Archives: 5/2006

Art

Art Makes Doctors More Thoughtful, Less Cubist

by Justin Barad on May 31, 2006 • 9:25 am

May01 gamers 08 Art Makes Doctors More Thoughtful, Less Cubist
Dartmouth is launching a pilot program using art to teach medical students the power of observation when making a diagnosis:

Observe. Analyze. Interpret. Decide. Explain. These were the general directions given to Dartmouth Medical School students on a recent trip to Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art. The visit was part of a pilot program that promotes the power of observation in making diagnoses.
“I had heard of programs at other medical schools that used art interaction to aid in patient interaction,” said Joe O’Donnell, the senior advising dean at Dartmouth Medical School and a member of the DMS class of 1971. “I thought that we could duplicate that program here, and put our Dartmouth stamp on it.”
He connected with Stephen Plume, an artist and a DMS professor of surgery, and they reached out to the Hood’s Director, Brian Kennedy. Soon they began working with Vivian Ladd and Lesley Wellman, both in the education department at the museum, to develop a program that would cultivate the simple, yet often nuanced, ability to notice things, whether it be in a painting or in a patient. During the month of May, they implemented two pilot workshops at the museum that sparked some thoughtful comments from participants.

More from Dartmouth press office…

ENT

Balloon Sinuplasty (TM) for Sinusitis

by Tim Odell on May 31, 2006 • 8:20 am

3215433 Balloon Sinuplasty (TM) for Sinusitis
Dr. James D Ulm, assistant professor of otolaryngology, and head and neck surgery at the Indiana School of Medicine, has developed a procedure similar to balloon angioplasty, but applied it to sinus inflammation.

Balloon Sinuplasty™ is a minimally invasive procedure that utilizes a small catheter and a balloon to quickly open and expand blocked sinuses, restoring normal sinus drainage and function. Until recently, patients with sinusitis were treated with pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics or topical nasal steroids, or conventional sinus surgery which, in some cases, requires bone and tissue removal to unblock sinus passageways.
Not all patients will qualify for the procedure, but for those that do, the surgery is less time-consuming, is safe and effective and has a shorter recovery time and less discomfort than the more traditional sinus surgery. Most patients can return to work the next day, said Dr. Ulm.

We recently covered balloon sinuplasty controversy here.
The press release…

Telemedicine

Virgin Atlantic To Introduce On-Board Telemedicine

by Josh Umbehr on May 31, 2006 • 6:09 am

Virgin Airlines Virgin Atlantic To Introduce On Board TelemedicineVirgin Atlantic will be installing telemedicine devices on their entire fleet. The devices called Tempus, produced by Remote Diagnostic Technologies, is for use by non-medical personnel to take a patient’s vitals and communicate via satellite with doctors on the ground.

Tempus uses the satellite technology that operates Virgin Atlantic’s onboard telephone system to transmit medical information such as pulse rate and blood pressure readings as well as video images to medical experts at the MedAire Centre in Phoenix, Arizona. The ground-based doctors can then diagnose the problem and advise the crew on the next course of action, enabling crew to use their medical training to assist the passenger.
Steve Ridgway, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic, welcomed the introduction of the technology;
“The safety and welfare of our passenger is of paramount importance. Virgin Atlantic has used the original telemedicine system, MedLink, for many years, but Tempus’ advanced technology significantly increases the airline’s onboard medical provision.”

I wonder if on-flight medical exams are a perk for first class flyers or if there will be a bill waiting for them at home from the doctor.
Read more here…
Info from the manufacturer of Tempus…

etc.

The 21st Century Intelligent Health System

by editors on May 31, 2006 • 3:48 am

In a report by MD NetGuide, the transformation of the current healthcare system into The 21st Century Intelligent Health System is discussed. In order for the US health system to withstand future challenges, a new model must be created. This new model will depend heavily on health information technology.
hi The 21st Century Intelligent Health SystemFrom the report:

As Speaker Gingrich likes to say, “Paper kills. It is that simple.” Our current system is taking a tragic toll in American lives. With as many as 98,000 Americans still dying due to preventable medical errors every year (www.iom.edu/Object.File/ Master/4/117/ToErr-8pager.pdf), ridding the system of paper based records and quickly adopting health information technology will save lives and-at the same time-save money
This is not just speculation. Examples abound of the dramatic benefits of health information technology. The Indiana Heart Hospital in Indianapolis built a new facility that is totally paperless, and they reduced medication errors by 85% (www.ihealthbeat. org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemID=10 9819). If we could achieve the same results nationwide, we would save nearly 6,000 Americans every year, since medication errors kill more than 7,000 citizens annually, according to the Institute of Medicine (www. iom.edu). These new systems also reduced physician administrative time by 30%, meaning the Hospital’s doctors can now spend more time with their patients and provide them with higher quality care.
Another example is the Central Utah Multi-Specialty Clinic (www.cumcmds .com). Allscripts built an ambulatory electronic health record system for this clinic, which has 70 physicians at 11 locations, and serves more than 300,000 patients. In the system’s first year of use, the Clinic saved $1 million through improved efficiencies and automation (www.allscriptsidx. com/_docs/CentralUtahClinicCaseStudy.pdf); five-year savings are projected to be more than $8 million. That is real money that can be put back into the Clinic to hire more doctors and nurses or buy new equipment. This can directly increase consumers’ access to care and dramatically advance the quality of care they receive.

Link…

Neurology

Neurotechnology Provides Hope for the Paralyzed

by editors on May 31, 2006 • 12:57 am

neurotech Neurotechnology Provides Hope for the Paralyzed
Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc. is currently focused on the commercialization of two proprietary platforms for neural stimulation, neural sensing in the brain and real-time neural signal decoding technology. These unique and powerful platforms can restore sensation, communication, limb movement as well as other bodily functions.

Cyberkinetics’ NeuroPort™ and BrainGate™ Systems are based on the same direct neural sensing technology platform. The FDA 510(k)-cleared NeuroPort™ System is being developed to enable physicians to provide a new tool that may improve understanding about how the brain works and may enable more accurate diagnosis and treatment of central nervous system injuries and conditions. The BrainGate™ System is being developed to provide novel communication interfaces, the ability to control devices and to potentially restore limb movement to those with spinal cord injury, stroke, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), as well as other central nervous system injuries.

pic braingate Neurotechnology Provides Hope for the Paralyzed

The BrainGate™ Neural Interface System is currently the subject of a pilot clinical trial being conducted under an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) from the FDA. The system is designed to restore functionality for a limited, immobile group of severely motor-impaired individuals. It is expected that people using the BrainGate™ System will employ a personal computer as the gateway to a range of self-directed activities. These activities may extend beyond typical computer functions (e.g., communication) to include the control of objects in the environment such as a telephone, a television and lights…

[On the other hand] the NeuroPort™ System is an FDA cleared medical device intended for temporary (< 30 days) recording and monitoring of brain electrical activity.
The NeuroPort™ System is based on Cyberkinetics' BrainGate™technology and consists of two parts, the NeuroPort™ Cortical Microelectrode Array (NeuroPort™ Array) and the NeuroPort™ Neural Signal Processor (NeuroPort™ NSP). The NeuroPort™ Array senses action potentials from individual neurons in the brain. The NeuroPort™ NSP records these high resolution signals and provides a physician with the tools to analyze them…

As neurotechnology progresses, new hope will keep emerging for the paralyzed.
Flashbacks: Brain-computer interface system: promising results; BrainGate Neural Interface System

in the news...

Fashion vs. Mosquito

by Justin Barad on May 30, 2006 • 10:26 am

PROTECTIVE CLOTHES02GA Provincial 05 27 06 PJ2M92K Fashion vs. Mosquito
Fashion wins! The ChronicleHerald.ca has a report on clothing pretreated with the insecticide permethrin. It is now available for consumers and purportedly helps ward off mosquitos with few ill-effects:

“I have a couple of these shirts and I love them, not because they look good, but because they work,” said McConnell, a former director of the division of toxicology, research, and testing at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, who now is a private consultant in Raleigh, N.C.
McConnell, who does not have financial ties to pesticide companies or clothing makers, said he still put a little of the insect repellent DEET on the back of his exposed neck on the buggiest days in Alaska, and sprayed some along the brim of his cap. But he credits the permethrin-treated shirt for warding off swarms of mosquitoes that would otherwise bite through the thin cloth on his back as he wades into creeks.
…Tommy Hilfiger now markets a line of twill golf shorts and cotton polo shirts treated with permethrin. Ex Officio sells treated gardening aprons, canvas gloves, and socks. And L.L. Bean offers insecticide-drenched hats, shirts, and zip-off convertible hiking pants in tropical colors.
…Is all this garb really necessary? More to the point, is it safe, and does it work?
For safety, the answer is encouraging, though the data is not all in. Permethrin is a synthetic, longer-lasting cousin to a natural insecticide found in chrysanthemums. Since 1977, it has been incorporated in various products approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for killing or controlling insects.
Unlike DEET or other repellents thought to confuse biting insects by masking carbon dioxide in breath and other body odors, permethrin is thought to stun or kill the bugs by disrupting their nervous systems when they bite something coated with the chemical – or, perhaps, just get close to it. Permethrin is thought to work even better than DEET against ticks.

The clothing is said to be effective for up to 25 washings. With West Nile, Malaria, and Lyme Disease posing significant risks these days, this clothing could be just what the doctor ordered.
Keep an eye on medgadget.com for more breaking developments in the world of functional clothing.
Read the full article here…

Medicine

Bluetooth Group Working on Medical Monitoring

by Tim Odell on May 30, 2006 • 7:04 am

full logo blueblack Bluetooth Group Working on Medical MonitoringThe Bluetooth SIG (the group put together by tech companies like IBM, Intel and Motorola to guide the standards and development of Bluetooth wireless), is looking into applications for medical devices in the home.

“Health-related devices in the home, such as blood pressure monitors and exercise equipment, which implement the new standard will be able to send information wirelessly to Bluetooth enabled PCs or cell phones so that users can monitor their health information or share this information with a doctor or fitness coach anywhere in the world,” said Robert Hughes, chair of the new Bluetooth SIG Medical Devices Working Group and a senior wireless standards architect in Intel’s Digital Health Group.
There are already Bluetooth-enabled medical devices on the market, but these are based on proprietary technology. The creation of an industry standard design profile will ensure interoperability and proliferate the use of the technology.
According to Michael Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG: “Because of its worldwide availability, existing pervasiveness in mobile phones and laptops, Bluetooth technology is ideally suited for medical devices that will provide a better quality of life for patients while reducing the cost of healthcare.”
The Working Group will begin work immediately, drafting the specification this year with the new profile available for use in devices in the first half of 2007.
The completed profile will run on all current versions of Bluetooth technology including the proposed UWB high-speed version.

Bluetooth seems like a nice middle ground between the range (but complication) of 802.11a/b/g/n and other more short-range solutions like IR or proprietary radio connections. As Bluetooth becomes more pervasive, secure simple systems would make for great monitoring in a more mobile in-house patient population.
More from Electronics Weekly, and from the Official Bluetooth Wireless Info Site

Informatics

SmartShirt: A Breathable Fabric (That Monitors Your Breathing)

by Nicholas Genes on May 30, 2006 • 5:51 am

smartshirt1 SmartShirt: A Breathable Fabric (That Monitors Your Breathing)Medgadget always brings you the latest in clothes that double as health monitoring equipment. We’ve posted about the LifeShirt and WEALTHY, the Wearable Health System.
Now comes a monitor-shirt that actually looks like a shirt: The SmartShirt, from Sensatex:

The light, breathable, cotton fabric has fully integrated conductive fibres that create connectivity to acquire and transfer analogue physiological signals to a small personal controller. The controller digitizes the data signals and wirelessly transmits them to a remote location where the data is received for monitoring. The system was developed to interface with wireless communication systems using ZigBee technology so that data can be transmitted to virtually any back-end system, and designed so that it is not necessary to have a trained technician present to send or receive data.

smartshirt2 SmartShirt: A Breathable Fabric (That Monitors Your Breathing)

Unlike similar products, only the Sensatex SmartShirt System combines innovative technologies in the textile, wireless, and biomedical engineering fields. Field testing of the SmartShirt System is planned for later this year. Sensatex is also testing a one-lead EKG band and a SmartBra that would employ the same system to remotely monitor vital signs and plans to add other sensor capabilities in the future.

Of course, Medgadget will bring you the latest on the SmartBra — maybe it won’t be the world’s first “wireless” bra… but it will communicate more health information than any other bra on the market.
More from Sensatex…

Public Health

Siemens: Now and Forever

by Nicholas Genes on May 30, 2006 • 5:04 am

siemens Siemens: Now and ForeverTwo UK hospitals are going high tech — as only UK hospitals can, with a bold, inflexible, expensive initiative that may hamstring the hospitals for decades to come:

Barts Hospital and The Royal London Hospital have awarded Siemens a 35-year contract to supply the latest medical technology in a deal worth more than £300 million.
Siemens will supply state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment technology in the radiology, cardiology and oncology departments of the two hospitals. Siemens will begin installing equipment in late 2009 and will be responsible for ensuring the hospitals have the latest technology until 2045.

Look, we’ve seen American hospitals waste money in strange and spectacular ways, and we don’t know the details of this long-range British plan (maybe it’s not front-loaded in Siemens’ favor, and maybe they’ll stay responsive to the hospitals’ needs even though the hospitals have no alternative anymore).
But it just seems reckless to assume Seimens will still be making quality medical products in 2045, especially given the changes in medical technology over the past 35 years…
We’ve never heard anyone say “Boy, I’m glad we locked in that electronic-medical-record contract with IBM back in 1971″ or, “We’ll proudly be implanting Guidant pacemakers well into the 2040s.”
More from Siemens…

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