemaker, glucometer being hacked ? Many of these devices are monitored by third parties to ensure reliability or report to the provider about the usage of the device. Their intent may. be benevolent to endure you are compliant, however there are many hackers stealing your data to sell to other interested parties.  The concerning issues are pointed out in this bulleting from the Federal Trade Commission.  Check out your monitoring device to see if it is HIPAA compliant. In the near future all monitoring devices should carry a HIPAA compliant badge on it and/or the instruction sheet much like a CE or UL approval rating.

FTC says health apps must notify consumers about data breaches — or face fines | TechCrunch: Facebook today is announcing the launch of new products and features for business owners, following the threat to its ad targeting business driven by Apple’s new privacy features, which now allow mobile users to opt out of being tracked across their iOS apps. The social networking giant has r…

Pfizer (PFE) Says Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Erodes Over Time - Bloomberg

Should you get a third shot?  Read and listen to the latest, then decide.

Pfizer Inc. said that data from the U.S. and Israel suggest that the efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine wanes over time and that a booster dose was safe and effective at warding off the virus and new variants.

The company detailed the data in a presentation it will deliver to a meeting of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration on Friday. The panel is expected to make recommendations for whether more Americans should receive booster shots.

“Real-world data from Israel and the United States suggest that rates of breakthrough infections are rising faster in individuals who were vaccinated earlier,” Pfizer said in its presentation, which was posted on the FDA website. The drug giant is partnering with Germany’s BioNTech SE to make the shots. 

FDA Staff Report

According to a meeting agenda the FDA posted on its website, the Friday panel meeting will include presentations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FDA staff, researchers from Israel and the U.K., along with Pfizer. 

Marion Gruber, one of two top vaccine officials who FDA recently said will step down later this year, is also scheduled to speak. Gruber was co-author of an article in The Lancet earlier this week arguing that booster shots weren’t yet necessary for most people. The departure of the two longtime agency staffers is a potential sign of friction over the Biden booster plan. 

Officials from Israel will present data from that country on booster protection against infections and severe disease, according to the agenda, and a professor of medical statistics from the University of Bristol will present data on real-world vaccine effectiveness.

The staff’s 23-page briefing paper noted that the likely benefit of a booster shot would depend on how much the third shot reduces disease relative to the first two. If the first two shots are still highly effective, then the efficacy of the booster shot “is likely to be more limited,” the staff said. Overall data in the U.S. indicate that the first two shots of the vaccine still protect against severe disease and death, the staff said.

The staff also noted that it is not currently clear whether there will be an increased risk of inflammation of the heart and heart lining after a booster shot, and that potential risks of a booster shot also must be considered. It didn’t offer a clear indication of which way the agency was leaning, which it often does before meetings.

Health Train posits it may be worthwhile to have your Covid  antibody levels measured prior to your decision regarding getting a 3rd 'JAB'

The past 18 months have stimulated more knowledge about viruses and vaccines.

Stay tuned and read our reference below

What is the difference between a third shot and a booster?

Pfizer (PFE) Says Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Erodes Over Time - Bloomberg

Telehealth’s Limits: Battle Over State Lines and Licensing Threatens Patients’ Options | California Healthline

Perhaps you live in a city that borders on two-state jurisdictions, such as Minneapolis-St Paul, Washington DC-Maryland-Virginia, 

If you live in one state, does it matter that the doctor treating you online is in another? Surprisingly, the answer is yes, and the ability to conduct certain virtual appointments may be nearing an end.  

This story also ran on Time. It can be republished for free.

Televisits for medical care took off during the worst days of the pandemic, quickly becoming commonplace. Most states and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services temporarily waived rules requiring licensed clinicians to hold a valid license in the state where their patient is located. Those restrictions don’t keep patients from visiting doctors’ offices in other states, but problems could arise if those same patients used telemedicine.  State medical boards don’t want to cede authority, saying their power to license and discipline medical professionals boosts patient safety. Licensing is also a source of state revenue.

Providers have long been split on whether to change cross-state licensing rules. Different state requirements — along with fees — make it cumbersome and expensive for doctors, nurses, and other clinicians to get licenses in multiple states, leading to calls for more flexibility. Even so, those efforts have faced pushback from within the profession, with opposition from other clinicians who fear the added competition that could come from telehealth could lead to losing patients or jobs.

Now states are rolling back many of those pandemic workarounds.  Many states have agreed to interstate medical licensing compacts for physicians, nurses, and some other health care providers

During the past 18 months, the public health emergency for the Covid19 pandemic created a national emergency causing an exponential rise in telehealth visits.  Many states loosened their regulations regarding telehealth visits, including cross-state border visits. CMS (formerly Medicare) loosened it's a restriction only allowing telehealth visits from rural or underserved areas to general usage.  The reasons for this had to do with social distancing and lockdown orders preventing traveling.

Even though the initial spike in telehealth visits has eased, utilization remains 38 times higher than before the pandemic, attracting not only patients but also venture capitalists seeking to join the hot business opportunity, according to a report from consulting firm McKinsey and Co. “As with most things in medicine, it’s a bottom-line issue. The reason telehealth has been blocked across state lines for many years is related fundamentally to physicians wanting to protect their own practices,” said Greenspun.

“The whole challenge is to ensure maximum access to health while assuring quality,” said Barak Richman, a Duke University law professor, who said laws and policies haven’t been updated to reflect new technological realities partly because state boards want to hang onto their authority.

Patients and their doctors are getting creative, with some consumers simply driving across state lines, then making a Zoom call from their vehicle.

“It’s not ideal, but some patients say they are willing to drive a mile or two and sit in a parking lot in a private space and continue to get my care,” said Dr. Shabana Khan, director of telepsychiatry at NYU Langone Health’s department of child and adolescent psychiatry and a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Telepsychiatry Committee. She and other practitioners ask their patients about their locations, mainly for safety reasons, but also to check that they are in-state.

Allowing a change that doesn’t put centralized authority in a patient’s home state would raise “serious enforcement issues as states do not have interstate policing authority and cannot investigate incidents that happen in another state,” said then-AMA President-elect Jack Resneck during a congressional hearing in March.

Telehealth’s Limits: Battle Over State Lines and Licensing Threatens Patients’ Options | California Healthline