What do one of the most recognizable doctors in America and a rapidly growing electronic medical record (EMR) start-up have in common? Apparently, a commitment to public health and fascination with health data. This past weekend Medgadget was invited to observe Dr. Mehmet Oz, of The Dr. Oz Show, team up with Practice Fusion to screen a few hundred Philadelphians at the Temple University School of Medicine. Dozens of physicians and medical students were on hand to provide a “15-minute physical” consisting of BMI, blood pressure, and waist circumference measurements as well as lab tests including a lipid panel (HDL, LDL, and triglycerides) and blood glucose, made possible by Alere‘s mobile lab device, Cholestech LDX, which synced directly to Practice Fusion’s EMR. This allowed Practice Fusion to generate a real-time “report card” for Philadelphia, which Dr. Oz then presented to Mayor Michael Nutter in addition to taking the Mayor’s blood pressure (135/80) and waist circumference.

We had the opportunity to catch up with Practice Fusion as well as Dr. Oz and his medical unit’s clinical event director, Mike Hoaglin (pictured above with Dr. Oz), to ask them about the screening and what excites them about collecting city-wide data.

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Hoping to attract more people to become organ donors, Facebook has added the option of making your donor status public on your timeline. And if you’re not registered yet, but feel browbeaten by friends who are, Facebook will link you to your state’s organ registry so you can sign up.

More from Facebook: Organ Donation: Friends Saving Lives…

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We here at Medgadget are huge fans of the innovative, but low-cost medical devices that undergraduate and graduate school students develop for their senior projects. We applaud the vision to distribute their devices to remote corners of the Earth to improve healthcare worldwide, but always wondered about how developing nations might best go about learning about these lifesaving technologies.

A group of students and researchers from the University of Michigan asked themselves that same question after realizing that no such comprehensive resource existed, and created the Global Health Compendium. The project is an open-source database hosted by popular wiki platform Appropedia, and focuses specifically on useful medical devices for developing countries. That means all the devices in the database are inexpensive and can be useful in countries lacking continuous electricity, replacement parts, clean water, and appropriate training. The devices in the database, approximately 100 so far, can be organized by disease treated, device status, and the region where the device has been tested or targeted.

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Statistics show that there are 800,000 new stroke victims every year, a figure that is expected to double over the next 20 years. How will we effectively be able to care for these patients?

That’s a question that researchers from the University of Southern California are addressing in a short video piece called “Wanted: Coach. Companion. Robot.” The video highlights a future day in the life of a robot they are developing to help stroke victims. Tthough not named, the robot looks very much like a Bandit 2 model. The device uses multiple imaging modalities, as well as a wrist-worn galvanic sensor on the patient to track a person’s vital statistics and the position of the limb being rehabilitated. What’s also somewhat unique about the USC robot is the personality it is given. Rather than merely being a speaking machine, the USC robot interacts almost like an early version of C-3PO, gently responding based on the person’s mood. Not only will the robot give you a warm greeting, but during your rehab exercises it’ll give you not-so-subtle feedback on your effort (“I may be a robot, but I am not blind”). According to the video below, the robot apparently also has the uncanny ability to change from a cardinal USC hoodie to full workout gear!

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We are only two months into 2012 and it’s clear that the Quantified Self movement is increasingly gaining traction. More devices are emerging to help people quantify everything from anxiety to weight, and blood glucose to sleep patterns. But what about people who cannot use the devices or are not ambulatory themselves?

A team led by Professor Bruce MacDonald at the University of Auckland in New Zealand has been working to create a corp of medical robots – Healthbots – to help these people. Medgadget had the opportunity to interview Professor MacDonald about the Healthbots, what they do, and when we can expect to see them available to help those in need.

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Given all of the recent media buzz surrounding Facebook – the Emperor of all Social Networks – we at Medgadget wanted to reflect some of that light onto the social networks that are most influencing medicine today. One such network is QuantiaMD, whose membership exceeds 150,000 physicians, according to the company, or one in five in the US!

We have previously covered two apps developed by the company: DiabetesIQ and Pri-Med. This editor first met up with QuantiaMD’s CEO, Eric Schultz, and Chief Communications Officer, Mary Modahl, at the mHealth Summit and just touched base again to produce the interview below.

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Venture Beat recently named the “Quantified Self” movement as a top trend for 2012. That publication defined the movement as “self-knowledge through numbers” and cited a number of gadgets that enable their users to quantify everyday activities such as workouts, sleep, heart rate, and galvanic skin response.

Hugo Campos is a proponent of this movement: He uses a FitBit device to keep track of his daily activity level, a Withings blood pressure monitor, a WiFi scale, and a Zeo sleep monitor. He cannot, however, access the data in his implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) because such data is off limits to patients. The data from his ICD can, however, be accessed by his physician and the device’s manufacturer.

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Stanford’s decade old biodesign program is partnering up with FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health to help the agency adapt the way it screens new medical technologies.

The parties have reached a “memorandum of understanding,” rather than a formal agreement to specific projects, but the framework creates a method by which cooperation can now take place.

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The FDA has issued draft guidance to companies that are looking to submit an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) or premarket approval (PMA) application for an Artificial Pancreas Device System that would be used by patients at home.

The document explains how one should go about proving the safety and effectiveness of an artificial pancreas, although the guidance is clear that these are simply recommendations and that “the word should in Agency guidances means that something is suggested or recommended, but not required.”

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A report just released by the Commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Margaret Hamburg, aims to provide immediate steps to quicken biomedical innovation.

Entitled “Driving Biomedical Innovation: Initiatives to Improve Products for Patients,” the 37-page blueprint briefly touches upon a number of important topics, including how to build the infrastructure to drive and support personalized medicine as well as what the FDA anticipates to be the future of medical devices (e.g. in terms of regulation).

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