The 15th Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award in Robotics and Automation (IERA) goes to the “UVD Robot” by Blue Ocean Robotics. The collaborative robot autonomously drives around hospitals while emitting concentrated UV-C light to eliminate bacteria and other harmful microorganisms. As a result, hospitals can guarantee a 99.99% disinfection rate – reducing the risk for patients, staff and…
Staff shortages are among the most urgent healthcare problems. While digitisation might offer relief, unfortunately many hospitals lag behind in transforming their processes. As pressure mounts, the chorus is heard: ‘It’s high time for bold changes’. Indeed, this was the motto of the 2019 Western German Health Congress held in Cologne, an event that focuses on health policy and health…
Humanity is not doomed to submit to machines as in the Terminator movies – or at least not yet. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are still far from capable to imitate the human brain in all its complexity. Yet there is no doubt that AI will have a global and huge impact, particularly for professionals such as radiologists, who should look at AI critically and focus on the many new…
‘Hello, John? You are about to suffer a heart attack – please come to the hospital immediately!’ Will we, one day, be collected by emergency doctors even before we’re ill? If it was up to some AI experts at Medica, this could be the case – soon. Some obstacles must yet be overcome to achieve perfect AI predictions. Yet, during Medica, some IT experts ventured to gaze into a crystal ball.
A team of seasoned European healthcare entrepreneurs announced the foundation of MCG motion capture GmbH (MCG), the world’s first precision motion analysis and digital care company. The team combines decades of expertise in the medtech, digital health and biopharmaceutical industry, including big data integration, analysis for decision support, and long-standing experience in clinical trials as…
Artificial intelligence clinics and rehab bikes, exoskeletons and stylish protections masks – healthcare in Taiwan has many faces and facets as the international medical & healthcare exhibition Medical Taiwan in Taipei will show from 27 to 30 June 2019. We visited participating companies and hospitals to give you a sneak preview of some of the highlights that might well create a buzz in…
The current innovation process for medical technologies risks stifling the development of new devices, a leading researcher has argued. Alejandro Frangi, Professor of Computational Medicine at the University of Leeds, says the present system was geared towards small, incremental changes to existing technology or the development of new technologies that work for ‘most’ people but are…
Digitalization offers great potential for hospitals: diseases can be detected earlier, internal processes more efficiently organized, health expenditure reduced and patients better cared for. Artificial intelligence, robotics, sensor technology, big data, additive manufacturing or augmented reality - the technologies for this have long been available.
Scientists from King's and Cambridge have developed a catalogue of DNA mutation ‘fingerprints’ that could help doctors pinpoint the environmental culprit responsible for a patient’s tumour – including showing some of the fingerprints left in lung tumours by specific chemicals found in tobacco smoke. Our DNA, the human genome, comprises of a string of molecules known as nucleotides. These…
Hackers can access a patient's 3-D medical scans to add or remove images of malignant tumors, thus placing patients at risk of misdiagnoses. The new study, published by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev cybersecurity researchers, showed that the altered scans successfully deceived both radiologists and artificial intelligence algorithms used to aid diagnosis. A 3-D CT (computerized…
Stretchable electronics is emerging as a promising new technology for next-generation wearable devices, according to a review published in Science and Technology of Advanced Materials. The technology has many possible applications for healthcare, energy and the military. But there are several challenges involved in finding suitable materials and manufacturing methods. The biggest challenge for…
The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) has been touted as an important aid for healthcare for at least adecade. However, despite years of research and major technical and scientific advances we are only at the beginning of its use in a medical environment. For AI to function correctly huge amounts of relevant data need to be accessible to its algorithms. France is conscious of being behind…
Atrial fibrillation can be correctly detected using commercially available smartwatches. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers of the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) at the University Medicine Greifswald and researchers from the Basel University Hospital.
Scientists put AI systems to the test und provide a glimpse into the diverse “intelligence” spectrum observed in current AI models.
People with both diabetes and uncontrolled high blood pressure who used a smartphone app to monitor their blood pressure remotely, get tips on healthful living and connect with a health coach saw significant declines in their blood pressure within six weeks.
AI has made an extraordinary qualitative jump, particularly in machine learning. This can help quantify imaging data to tremendously advance both pathology and radiology. At a recent meeting in Valencia, delegates glimpsed what quantitative tools can bring to medical imaging, as leading Spanish researcher Ángel Alberich-Bayarri from imaging biomarker company Quibim unveiled part of his work.
Today the impressive development of drones by some people is happily regarded as the pinnacle of digitalisation in healthcare. Some groups are testing whether drones can quickly and safely deliver defibrillators to patients in need or whether they can transport laboratory samples or blood products. These developments catch lots of attention, but PD Dr Dominik Pförringer, trauma and orthopaedic…
Anesthesiologists at UT Southwestern Medical Center are helping to explore the use of hypnosis through virtual reality to lessen postoperative pain and anxiety in children.
Researchers have created a new machine learning software that can forecast the survival rates and response to treatments of patients with ovarian cancer. The artificial intelligence software, created by researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Melbourne, has been able to predict the prognosis of patients with ovarian cancer more accurately than current methods. It can also…
A team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety in Griffin has developed a machine-learning approach that could lead to quicker identification of the animal source of certain Salmonella outbreaks. In the research, published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Xiangyu Deng and his colleagues used more than a thousand genomes to predict the animal sources,…
A new Cedars-Sinai study shows that using Fitbit activity monitors to measure steps taken in the days after surgery can predict which patients leave the hospital sooner. The study of 100 patients, led by Timothy Daskivich, MD, director of Health Services Research for the Cedars-Sinai Department of Surgery, showed that each step taken towards 1,000 steps the day after surgery resulted in…
Currently many researchers and experts assume that the next great socio-economic revolution will include a completely new definition of health and how we define illnesses and therapies. “Our health system today can no longer be sustained in its existing form. It has become too expensive and too ineffective,” Professor Harald Schmidt, head of the Department of Pharmacology and Personalised…
Nuance Communications, Inc., at its Customer Experience Summit, revealed Project Pathfinder, a breakthrough technology that uses machine learning and Nuance AI innovation to increase the conversational intelligence of virtual assistants (VAs) and chatbots. Project Pathfinder reads existing chat logs and transcripts of conversations between agents and customers within contact centers, and…
Several research groups at Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) are working on digitally combating cancer. The main goal is to combine and jointly evaluate existing information. With 500,000 new cancer cases every year in Germany alone, it is worthwhile comparing experiences with different diagnostic and treatment methods, thus allowing more patients to benefit from the most promising approaches. In…
In intensive care units (ICU), some monitoring device or other is always sounding the alarm. Whether it’s a patient whose blood oxygen level is too low, someone in the next bed whose intracranial pressure is rising, or someone else whose blood pressure has taken a nosedive. Or perhaps just because a patient has shifted position in bed. False alarms like this last are all too common. They…