With the holiday season upon us, this month’s High-Tech Health column will expand on October Topic of diet and exercise. There is no more difficult time of the year than now to maintain healthy exercise and dietary habits.
Remember that habit is something that usually takes 10-12 weeks of practice before it really becomes ingrained in our behavior. When it comes to diet and exercise, people have a tendency to swing back and forth to extreme. Proper eating and exercise habits should transcend the seasons and help carry you through holiday excess.
Read on as we explore some tools that may help you achieve your goals.
RICHMOND, VA (November 19, 2007) – The Pink Key, a personal health records tool for breast cancer patients, survivors and their families, announced today anagreement with the Richmond Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, under which 10 percent of Pink Key revenues would be provided to Komen for qualifying Pink Key subscriptions.
The Pink Key provides and regularly updates a person’s complete medical records and houses them on a computer “thumb drive” that can be carried on a key ring and is accessible at all times by patients and health-care professionals. It is produced by Vital Data LLC, which also makes the VitalKey, a health-records thumb drive serving the needs of general consumers.
All VitalKeys, including the Pink Key, can be lifesavers if their holders are ever involved in an emergency care situation and unable to speak or otherwise communicate with medical professionals who are not familiar with their medical records, medications, allergies and other special medical needs.VitalKeys contain all such records and may be accessed from virtually any computer; Internet access is not required to open a VitalKey.
MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is the bacterium that has gotten so much press lately. Usually spread by direct contact, it can be responsible for minor to life-threatening infections.
Contrary to what you might believe due to the recent attention paid to this bacterium, this is not a new health threat.
It may surprise you but up to 1 in 5 healthy people carry staphylococcus aureus on their skin. Up to 60 percent of us are colonized with these bacteria from time to time.
The Medical Society of Virginia, also known as the MSV, is a professional association of more than 8,700 Virginia physicians. The Medical Society of Virginia has been responsible for the creation of the State Board of Health, the State Board of Medical Examiners, the Board of Medicine and the MSV Review Organization (which has evolved into the Virginia Health Quality Center). Each of these now independent entities had their beginnings within the Medical Society of Virginia.
Posted by - Ryan Burns, Director of Key Holder Services
This is a great video provided by American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) on their site MyPHR.com. It gives a brief tour of your Personal Health Records and the need to have a complete PHR. As the video shows, creating your own personal PHR can be a long and winding road.
Much like the people at AHIMA, we at VitalKey believe that everyone should have their own PHR. However, we realize that what this video describes can be, for some, a long and confusing process. One of our goals is to help make creating and maintaining your Personal Health Record easy. At VitalKey we do all the hard work for you:
We supply you with the necessary HIPAA records request form
We gather all your records from your doctors and physicians
Our staff of nurses review, label and categorizer all your medical records
We digitize, store, and secure your documents
All you have to do is plug your VitalKey into an internet connected computer and instantly you have your up-to date personal health record… ready to go!
RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 11 /PRNewswire/ — VitalKey, a leader in the rapidly growing field of personal health records, announced its introduction of the Pink Key, a personal health records tool for breast cancer patients, survivors and their families. Like its flagship VitalKey, the Pink Key provides and regularly updates a person’s complete medical records and houses them on a computer “thumb drive” that can be carried on a key ring and is accessible at all times by patients and health-care professionals.
More Americans die each year from medical errors than from breast cancer, colon cancer, and vehicle accidents combined. To ensure that medical caregivers have accurate, current information — when and where they need it — a group of Virginia doctors invented the VitalKey, a medical records management service that provides consumers with a digital copy of their actual medical records. They’ve expanded on these capabilities with the new Pink Key.
“Like our VitalKey, the Pink Key is an invaluable tool to help people navigate the increasingly complex, and expensive, world of health care,” said Tom Blue, VitalKey’s chief operating officer. “With multiple physician and specialist relationships, and frequent changes in treatment options and protocols, breast cancer patients, survivors and their families face especially daunting challenges that the Pink Key was designed to help
solve.”
A new USB device could play a “key” role in helping women maneuver life after a diagnosis of breast cancer. Vital Data LLC has partnered with the VCU Massey Cancer Center to develop the Pink Key, a “consumer empowerment type of technology” that encourages breast cancer survivors to stay engaged in their own medical care.
The device is similar to Vital Data’s VitalKey USB drive, which allows subscribers to keep an electronic version of their medical records nearby in case of emergencies.
“The Pink Key goes a step further,” said Tom Blue, Vital Data’s chief operating officer. In addition to medical records, “it’s a library of content and there’s also some functionality that allows for the management of appointments.”
“It gives women all the information their doctors have. It keeps patients involved in their own care,” explained Dr. James Khatcheressian, assistant professor with the VCU Department of Internal Medicine, who authored much of the content that appears on the Pink Key.
At the Executive Health Evaluation program at the LevinsonHeartHospital we spend hours talking with our patients about how to achieve wellness.Essential to this effort is conscientious plan to use the same discipline that most of our patient’s exhibit at work and apply it to their own personal lives.As the provider of Executive Health services to 10 of the 13 Fortune 1000 companies located in Richmond, we have the opportunity to interact with many incredibly talented people.Many of these folks are very proactive about their health,some however less so.
The Executive Health Evaluation program prides itself at delivering true preventative care with a focus on the enhanced wellness.When it comes to diet and exercise individuals seem to fall into two camps, very motivated and not so motivated.From a physician’s point of view, it’s very important to communicate to patients the essential nature that diet and exercise play in the prevention of disease.
Let’s start with diet.Humans have been on the earth for thousands of years.Our bodies have typically been nourished with small, frequent, high-fiber meals.Humans have traditionally been hunter-gatherers and our digestive systems were made to accept small quantities of food throughout our waking hours.Not until the Industrial Revolution were such large quantities of food available.This has resulted in ever increasing portions which over time have overcome our body’s ability to use these calories.Thus our ever increasing rates of obesity and diabetes.
Posted by - Ryan Burns, Director of Key Holder Services
I read an article several weeks ago about an interesting situation involving personal health records and have been mulling it over in the back of my mind. The gist of the article is that tens of thousands of medical records that were once a part of the now bankrupt and closed Greater Detroit Hospital were BURNED on a farm in Salem Township. Yes… I’ll repeat that. Tens of thousands of medical records were burned on a farm!
We recently learned that VitalKey has been named by the Virginia Capital Day Conference a “Virginia Growth Company to Watch.” This is an honor and further validation that our work has the potential to serve the community in a significant way. We’re grateful to all of you – our VitalKey Holders - who follow our progress and help us to educate the community about this important technology.
The Virginia Capital Day Conference has named the winners of the 2007 Virginia’s Growth Companies To Watch awards, to be presented at the Virginia Capital Day Conference reception on October 3 at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond.
Virginia’s Growth Companies To Watch is a program to recognize promising growth companies in the Commonwealth which reflect the high quality of private company investing opportunities for venture, private equity and mezzanine investors:
“These companies are great examples of the healthy entrepreneurial environment in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said Virginia Capital Day Conference Chairman T. Dean Madison.
“Conference attendees will have the opportunity to network with these entrepreneurs and help us celebrate their emerging success.”
Those companies selected from the greater Richmond area will also be recognized as Greater Richmond’s Companies To Watch, an award sponsored and delivered by the Venture Forum and Troutman Sanders.
In addition to the Virginia Growth Companies program, the Virginia Capital Day Conference will feature keynote addresses from Patrick O. Gottschalk, Secretary of Commerce and Trade for the Commonwealth of Virginia; nationally recognized political analyst Dr. Larry J. Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, and J. Alfred Broaddus, Jr., Retired President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. In addition, the ACG Richmond Private Equity Marketplace and a panel featuring limited partner perspectives on the state of the alternative investment landscape.
