Health care

SEATTLE--Microsoft thinks its Kinect motion-sensing game controller will find a spot in operating rooms and doctors offices as it already has in consumers' living rooms.

The software giant, which has been working for years to get health care companies to use its technology, is trying to open doors with Kinect. Today at the Pacific Health Summit here, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie, showed how medical providers can use the technology to improve care.

In one scenario, patients virtually attend group therapy sessions. But rather than displaying their actual images, Kinect allows them to use avatars, which can capture the movements of the arms, shoulders, even eyebrows, while allowing them to maintain anonymity with the group.

"There's a naturalness to it, even though there's a cartoonish quality about it," Mundie said. "But you get a huge amount of clues."

In his scenario, one patient, listening to another member of the group chat, sat with arms crossed, brow furrowed, and appeared disinterested. That could be a clinical sign of depression worth following.

This isn't just about Kinect, though. Microsoft and other big tech companies such as Google have been courting the health care market for years, prompted in no small part by federal initiatives to drive the digitization of medicine. But those initiatives have so far had, at best, mixed success, in an industry that loves the latest technical marvel in equipment but resists the digitization of patient records. But with so much spent on health care, the lure for tech providers is hard to ignore.… Read more

A new saliva test developed by geneticists at the University of California, Los Angeles, reveals a person's age within five years, a finding that could have many applications in medicine, at crime scenes, and more.

"With just a saliva sample, we can accurately predict a person's age without knowing anything else about them," says principal investigator Dr. Eric Vilain, a professor of human genetics, pediatrics and urology, in a UCLA news release.

The team's research, published online this week in the Public Library of Science's PLoS One journal, focuses on methylation, a process by … Read more

The tricorder, that handheld geological, biological, and meteorological device of general awesomeness from the Star Trek universe, has spawned several real-life iterations boasting such uses as the detection of ulcers and deadly gases.

So in May, the X Prize Foundation announced that, alongside Qualcomm, it would award a $10 million Tricorder X Prize to the person who develops a mobile device that can diagnose a broad range of common health ailments as well as--or better than--a panel of board-certified physicians.

A team at Oregon State University in Corvallis is now one step closer to what remains a pretty tall order.… Read more

GE and Mayo Clinic announce today that they are the recipients of a five-year, $5.7 million research grant to study and develop a dedicated MRI brain scanner to image a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders, including stroke, depression, and autism.

"A smaller, lighter, dedicated head-only MRI system will have a huge positive impact on the field of psychiatry," said Steve Williams, head of the Department of Neuroimaging at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, in a news release. "During the past decade, brain imaging research has dramatically improved our understanding of mental … Read more

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

As many hospitals and health care centers across the U.S. switch from paper record-keeping to newer, electronic health record systems that qualify them for federal incentives, a team of physician-scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College has been tracking the transition for 19 physicians at an adult ambulatory clinic.

Nearly 4,000 prescriptions for more than 2,000 patients were tracked before the switch, 12 weeks after the switch, and a year after the switch. Researchers found that prescription errors dropped by two-thirds, from 36 percent to 12 percent a year after their physicians had switched to electronic record-keeping systems.… Read more

Directed at the tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans, or for those who want immediate dermatology-related diagnoses, Skin of Mine is a platform for measuring and monitoring moles and other skin conditions.

The app--updated in mid-May and compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad--is now available for $2.99.

The setup is simple: create a free account at SkinofMine.com, upload symptom photos to receive automated analyses, and pay on average $50 to receive a certified diagnosis directly from a Skin of Mine medical professional (these include doctors, nurse practitioners, and physicians' assistants) of the user's … Read more

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pushing harder than ever for government leaders around the world to increase vaccination investments.

In a keynote address yesterday to the 64th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates spoke for nearly half an hour to health ministers from 193 countries about the importance of "seeking good health care for every human being."

"I believe we have the opportunity to make a new future in which global health is the cornerstone of global prosperity," he said.

Gates called on the assembly to make this "the Decade of Vaccines," with some basic goals: eradicate polio early in this decade; build a system capable of delivering vaccines to every child; make five or six new vaccines available to all children around the world. With these investments, Gates said, the world "can save 4 million lives by 2015 and 10 million lives by 2020."

Another challenge Gates cited was lowering the cost of antigenic materials, such as pentavalent, pneumococcus, and rotavirus vaccines. The Gates Foundation is working with vaccine manufacturers to cut prices of those inoculations in half by 2016. Lower costs would be beneficial to many countries around the world that are reeling from budget woes. … Read more

After being available for several years in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe, Swedish firm Sectra's digital mammography system has now been approved by the FDA for use in the U.S. (It was also approved for use in Canada in March and in Russia in April.)

The system, called MicroDose, uses technology called photon counting that results in two key changes over traditional mammograms: higher-resolution images at half the radiation exposure.

"Until now, digital mammography systems in the U.S. have managed to reduce the radiation dose slightly below those of film-based systems," Dr. Jesper … Read more