Latest news with #healthprotection
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
OMRON Healthcare Singapore partners with bolttech and QBE to launch innovative embedded health solution
The comprehensive subscription programme offers OMRON customers in Singapore access to personalised health protection and insights SINGAPORE, July 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Global insurtech bolttech and OMRON Healthcare Singapore, a global leader in innovative medical equipment for health monitoring and therapy, today announced the launch of their Premium Care subscription plan in Singapore. This three-in-one premium subscription programme offers registered OMRON connect members personalised health insights, protection and exclusive services tailored to OMRON device owners. Underwritten by QBE, a global insurer present in Singapore for over a century, the plan is now available for all owners of OMRON blood pressure monitors with wireless connectivity. The Premium Care plan offers subscribers three key features: 1. Monthly blood pressure status reports: Customers can receive monthly AI-powered blood pressure status reports. The reports provide personalised summaries of their latest blood pressure status and practical, data-driven recommendations for self-management, enabling customers to make more informed and proactive health decisions together with their healthcare providers. 2. Step-up insurance coverage: Customers can get automatic access to health protection with coverage of up to SG$10,000 for heart attacks and strokes, alongside worldwide accidental death coverage. Members start with a base coverage of SG$2,000 which goes up to SG$10,000 by using the OMRON Connect app to regularly monitor their blood pressure. Coverage increases with consistent usage and maintaining healthy readings, promoting proactive health management. 3. Comprehensive device protection: Customers can enjoy upgraded warranty coverage which includes device repairs arising from accidental damage and battery leakage. With premium doorstep pick-up and drop-off delivery service, customers can also benefit from having their devices serviced by the OMRON Service Centre, secure handling, and end-to-end logistics included in the plan – all without the need to leave their homes. Masanori Matsubara, Managing Director – OMRON Healthcare Singapore, said, "At OMRON, we're committed to realising the vision of "Going for Zero" - a society with Zero cardiovascular deaths. Partnering with bolttech and QBE is a transformative step forward. We are able to deliver innovative embedded protection, and meet our customers where they are – in their homes, on their devices, and in their daily lives. This collaboration brings together our health expertise with bolttech's digital capabilities and QBE's insurance solutions to offer a seamless, personalised experience that truly empowers individuals to take control of their health with confidence." Koh Yen Yen, General Manager - Singapore, bolttech, said, "With the Premium Care plan, we're redefining what connected health can look like. By embedding intelligent protection directly into the customer journey, we're not just offering insurance, we're empowering people to take charge of their health with real-time insights, seamless services, and meaningful coverage. We're excited to partner with OMRON and QBE, to provide customers with potentially lifechanging health monitoring technology. This innovative, all-in-one solution will empower people to manage their health proactively, with greater confidence and ease." Ronak Shah, CEO of QBE Singapore, said, "By underwriting the Premium Care plan, QBE is proud to play a part in a forward-thinking partnership with both OMRON and bolttech that combines technology, health insights, and meaningful coverage to deliver real value to customers. The plan's step-up insurance coverage aligns with our own thinking around innovative insurance solutions. It rewards subscribers that consistently use the technology to monitor their cardiovascular health, on the basis that this will help them lead healthier lifestyles, ultimately prolonging lives, reducing medical expenditure overall." As part of the programme's launch promotion, all new subscribers to the OMRON Premium Care plan will be entitled to a free one-month subscription. For more information on the Premium Care service, please visit: About OMRON OMRON Healthcare is committed to enhancing health and empowering people worldwide to live optimally. OMRON is a global leader in providing clinically validated, innovative medical devices for home health monitoring and care. Aiming to achieve its vision of "Going for Zero, Preventive Care for the Health of Society," OMRON develops a wide range of products and services for cardiovascular management, remote patient monitoring, respiratory care, and pain therapy. These solutions are designed to assist healthcare professionals and patients in reducing the risk of cerebro-cardiovascular diseases, preventing the worsening of respiratory conditions, and alleviating restrictions caused by chronic pain. With more than 350 million units sold globally*, OMRON is the most recommended blood pressure monitor brand by healthcare professionals worldwide**. Since its inception, OMRON Healthcare has been striving to improve the quality of life and contribute to healthier living through innovations that support the prevention, treatment, and management of medical conditions. Currently, OMRON products and services are available in more than 130 countries***. For more information, please visit Cumulative sales of home-use digital blood pressure monitors worldwide (as of May 2023). **1 Frost & Sullivan Survey, medical professional perception survey on blood pressure monitors (November 25, 2019, and U.S. News Staff Report 2020, accessed on June 9, 2020). **2 Kantar Health Survey among cardiologists (2019). *** Number of countries where OMRON products and/or services are available (as of March 2023). About bolttech bolttech is a global insurtech with a mission to build the world's leading, technology-enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance. bolttech serves customers in 37 markets across Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa. With a full suite of digital and data-driven capabilities, bolttech powers connections between insurers, distributors, and customers to make it easier and more efficient to buy and sell insurance and protection products. For more information, please visit About QBE Singapore Present in Singapore for more than a century, QBE Insurance (Singapore) Pte Ltd, a general insurance and reinsurance company, is the Republic's oldest registered Australian company. Established in 1891, QBE Singapore is a trusted provider of specialist expertise and professional insurance services. Our insurance specialists develop leading-edge products that are client-focused, delivering cover tailored to deal with everything from complex risks to more simple and straightforward insurance needs. QBE Insurance (Singapore) Pte Ltd is part of the QBE Insurance Group which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and headquartered in Sydney. For more information, visit View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE OMRON Healthcare Singapore Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Telegraph
03-07-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Australian man dies from ‘extremely rare' virus after bat bite
A man has died from an incurable and 'extremely rare' rabies-like virus that he caught after being bitten by a bat. The man, who is believed to be in his 50s, was bitten several months ago and infected with Australian bat lyssavirus – a pathogen closely related to rabies. It is the first confirmed case of the virus in a person in New South Wales, and only the fourth human infection since lyssavirus was first identified in Australia in 1996. While ABLV is unique to Australia, in June an injured bat rescued from a garden in the Isle of Wight tested positive for European Bat Lyssavirus. There are two strains of this pathogen and, according to the Bat Conservation Trust, just 59 of 19,000 bats tested since 1986 have been infected in the UK. Two people have been infected in Britain since records began – once in 1902, and again 100 years later in a bat handler in Scotland. 'It is incredibly rare for the virus to transmit to humans,' Keira Glasgow, a director in health protection at New South Wales Health, said on Wednesday. 'But once symptoms of lyssavirus start in people who are scratched or bitten by an infected bat, sadly there is no effective treatment.' Symptoms of lyssavirus can take days, months or even years to emerge. Much like rabies, early signs of the disease are flu-like – including a headache, fever and fatigue. Patients can deteriorate rapidly, with paralysis, delirium, convulsions, and ultimately death. 'Rabies, the disease, is an extremely similar disease of the central nervous system to that which can develop after ABLV [Australia bat lyssavirus] infection, although the two viruses are genetically distinct,' said Dr Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland. 'ABLV is a rare passenger of bats but when it is present, it is more often the cause of symptoms in those bats. Once symptoms develop in an infected human, disease is often fatal as there is no cure,' he told The Telegraph However, like rabies, immediate treatment post-exposure can stop symptoms from ever developing – and because the viruses are so similar, rabies immunoglobin and rabies vaccines are used to treat lyssavirus infections. However Trish Paterson, a wildlife carer for more than 30 years who ran the Australian Bat Clinic and Wildlife Trauma Centre in Queensland, told ABC News that it was worrying that the man had reportedly sought treatment – though it is not clear how quickly. 'If he received treatment [directly after the bite] and still contracted the virus, that would be a little bit concerning,' she said. In Australia, 118 people required medical assessment after they were bitten or scratched by bats last year. Public health officials this week urged anyone who came into contact with a bat to seek immediate treatment. But it is currently not clear how widespread the virus is within the country's bat population. According to figures from Wildlife Health Australia as of June 2024, 420 sick bats have tested positive with lyssavirus since 2001, including 97 in New South Wales. The disease affects a variety of bats and prevalence in wild populations is not clear – although studies in the early 2000s suggested it was less than 1 per cent, Wildlife Health Australia said. 'We don't know much about ABLV dynamics in bats,' Dr Alison Peel, a veterinarian and wildlife disease ecologist at the University of Sydney, wrote on the social media site BlueSky. 'But the risk to people is higher when contact is more likely – [for example] during food shortages for flying foxes, when they are more likely to search for food in backyards, or extreme heat events, when bats suffer and die in large numbers and people try to help. 'So, it's important to ensure that we protect bat habitats and allow space for them to play their important natural roles in ecosystems, without forcing them to come into contact with humans,' she said.
BBC News
17-06-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Pupils from poorest areas less likely to get anti-cancer jab
Doctors say they are concerned about a drop in the number of young people having a vaccine which protects against an infection that can develop into cervical HPV vaccine, which is offered to school pupils aged 12 and 13, helps stop the spread of Human vaccine programme, which started in 2008, has been hugely successful, with no cervical cancer cases detected in women who have been fully Public Health Scotland said it was worried that uptake in Scotland's most deprived communities was 20% lower than in the most affluent areas. HPV is the name given to a large group of viruses which can be caught through sexual contact with another person who already has say most HPV infections go away by themselves but sometimes infections can lead to a variety of serious 2008, Scotland's HPV vaccination programme started offering immunisation to girls in their first year of secondary then, no cervical cancer cases have been detected in women who have been fully vaccinated and, in 2019, the programme was extended to can develop cancer of the anus, penis, mouth and throat as a result of the infection and can also spread the infection to Claire Cameron, a consultant in health protection at PHS, said vaccine uptake in Scotland has been declining gradually over the past decade and "inequalities are increasing" since the Covid pandemic."That's really concerning because this virus can affect everybody and we want everybody to be vaccinated so they can be protected," she said. The latest available data from PHS shows the average HPV vaccination coverage among S1 pupils last year was 71.5%, with girls more likely than boys to be the least deprived areas the vaccine rate at S1 rose to 82.1%.But in the most deprived communities that figure slumped to just 59.9%.Dr Cameron said there were a number of reasons why uptake was lower in some communities."We think it's maybe something to do with vaccine confidence isn't as high as it has been," she said. "Maybe people's engagement with healthcare has changed, but also we offer this vaccine in schools and we know that there has been a change in how young people engage with education and there's challenges there." Last year researchers from Edinburgh University's Bioquarter set up workshops in local schools to teach pupils about the benefits of immunisation against human Cairns-Gibson, who heads one of them at Castlebrae High School in Craigmillar, said vaccine uptake there was considerably lower than the average for the whole of NHS Lothian but in the first year of the programme uptake increased."The thing we have noticed is the increase in confidence," he said. "We've got an ongoing partnership with the school, so they know our scientists, it's trusted people who are coming in and telling them this information."We noticed there was quite a lack of knowledge on HPV and a lot of people conflated it with HIV, so they just didn't necessarily know what it was, why they needed to get it." Pupils at the school are encouraged to ask questions about vaccines and HPV. They also discuss how vaccines can offer protection to a whole community as well as looking at the many different HPV viruses through the microscope. JJ, who is in S2, had been worried about getting his vaccine but after taking part in the workshop decided to go ahead."I had worries about getting the jag because I don't want to get it, but I had also don't want to get the virus," he said. "It will help more because it shows you what happens if you don't get it."Razan, who is 13, said: "I understand more about it and getting more information helps you not get scared."Ellie, 13, said: "If you don't get it then you are more at risk, but not only are you more at risk of getting yourself ill but you are risk of getting other people ill who may not be able to get the vaccine because of medical issues."
