Archives: 6/2005

Society

Spam Can Be Good for You

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 30, 2005 • 8:46 am

spam sm Spam Can Be Good for YouSpam is not good for your email box. On the other hand, according to a study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion and coming out of the University of Alberta, spam might be beneficial to your health:

People who were spammed about healthy eating and keeping active, tended to exercise and lose weight, according to the researchers at the University of Alberta.
For 12 weeks, Dr. Ron Plotnikoff and colleagues sent weekly e-mail reminders to some volunteers at five large Canadian workplaces who were taking part in a larger study about exercise and health. More than 1,600 completed the full study.
Writing in the American Journal of Health Promotion, Plotnikoff said those who received the e-mail reminders exercised more and knew more about the benefits than those who did not.
They also reduced their mean body mass index, or BMI, a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

More at Reuters…
The press release…

Ob/Gyn / Surgery

MSU: Robotic Arm Is Capable of Doing Breast Exams

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 30, 2005 • 6:30 am

robotic breast exam MSU: Robotic Arm Is Capable of Doing Breast ExamsEngineers from the Michigan State University, together with staff from the Dept. of Surgery, have developed a robotic arm to perform breast exams:

Here’s how it will work: A physician or other health-care provider, located in a hospital or clinic, will slip his or her hand into a glove-like instrument. That will allow him or her to move the robotic arm that is with the patient in a remote location.
“That arm, which actually looks like a hand, is equipped with sensors,” said Carol Slomski, chairperson of MSU’s Department of Surgery and co-director of the project. “As the hand touches the patient, the sensation from this touch comes back into my hand. When the robotic fingers feel a lump or some other abnormality, I also feel it.”
The robotic hand will also be equipped with an ultrasound transducer that will collect and transmit back to the health-care provider an image of what he or she is feeling. The system also will have video and audio capabilities, so patient and physician can directly communicate.
“There are so many benefits to this technology,” Slomski said. “Not only does it provide health care for people in remote locations, it also can put an experienced provider at the other end. It’s like getting a secondary consult.
“Just because you’re located in the Upper Peninsula or even Botswana, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a sophisticated diagnostic or therapeutic procedure.”
“Having the capability of ultrasound and palpation simultaneously is a major advantage,” said Ranjan Mukherjee, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the team building the device. “Often the ultrasound and exam are done separately. But if the physician can look at the image and feel what he or she is seeing, it’s a huge advantage.”
The computers at the two sites are linked through an Internet connection, Mukherjee said.

Paint us old fashioned, as we believe that getting the patient to the doctor is still easier than getting massive robotic components to both of them. On the other hand, it is an interesting tecnology in the works, indeed.
The press release…
(hat tip: WMMNA)

Medicine / Pediatrics

Technosphere® Insulin Enters into Phase 3 Safety Trial

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 30, 2005 • 6:09 am

mannkind inh sm Technosphere® Insulin Enters into Phase 3 Safety TrialMannKind Corporation has announced yesterday that it has initiated enrollment of patients in phase 3 safety trial of inhaled Technosphere® Insulin (TI) in the United States.
The company, that was founded by the legendary innovator of medgadgets Alfred Mann, describes its dry inhaled insulin:

The MannKind inhaled insulin delivery system consists of a proprietary dry powder Technosphere® formulation of insulin that is inhaled into the deep lung using MannKind Corporation’s proprietary MedTone® inhaler, which utilizes single-use, disposable, plastic cartridges containing Technosphere® Insulin powder.
The inhaler is light, easy to use, and fits in the palm of the patient’s hand, which is believed to facilitate patient compliance.
Technosphere Insulin is stable for at least 18 months under refrigerated conditions and for at least two months at room temperature, which is equivalent to or surpasses commercially available insulin products.
The combination of Technosphere® Insulin’s unique performance characteristics including the rapid transfer of the insulin into the blood and the significantly higher bioavailability, along with the convenience and ease of use of the MedTone® inhaler, may have the potential to change the way diabetes is treated.

(hat tip: Medicine and Man)

Informatics

Military Medical Records Go Paperless

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 30, 2005 • 5:56 am

According to the Navy NewsStand, the new system of medical record keeping known as the Composite Health Care System II (CHCSII), will be implemented at the National Naval Medical Center starting September 18.
The Navy NewsStand says that the system is a part of larger initiative from the Department of Defense:

CHCSII will allow medical personnel to enter patient information directly into an electronic medical record without needing to first handwrite the record of the visit.
CHCSII will maintain the digital information in a centralized database, creating a comprehensive, life-long, computer-based patient record for each and every military health beneficiary. Furthermore, since the program acts as a database, hospital functions like laboratory, radiology and pathology test results will be faster. CHCSII will also improve patient safety through automatic alerts of potential allergic reactions and drug-to-drug interactions.
“CHCSII implementation at our medical center is an exciting endeavor that will keep our staff functioning on the cutting edge of technology,” said Capt. Mark Olesen, National Naval Medical Center’s deputy commander. “This is a great change for our staff and patients, because it propels us into the future of medicine, which is a world of immediate digital access, virtually unlimited and everlasting information storage capacity, and world-wide connectivity.”
Although CHCSII will not immediately eliminate the use of paper records, as hospital officials point out, it is the first step toward a more efficient and integrated Navy Medicine.
“The Navy currently maintains more than 500 military treatment facilities throughout the fleet; each with their own paper records keeping department. CHCSII will connect us all to each other with the click of a keypad,” said Capt. Kenneth Senn, CHCSII project officer at the hospital. “Eventually, after CHCSII is implemented worldwide, a sick or injured Sailor treated on a ship halfway around the world can be transferred to Bethesda and all of his medical information is accessible — even if he didn’t have time to grab his paper record.”
While the new system will benefit Navy Medicine, CHCSII is not a sea service specific initiative and is, in fact, designed to improve joint military medical operations. Proponents of the program have said CHCSII will improve interoperability between the branch services’ health care systems through the use of one centralized system instead of the current separate medical structures for each branch.
“Enterprise-wide implementation of this system will support the commitment of the Defense Department to conduct population health management throughout the [Military Health System],” Senn said.

More at the Navy NewsStand…
(hat tip: Medical Informatics Insider)

Uncategorized

Penelope Surgical Instrument Server Debuts

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 29, 2005 • 11:09 am

penelope debuts Penelope Surgical Instrument Server Debuts
Penelope Surgical Instrument Server, profiled by us in January, has been used for the first time in a clinical case, United Press International reports.

“I was pleasantly surprised by how efficient and reliable she was,” Dr. Spencer Amory, director of surgery at the hospital, told the New York Daily News.
The robot handed over surgical instruments on the command of the surgeon and then returned the instruments to their original place during a routine procedure to remove a benign tumor from a woman’s forearm.

(hat tip: Engadget)

Diagnostics / Reproductive Medicine

Baby Gender Mentor™: At Home Gender Test

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 29, 2005 • 6:20 am

babygender Baby Gender Mentor™: At Home Gender Test
The Boston Globe profiles a home test launched earlier this month that allows pregnant women in the US to know the sex of their fetus as early as five weeks gestation. The test requires a finger prick for a blood sample to be sent to a lab for fetal DNA testing. If the sample contains the Y chromosome then the fetus is male, and the absence of the chromosome means a female fetus.
The test is available for a total price of $275 exclusively at the PregnancyStore.com…
Update: Those interested in purchasing this product should consider the commentary from former customers below.

Cardiac Surgery

Second Patient Receives VentrAssist

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 29, 2005 • 6:14 am

ventassist productpro Second Patient Receives VentrAssistBBC News reports:

George Carter, 57, from Romford, Essex, has been fitted with a VentrAssist – which is a sixth of the size of traditional heart pumps.
The pump, pioneered in Australia, runs off a battery and could be an alternative to heart transplants.
Following the operation on 26 May, Mr Carter left hospital on Tuesday.

Flashback: VentrAssist LVAS

GI / Medicine

FerriScan™

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 29, 2005 • 5:50 am

ferriscan sm FerriScan™Medgadget reader Dr. Joel B. tells us to check out another great clinical system. This one is called FerriScan™ and it comes from Australian company Resonance Health Ltd. The system is FDA cleared for non-invasive diagnosis of iron overload:

FerriScan™ is a novel, non-invasive diagnostic test of the iron content of a patient’s liver to assist clinicians in the detection and treatment of iron overload disorders such as thalassemia and hereditary haemochromatosis. The FerriScan™ diagnostic test service uses existing MRI (magnetic-resonance imaging) machines at radiology facilities worldwide which can be configured to provide a suitable scan of the liver that is subsequently analysed at the centralised IVB image analysis centre to quantify iron loading using proprietary software. The FerriScan™ test provides a safe alternative to liver biopsy and will become a valuable adjunct to gene testing for iron overload diseases. Liver biopsy is an unpleasant, invasive procedure requiring liver tissue to be extracted from the patient by needle.

More at FerriScan™ homepage…
FerriScan™ brochure (.pdf)…

Net News

NEJM Audio Trial – Listen to Full-Text Articles for Free

by Gene Ostrovsky on Jun 29, 2005 • 5:31 am

Young docs at Case Western Reserve Univerity (CWRU)/SVCH Internal Medicine Residency Program who maintain the Clinical Cases Blog, would like to bring to your attention the following free features in the online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine:

- RSS feed–not available from JAMA, Annals, Archives or Lancet
- Medical podcasts–in the form of interviews with study authors–check the right sidebar
- And most recently, starting last week, full-text articles available to listen online
The last feature is the most promising and I will discuss it in further detail.
It is a prototype of the so-called NEJM Audio and has two sections:
- Clinical Research Update–a summary of the current issue of NEJM
- Clinical Practice – a complete text article
These articles are available for online listening. If you have a Bluetooth-phone and a PDA, you can listen to them anywhere.

More…

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