The Health News – 28 June 2017
- Two issues dominating recent health policy discussions have seen the Australian Medical Association at the forefront of political debate, expressing concerns over the direction of some processes and decisions. The medicinal cannabis and maternity services debates have kept AMA President Doctor Michael Gannon a familiar face around Parliament House in Canberra, explaining doctors’ views to Government and the media.
- Be My Eyes has just over thirty five thousand 35,000 visually-impaired users registered for the app and over half a million volunteers. Whenever a visually impaired user requests assistance a sighted volunteer receives a notification and a video connection is established.
- Cartoon characters on food packaging such as Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam are fuelling Australia’s childhood obesity crisis and should be restricted, public health experts say. Researchers at the Obesity Policy Coalition surveyed one hundred and eighty six packaged foods with cartoon characters designed to lure children, and found fifty two per cent were classified as unhealthy, based on Food Standards’ Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion.
News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 28th of June 2017. Read by Wayne Bucklar. Health News
https://ama.com.au/ausmed/ama-voicing-concern-over-some-political-moves
Two issues dominating recent health policy discussions have seen the Australian Medical Association at the forefront of political debate, expressing concerns over the direction of some processes and decisions.
The medicinal cannabis and maternity services debates have kept AMA President Doctor Michael Gannon a familiar face around Parliament House in Canberra, explaining doctors’ views to Government and the media.
After a surprise result from a Senate vote in June, terminally ill patients with a doctor’s prescription will be able to get faster access to medicinal cannabis and be allowed to import three months’ worth of their own personal supply of the drug.
The Greens pushed for changes to Government restrictions and they found support from Labor, One Nation and some independents.
The AMA is also warning that the planned new National Framework for Maternity Services was doomed to fail due to inadequate stakeholder consultation.
Describing the process as spectacular failure to adequately engage expert obstetric, general practice, and other crucial medical specialists in its development, Doctor Gannon said opportunities for improvement were being lost.
Following an agreement at the April two thousand and sixteen Council of Australian Governments Health Council meeting, the Queensland Government was tasked to lead the project to develop the NFMS, under the auspices of the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council.
The AMA first became aware of the NFMS project in December two thousand and sixteen … and has raised concerns about the project ever since.
Be My Eyes has just over thirty five thousand 35,000 visually-impaired users registered for the app and over half a million volunteers. Whenever a visually impaired user requests assistance a sighted volunteer receives a notification and a video connection is established.
Brenda Smith, fifty one, who lives in Brisbane, Australia… says she uses Be My Eyes for day-to-day tasks like reading instructions on food and telling apart the white bread her son eats from the brown bread she does. She says she also used it recently to guide her to which switch had thrown in the electricity box.
In May, startup Aira, the first product out of AT&T’s Foundry for Connected Health raised twelve million dollars in funding. Aira’s platform takes advantage of pre-existing wearable smart glasses, like Google Glass, and uses the mounted camera. But where Be My Eyes and Aira differ is that Aira incorporates remote human agents using the gig economy and has plans for artificial intelligence assistance. This allows it to connect trained, paid, independent contractors with blind people to assist them in day-to-day tasks in real time. The glasses stream everything the user is seeing to an agent who, sitting in front of a dashboard, is able to assist the user with everything from reading signs to shopping, to navigating, to the numerous other mundane tasks that sighted individuals take for granted. Through the glasses, the agent is able to talk to the user and give them detailed information about their surroundings. …
Cartoon characters on food packaging such as Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam are fuelling Australia’s childhood obesity crisis and should be restricted, public health experts say.
Researchers at the Obesity Policy Coalition surveyed one hundred and eighty six packaged foods with cartoon characters designed to lure children, and found fifty two per cent were classified as unhealthy, based on Food Standards’ Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion.
They found eighty seven per cent of snack bars, sixty one per cent of cheese snacks and thirty two per cent of breakfast cereals featuring colourful cartoons were unhealthy, laden with fat, sugar and/or salt.
The coalition’s executive manager, Jane Martin, said it was “extremely frustrating” to see food companies continue to hook children and create pester power using cartoons.
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