Dr. Rami Kaminski
Kaminski, MD is an American pioneering psychiatrist and author of The Gift of Not Belonging
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Business Wire
an hour ago
- Business Wire
CalmWave Named to Inc.'s 2025 Best Workplaces List
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- CalmWave, creator of the Calm ICU™ and leader in eliminating non-actionable alarms through healthcare data science and Transparent AI, announced today that has been named to Inc.'s 2025 Best Workplaces list honoring companies that have built exceptional workplaces that support their teams and businesses. 'This recognition reflects the integrity, grit, and heart of our team and reinforces our belief that meaningful innovation begins with creating an exceptional place to work,' said Ophir Ronen, founder and CEO, CalmWave. 'We share a singular mission to transform healthcare by redefining and optimizing hospital operations, enabling clinicians to focus on what matters most: patient care. The entire CalmWave team is driven to make an impact, united by a shared commitment to improve healthcare for both clinicians and patients.' CalmWave is the first effective solution to address the endemic problem of alarm fatigue in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Alarm fatigue occurs when the constant stream of alarms overwhelms both clinicians and patients, often due to a flood of non-actionable alarms – alerts triggered by monitoring systems that do not require immediate intervention or clinical response. These alarms account for 80–99% of those in ICUs and are the primary cause of alarm fatigue. This cacophony not only increases the risk of negative outcomes such as ICU delirium but also places significant strain on healthcare staff, ultimately impacting overall patient care. CalmWave is redefining hospital operations, starting by eliminating alarm fatigue in ICUs and expanding to deliver enterprise-wide operational intelligence that enhances clinical workflows, optimizes clinical engineering, and supports system-wide staff well-being. The Calm ICU™ is a signal-led critical care environment powered by CalmWave that reduces alarm burden using data science and allows clinical teams to focus on patient care, accelerate ICU throughput, improve patient safety and enhance hospital operations. It enables hospitals to align teams, technology, and time – informing decisions where they matter most: at the bedside. 'Inc.'s Best Workplaces program celebrates the exceptional organizations whose workplace cultures address their employees' welfare and needs in meaningful ways,' says Bonny Ghosh, editorial director at Inc. 'As companies expand and adapt to changing economic forces, maintaining such a culture is no small feat. Yet these honorees have not only achieved it – they continue to elevate the employee experience through thoughtful benefits, engagement, and a deep commitment to their teams.' This year's list, featured on is the result of comprehensive measurement and evaluation of American companies that have excelled in creating exceptional workplaces and company cultures, whether in-person or remote. The Best Workplaces award process involved a detailed employee survey conducted by Quantum Workplace covering critical occupational elements such as management effectiveness, perks, professional development, and overall culture. Company benefits were also audited to determine overall score and ranking. CalmWave is honored to be included among the 514 companies recognized this year. To view the full list of winners, visit About CalmWave CalmWave's mission is to objectively improve healthcare, starting with safely eliminating non-actionable alarms. Alarms triggered by bedside monitoring systems that do not require immediate intervention or clinical response comprise 80-99% of all audible alarms in intensive care units (ICUs). They contribute to a well-recognized and widespread issue known as alarm fatigue, endemic to every hospital worldwide. Alarm fatigue, rampant in the modern healthcare system, causes great stress for clinicians and patients, ultimately impacting patient outcomes and staff retention. Using Transparent AI, CalmWave outlines the rationale behind each optimized setting, empowering a hospital's clinical staff to evaluate and implement optimized alarm limit recommendations in the bedside monitor at the patient's bedside using the CalmWave Operations Platform, which integrates seamlessly with the hospital's EMR. Doing so remediates alarm fatigue and can improve staff retention and patient outcomes. Visit for more information and follow us on LinkedIn and X. About Inc. Inc. is the leading media brand and playbook for the entrepreneurs and business leaders shaping our future. Through its journalism, Inc. aims to inform, educate, and elevate the profile of its community: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters who are creating the future of business. Inc. is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with fellow leading business publication Fast Company. For more information, visit About Quantum Workplace Quantum Workplace, based in Omaha, Nebraska, is an HR technology company that serves organizations through employee-engagement surveys, action-planning tools, exit surveys, peer-to-peer recognition, performance evaluations, goal tracking, and leadership assessment. For more information, visit
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Too many women 'grin and bear it' when getting an IUD. I helped write new pain management guidelines to change that.
Millions of American women have had an IUD (a tiny T-shaped contraceptive device) inserted into their uterus. Many of them likely walked into their doctor's office with a bit of anxiety, not knowing what exactly the procedure would feel like: Would it be just a pinch or would it be incredibly painful? (There is no shortage of viral horror stories.) Also, would your doctor take your pain seriously? Up until recently, there wasn't a standard of care for IUD pain management. Women are often told to pop over-the-counter pain relievers before coming in for the procedure, even though they don't always control the pain. Any pain relief beyond that has been up to the woman's doctor or hospital, and depended on what options they had available. That's changing thanks to new guidelines on pain management for IUD placement issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists last month, which follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's updated guidelines in 2024. ACOG called out the 'urgent need' for doctors to acknowledge and treat patient pain and added that patients should 'have more autonomy over pain control options for their health care.' Genevieve Hofmann is a nurse practitioner who coauthored the new ACOG guidelines. In this interview with Yahoo Life's Rachel Grumman Bender, Hofmann explains why IUDs can be painful for some, why any fears shouldn't scare people off from getting this highly effective contraceptive and how these pain management guidelines are an important step in the right direction. IUDs are really one of the most effective birth control methods out there. We call them LARCs, or long-acting reversible contraceptives. Hormonal IUDs are over 99% effective at preventing pregnancy, and nonhormonal IUDs are equally effective. What's nice about hormonal IUDs is that we also use them to manage a lot of gynecologic conditions, such as heavy menstrual bleeding and painful periods. However, patients are coming to us and saying, 'I do not want to have this horrible experience with getting an IUD. How can we manage this?' I've been in practice for a little over 20 years and [when I started out], we would tell people to take some ibuprofen beforehand and try to do some distraction techniques while we're putting it in. There's a lot of grin and bear it in gynecology and in women's health. It's really challenging for us as providers to give people an accurate assessment of what they're going to experience with IUD placement. I've seen people who have had IUDs placed where it was like, That was not terrible, and then all the way to That was the worst pain that I've ever had in my entire life and I had a natural childbirth. There's a very large range of how people experience pain as well as anxiety. So I think as a provider, the guidelines really put the onus on us to help people anticipate the pain and have that conversation about what they can expect. Sometimes they won't know until they're in the throes of it, and so it's about being prepared with some pain options in anticipation that it could be a really painful and uncomfortable procedure for them. IUD insertion requires the placement of a speculum, which sort of holds open the vagina in a way that's not normal. So having a speculum in the vagina is not really comfortable. Then there's the procedure itself. A lot of times, we have to manipulate the position of the uterus, and we do that sometimes by putting a clamp on the cervix. It's this sort of sharp instrument that takes a little 'bite' out of the cervix to hold it in place. So that tenaculum placement can be very painful. IUDs are placed in the uterus, which is a muscular organ. To do that, you have to go through the cervix, which is the opening to the uterus. The cervix can be very tight, especially if someone has not had a vaginal birth. And so getting through that cervical opening can be really painful for some. The uterine body itself has some nerves, so something going into the uterus is just crampy and painful — it's a very deep, visceral pain that is hard to explain to people if they've never had any kind of instrumentation in the uterus before. We also have a really large nerve called the vagus nerve that goes through the cervix; so people can also have this kind of vasovagal-type response when we manipulate the cervix, which makes people feel really terrible too. It makes you feel like you're going to pass out and you get hot and you feel like you're going to throw up. And sometimes people feel like they have to poop and that is a really uncomfortable feeling as well. So there are many different aspects that cause pain. But not everyone's going to feel that way. As a provider, I don't want to scare people out of getting this really effective birth control method or way to manage heavy menstrual bleeding. So [it's about] finding that balance between giving people the information they need so they can feel, OK, I'm going into this with my eyes open, but also not terrifying and scaring people away that they say, Yeah, I'm never ever gonna do that. I always say it's like going to a restaurant. You're going to tell 25 people when you have a terrible restaurant experience. But if you have a great restaurant experience or a mediocre restaurant experience, you don't really tell anybody. So, I think there's a lot of people who do great with their IUD insertion and really manage it well, but they're not as vocal about it as somebody who's had a really awful experience. What the evidence for the guidelines really demonstrated was that using some sort of topical lidocaine, which is a numbing agent, on the cervix was beneficial compared to a placebo or compared to other distracting techniques or ibuprofen and other pain medications. Many of us have been offering better pain management options in the last several years compared to maybe what was happening 10 or 25 years ago. We know from the evidence that anxiety tends to worsen pain. I think providers will give anxiolytics [medications to treat anxiety], so telling patients to take a little bit of Xanax or some Ativan to help with the anxiety. And I do think people are using localized lidocaine, whether that's in a gel or a spray or putting in an injectable lidocaine through a paracervical (nerve) block. I think that is becoming much more typical. There's also IV sedation. The other big thing that comes out of these guidelines is that we as providers owe it to our patients to have a discussion about some options that are available to them. So, it's really having the conversation, guiding patients to make the best decisions for themselves and then hopefully being able to find some interventions that you can do in your clinic safely and effectively to give people some options. I hope that these guidelines get the conversation started in a way that we're meeting people where their needs are ... that they feel heard and can access things like IUDs that are really highly effective ... and that we believe patients when they say, 'This was really painful.' Or, 'I had a really terrible experience last time I did this.' [We should] trust them to know their bodies and say, 'OK, here are the things we're going to do to hopefully try to improve that experience this time.' So I hope that's what comes out of it. Patients need to feel like they're in a space where they can advocate for themselves and be heard. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Axios
3 hours ago
- Axios
NIH ruling is latest blow to RFK Jr.'s agenda
Hundreds of researchers who saw their National Institutes of Health-funded studies halted by the Trump administration could begin working again soon after a federal judge ordered their funding restored Monday. Why it matters: The ruling was the latest blow to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s efforts to reshape the agency, including cutting funding for research and institutions that it says do not support the agency's mission, such as diversity, equity and inclusion studies. If it survives likely appeals, the ruling could allow researchers to restart their work on subjects including cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and HIV. "The Trump administration has tried to impose their own ideological concerns on top of a well-functioning system," Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a plaintiff in the case, told Axios. "Today they got called out." Driving the news: NIH cut nearly $3.8 billion in grants to U.S. institutions, per estimates from the Association of American Medical Colleges. Attorneys representing researchers in several states said the funding cuts were "arbitrary" and singled out cuts affecting people of color, women and LGBTQ+ people. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge William Young told the attorneys that the case raises serious concerns about racial discrimination related to health and said some evidence points to potential discrimination against women's health. "I've never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable," Young, a Reagan appointee, said Monday. The other side: The Department of Health and Human Services said it is exploring all legal options, including filing an appeal and moving to stay the order. "HHS stands by its decision to end funding for research that prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement. NIH director Jay Bhattacharya told lawmakers last week that he has established an appeals process for terminated grants. Between the lines: Plenty of studies in the case didn't primarily focus on questions of race or sexuality but still had their funding cut because algorithms flagged funding in their grants, Lurie pointed out. The study Lurie was part of that was a subject of the lawsuit was focused on access to HIV drugs, but it had a secondary question about hurdles specific to the LGBTQ+ community, he said. "Time lost is never made up," Lurie said. "There were delays in the accrual of new information, delays in the analysis of existing information, delays in publication eventually, and therefore in sharing whatever information we might have learned for the world." Catch up quick: It's the latest ruling against HHS moves to cut back researchers' work. In April, a District Court judge in Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order preventing HHS from cutting over $11 billion in public health funding to states. In March, another Massachusetts judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration's planned $4 billion cut to NIH research funding, specifically targeting "indirect cost" grants. In January, a District Court judge in North Carolina issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration's pause on the disbursement of federal grants and loans. Reality check: The ruling only applies to the grants listed in this case, and it only restores the grants while the case makes its way through court. Young didn't officially rule that the directives were unlawful because they were discriminatory. Instead, he asked for evidence supporting or refuting the possibility of racial or gender discrimination.
