medical

Although it has touted privacy as a key concern, the White House isn't faring as well as it should in that area, at least according to a report card from a noted privacy group.

Released last week by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the 2010 privacy report card (PDF) gave the Obama administration a grade of C in consumer privacy, a B in medical privacy, a D in civil liberties, and a B in cybersecurity. Offered by a group of privacy experts at a Capitol Hill briefing, the 2010 report card reflects lower grades in a couple of … Read more

It all started more than 25 years ago, when James C. Tilton, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, began investigating a novel way to analyze the pixels that comprise digital images.

He devised an algorithm that took image segmentation (grouping pixels at different levels of detail) to a whole new level; he not only found regional objects, but also grouped spatially separate objects into region classes. In other words, applied to a satellite image, it could not only identify and separate lakes of varying depths, but could recognize lakes as a class of objects spatially distinguishable from, say, trees.

He calls this Recursive Hierarchical Segmentation, and it has been used to analyze Earth-imaging data from NASA's Landsat and Terra spacecraft to improve snow and ice maps, find potential locations for archeological digs, etc. It is now being applied to medical imaging to improve mammograms, ultrasounds, digital x-rays, and more.

"My original concept was geared to Earth science," says Tilton, who was at first skeptical that his algorithm could enhance, say, mammography. "I never thought it would be used for medical imaging."

Then he processed cell images and saw details not visible in unprocessed displays of those images. "The cell features stood out real clearly, and this made me realize that Bartron was onto to something."

Bartron Medical Imaging, based out of Connecticut, has since developed the new MED-SEG system, which the FDA recently cleared for use by trained professionals to process images alongside other images, though stipulated that the system should not (at least yet) be used for primary image diagnosis.

Bartron, which first studied the software through Goddard's Innovative Partnerships Program Office, licensed the patented technology in 2003 to create a system that would differentiate hard-to-see medical image details. It then began to work with doctors to analyze CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, etc.… Read more

Medical records software developer ClearPractice has been working directly with Apple to develop Nimble, the electronic medical records (EMR) app it released this week that the company says is the first to run natively in iOS on the iPad.

Nimble incorporates throwback features from ClearPractice's software-as-a-service EMR software, which has been around since 2006 and includes scheduling, tracking inpatient rounds, prescribing meds, and reviewing/ordering lab results. But it is updated with not only an iPad-specific user interface, but a series of additional fields, such as Name, Location, Admit Date, Floor, Bed, Admission Status, and Claim Status.

To comply … Read more

The Dell Streak is on its way to your doctor's office.

Dell announced on Wednesday that its Electronic Medical Records and Mobile Clinical Computing service, which allows physicians and hospitals to access patient information, will be integrated into its 5-inch tablet. The company cited a recent Manhattan Research study, saying that 64 percent of medical professionals use smartphones. Dell wants to tap into that market with its Streak tablet.

The company contends that its Android-based Streak tablet would work well for physicians. Dell hopes to sell medical professionals on the tablet's mobility, as well as its ability to &… Read more

A new national study has found that one in five adolescents now suffers some sort of hearing impairment, according to a report Tuesday on NPR's All Things Considered program. That's a scary statistic.

In the August 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston analyzed federal data collected from national yearly surveys of the health of American citizens. The conclusion is chilling: "The prevalence of hearing loss among a sample of U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 19 years was greater in 2005-2006 compared with … Read more

They may have started with Atari or early Nintendo devices, but the majority of today's medical students grew up in a world with video games. "They are actually more comfortable in image-rich environments than with text," says Frederick Kron, a former medical educator and the president of Medical Cyberworlds.

And according to a survey of more than 200 medical students at the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin at Madison, 77 percent say they would participate in a multiplayer online health care simulator if said simulator helped them accomplish an important goal.

Moreover, a whopping 98 … Read more

A good appointment system is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to keeping a busy medical practice running smoothly. Medical Calendar is a basic program that lets users keep track of appointments for multiple providers within a practice. It's not the most sophisticated or full-featured program we've seen, but it does work well for what it is.

The program's interface is attractive and fairly easy to navigate. We liked that users could enter multiple medical providers and choose from a variety of avatars, making them easy to identify at a glance. … Read more

This is Oscar. The cute little feline from Jersey in the U.K. had an accident about nine months ago when a combine harvester ran him over while he napped in a field, severing the bottom part of his two back legs.

But Oscar is plucky. His local vet, Peter Haworth, consulted another vet, Noel Fitzpatrick of Surrey, England, who has an advanced practice. They discussed Oscar's case via phone and e-mail, and after viewing X-rays and photos, they reasoned that Oscar was a good candidate for a cutting-edge new procedure Fitzpatrick had been developing: bionic cat legs.

They'… Read more

I'm a lucky guy. I wear glasses, and I like wearing them. They're sort of my way of saying, "Screw you, world, I'm an actual nerd!" My glasses are big, they're black, and they make me look so good that I've destroyed all of my mirrors because I just can't stand it. But they're single index, meaning they're not bifocals. Undoubtedly, though, one of these days (probably around the time I hit 40, according to the research), I'll need to upgrade.

But maybe I won't be getting bifocals … Read more