Are surgeons still opting for surgical procedures solely for medical need – or are economics forcing their decisions? That vexatious question, posed at the 129th Congress of the German, was spurned at the outset by Markus W Büchler MD, President of the Society and Medical Director of the Department of General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery at University Hospital Heidelberg. ‘We surgeons…
In the lead up to further talks on medicine pricing, Stephen Whitehead, Chief Executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has accused the UK government of being too focused on encouraging breakthrough drugs at the expense of significant gains for patients from incremental innovation in medicines. ‘The government wants to target resources at big breakthroughs, but…
Her Majesty the Queen officially opened the new state-of-the-art South West Acute Hospital, in the Northern Ireland town of Enniskillen on June 26th. The £276 million hospital is the first hospital to be built in Northern Ireland in more than a decade.
Integrated care in Europe is primarily offered in regional networks. An international symposium in Berlin showed that new forms of care require innovative ideas and a tenacious team, Susanne Werner reports
A new report from Siemens Financial Services (SFS) shows that annual growth rates for global medical equipment leasing and renting have now outstripped growth in the medical device market as a whole. The global medical leasing market is currently expanding at a rate of 6.50%, outpacing the 4.98% growth rate of the global medical device market.
A new survey brings fresh insight into radiologists’ thoughts on teleradiology in Europe. Conducted by radiologist Dr Erik Ranschaert from the Jeroen Bosch Hospital, Den Bosch, The Netherlands, the findings were presented in March to a Special Focus Session at the European Congress of Radiology in Vienna. Mark Nicholls reports.
The European operating room solutions market, comprising surgical lights, surgical tables and pendants, is primarily a replacement market. Although tightening budgets are hindering market prospects, the need for state-of-the-art operating rooms are creating lucrative growth opportunities.
Embarking on any business enterprise is never a small feat, but when that business is healthcare the task becomes gargantuan – and even greater if opening a healthcare facility in a country where the economies of scale create immediate difficulties. There’s also the problem of the main competitor being the free-of-charge public sector.
Modernisation and a financing model facilitate savings of up to 50% in primary energy consumption. Every year, European hospitals face energy costs in the €billions. In Germany, for instance, the sum is €1.7 billion.
If the hopes of inventors are to be believed, in around 20 years’ time there will be ‘real artificial lungs -- for now the endpoint of a history that began 84 years ago with the invention of the iron lung. Until then, non-invasive and invasive mechanical respiration will continue to dominate the hospital, complemented by extracorporeal procedures for blood oxygenation and decarbonisation,…
In many hospitals medical specialists from different fields work closely together. To give them access to centrally held information and patient data collected from admittance to discharge, hospitals increasingly use IT solutions such as the electronic patient’s record (EPR). Such installations demand an extensive data security policy and implementation plan.
Italian healthcare is still hitting the headlines. Although Prime Minister Mario Monti announced plans for healthcare reform at the end of 2011 – effectively cutting healthcare spend by €2.5 billion, as well as increasing the retirement age – the on-going exposure of hospitals and emergency care failures is drawing huge attention and has even prompted investigations by state prosecutors.…
A €35,000 DRG reimbursement for TAVI has put Germany in the lead for this procedure – and prompted sharp competition and disputes between cardiologists and cardio-surgeons, Holger Zorn reports.
ILJIN, the shareholder of Alpinion Medical Systems, which began as a Korean die-casting and electrical business 44 years ago, is today an international high-tech company.
Swiss surgical patients can check on and correct their treatment data and thereby facilitate reliable hospital benchmarking. In 1995, surgeons in the Biel, Burgdorf and Zurich Limmattal hospitals founded the Working Group for Quality Assurance in Surgery (AQC) to collect and compare reatment data.
Cuts in pharmaceuticals spending, doctors’ jobs threats, A&E closures, non-payments to medical suppliers – can a new government save their country and its NHS by massive stringency and tax hikes? Our correspondent Dr Eduardo de la Sota Guimón reports.
Philips and MAQUET mark milestone with 50th shipment of Philips’ hybrid operating room (OR) with MAQUET’s surgical table to Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
Seriously injured trauma patients transported to hospitals by helicopter are 16 percent more likely to survive than similarly injured patients brought in by ground ambulance, new Johns Hopkins research shows.
Abbott Laboratories has obtained European Union approval to market its rapid, Plex-ID instrument, along with three assays for use on the system.
To gain a deeper understanding of Asian and especially South Korean innovations in the healthcare market EUROPEAN HOSPITAL visited the 28th Korea International Medical and Hospital Equipment Show (KIMES) on 16 to 19 February. Executive Director Daniela Zimmermann had the opportunity to speak with Jae-Moon Jo, team leader in medical equipment development and Senior Vice President of Samsung…
Professor Timothy Evans, a leading intensive care specialist believes regionalising critical care into major centres across England and Wales is an ‘inevitable step’ as the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) seeks to make the best use of resources, Mark Nicholls reports.
Currently there is a truly enormous hole in the ground in the city of Wiener Neustadt, Austria, but by summer 2012 MedAustron, one of the most modern centres for ion therapy and research in Europe, is to be built here.
Integrated information management reduces risks and cuts cost, Finn Snyder reports. Intensive care units (ICUs) are vital in healthcare. ICUs in US hospitals, for example, treat six million of the sickest and oldest patients annually, according to a document recently published for the Massachusetts Technology Park Corporation, which states that choices about how to manage them carry high stakes:
‘Before each ward round my students and I wash our hands’ – so said Ignaz Philip Semmelweis in the mid-19th century, in his drive to reduce the hospital mortality rate. Today, the World Health Organisation states that ‘Clean care is safer care’ – and yet, particularly in recent times, the lack of hygiene in numerous hospitals has resulted in mortalities. Who is to blame? What can be…
The German Association of the Diagnostics Industry (VDGH) announces encouraging results from a new member survey, Susanne Werner reports.