hospital

New cloth self-cleans by killing bacteria

Tossing clothes into the wash when dirty is so last year, thanks to a discovery by chemists out of the University of California at Davis. Near-ordinary cotton may simply need be exposed to light to get busy killing bacteria and breaking down toxic chemicals such as pesticide residues.

Ning Liu, a doctoral student at UC Davis, worked with textile chemists Gang Sun and Jing Zhu to develop a method that incorporates a compound (2-AQC) into cotton fabrics. When exposed to light, it produces reactive oxygen species such as hydrogen peroxide that kill bacteria and break down toxins.

While Liu says 2-AQC is more expensive than other compounds, it is difficult to remove from cotton due to strong bonding, and cheaper equivalents should work, too.

"The new fabric has potential applications in biological and chemical protective clothing for health care, food processing, and farm workers, as well as military personnel," she says.

The team reported on its findings in the Journal of Materials Chemistry last month, shortly before another study out of the University of Iowa chronicled the vast presence of even drug-resistant disease-causing bacteria on hospital curtains.… Read more

New Jersey hospital to add 2.1 megawatts of solar

St. Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., announced today it's beginning construction this October to install 10,000 solar panels throughout its campus.

The 2.1-megawatt project will be the largest solar installation of any hospital in New Jersey to date, and be distributed across six different locations within the hospital's campus.

The solar system will include two rooftop installations, three parking lots with solar carports, and a solar carport on the roof of an existing parking garage.

The solar system will be constructed by Sun Farm Network, and the 10,000 solar cells will … Read more

Wireless network could monitor breathing

Engineers at the University of Utah predict that, in about five years, a network of wireless transceivers around a bed will be able to measure breathing rates without a single tube or wire being connected to the patient.

The uses of the system, which the team has dubbed BreathTaking, are obvious: patients in post-op, infants at risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or even people with sleep apnea.

And because the technology uses off-the-shelf transceivers similar to ones used in home computer networks, the system could cost less than current breathing monitors, said electrical engineer Neal Patwari, senior author of … Read more

This Day in Tech: Data from Stanford Hospital patients found online

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Friday, September 9.

Stanford Hospital confirms that patient data was online for almost a year.

Apple iPads, iPhones get Flash video via HTTP Live Streaming.

Google, Apple, Microsoft are the top global brands, according to a new study by Brand Finance.

The FBI raids Solyndra and calls the company's CEO on the phone.

AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong wants to merge with Yahoo. Now that former CEO Carol Bartz is out at Yahoo, this … Read more

Mislaid hospital data another cause for unease

If recent hacking episodes--not to mention the casual attitude toward privacy displayed by some social networks--have made you a little queasy about our hyperdigitized, hypernetworked society, recent news from Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., isn't likely to make you feel much better.

The New York Times' Kevin Sack reports that the hospital has confirmed a rather bizarre episode. A spreadsheet listing the names; diagnosis codes; account numbers; admission and discharge dates; and billing charges for 20,000 emergency room patients wound up on a Web site that enables students to pay people for help with their homework--as … Read more

What creatures inhabit the surface of your cell phone?

Germaphobes may want to navigate away from this page, lest they find themselves tempted to scrub their cell phones as often as their hands. Because cell phones are not only dirty, some of them even play host to what researchers are calling "worrisome" drug-resistant bacteria.

A team from the Department of Medical Microbiology at Inonu University in Malatya, Turkey, set out to answer the question that serves as the title of their report: Do mobile phones of patients, companions, and visitors carry multidrug-resistant hospital pathogens?

They cultured 200 mobile phones, collecting swab samples from three parts of each … Read more

AirBnB raises funding, launches iPhone app

AirBnB, the start-up that began as a couch-swapping service for young, budget-minded travelers and the people willing to rent them space in living rooms, spare bedrooms, and mattresses on floors, made several big announcements this afternoon: a $7.2 million Series A funding round on behalf of Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners, and an iPhone app for instant lodging bookings.

The company plans to use this funding, which adds to a $600,000 seed round that it raised from Sequoia last year, to hire more people (co-founder Brian Chesky says it has 40 job openings at the moment) and improve … Read more

AT&T launches health care business

AT&T is making a new foray into the health care market with a business geared toward improving patient care and trimming medical costs.

Announced today, the new AT&T ForHealth unit will deliver a range of wireless, networked, and cloud-based products to doctors, hospitals, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies. The goal is to push the adoption of new technologies to the industry as the country tries to switch over to electronic and digital health care management.

AT&T said it's looking to expand upon some of its current health care projects, which include medicine bottles that … Read more

Turbo treatment

Time management games seem to be exploding in popularity, and we've seen renditions that take place on farms, in cafes, and other busy settings. Hospital emergency rooms are one of the busiest settings around, so it's no surprise that someone created a time management game featuring a harried nurse as the main character. In Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward, users race against the clock to get patients treated and make strategic decisions about spending the hospital's funds. It's obviously not a realistic portrayal of hospital, but it's definitely fun.

We liked that Hysteria Hospital allows users … Read more

Plug-and-play hospitals inflate in Haiti

You've probably heard something about Doctors Without Borders (also known as the Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) lately, given their involvement in Haiti. Here, we see the organization set up what they call "plug and play" hospitals--self-sustained, inflatable medical facilities.

The whole 41 metric ton setup allows 9 tents housing 100 beds to be delivered by air, an inflatable facility that operates nearly autonomously from Haiti's devastated infrastructure. Everything from generators to sterilization equipment comes along with the tents.

BoingBoing has an excellent interview with members of the MSF regarding these deployed facilities that I'd … Read more