Hospitals

Study: EMRs not always linked to better health care

The adoption of electronic medical records, or EMRs, in U.S. hospitals has improved the quality of care in only one of three areas studied, and even in that area, the gains are limited, according to new research by the nonprofit Rand published this week in the American Journal of Managed Care.

Researchers analyzed the quality of care at 2,021 hospitals between 2003 and 2007 across three conditions: pneumonia, heart attack, and heart failure. The number of hospitals using either basic or advanced EMRs grew from 24 percent in 2003 to 38 percent in 2006.

Not only did the … Read more

Chest pain? New system decides if you need ER

Many of us know someone who has experienced severe chest pain but hemmed and hawed over whether to go to the emergency room. The ultimate hope is that the pain will just pass.

The rule of thumb has been to just go--better safe than sorry. But only 20 percent of those who do go actually have heart attacks, so researchers at the Stanford Cardiac Rehabilitation Program have developed a 3- to 5-minute survey that can be administered by a health care professional that helps identify symptoms, level of heart attack risk, and whether a trip to the ER is necessary.… Read more

Ultrasound could help diagnose prostate cancer

In 2010 alone, some 217,730 men in the U.S. have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and some 32,050 have died from it, according to the American Cancer Society. But diagnosis relies largely on painful, nontargeted biopsies that result in many false negative results.

So researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have been developing a technique that uses ultrasound to more effectively target tumors, and they say they've had great success in the four patients on whom they've tested it.

The technique involves injecting microbubbles of a contrast agent into the patient. Using … Read more

Surgeons using iPads in operating rooms

Georgetown University has begun a program that uses iPads in their operating rooms to assist doctors with complicated operating procedures.

The iPads allow surgeons easy access to all sorts of medical data, imagine, and processes during an operation. The ease of using iOS comes in handy (no pun intended), since no stylus or keyboards are needed. It's quick and efficient, according to a Journal of Surgical Radiology statement:

With its attractive screen and networking capabilities, the iPad offers surgeons real-time access to images and patient data during an operation. Integrating it into routine clinical practice can save lives and … Read more

IBM takes health care analytics to the cloud

Last week, I wrote about IBM's continued march to the cloud and the company's focus on using advanced analytical software to make better decisions faster.

This week both of these efforts are coming to light in the health care arena as Big Blue is set to announce that the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) will use advanced analytics software to cut the time required to match bone marrow donors with patients by up to 50 percent.

The NMDP estimates that as many as 10,000 patients may benefit from a transplant each year in the U.S. alone, … Read more

New heart op to be performed remotely--in 3D

A cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, tomorrow will try to perform the world's first heart procedure using a robotic arm paired with advanced 3D mapping to treat a 63-year-old patient with atrial fibrillation (or AF, the most common arrhythmia).

The procedure, which will incorporate use of the CARTO-3 mapping software, comes just six months after Dr. André Ng became the first to perform a remote catheter ablation using the hospital's Amigo Robotic Catheter System, and just eight years after the hospital began performing ablation to treat AF.

In the procedure, a surgeon (or bot) inserts … Read more

Meet Cody, the robot that gives sponge baths

One thing we can probably all agree on is that in the future, robots will be everywhere. But will they play the role of master or servant?

With luck, the latter will come to pass, and Cody, a concept robot from Georgia Tech, is an example of what we should hope for (or fear). Simply put, it's a sponge bath robot, three words I never thought I'd type in the same sentence.

The best part is it appears to do the job well, though it certainly takes all the sexiness out of the endeavor. The autonomous robot uses lasers--because, really, robots all have lasers, or at least should--to specify a body part that needs to be scrubbed.

A camera then feeds the information to a microprocessor which, in turn, commands the robot's arm to wipe the selected area, which it swabs first.

In tests conducted by Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab, Cody used image processing to determine the hue of the "debris" (which we're guessing includes dead skin cells--and possibly bedbugs and dignity) and thus ascertain how much remained on the arm after the robot completed its task. Cody effectively removed 96 percent of the stuff.

Fortunately, it performs its duties using "relatively low force"--less than three newtons, which is science speak for, "Oh, yeah, right there, baby."

So let's recap: If you're in the hospital of the future, instead of a sexy nurse or orderly giving you your daily sponge bath, you will get a sterile, unthinking robo-doc named Cody. Sometimes progress isn't all it's meant to be. And just so you know what's coming, there's a video of Cody in action below. … Read more

Introducing the wheelchair that can stalk

The Human-Robot Interaction Center at Japan's Saitama University is developing a wheelchair whose camera and laser sensor enable it to track--and follow--the person next to it.

The wheelchair, which is considered standard in all other respects, uses a distance sensor to determine which way the followed person's shoulders are facing so that it can change direction as the leader does.

"[Care] facilities sometimes don't have enough staff, so a single helper has to push two wheelchairs," a Saitama spokesperson says in a news report. "With wheelchairs like this, which can follow automatically, you can … Read more

How video game processors could save lives

Are you dreading upgrading your graphics processor yet again just so you can get lost in the alien-infested urban jungle of Crysis 2? Rest assured that the immersive power of these state-of-the-art video processors is now being used for more than just visual pleasure.

A new technique for processing X-rays appears to lower the radiation patients are exposed to during cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans by a factor of 10 or more, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego.

The research is being presented this week at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine's 52nd annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Lead author Xun Jia, a UCSD postdoctoral fellow, based his team's work on recent advances in compressed sensing by developing a CT reconstruction algorithm for graphics processing unit platforms (GPU cards being used for 3D computer graphics, often in video games), thereby increasing computational efficiency to reconstruct a cone beam CT scan in just minutes.… Read more