Did you know that in 2009 the U.S. Congress created the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which set aside $27 billion for an incentive program to encourage hospitals to adopt electronic health records systems (EHR). That’s right the Federal government is paying doctors and hospitals to setup and use electronic health records systems...
We’re talking about risk analysis, the process we go through before deciding on a given action. Whether its diet soda or donuts we'll do a casual risk analysis in our head. Example, someone is sharing a dozen donuts, do you want one? YES! Do you need the extra calories, fats, sugar, etc. NO! The heck with it, YOLO!...
The world is producing a record amount of single-use plastic waste, mostly made from polymers created from fossil fuels, despite global efforts to reduce plastic pollution and carbon emissions, according to a new report. While governments around the world have announced policies to reduce the volume of single-use plastic...
Celebrate your best Thanksgiving ever!
Remember the Thanksgiving story you learned in school — how, way back when, Pilgrims and Indians got together at one giant dinner table and ate turkey and stuffing and green beans covered in Campbell's mushroom soup? And then there was peace on Earth?
Actually, it was the Wampanoag in 1621 who helped the first wave of Puritans arriving on our shores, showing them how to plant crops, forage for wild foods and basically survive.
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Remember the scene in the Graduate when Dustin Hoffman’s future father-in-law tells him to go into PLASTICS, the growing industry at the time, one of mankind’s greatest innovations. When we started Case Medical thirty years ago manufacturing custom trays out of metal, we were told the same thing. PLASTIC was the best material for all things in our industry…
Sometimes we get too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole. Few recent scientific discoveries have captured the public’s imagination quite like the wood-wide web — a wispy network of fungal filaments hypothesized to shuttle nutrients and information through the soil and to help forests thrive. Scientists and nonscientists alike have posited that shared fungal networks are ubiquitous in forests around the world...
It is late October, a time when apples are pressed into cider, leaves turn to vibrant autumn colors and Halloween horror movies scare and thrill audiences. While the names of monsters, ghosts and ghouls in these movies change, there are some recurring themes that are common to all of them including dangers lurking in hidden places, unexpected twists, secret weapons and of course, sequels. In a horror movie starring SPD professionals ...
Let’s talk about rinsing, whether its dishes, your hair, salad fixings or medical devices. Doesn’t sound all that glamorous does it? Right up there with taking out the trash and many other chores that need to be done. That’s why they’re called chores after all. Truth is rinsing is really, really important, and yet is often overlooked or simply not done well enough because it takes time...
There's a lot to be learned from food science that can be applied to reprocessing medical devices. For example, you should never put meat into a cold pan before cooking, because the meat and even the oil will then stick and burn. Rather pre-heat your cookware before putting anything in it. The same principle of pre-heating holds true for sterilization, if you want to ensure a good outcome...