Cardiology tends to be surrounded by a maze of regulations, responsibilities and red tape. Leave it to the traditionally mercantile Dutch to streamline things. Case in point: HartKliniek, a chain of medical specialist diagnosis and treatment centres in the Netherlands which aim to transform cardiology to a more effective model – less personnel, more time for patients. We spoke with Menno and…
While the debate on the added value of robotics and robot-assisted systems has been in full swing for a while now, the demand for robotic surgery throughout Europe’s medical institutions continues to grow exponentially, particularly in specialties like visceral surgery and orthopaedics. But what exactly are the benefits and downsides involved with the use of surgical robots?
As COVID-19 infections begin to rise again, a novel testing strategy proposed by researchers at the University of Oxford at the start of the pandemic has become urgent once again. The strategy aims to bring the virus’s reproduction number (‘R’) down to below 1, by concentrating testing resources on particular groups in the population that are most likely to spread the infection to others,…
Royal Philips announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Intact Vascular, Inc., a U.S.-based developer of medical devices for minimally-invasive peripheral vascular procedures. Intact Vascular will enhance Philips’ image-guided therapy portfolio, combining Philips’ interventional imaging platform and diagnostic and therapeutic devices with Intact Vascular’s unique, specialized…
Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, Post-Pandemic Global Healthcare Market Outlook, 2020, forecasts that 2020 will be an unforgiving but transformational year for the healthcare industry. As the world grapples with a global emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is expected to witness a drop in growth from 5.3% to 0.6% in 2020, with revenues remaining below the…
SymphonyAI Group, an operating group of leading business-to-business AI companies, announced the acquisition of TeraRecon, the market-leading advanced visualization and AI solution provider for medical imaging. As SymphonyAI Group’s seventh portfolio company, TeraRecon has a charter to establish a new portfolio of healthcare AI solutions focused on medical imaging. Using newly patented AI and…
Critics of the pharmaceutical industry say it is misaligned with public interest. So is it time to nationalise the sector? Experts debate the issue in The BMJ today. Mariana Mazzucato and Henry Lishi Li at the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose believe the state should play a greater role in the sector. They acknowledge that the private sector is crucial to bringing cutting-edge…
Fujifilm Corporation announced that it has entered into an agreement with Hitachi, Ltd. to acquire Hitachi’s Diagnostic Imaging-related Business to further expand its Healthcare business. Prior to the acquisition, Hitachi will establish a company and implement an absorption-type company split whereby the New Company will absorb the Business.
In recent years, whenever the German media reported on laboratory medicine, questions consistently arose: ‘How can excessive costs for lab services be cut?’ and ‘How could money saved be distributed among other medical specialists and general medicine practitioners (GPs)?’ The questions are myopic in their failure to address two important aspects of laboratory medicine – its…
Vincent Vidal (Marseille, France) and colleagues have demonstrated the in vivo feasibility of arterial embolization with permanent and absorbable suture fragments, leading them to propose what they have termed the “FAIR-Embo” concept to the wider interventional radiology (IR) community. Writing in Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology (CVIR), they conclude: “Embolization by absorbable…
Nations with strong women’s rights are more likely to have better health and faster growth than those who don’t promote and protect these values, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open. This trend is evident in even in resource-poor countries, say the researchers. While many parts of the world have made good economic progress, women’s rights have often been overlooked, say…
Formed in 2007 – under the directives of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President, Prime Minister, and Ruler of Dubai, UAE – the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) oversees the healthcare system. Driven by the private sector, the country’s healthcare growth is a notable success story. We asked Dr Ibtesam Al Bastaki, Director, Investments & PPP’s at DHA about the vision for…
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) expands its Synergy programme to provide continuing education and further advance the hospital pharmacy profession throughout the world. The next event in the series, a Synergy Masterclass, will focus on "Procurement, tendering and decision-making processes in the hospital setting" and will take place on 4-5 October 2019 in…
A team of researchers from Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University (UVSQ), Inserm and Pasteur Institute has been able to provide for the first time an accurate estimate of both the incidence (annual number of new cases) and added direct cost of infections due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria in patients hospitalised in French hospitals during 2015 and 2016.
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…
The Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, will be launching a new report by the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) on introducing more automation in the NHS. As families and businesses face a 50 year high tax burden, the government has a duty to provide good value for money. The NHS is an essential service which needs to see further improvement and less money wasted.…
Engineers have developed a prototype endoscope which they say could cut the cost of manufacture from £80,000 to just £40. The redesigned device has the potential to revolutionise cancer screening in low-to-middle income countries where the cost of equipment makes screening prohibitively expensive. The endoscope is designed to see inside the upper part of the digestive tract for signs of…
NHS organisations are entering into working partnerships with drug companies, but they are not making the details, and even existence, of many of these deals available to the public, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today. These partnerships are used to support a variety of initiatives, including several projects to review the medication of people with ADHD, and more than 20 projects that…
Carestream Health has signed an agreement with Royal Philips to sell its healthcare information systems (HCIS) business to Philips. This unit includes imaging IT solutions to multi-site hospitals, radiology services providers, imaging centers and specialty medical clinics around the world. The business has developed strong customer relationships in attractive, high-growth healthcare segments and…
Utz Tillmann, director-general of the German chemical industry association VCI, deplores the rejection of the Brexit agreement by the British Parliament: “This vote brings us close to a no-deal Brexit. I very much hope that even in the current heated atmosphere the British politicians will still find a way to prevent a worst case scenario. London and Brussels should remain in dialogue now.”…
Integrated healthcare provider Primary Health Care has joined forces with Siemens Healthineers to deploy more than 70 Atellica Solution immunoassay and clinical chemistry analyzers. This marks Siemens Healthineers largest contract for in vitro diagnostics testing in Australia, and one of its most robust sales of the Atellica Solution. The analyzers are integrated with Atellica Diagnostics IT…
Homecare in the Netherlands worsened. ‘The organisations grew bigger, involving more and expensive management,’ observed nurse Jos de Blok. ‘Registration procedures became unnecessarily complicated. I enjoyed my job when I started in 1986, but that feeling changed. I knew there should be an easier way, without managers and at a lower cost. So, in 2006, I began the Buurtzorg concept.’ This…
Brexit is bad for our health and can be prevented, argue experts in The BMJ today. Public health doctors, Mike Gill and Martin McKee, together with Mark Malloch Brown of Best for Britain and Fiona Godlee, The BMJ’s Editor in chief, say “whatever our views as individuals, or how we voted in the 2016 referendum, we can no longer escape the fact that Brexit in any form so far discussed is bad…
Nearly 70 percent of the U.S. adult population meets the definition of overweight or obese, but a new study by University of Arkansas researchers shows the problem isn’t randomly distributed across the country. Instead, obesity is concentrated in areas with social and demographic factors that create what researchers term an “ecology of disadvantage.”
Plans to bring together University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust - which runs the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham - and Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, which manages Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull hospitals, have been given the green light from the trusts’ respective Boards of Directors, with the decision cleared by both Councils of Governors. The enlarged…