Wednesday Bible Study: Rehashing
Psalm 105 is a lengthy song of praise that recounts God ' s faithfulness to the Israelites, mostly reciting purported events in Exodus. The introduction is adapted -- largely copied actually -- from 1 Chronicles 16, in which David sets up the Ark and commissions a song of praise by Asaph. Note verse 35 -- there are no caterpillars in the canonical version of Exodus. The caterpillars have come up before, which presumably means that they were working from an alternative version of the story. I don ' t need to harp on the moral depravity of the story -- the 7 year famine God causes, the murder of Egyptian children, the g...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 24, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: The Return of the King
You may recall that an earlier psalm purported to be the last Psalm of David, but as we know, the current Book of Psalms is actually a compilation and the editors just didn ' t delete that. There are more psalms attributed to David and we ' ve come to two of them today. Psalm 101, attributed to David,  is a sort of oath of office. Psalm 103 is a song of praise, which gives God several attributes that he clearly doesn ' t have. No, he doesn ' t heal all diseases (v. 3), doesn ' t renew youth (v. 5), doesn ' t work vindication and justice for all who are oppressed (v. 6) and most certainly is not merciful and...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 17, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: Yahweh Dah Bomb!
We now get a run of (mercifully short) songs of praise. Again, there are multiple gods but our god is the biggest and baddest. Yes, he is also the creator, but that ' s sort of a contradiction. If the Big Y created the heavens and the earth, where did all these competing gods come from? This is never explained.There is some weird imagery in these, with geographic features engaging in anthropomporphized activities. As a final note, these were evidently written during times of victory and prosperity. They obviously don ' t pertain to the exilic situation in which the book was compiled.98 O sing to theLord a new song,for...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 14, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

OpenNotes Lab Will Explore the Intersection of Patients and AI
The OpenNotes Lab will bring transparency, collaboration, and innovation to the intersection of healthcare AI and patient-centered care. The Lab builds on the organization’s 15 years of advocacy and research. Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with Liz Salmi, Communications & Patient Initiatives Director at OpenNotes and Chethan Sarabu, MD, FAMIA, FAAP – Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine to learn more about OpenNotes and OpenNotes Lab. A Win for Patient Transparency For the past 15 years, the team at OpenNotes has been advocating for greater transparency in ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - April 12, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Colin Hung Tags: AI/Machine Learning Ambulatory Communication and Patient Experience Healthcare IT Ambient Clinical Voice atherine M. DesRoches BIDMC Chethan Sarabu Generative AI Harvard Medical School Healthcare AI Healthcare Transparency John Hal Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: Sadly, no
Psalm 89 is quite lengthy so it will be our only text for the day. I ' m afraid I can ' t do anything special for Easter because we haven ' t gotten to the messianic prophecies yet. It isn ' t clear when Psalm 89 was written, but Ethan the Ezrahite was an associate of King Solomon, mentioned in Kings 4:31. One problem is that the (probably fictional) reign of Solomon as described in Kings does not include any of the hard times evoked here. It was a time of prosperity, military strength, and conquest. It could refer to the invasion by Pharaoh Shisak during the reign of Rehoboam, after the civil war that saw the northern kin...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 31, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

A Look at a Number of Innovations at HIMSS 2024
At HIMSS 2024, we got a chance to sit down with a number of amazing individuals and companies who were doing great things.  I think we did close to 90 videos at the conference, so be sure to subscribe to Healthcare IT Today, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, or TikTok, and Subscribe to Healthcare IT Today on YouTube to get all the latest information.  We wanted to highlight a number of the short videos we recorded that talked about some of the great innovations that were happening at HIMSS 2024. First up is Ginny Torno, Executive Director, Innovation and IT Clinical Systems at Houston Methodist who shared with...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 21, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Clinical Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Agamon Health Care Coordination care gaps CitiusTech Di Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: QAnon
Psalms 81 and 82 are pretty standard fare. 81 is written for a specific observance, and it reminds the Israelites that they are God ' s chosen people and to be faithful. 82 calls on God to punish the wicked and reward the righteous -- as if he wouldn ' t do it unless we asked. Psalm 83, however, is getting a whole lot of attention right now, from people who probably don ' t read this blog and who you probably are barely aware of. It describes a broad alliance against Israel, bent on its destruction, and calls on God to exterminate them, referring to the massacres of the Midianites in Numbers 31, and the massacre of th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 20, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: Moar Anachronism
Psalms 79 and 80 are attributed to Asaph. As you will recall, Asaph was purportedly one of David ' s chief musicians, but the setting of these psalms is evidently the fall of Judah to Babylon, so that makes no sense. These must have been written during the exile, after Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and kidnapped the elites. It ' s also possible, though less likely, that the setting is the sack of Jerusalem by the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak in the 10th Century BCE, in the reign of Rehoboam, but Asaph, if he ever existed, would certainly have been long dead by then. In general, most of the psalms seem to be responses to even...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 17, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

History Lesson
Psalm 78 is, I believe, the third longest psalm. It ' s also one of three so-called " long history " psalms. It basically recounts events from Exodus and Numbers, in chronologically confused order, and then skips ahead to touch on the establishment of the reign of David. The listing of the plagues of Egypt does not exactly correspond to the canonical version of Exodus we have today -- there are no caterpillars or frost in Exodus. This may just be a fanciful addition, or it may be that it draws on a lost version of the story. Once again, keep in mind that there were no printing presses and any document would have existed in...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 13, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: God is bad(ass)
Psalms 75 and 76 are classified as songs of praise, but what they are praising is not goodness or wisdom, but sheer power. And they use some weird metaphors. Psalm 75 appears to refer to a day of judgment, an idea which appears rather vaguely in the Tanakh but which is more central to Christianity. Note that the idea in Judaism of the coming of the Messiah and restoration of the kingdom is quite different. However, they have become conflated in the current political alliance between fundamentalist Jews and Evangelical Christians. One of the other would be really disappointed should it ever come to pass. (Again, " Do Not De...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 6, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: The dark book
As I explained last time, the Book of Psalms is a compilation and Psalm 72 is evidently the conclusion of one of the component books. The next ten are attributed to Asaph, who was one of king David ' s chief musicians, but that doesn ' t really make sense because they seem to refer to a time when the kingdom was in dire straits, quite unlike the triumphalist tone of the depiction of David ' s reign. Psalm 73, which is used in both Jewish and Christian liturgy and has been set to music, asserts continued faith even while the wicked prosper. The psalm predicts the downfall of the wicked, although as we know that doesn ' t ne...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 3, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

PhaseV Applies Machine Learning for Successful Clinical Trials
A clinical trial can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and one of the major contributors to costs is recruiting and keeping human subjects. According to Dr. Raviv Pryluk, PhD, CEO and co-founder at PhaseV, machine learning can cut the number of subjects by 30 to 50 percent. In this video, he describes other ways that AI can make drug development more efficient. At the design stage, a drug company can run millions of simulations to determine where risks lie and what parameters are most promising. AI can help to choose not just the number of subjects, but their demographics, and what your goal (clinical endpoint) should ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 1, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: AI/Machine Learning Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Regulations Clinical Trials Clinical Trials AI Clinical Trials Machine Learning Healthcare IT Video Interviews Israeli Clinical Trials Israeli Health IT Pharma Pharma AI Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: Divine Right
Psalm 72 is one of those elevating the king to a kind of demigod status and extolling his power and glory. As I have said many times, the basic structure of Judean society, as was the norm throughout the region, was an alliance between a priestly caste and warrior kings, so that ' s what this is all about. But yes, it ' s weird that it ' s called a Psalm of Solomon, and concludes with " The prayers of David, son of Jesse, are ended. " It ' s doubly weird because many subsequent psalms are in fact ascribed to David. The likely explanation is that the Book of Psalms we have today is a compilation of several books, usually th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 28, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: A digression to current events
The next two psalms are just the usual pleading for God to be good to me and to screw over my enemies, so I won ' t say anything else about them.  But I will take this opportunity to comment on the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that an embryo is legally a child, with Chief Justice Tom Parker writing that " human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. " Presidential candidate Nikki Haley said she agrees, that she believes an embryo is a baby. It is something of a mystery why this very weird belief has become ce...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 25, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Quality of Life for People with Mental Illness Employed in Extended Employment Programs in two Arab Towns in Israel: An Exploratory Study
Leena Badran (University of California), Stephen A. Rosenbaum (University of California), Arik Rimmerman (University of Haifa), Quality of Life for People with Mental Illness Employed in Extended Employment Programs in two Arab Towns in Israel: An Exploratory Study, 14 Frontiers... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - February 24, 2024 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs