Heath care

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y.--When you think about diverse issues like river management during drought, urban traffic prediction, cocoa crop maximization, and how to win at Jeopardy, IBM might not be the first company that comes to mind.

But as unlikely as it might seem, Big Blue has its hands in all four of those areas and many, many more, all part of its IBM Research division, a sprawling organization that seeks to keep the company at the bleeding edge of the world's most pressing technology problems and to help it and its partners develop products aimed at solving … Read more

In 2006, Spyglass Consulting Group released a report, Trends in Mobile Communications, finding that 59 percent of physicians interviewed were using smartphones. Today, according to the firm's latest report, that figure has jumped to 94 percent.

"Physician smartphone adoption is occurring more rapidly than with members of the general public," said Gregg Malkary, managing director at Spyglass. Moreover, Malkary added, "Physicians are showing a clear preference [almost double] for using the Apple iPhone (44 percent) over the RIM BlackBerry (25 percent)."

A note of caution: the study's sample size is small. The "Point … Read more

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

A patch comprising hundreds of microscopic needles that dissolve into the skin could enable laypeople to administer vaccines not only easily but also painlessly, according to new research out of Georgia Tech and Emory University.

The patch contains roughly an array made of poly-vinyl pyrrolidone with 100 needles that are just 650 microns long. Once pressed into the skin, the microneedles immediately begin to dissolve in bodily fluids, and only the water-soluble backing remains. (Because the backing alone contains nothing sharp, it can simply be thrown away.)

The patches were studied on mice, and the results appeared online in the journal Nature Medicine. … Read more

IBM plans to announce on Thursday a $100 million three-year initiative--enlisting its own scientists and technologists alongside new hires in the medical field--to develop technologies and business processes for health care and insurance providers.

IBM points to its work in systems integration, services research, cloud computing, analytics, and emerging fields such as nanomedicine, as the drive behind an initiative it hopes will empower practitioners to spend more time on patient care.

In a news release, IBM says it plans to enlist the help of more than 100 researchers from its research laboratories scattered around the world--in Haifa, Tokyo, … Read more

We need to talk.

Some of you have obviously been a little restless lately. You've been leaving comments that betray your irritability. You've been lobbing misspelled accusations about my sexuality that might affect my ability to be nominated for the Supreme Court.

So I'd like you to consider whether this fractiousness might just be the fault of your new iPad. It seems that the revolution that's only just begun might one of the culprits behind something of a REMolution that appears to be preventing so many from enjoying a good night's sleep.

According to CNN, … Read more

Studies on hand-washing adherence are often nauseating. A lot of people seem to rarely wash their hands, even after leaving a bathroom. Several recent studies on hand hygiene in hospital settings find a hand hygiene adherence rate of around 40 percent among health care workers. To tap my vast vocabulary: yuck.

Let's see if a new iPhone and iPod Touch app makes a difference. Called the iScrub Lite 1.5, the free app released on the iTunes Store on Wednesday enables medical professionals to enter data on hand hygiene compliance, which has typically been accomplished via old-fashioned clipboards and note cards.

"The long-term goal of our research is to understand hand hygiene behavior and use the feedback to help improve rates," says Philip Polgreen, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa, where the app was developed. "This app can help standardize and streamline how observations are recorded."

In a nutshell, the app enables anyone who cares to monitor hand hygiene to record observational data, e-mail it as an Excel spreadsheet, follow World Health Organization compliance models, and customize data collection to reflect various locations, job roles, and notes.… Read more

When Peter Scharff didn't call his grandmother on a Wednesday or Thursday, the housekeeper found the 99-year-old woman on the kitchen floor Friday morning, where she had fallen and broken her hip two days prior.

While his grandmother recovered and lived to 105, Scharff was too disturbed by the narrow miss to forget about her agonizing hours on the floor. So he and his daughter, Rachel, devised a recently-launched automated phone service that, for $34.95 a month, will call an aging loved one twice a day to check in.

The concept behind FineThanx is intentionally simple: Those receiving … Read more

A new, decades-long study launches Thursday to investigate possible links between cell phone use and a series of health problems, including cancer and Alzheimer's.

Part of the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) Program, the cohort study on mobile communications (COSMOS), is set to follow at least 250,000 people aged 18 to 69 from five European countries for 20 to 30 years.

The study will specifically investigate the long-term impact of cell phone use on health, according to Mireille Toledano, co-principal investigator of the study from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. "For the … Read more