Hospital data from a wide range of disciplines, departments and specialties strongly influences crucial decision-making and planning. Agfa HealthCare’s Business Intelligence solution, for example, uses data to measure, understand and predict developments, and aims to present this information in an accessible and transparent way so that administrators need not even ask for in-house generated…
Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of fatalities in Germany. Medical wearables which measure vital parameters such as the blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygen levels in real time could help detect these diseases early, and treat them on a preventive basis. In daily life and during sports activities, in the form of fitness bracelets or smart watches, these small, portable…
Coronavirus-associated concerns dominate the Top 10 list of important technology hazard risks for hospitals, in an annual report published by ECRI, a nonprofit technology Pennsylvania research firm. The list is derived from ECRI’s team of technology experts who monitor hospital and healthcare organizations, and published to inform healthcare facilities about important safety issues involving…
In many ways, our brain and our digestive tract are deeply connected. Feeling nervous may lead to physical pain in the stomach, while hunger signals from the gut make us feel irritable. Recent studies have even suggested that the bacteria living in our gut can influence some neurological diseases. Modeling these complex interactions in animals such as mice is difficult to do, because their…
Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston have discovered what may be the Achilles' heel of the coronavirus, a finding that may help close the door on COVID-19 and possibly head off future pandemics.
Medical imaging IT and cybersecurity company Sectra has received an order for its digital pathology solution from Amsterdam UMC in the Netherlands. This follows a recently announced radiology imaging contract. With radiology and pathology in one joint solution, Amsterdam UMC will be able to conveniently share images and information between the two medical specialties, enabling efficient…
Could surgical procedures for hip or knee arthritis be improved? IT specialists at Leipzig University Hospital’s Innovation Center for Computer-Assisted Surgery (ICCAS), and physicians in the Department of Orthopaedic, Trauma and Plastic Surgery department, analysed and optimised the operating room (OR) setup, legwork and instruments handling. We asked project manager Juliane Neumann, at…
The corona pandemic, which has been rampant for a year, and the Ebola epidemic of 2017 have shown the value of online courses for the rapid worldwide dissemination of life-saving knowledge, the German Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) points out. One year ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its first online course on Covid-19 diseases. HPI head Prof. Christoph Meinel reflects on its…
Hundreds of cancer patients have benefitted from using computer algorithms to manage their symptoms and improve their wellbeing in a unique UK trial. The early stage colorectal, breast or gynecological cancer patients took part in the trial of the eRAPID system, developed by the University of Leeds, which allowed them to report online symptoms from home and receive instant advice on whether to…
The search for antiviral agents against the new coronavirus is in full swing. Using a novel approach, Bioinformaticians have now discovered a weakness in the virus that could be exploited for drug development. In a computer model, the scientists discovered a human enzyme that is crucial for the virus. When it was switched off in the model, the virus could no longer multiply.
Doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge aim to drastically cut cancer waiting times by using artificial intelligence (AI) to automate lengthy radiotherapy preparations. The AI technology, known as InnerEye, is the result of an eight-year collaboration between researchers at Cambridge-based Microsoft Research, Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the University of Cambridge.
The deployment of conversational user interfaces (CUI) or chatbots to healthcare has started gaining momentum. It is fueled by the rising power of artificial intelligence (AI), the increasing popularity of mobile health applications as well as the desire for engagement and usability. The past few years have seen a myriad of innovations in chatbots that can automate and engage in human-like…
A great deal of solutions using new technologies have been released to help tackle the Covid-19 pandemic and a panel of international experts shared a few examples during the Barcelona Health Summit last October. Contact-tracing apps are an interesting option to manage a pandemic, but the creation process can take a long time and must meet several requirements, according to a Dutch official who…
In a virtual roundtable 5G discussion five healthcare IT experts, three senior executives from major USA medical centres and two consultants, discussed questions posed by members of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
The demand for more user-friendly ways to offer long-term ECG is growing and accelerated even more due to Covid-19. New devices and service models enable high quality ECG monitoring without patients having to leave their homes.
Although the Covid-19 pandemic has put wind behind the sails of AI in healthcare, domain specific tools are needed to build and deploy AI and harness its power in data handling, training workflows and reproducibility of state-of-the-art approaches, according to Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA Vice President of Healthcare at the technology firm NVIDIA, presenter of a public address at RSNA 2020.
Overcrowding is a challenge that faces numerous hospitals across the UK. The burden of managing occupancy rates can immediately turn into a major issue that puts immense pressure on hospital staff, patients and their families alike. Studies show that when capacity rates increase above 92.5%, the death rate in hospitals can expand exponentially. It can represent one-in-seven mortalities amongst…
Digital epidemiology is on the frontline in the Covid-19 war, with innovative techniques used to observe and monitor this viral spread across populations. Its increasingly important role was outlined to a virtual session at Medica 2020 by theoretical biologist Professor Dirk Brockmann. In a keynote presentation ‘Perspective of digital epidemiology – opportunities, promises and challenges’,…
MEDICA in Düsseldorf is a world-leading platform for the medical technology business and the healthcare industry and has always been one of the places to be for the entire sector as it covers current digital health trends, innovative products and services for linking all of the major stakeholders in medical care. Consequently, digital health is a mainstay of virtual.MEDICA, which, due to the…
Ultrasound specialists at the Hainan Hospital of Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital in Sanya and the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital of Hangzhou successfully conducted robotic tele-ultrasound examinations over a 5G network of four patients with confirmed and suspected Covid-19. They were in Tongxiang and Wuhan, cities some 2600+ kilometres distant.
International medical imaging IT and cybersecurity company Sectra has signed a digital pathology contract with the Norwegian healthcare region Helse Vest RHF. The healthcare region already uses Sectra’s enterprise imaging solution, which will now include digital pathology. The region-wide solution allows Helse Vest to share resources among healthcare providers, and using the same system for…
The new Joint Imaging Platform – JIP for short – is a flexible, decentralized analysis platform for medical images. The JIP was initially developed for the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) sites. It is designed to facilitate cross-institutional imaging projects and to help meet the technical and legal challenges associated with the joint use of imaging data.
Sony has announced an update to its vendor-neutral medical imaging platform Nucleus. This version built in direct response to the pandemic, introduces remote patient observation with new recording functionalities for use in the operating room (OR), Intensive Care Units (ICU), endoscopy suites, interventional rooms or anywhere else in the hospital.
A study published by The BMJ finds that machine learning models have similar performance to traditional statistical models and share similar uncertainty in making risk predictions for individual patients.
Olympus Corporation announced the launch of Endo-Aid, a platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that includes the endoscopy application Endo-Aid CADe (computer-aided detection) for the colon. This new AI platform enables real-time display of automatically detected suspicious lesions and works in combination with Olympus’ recently introduced EVIS X1, its most advanced endoscopy system…