genetics and disease diagnosis. But carrying out such analyses requires expensive lab equipment, making its application out of reach for many people who live in resource-limited places.
After only a 10-minute run, the device could detect the Hepatitis b virus in blood serum at a level low enough to flag an early-stage acute infection,
However, fields such as medicine or controlled catalysis call for more precise distribution in order to achieve the greatest possible efficiency of the active agent.
Future applications of such a DNA walker might include a cancer detector that could roam the human body searching for cancerous cells
constantly computing whether a cancer is present.""More immediate practical applications may include deploying the DNA walker in the body
and targeted by doctors. There also may be implications for future delivery of nanoscale therapeutics. Although it may be a long march from diagnosing cancer to curing it,
"All breakthroughs begin with baby steps. Only in this case, they are the steps of a DNA walker,
"said co-author Jung. The walker is made from a single piece of DNA with two legs connected by a torso.
Their new approach created the first-ever flexible Fresnel zone plate microlenses with a wide field of view--a development that could allow everything from surgical scopes to security cameras to capture a broader perspective at a fraction of the size required by conventional lenses.
Their new approach created the first-ever flexible Fresnel zone plate microlenses with a wide field of view--a development that could allow everything from surgical scopes to security cameras to capture a broader perspective at a fraction of the size required by conventional lenses.
which to test viruses and vaccines. Professor Waterhouse made the discovery while tracing the history of the Pitjuri plant
which to test viruses and vaccines.""This plant is the'laboratory rat'of the molecular plant world,
"We have discovered that it is the plant equivalent of the nude mouse used in medical research.""
or sterile growing environments where plants were protected from disease --and space was an intriguing option."
So just as nude mice can be really good models for cancer research, 'nude'versions of crop plants could also speed up agricultural research,
and Ear/Harvard Medical school and Boston University have prevented successfully the development of Parkinson's disease in a mouse using new techniques to deliver drugs across the naturally impenetrable blood-brain barrier.
Their findings, published in Neurosurgery, lend hope to patients around the world with neurological conditions that are difficult to treat due to a barrier mechanism that prevents approximately 98 percent of drugs from reaching the brain and central nervous system."
"We are developing a platform that may eventually be used to deliver a variety of drugs to the brain,
"Although we are currently looking at neurodegenerative disease, there is potential for the technology to be expanded to psychiatric diseases, chronic pain,
seizure disorders and many other conditions affecting the brain and nervous system down the road.""Using nasal mucosal grafting,
a known therapeutic protein for treating Parkinson's disease, to the brains of mice. They showed through behavioral
and histological data capture that their delivery method was equivalent to direct injection of GDNF-the current gold standard for delivering this drug in Parkinson's disease despite its traumatic nature and high complication rates-in diffusing drugs to the brain.
because the therapy has been shown to delay and even reverse disease progression of Parkinson's disease. Nasal mucosal grafting is a technique regularly used in the ENT field to reconstruct the barrier around the brain after surgery to the skull base.
ENT surgeons commonly use endoscopic approaches to remove brain tumors through the nose by making a window through the blood-brain barrier to access the brain.
Once they have finished the treatment, they use adjacent nasal lining to rebuild the hole in a permanent and safe way.
with the nasal lining protecting the brain from infection just as the blood brain barrier has done. Dr. Bleier saw an opportunity to apply these techniques to the widespread clinical dilemma of delivering drugs across the barrier to the brain and central nervous system.
surgeons may create a"screen door"to allow for drug delivery to the brain and central nervous system. The technique has the potential to benefit a large population of patients with neurodegenerative disorders,
where there remains a specific unmet need for blood-brain penetrating therapeutic delivery strategies.""We see this expanding beyond Parkinson's disease,
as there are multiple diseases of the brain that do not have good therapeutic options, "Dr. Bleier said."
"It is a platform that opens doors for new discovery and could enable drug development for an underserved population."#
"##The study was supported by a grant from the Michael j fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and represents a collaborative effort between Mass.
Eye and Ear clinicians and scientists are driven by a mission to find cures for blindness, deafness and diseases of the head and neck.
developing new treatments and cures through discovery and innovation. Mass. Eye and Ear is a Harvard Medical school teaching hospital and trains future medical leaders in ophthalmology and otolaryngology, through residency as well as clinical and research fellowships.
Internationally acclaimed since its founding in 1824, Mass. Eye and Ear employs full-time, board-certified physicians who offer high-quality
U s. News & World Report's"Best Hospitals Survey"has ranked consistently the Mass. Eye and Ear Departments of Otolaryngology and Ophthalmology as top in the nation n
#Breakthrough to the development of energy saving devices for the next generation Wide-gap semiconductors such as gallium nitride (Gan) are used widely for optical devices such as blue LED
000 Americans are on the waiting list to receive a heart transplant. With failing hearts, these patients have no other options;
which transplants are no longer necessary to repair damaged organs.""We've been able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3-D images of embryonic hearts and 3-D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution and quality out of very soft materials like collagens,
Feinberg leads the Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics Group, and the group's study was published in the October 23 issue of the journal Science Advances.
"We should expect to see 3-D bioprinting continue to grow as an important tool for a large number of medical applications."
Quantum entanglement is a phrase more likely to be heard on popular sci-fi television shows such as"Fringe"and"Doctor Who."
and other medical devices have been pumped out of 3d printers, but never before has the technology proven so integral to the production of a pill.
Doctors would also have the option of adjusting doses as they like, rather than relying on drug makers to provide a pill in one dose or another.
Otherwise, hey, better medical technology thanks to 3d printing is good for everyone o
#This new high-power diamond laser can cut steel Although lasers based on diamond have been around around for several years,
Researchers propose to do this by making the plants better at handling stress. Now I know what you might be thinking tress limate changeit sounds like it time to call the plant acupuncturist.
when the plant detects stress. Beneath this superficially crude mechanism lie untold layers of regulatory nuance.
and nourish stem cells bound for injection and differentiation into heart muscle cells. It used rats with damaged hearts
e-muscularizingthe area and fixing the characteristic damage of a heart attack. The hydrogel worked like a charm;
compared with just 12%survival while suspended in a normal injection fluid. Prior studies using stem cell injection have had to resort to specialized version of cells or cell components,
or just injecting incredible numbers of the cells, but both of these approaches are costly, time consuming,
compared with just 8%for regularly stem cell therapies. The team did not invent a treatment for this heart disease,
but a booster pack that lets a preexisting treatment really kick into high gear. It can support both adult and embryonic stem cells
This comes soon after a separate team from Harvard university announced their porous hydrogel could also achieve huge increases in the effectiveness of stem cell therapies.
and biomedical engineers are even looking into using them as a bio-safe internal optical network.
#A possible broad spectrum cancer cure is in the offing, but human trials could be up to 4 years away For almost
cancer has been nipping at our heelsnd brains, stomachs, kidneys, and so on. The fossil record indicates humanity embittered relationship with the disease extends even to prehistoric times.
Over the centuries, cancer has proven a most intractable foe. One reason for this is that cancer is a big family, with numerous subtypes and categories,
a veritable medusa head which immensely complicates finding a universal cure. A remedy for one cancer is no guarantee that it will work against another type of cancer.
Worse the treatments that work against multiple types of cancer like chemotherapy and radiation are often so harsh and hazardous that doctors hesitate to prescribe them.
Badly needed is a broad spectrum cancer cure that doesn ruin the human body in the process.
Thanks to a research group studying malaria, such a cure now looks to be in the offing.
The story of this accidental discovery is important as much for what it says about the scientific process as the treatments it promises.
The researchers, a group of Danish scientists from the University of Copenhagen and the University of British columbia
were studying a malaria vaccine for pregnant women when they stumbled across what appears to be broad spectrum cancer cure in the form of a modified malaria strain.
The story is not without a heavy dose of irony, one of mankind oldest foes,
the Malaria virus, may contain the mechanism for curing an even worse nemesis cancer. Ali Salanti, a researcher behind the possible cancer cureor decades, scientists have been searching for similarities between the growth of a placenta
and a tumor, says Ali Salanti, who headed up one of the teams responsible for the discovery. he placenta is an organ,
which within a few months grows from only a few cells into an organ weighing approximately two pounds,
and it provides the embryo with oxygen and nourishment in a relatively foreign environment. In a manner of speaking, tumors do much the same;
they grow aggressively in a relatively foreign environment. hile studying the placenta, Ali Salanti noticed that a carbohydrate the malaria parasite attaches itself to in the placenta of pregnant women is identical to a carbohydrate found in many cancers.
It was but a small step from there to modifying a malaria strain, so that when it comes in contact with a cancer cell,
it injects a toxin that destroys the cell. In this manner, the scientists believe they have created effectively a method for identifying a wide range of cancerous cells in the body
and eliminating them. So far several rounds of animal tests have borne out their hypothesis, and a company called VAR2 Pharmaceuticals has been spun out of this research to bring the therapy to market.
Despite what looks like rapid progress, it could take roughly four years before human trials begin.
Aside from the obvious tremendous benefit that would come from a broad spectrum cancer cure, these developments highlight another nemesis to human health:
With 7. 6 million people dying of cancer a year, in the four years it will likely take to bring this cancer treatment to market,
this discovery of potential broad spectrum cancer cure would seem to make it r
#Big data driving market disruption, leaving many organizations fearing irrelevance: Study A global report by Capgemini, provider of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, in partnership with EMC Corporation, reveals that amid the market disruption being driven by Big data,
the device could have applications in voice-command electronics, medical sensing devices that use waves, like ultrasound,
and hearing aids and cochlear implants. The proof-of-concept device looks a bit like a thick, plastic, pie-shaped honeycomb split into dozens of slices.
and obesity While it has been suggested long that gut microbiota disturbances are involved in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), obesity and metabolic syndrome,
the new findings suggest emulsifiers might be partially responsible for this disturbance and the increased incidence of these diseases.
and metabolism, finding that relatively low-level concentrations of the emulsifiers resulted in distinct alterations to the gut microbial ecosystem (microbiota) and led to low-grade inflammation and the onset of metabolic syndrome.
the research team reported that the emulsifier-induced metabolic syndrome was associated with microbiota encroachment, altered species composition and increased pro-inflammatory potential.#
#Moreover, they suggest that the broad use of emulsifying agents might be contributing to an increased societal incidence of obesity/metabolic syndrome and other chronic inflammatory diseases.##
""The dramatic increase in these diseases IBD, obesity and metabolic syndrome#has occurred despite consistent human genetics, suggesting a pivotal role for an environmental factor,
"Chassaing and his colleagues theorised that emulsifiers might affect the gut microbiota to promote these inflammatory diseases
These changes in bacterial expression triggered chronic colitis in mice genetically prone to this disorder,
or mild intestinal inflammation and metabolic syndrome, characterized by increased levels of food consumption, obesity, hyperglycemia and insulin resistance.
Who also showed that transplant of the microbiota from emulsifiers-treated mice to germfree mice was enough to transfer some parameters of low-grade inflammation and metabolic syndrome.
it would indicate a role for the food additive in driving the epidemic of obesity, its interrelated consequences and a range of diseases associated with chronic gut inflammation,
said the authors. While detailed mechanisms underlying the effect of emulsifiers on metabolism remain under study,
and metabolic syndrome,"said Andrew Gewirtz, senior author of the study.##Rather, our findings reinforce the concept suggested by earlier work that low-grade inflammation resulting from an altered microbiota can be an underlying cause of excess eating."
10.1038/nature14232#Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome#Authors: Benoit Chassaing, et a e
labelling, injury, sanitation and wasted raw ingredients. Increasing automation in the workplace can significantly help reduce many of these issues, with the newest generation of technologies such as lightweight robots capable of improving processes for food manufacturers.
The freeing up of employees from repetitive tasks can also help reduce costs related to worker accident and injury.
In the United states as many as 65 percent of all food factory workers had experienced injury while working on the job.
Costs related to worker injury are considerable. In addition to injury pay, they can also have a direct impact on insurance premiums, lost labour and production interruption as well as the distress of a valued team member.
Lightweight robots now have many built-in features to ensure they can work safely side-by-side with factory workers.
Alternately, riders prone to the malady could always take anti-nausea medications, though this is not a particularly practical solution for various reasons.
#3 Technology Trends Transforming Health care By Mahek Shah, MDTHE health care industry has always been changing,
but what is different about our industry now is that the pace of change has sped up.
For example, athenahealth was able to push Ebola-related patient travel history questions to its EHR athenaclinicals within an hour of the media frenzy over a Dallas hospitals inability to treat Ebola patient Thomas Duncan.
as a result of the hospital sending him home first. Traditional software implementations are just not capable of pushing seamless updates in near real-time like cloud-based EHRS can.
enabling doctors to concentrate more on what they do best: practice medicine and improve the quality of life for patients.
These other services create a better experience for both patient and provider. The cloud-based EHR field is crowded;
Imagine a diabetics biochip detecting blood glucose levels within personalized parameters, and then initiating appropriate, immediate,
We are in the early innings of the wearable game in health care as the Apple Apple Watch demonstrated;
Imagine a diabetics biochip detecting blood glucose levels within personalized parameters, and then initiating appropriate, immediate,
Sensors will soon provide doctors valuable feedback for a range of chronic conditions: a pacemakers use in heart arrhythmias, efficacy (or side effects) of prescribed medications,
and dosing compliance, including chemotherapy. These devices represent the possibility of consumerization within health care. Patient-centric devices beyond just smartphones or even watches will help not only awarenes,
but more importantly personal control of health. They will create a progressive model of care, in which health care institutional involvement whether hospital, clinic,
or doctors office occurs at later stages when most needed. This will lead to both financial and time savings for consumers and providers,
as well as a better health care experience. Big data analytics & Patient Access Analytics will provide valuable insights in operations and more importantly
at the point of care. But analytics alone won't be a panacea unless organizations and providers must also have more robust patient access tools.
whereby algorithms and other powerful digital technologies become an essential tool in the doctor's toolkit.
hospitals and chip makers, to name two, and even the U s. Department of defense. Central to the concept of onsite generation that links with microgrids is energy storage,
#Can Apple And IBM Change Health care? Five Big Questions Today, at a glitzy press conference at IBM new Watson headquarters in Manhattan swank Silicon Alley, IBM IBM and Apple Apple announced that they are partnering with Japan Post,
which already has a massive Big data-style collection of health care information, to both know more about its customers
including medical appointments. These workers will bring the senior citizen an ipad, and sit with them
The app will remind patients to take their medicines (the fictional anecdote used by IBM executives to explain that used a woman who kept forgetting her blood pressure medicine
The executives didn mention any telemedicine component where patients could directly connect with doctors or nurses,
but it easy to imagine one. The customers won pay for the ipad, although there may be a nominal fee for the service,
That depends on whether patients can really be sure that a company they trust (like Apple) can protect their data from one they probably don (any company in U s. health care.
the patient high blood pressure would mean that getting her to take her medicine more often would improve her life.
As Cook noted, the U s. health care market is fragmented. No insurance company here has the reach that Japan Post does.
including one related to home health care that is being done by Express Scripts Express Scripts. Will this work?
IBM and Apple deserve huge congratulations for the way they are taking on the problem of improving health care for seniors especially
since it is a problem health care companies are failing to solve. This is a big deal.
It very possible, maybe even likely, that an ipad giveaway program, paired with the right apps, could make senior citizens with chronic health problems healthier and more independent.
but in January it moved to the Department of health where NIC implemented a new system that doctors
It a calculus of success. Working together, we can solve the equation w
#Boeing Patents Futuristic Force field Aerospace and defence firm Boeing BA-1. 59%has just been granted a patent for
Glu got its biggest recent winner from a celebrity app that many scoffed at before Kardashian game fever swept America.
But the most exciting and important application of drone delivery would be in health care. There no comparison.
How Amazon Prime Air Could Affect Health care In fact for all of the major new players eying the health care market with Apple AAPL-0. 46%pushing to collect health data through the Apple Watch,
or Walmart beginning to deliver care at its stores Amazon innovative plan is positioned arguably best to fill an existing gap.
And the sheer demand for medication therapy is only going to rise, as chronic health conditions worsen:
This hurts our health, and our health care system: Poor medication adherence leads to more illnesses, more deaths,
and more unnecessary spending on health care. Some studies suggest that failing to take the right prescriptions adds up to as much as $290 billion in added costs per year.
Amazon somewhat familiar with the health care market and may be eying a bigger push. The company already playing a major role in drug delivery,
or the last couple miles in helping improve medical adherence and patient outcomes. Especially as more doctor visits and care end up shifted to telehealth,
as my Advisory board Company colleagues have projected. For example, this Marketing and Planning Leadership Council research brief explores the rise in programs designed to remotely monitor patients.
In this new world, health care really would be centered patient. Imagine sitting in your kitchen, finishing a virtual consult with your doctor,
and then getting a package 20 minutes later with your prescription. There a bit of irony here.
But a big opportunity for rapid progress has emerged as online medical education becomes increasingly common.
Doctors and nurses in even the poorest countries can now get much better training. Medical education in emerging markets typically suffers from two problems.
First, medical universities and residency programs rarely have qualified enough instructors, and sometimes lack access to modern curricula and equipment.
Second, weak or nonexistent continuing medical education (CME) programs prevent health workers from later keeping their skills sharp.
The World health organization estimates that the world needs more than 7 million additional skilled health professionals, with shortages at crisis proportions in many parts of South Asia, Southeast asia, and Africa.
and doctors around the world are embracing such technologies, sometimes with promising results. Medical education typically begins with university coursework,
and many medical schools now use e-learning tools like webcasts and online study aids to broaden enrollment
In radiology, for instance, a growing number of hospitals around the world now use software by Lifetrack Medical Systems,
The software enables radiology residents to receive virtual training from qualified practitioners anywhere in the world boon for places like Indonesia and Myanmar with acute radiologist shortages.
Even surgery can now be taught remotely with technologies that combine virtual reality with AI techniques to train both real time decision-making and psychomotor skills.
says theye actively being used for surgery students in Thailand. He believes they will be particularly valuable in emerging markets facing shortages of expert surgeons.
Irrespective of specialty, medical education must be a lifelong pursuit for all healthcare professionals, and in developed countries, regulators and professional associations typically require health workers to periodically participate in ongoing programs to keep their skills sharp.
Many emerging countries lack such requirements, but online platforms are starting to fill this critical gap.
for instance, a Harvard Medical school-affiliated NGO called HAIVN runs a video conferencing platform that connects HIV specialists in top Vietnamese hospitals with frontline community health workers.
FHI360 is another NGO using innovative online platforms to provide continuing medical education in emerging markets.
Its USAID-funded Control and Prevention of Tuberculosis Project, which Techonomy highlighted in January, does this for health workers in Thailand and China with Qstream,
In the Philippines, for example, a group of doctors founded an online community called Healthxph that uses social media to mobilize discussion about healthcare topics.
In neighboring Indonesia, more than three-quarters of doctors in major cities reported using the Internet regularly to build their knowledge and skills
E-learning and Global Public health To be sure, improving healthcare in emerging markets is about much more than just expanding the health workforce.
Yet health workers remain the frontline stewards of public health and healthcare systems cannot function without them.
Unlike in the Premera breach, medical data and banking information were believed not to have been exposed in the Anthem breach.
the University of Toronto is working with Christian Blind Mission a non-governmental organization that helps people with disabilities in developing countries as well as software supplier Autodesk ADSK+0. 17%and the Corsu rehabilitation hospital in Mpigi, Uganda.
sending that file back to the hospital be printed. Saving this time is vital, Professor Ratto explains,
In spite of the initial costs involved, the efficiency gains and quickly reduced cost of production make it a useful investment for hospitals.
and traveling to immunization camps in Africa and to Geneva to learn about public health policy.
and safety needles will receive WHO funding after 2020 should radically reduce infections caused by dirty syringes.
Dr Selma Khamassi, head of THE WHO team for injection safe, told BBC News that the new policy will hopefully help eliminate the 1. 7million new Hepatitis b cases
300,000 cases of hepatitis C and 35,000 new cases of HIV each year, as well as other infections. t was one of the proudest days in my life,
says Koska. o hear the head of THE WHO giving this the push that she did was phenomenal.
Applied to 16 billion injections that are made annually in developing and transitional WHO member states,
The remaining 5 per cent the use of syringes to vaccinate against potential disease converted en masse to auto-disable syringes in 1999.
I felt this discombobulating headache at the American Authors concert. My friend was sending emails while
we must remember that obsessive documenting changes the artistic structure of a concert atmosphere. he need to ocumentone life in every detail is a mania that can subtract from one enjoyment of the moment,
and prescription opioid epidemic the Obama administration announced recently a new $13. 4 million program to curb access to both.
The program will target illegal trafficking of the drugs in areas that have been particularly hard hit by the epidemic
Most states have a prescription drug monitoring database that allows doctors and pharmacists to see if an individual is going to multiple doctors
or pharmacies seeking prescriptions. he law says we have a corresponding responsibility to make sure that medications are used for legitimate medical purposes,
says Watzak. harmacists are trained to recognize red flags and if we have concerns we can call the physician
including exaggerating or inventing symptoms, doctor and pharmacy shopping, and forgery. When a pharmacist suspects a patient is addicted to prescription opioids
and heroin use is directly related to other public health issues, including the increasing rate of HIV infections and car accidents.
This is particularly troubling as these issues put the patient at an increased likelihood of needing a legitimate prescription for opioids to aid in the recovery from a planned procedure
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