From a HealthAffairs.org online article:
This proposed agency could work like a seal of approval, like the Energy Star program run by the Environmental Protection Agency, for new software, apps, and vendors that will be handling sensitive health information. Just like dishwashers evaluated by Consumer Reports, apps that handle personal health information should have a similar unbiased review process.
The US health care system is finally at a tipping point of much needed and overdue modernization. While it promises a brave new world of streamlined and improved health care, we are facing nothing short of a revolutionary transformation that is based on a tsunami of readily accessible health information and digital tools.
Currently, there is no federal agency, public-private collaboration, or private industry mechanism that is prepared to handle the ensuing activity in its entirety. We need to get a handle on how best to protect our private health care data while also making sure that information is allowed to flow as freely as necessary to improve our delivery system and population’s health. We need a dedicated team of experts who speak the language of both information technology and public policy. We need a new federal agency that has jurisdiction and dedicated staff to oversee health information and the technology that will simplify and operationalize the information.
From Helen of Troy’s abduction to the deception of the Trojan Horse and the fall of the city, tread the line between myth and reality in this phenomenal new exhibition.
The story of the ancient city of Troy, and of the great war that was fought over it, has been told for some 3,000 years. Spread by travelling storytellers, it was cast into powerful words by the Greek poet Homer as early as the eighth to seventh century BC – and into powerful images by ancient Greek and Roman artists. Just as it enraptured audiences in the past, it still speaks to us today and it’s easy to see why. It’s a story that has it all – love and loss, courage and passion, violence and vengeance, triumph and tragedy – on a truly epic scale.
Expect many of those chairs to be filled in the months ahead. The Winter Village is a huge draw, built around a massive ice rink enjoyed by upwards of 300,000 skaters throughout the holiday season. “We want people to enjoy great cocktails and drinks at the Porch, to take time to relax and appreciate the city with all its extraordinary energy,”
Maison de la Luz
“For patients with severe but stable heart disease who don’t want to undergo these invasive procedures, these results are very reassuring,” said 
In 1965, James Baldwin, by then internationally famous, faced off against William F. Buckley Jr., one of the leading voices of American conservatism, in a debate hosted by the Cambridge Union in England. The debate proposition before the house was: “The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.”
Right now, you tend to have investment advisors for retirees, and insurance advisors or salespersons for retirees, and it’s fairly rare to go to somebody who can sell you annuities or invest your money and has no financial incentive to tilt one way or the other. Ultimately, what I’d like to see are people who have knowledge of both annuities and investments, and who are compensated in a way that doesn’t influence the decision.
Nobel Prize–winning economist William Sharpe has spent most of his career thinking about risk. He’s behind the Capital Asset Pricing Model for gauging systemic risk and the eponymous Sharpe ratio, which captures risk-adjusted return.
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including whether public impeachment hearings are making President Trump more or less vulnerable, what stood out about the witnesses who testified so far, whether Trump’s Ukraine dealings are surprising or “in character” and the latest dynamics among 2020 Democrats.
Boomers Daily 