The milestone health care reform law signed into law in 2010 is only now beginning to take shape, and it will take until the beginning of 2014 for it to be fully in place. But a lot of patient-friendly provisions are already in place, and we at the LFNC want to ensure that lupus patients and their loved ones know what changes have already happened, which ones are coming, and how it affects you.

Whether you are on Medicare or Medicaid, have private insurance or no health insurance at all, you have important new rights under the health care law, and even more importantly, a promise of greater access.

Come to our brown bag lunch (bring your own lunch) session at the LFNC offices on Tuesday, September 4, at noon to learn about what is changing, what is staying the same, and where you fit in. Bring your questions, and we'll be happy to answer them for you. RSVP to: communications@lfnc.org.

 

Not a whole lot - at least, not yet. Today, you can get smartphone apps for logging your diet and keep track of your workouts in limited cases, but that's about it. That's about to change. Venture-capital funded startups are moving rapidly to develop mobile applications to help monitor activities and more.

There's also a washable, sensor-embedded T-shirt from Rest Devices Inc. that measures respiration during sleep, shifting overnight sleep studies from hospitals and clinics to a patient's own bed. The data is uploaded from the shirt to a removable USB port for transfer to the clinician's office.

 

And the chip maker Qualcomm Inc. is offering $10 million to inventors who can develop a Star Trek-like "tricorder" that uses sensors to diagnose a dozen medical ailments including heart disease and diabetes.

 

And the government is working with industry to make rapid developments possible.

 

But the government also has taken action that helps mobile medical devicemakers, with the Federal Communications Commission voting in May to open 40 MHZ of wireless spectrum for "medical body area networks," or MBANs, for transmitting information from and between mobile medical devices at home and in hospitals.

 

Read more here.

Building on our initial pilot class last year, and leveraging small grant from the Walmart Foundation, the Lupus Foundation of Northern California is happy to announce a series of exercise classes focused exclusively on patients with chronic pain. Led and developed by Regan Mizuno, a certified personal instructor and lupus patient herself, the classes will focus on reducing pain and giving participants the opportunity to reclaim more mobility. Check out the video below for a quick look.

Moving with Lupus

The schedule for the classes from this month till the end of this year will be as follows:

1. Tuesday, August 28 from 8 pm to 9pm.
2. Saturday, September 8 from 11 am to 12 noon.
3. Tuesday, September 18 from 8 pm to 9pm.
4. Saturday, September 29 from 11 am to 12 noon.
5. Tuesday, October 9 from 8 pm to 9pm.
6. Saturday, October 27 from 11 am to 12 noon.
7. Tuesday, November 13 from 8 pm to 9pm.
8. Tuesday, November 27 (burn your turkey off class!) from 8 pm to 9pm.
9. Saturday, December 8 from 11 am to 12 noon.

 

Male and female patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) are being sought for a clinical study looking at a possible benefit of an investigational medicine.  The study site is in Roseville, California and in the Sacramento area and will last approximately 56 weeks.