HEALTH - Fentanyl Crisis Impacting People and Animals Around the World

(fentanylsafety.com)

The opioid crisis in North America is taking lives.

Synthetic opioids like carfentanil, W-18, and especially fentanyl, are showing up in greater numbers by the year, and causing deaths not only among individuals who use the drugs, but also among law enforcement officers and K-9 unit dogs.

The number of fatal fentanyl overdoses in the US jumped 79% between 2012 and 2014, and in eight American states - Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina – the fatal overdose rate jumped 174% between 2013 and 2014.

And the opioid crisis isn’t slowing down.

Estonia, a small country with one of the strongest economies in the European Union, has been dealing with a fentanyl crisis for years.

In 2002, there were 105 drug overdose fatalities, and 90 percent of those were fentanyl.

The synthetic drug filled a gap in the drug supply caused by the Taliban’s ban on opium and the resulting scarcity of heroin on the streets.

Although Estonia’s economy was, and is, one of the strongest in Europe, the issue of fentanyl addiction remains stubbornly entrenched.

HIV rates and Hep-C rates are significantly higher than the European average because most users take fentanyl intravenously.

Fentanyl causes more overdoses than the heroin that it replaced in Estonia, and causes more overdoses than unadulterated heroin in North America.

The drug is deadlier, and the DEA has warned that exposure to even a small amount of the powdered form can cause major health issues.

But the opioid crisis is much bigger than fentanyl.

In Estonia, the problem started with a generation of young citizens who struggled to keep up with a rapidly changing economic context.

They lacked social supports, they lacked jobs, and they lacked hope.

It fits with what the latest research reveals about drug use and addiction – in situations of social deprivation, drug use prevails.

Estonia offers a glimpse into what the future may hold for a generation of North American youth, struggling with similarly rapid change and shrinking social supports.

But it doesn’t have to go that way.

Harm reduction is a proven method for reducing overdose fatalities, and creating rich social supports will help everyone in the community – users and non-users alike.

Portugal is another European country that offers insight into responding to an opioid crisis.

Rather than cracking down, as many governments do, Portugal decriminalized drug use.

14 years later, they have the second-lowest overdose rate in the European Union.

Despite the fact that their economy is struggling, their investment in healthcare and reducing stigma around drug use has proven effective.

Is the same progress possible with fentanyl?

Canada is already looking into opening safe injection sites, which are a step in the direction that brought success to Portugal.

In the meantime, law enforcement officers will continue to try and stem the flow of fentanyl from illegal labs onto the streets, and to help affected users.

The next article in this two-part series will look at how agencies and officers in Canada are approaching the problem, and working to keep citizens, their own colleagues and their canine partners safe.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a published academic, an editor with the Editors Association of Canada, an independent scholar and researcher, and a self-care and narrative coach. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology and identity - how our tools shape our selves and change our stories, and in how the nature of work is changing as we incorporate more technology into our daily lives.

BUSINESS - Pros and Cons: Corporatization of the Veterinary Industry

(Banfield Pet Hospital)

The Mars acquisition of VCA has resulted in concern in some parts of the veterinary community.

There are vets who have felt disenfranchised and restricted by corporatization, and others who feel that corporatization compromises vet care.

Banfield pet hospitals, an earlier Mars acquisition, have faced significant criticism from vets whose practices were purchased and brought under their corporate management.

Banfield was purchased by Mars in 2007, and Mars further expanded into the pet healthcare industry in 2015 with the acquisition of BluePearl.

Although Banfield’s mixed reputation caused some pause for BluePearl executives when Mars approached them, Dr. Neil Shaw outlined some of the benefits of being acquired by Mars.

Some of the benefits that Shaw saw for BluePearl in the acquisition included:  

1. Ability to solicit input from successful professionals in other service industries on how to develop the very best models for service
2. Grow our internal team development/training capability
3. Provide additional advancement opportunities for all team members
4. Hopefully be able to increase our benefit package over time
5. Grow the organization by expanding the number of BluePearl hospitals to reach more pets
6. Increase the efficiency of the referral process for it to have a larger footprint within the veterinary community
   
   

These benefits are among the many reasons that corporatization, controversial though it may be, offers hope for an industry currently struggling with mental health crises and frequent burn-out, the high cost of turnover among veterinary teams, and a changing dynamic when it comes to practice management.

As Today’s Veterinary Practice noted last year, “today’s veterinary practice is no longer part of an insignificant, mom-and-pop industry; instead, it is an exciting, evolving marketplace to which the rest of the world is paying close attention.”

Increasing the support base for veterinarians has the potential to alleviate these pressures on individual veterinarians, and that would be good for everyone from the boardroom to the waiting room to the homes of well-cared-for clients.

The Mars acquisition of VCA is an interesting move, and structurally different than both the Banfield and BluePearl acquisitions.

Unlike both Banfield and BluePearl, which were companies founded by veterinarians, none of VCA’s founders are vets.

Despite this, VCA has gained a reputation that eluded Banfield and although views among the veterinary community are mixed, the company has a reputation for providing consistent quality care in its clinics and hospitals.

If Mars is able to incorporate VCA’s positive reputation and approach to pet healthcare, the merger has the potential to offer significant benefits to both vets and clients.

One of the ways corporatization could work as a positive force, and a focus that Mars will benefit from and hopefully avoid the mixed results seen by Banfield, is to centre veterinarian agency and autonomy – to offer support and infrastructure and business training to the veterinarians, without rigidly dictating how they do their jobs.

This was the main complaint from vets who disliked or distrusted corporatization, and, in the UK, where the agency of individual vets has been preserved within corporatization, the response is much more universally positive.

Simon Innes, the chief executive of CVS in the UK, told The Telegraph, “You don’t really need to dictate to clinicians. The minute you start to do that, is the minute they say no… The idea of the model is that at the business end we create an environment where vets can get on with what they are good at: treating clients. We help them by giving them professional support they need.”

What do you think about the corporatization of the veterinary industry?

Watch InfoStream this week for a YourSAYTM survey and share your views.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a published academic, an editor with the Editors Association of Canada, an independent scholar and researcher, and a self-care and narrative coach. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology and identity - how our tools shape our selves and change our stories, and in how the nature of work is changing as we incorporate more technology into our daily lives.

DIGITAL - "Cloudbleed" Leak Puts Internet Users' Information at Risk

Tavis Ormandy from Google’s Project Zero discovered a security problem with Cloudflare’s servers - a leak which has been dubbed Cloudbleed.

Cloudflare provides essential internet infrastructure and security to millions of websites.

This bug puts users information such as private messages, authentication tokens, passwords and other sensitive data at risk.

The greatest concern is that search engines were caching that leaked information and data has been vulnerable since.

As soon as Cloudflare was notified on February 17th, they disabled the features that were causing the problem and started to delete all the caches of data that may have possibly exposed personal information.

The removal has not yet been completed.

While some are comparing this leak to the devastating Heartbleed bug in 2014, the breach is not the same scale. At least not yet.

Heartbleed affected half a million websites, where as this bug has hit approximately 3,400.

It remains to be seen if more websites will be impacted but Cloudflare’s response to the breach was quick.

According to a blog post by the company:

“The industry standard time allowed to deploy a fix for a bug like this is usually three months; we were completely finished globally in under 7 hours with an initial mitigation in 47 minutes.

The bug was serious because the leaked memory could contain private information and because it had been cached by search engines. We have also not discovered any evidence of malicious exploits of the bug or other reports of its existence.” 

Officials from companies whose websites have been exposed, such as OkCupid and Uber, have reported minimal impact from the bug.

What should you do?

Keep in mind that nothing you do now will change what has already happened, but you can see if your information is at risk - check to see if sites you use are impacted.

Take this internet security scare as a reminder to change all your passwords whether you use impacted websites or not, and do this on a regular basis.

Ensure you use strong passwords and different ones for different sites.

If websites or services offer two-step verification, use it.

Cybersecurity is of vital importance, especially as digital use and mobile commerce continues to grow.

Not only are corporations responsible for taking steps to protect the personal information of their clients, users also have to remain vigilant.

WELFARE - Adoptable Dogs Return as Ball Dogs at Brazil Open

After a successful debut in 2016, ball dogs will once again participate in the Brazil Open tennis tournament.

The six dogs are from local animal shelters and will retrieve balls during warmups for the semi-final and final games.

All four dogs that appeared last year were adopted and organizers hope this year’s dogs will ‘fetch’ people’s attention and find homes as well.

Ball dogs Cindy, Nanda, Pretinha, Mia, Arlete and Ovelha range in age from four to ten years.

"They are dogs that have had a difficult trajectory, yes. But what we want to point out is not the history suffered from the past, but to prove that no matter what they have gone through, they can be great companions today and in the future,” Madalena Spinazzola, director of corporate marketing and strategic planning for PremieR Pet and event organizer, said on the Brazil Open website.

Having dogs retrieve tennis balls at the tournament places them in front of an audience that may not have considered adoption and that is the goal of many unique adoption promotions.

Other innovative examples include having adoptable dogs at a major league baseball game, as greeters in a hotel and dancing in a ballet.

DIGITAL - SnapChat Discover Takes on "Fake News"

SnapChat Discover is designed to be a premium source of news and entertainment, with content provided by publishers in the news, magazine, and television industries.

In a 2015 blog post, shortly after SnapChat Discover launched, Snap wrote, “Social media companies tell us what to read based on what’s most recent or most popular. We see it differently. We count on editors and artists, not clicks and shares, to determine what’s important.”

Two years later, Snap is following through on that promise by demanding more from Discover publishers and creators.

New guidelines have been released with the intent to counter the growing problem of “fake news” on social media.

Editors of Discover publishers will be expected to fact-check each of their publications – not only their own stories, but also any stories that they link.

An executive from Snap told The Guardian that these changes are intended to “empower our editorial partners to do their part to keep Snapchat an informative, factual and safe environment for everyone.”

There is a growing, and global, crisis of trust in a variety of established institutions – government, business, NGOs, and the media.

When it comes to the media, this distrust is fueled by perceptions that traditional news media is biased, and by the fact that fake news is running rampant across social media platforms.

According to Pew Research, 23% of adults say they have shared a fake news story either intentionally or accidentally, and 64% of adults say that fake news has caused significant confusion about basic facts.

The solution to the prevalence of fake news may be in moving away from automation and algorithms, and back to human engagement with curating content.

Better interface design, with a focus on making it easy to find and share good stories, and hard to spread false ones, is becoming more of a necessity.

Carl Alviani at Quark writes, “Every digital interaction encourages certain behaviors, and every media channel has limitations. Actively shaping those parameters to encourage civil, factual discussion isn’t only justifiable—it’s nearly an ethical necessity.”

SnapChat is actively engaging with that necessity, and it will likely prove good for the bottom line as well as for users ease of mind.

Their move to establish Discover as a highly-curated hub of reliable content has the potential to lend credibility to publishers who establish themselves on the platform, as well as benefiting the platform itself.

Discover needs this boost, since views were down in late 2016 as the company dealt with major competition from Instagram Stories, and struggled with how to monetize more effectively ahead of their upcoming IPO.

Tightening up their content guidelines, and investing in Discover Shows (with their new stream of ad revenue), looks like an effective way to place themselves ahead of other social media sites when it comes to reliability.

Since wealthy Americans are among those most concerned with fake news, this is a wise move.

The Washington Post is ready to take advantage of this opportunity.

They were at the head of the pack when it came to incorporating SnapChat into election coverage, and they’ve launched a daily Discover Edition which makes them the first prestige news outlet to offer multiple news updates throughout the day on that platform.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a published academic, an editor with the Editors Association of Canada, an independent scholar and researcher, and a self-care and narrative coach. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology and identity - how our tools shape our selves and change our stories, and in how the nature of work is changing as we incorporate more technology into our daily lives.

BUSINESS - Walmart Continues Bid to Become Ecommerce Heavyweight

Walmart has once again upped its game in the world of ecommerce.

Last year the retail giant took a major step to compete in the ecommerce market with the acquisition of Jet.com.

InfoStream predicted at the time the two companies had the potential to make a dent in sector-leading Amazon’s market share.

Their intention to do just that was illustrated by Walmart’s recent adoption of a free two-day shipping program.

To further bolster their ecommerce, Jet.com purchased ShoeBuy for approximately $70 million in January of this year.

Shoebuy is a leading online footwear, clothing and accessories retailer that carries over 800 brands and will continue to operate as a stand alone site.

That acquisition was followed by the purchase of outdoor retailer Moosejaw by Walmart just last week for $51 million.

While Moosejaw is a small retailer, they have experienced significant growth in contrast to other outdoor gear stores.

In case anyone had been in doubt, Walmart is showing they are serious about becoming a major ecommerce player.

Their strategy seems to be working for the company.

Walmart recently announced online sales gained 29% in the fourth quarter which ended January 31.

“We’re happy about how fast we’re moving, but still have a lot of work to do,” Marc Lore, President and CEO Walmart ecommerce US, said on a call with reporters.

Lore was up-front about the company’s interest in more acquisitions similar to Moosejaw.

It won’t be surprising to hear about additional ecommerce related purchases by Walmart in the near future.

HEALTH - New Merck Veterinary Manual is Mobile and Agile

Since 1899 Merck has been publishing medical manuals, with the first Merck Veterinary Manual (MVM) released in 1955.

The 11th Edition was recently made available to the veterinary community.

In addition to expanding content, over time Merck has broadened its availability by adding an online version, creating a mobile app, and engaging on social media.

There are a number of advantages to the electronic versions.

It enhances the tradition of portability, allows for more timely updates and reviews of the content, there is room for a much larger number of figures and images, and can include multimedia content such as audio and video files.

The latest edition adds more interactive features such as regular news items that involve the veterinary profession, along with occasional commentaries.

There are new sections for case studies and quizzes based on MVM content to allow users to test themselves on a range of material.

Clinical calculators are included that enable users to enter patient data and determine specific dosages and related treatment requirements.

Veterinary students will be adding their perspectives on veterinary topics through regular blog posts.

For pet owners, there is material that addresses pet health topics in everyday language that will be easier to understand than the technical language of the sections intended for professionals.

Keeping up with the profession's and society's need to be in the know as it happens, the MVM online will now be updated on a continual basis.

So instead of waiting several years for new information to be published, it will appear as soon as it is available.

Merck has plans to release a new app for mobile devices and provide regular updates for that version as well.

BUSINESS - Mind the IT Gap

There is a gap between what businesses expect from their IT departments and CIOs, and what these departments and executives can provide.

And a wise business owner or investor will pay attention to that gap, or risk falling into it.

Deloitte recently released a global CIO survey highlighting major areas of disconnect between expectations and capabilities.

They found that CIOs can have significant positive influence on the long-term success of the company when they develop capabilities in their IT departments.

This positive influence was true regardless of the personality of the individual CIO, as long as that executive could adapt and respond to the specific needs of their team and organization.

This fits with what The Bayard Partnership has noted as the most common stumbling block for CIOs – the inability to influence either upper management or their own teams.

Deloitte’s research suggests that CIOs tend to be less relationship-oriented than other CxOs, and paired with Bayard’s finding, this indicates that CIOs need to focus on building their relationships with both management and their own teams.

However, a key recurrent finding in Deloitte’s research was that the core expectations of the businesses did not match investment and resource allocation within the business, and that’s an issue that no amount of relationship-building can solve.

For example, cybersecurity is a core expectation according to 61% of CIOs, but only 10% said that it was a top priority of the business.

This is a major issue, because without adequate cybersecurity systems, businesses and organizations are at significant risk.

Similar disconnects between expectation and capabilities exist for categories such as improving business practices, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, maintaining systems, and driving business innovation.

When the capabilities are not currently in place, the infrastructure is not being built, and the talent is not being pursued or properly cultivated, can businesses reasonably expect IT departments and CIOs to deliver? Clearly not.

Talent, like cybersecurity, is a significant issue.

For agile tech talent, demand is four times the supply, and big-data talent is similarly in high demand.

Many businesses are failing to entice or maintain their tech talent.

In some cases, such as Uber’s issues keeping industry-leading women engineers on their teams, talent is actually being driven away.

These gaps are not new.

After all, investment in long-game improvements to core business capabilities always hurt the bottom line before they help it, and a fast-moving marketplace doesn’t feel hospitable to those “short-term pain for long-term gain” choices.

And yet, as Computer Weekly states in their series on CIO development and digital innovation, “If companies are unwilling to use technology to disrupt their business, someone else will do it for them. Businesses must be truly up to date with the changes being driven by technology, and be wary of the opportunities and threats.”

Disruption is already here, and CIOs (and their organizations!) are going to have to take the plunge and make the investments that allow capabilities to catch up to expectations.

Without closing the gap in critical IT areas businesses will not be able to deploy an effective digital strategy, and without that strategy, they risk falling in.

About Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a published academic, an editor with the Editors Association of Canada, an independent scholar and researcher, and a self-care and narrative coach. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology and identity - how our tools shape our selves and change our stories, and in how the nature of work is changing as we incorporate more technology into our daily lives.