As many nations struggle to keep COVID-19 infection numbers down through increasingly tough public health measures, some point out the island of Taiwan presents an example of how to be prepared in the event of a pandemic. Located less than 150 kilometres from the original viral source – China – Taiwan has seen far fewer cases of the coronavirus in the past month, with a much lower infection…
Human factor aspects of reprocessing can never be completely avoided yet staff can be empowered to reduce the risk of infection. This was an important conclusion established at a multidisciplinary expert panel held at Pentax Medical’s R&D Center, discussing infection risk mitigation in endoscopy. This panel of experts, consisting of physicians, nurses, microbiologists, infection control…
Capturing all the possibilities brought by AI long-seemed a faraway dream for hospitals, since most artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are vendor dependent, thus complicating their deployment in clinical practice. However, the dream has become reality at Utrecht UMC, which launched a pioneering AI infrastructure able to monitor information and run any algorithm from its HIS, RIS and PACS.…
EIT Health and McKinsey & Company have published a Europe-wide report “Transforming healthcare with AI: The impact on the workforce and organisations” exploring the impact of AI on healthcare practitioners, as well as the implications and obstacles for scaling AI in healthcare organisations and systems.
Errors in breast imaging: the subject is vexing. How to avoid or address errors are also concerning. These subjects lay at the core of a presentation to radiologists during the recent annual congress of the British Institute of Radiology, when consultant radiologist Dr Rosalind Given-Wilson described the how, where, and what of errors or near misses, along with their impact on patients and…
It’s time to cut through the hype surrounding artificial intelligence and begin to understand the reality in terms of application in radiology. With many different algorithms available that cover a growing array of diagnostic and interpretational areas, Dr Anjum Ahmed believes hospitals and care providers now need to ask the right questions when weighing up AI implementation in their clinical…
Thermo Fisher Scientific and NanoPin Technologies, Inc. have entered into a collaborative relationship to advance blood-based infectious disease detection technology through the development of highly sensitive liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based workflows. Through the detection of disease-related antigens directly from patient blood samples, NanoPin's unique diagnostic platform…
Refining hospital processes saves costs, improves workflows and patient care plus outcomes. To realise those aims, a hospital in the Netherlands has installed an Internet of Things (IoT) mesh network. A pilot project initiated by a Dutch children’s hospital has enlisted an entire ward as an Internet of Things (IoT) playground, to experiment with various type of tags, sensors and switches in a…
Although some people foresee artificial intelligence (AI) easing medical workloads, many challenges arise before that dream can begin. Dr Felix Nensa and Dr Bram Stieltjes described such hurdles in a session held during a SITEM School Symposium in Bern, Switzerland. Whilst AI has potential, actually delivering that asset in to routine medical practice remains a major challenge.
Duodenoscopes have been long recognized to require precise execution of reprocessing instructions to properly clean and disinfect. According to Beilenhoff, et al. (2018), it is crucial to follow the manufacturer’s Instructions for Use (“IFU”) at all times to make sure the duodenoscopes are properly cleaned. Yet, IFUs are not always easy to follow.
In a busy hospital, thousands of devices and equipment are on the move every hour of every day. Beds, blood pressure monitors, wheelchairs, or infusion pumps can be taken to different locations and, at times, even ‘lost’. Keeping track of vital tools is a challenge, particularly given the massive throughput of patients and staff shift changes. However, innovative tracking systems are evolving…
Touring the laboratory at the Clínic de Barcelona Hospital, Dr José Luis Bedini revealed how the latest Siemens Healthineers technology has transformed workflow to deliver quicker results, improve efficiency, conserve energy, and thus make the team of technicians very happy! In recent months the Core Lab Operative Area at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona has undergone a transformation due to the…
The need to effectively address HCI – Human-Computer Interaction – is emerging as the key challenge in creating a productive and efficient laboratory of the future. The subject was examined in detail by Andreas Schuller from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, during a conference in Barcelona, which brought together more than 1,000 scientists and technologists.
We talked to Dr Annika Blank, Consultant and Lean green belt, about eight-year experience with the concept and optimisation of processes, the implementation of digital pathology and a voice recognition system for patient management. "The biggest and most cost intensive step taken to optimise workflows was the refurbishment of our laboratory, which was completed in 2016. This allowed us to…
FUJIFILM displayed its evolving portfolio of medical informatics and Enterprise Imaging innovations, by presenting REiLI, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Medical Imaging initiative at HIMSS & Health 2.0 Conference.
IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A.) announces the launch of myQA iON at the 2019 PTCOG conference. myQA iON significantly reduces the time needed for patient QA: The use of PT machine log files, process automation, task-based workflows, and the latest web technologies significantly increase QA efficiency while ensuring patient treatment safety. Compared to conventional detector measurements (at…
More than 16 years of experience in the complex matter of workflows within clinical labs leads to the latest generation of ASP SortPro tube sorter. To make the investment in sorting devices efficient, these must be integrated perfectly into the workflow. The ASP team sold hundreds of tube sorters to clinical labs and hospitals worldwide. In all these installations the German engineers have…
Carestream Health will showcase its latest version of Vue Clinical Collaboration Platform at the HIMSS 2019 tradeshow (Booth #2741) being held February 11-15 in Orlando, Fla. The latest release of its Clinical Collaboration Platform includes a zero-footprint offering with additional modules, as well as report analytics using natural language processing (NLP) to enable data-mining of diagnostic…
Pete Valenti, Hologic’s division president of breast and skeletal health solutions, talks about how AI is driving innovation in breast health technology. Underpinning that evolution more recently has been the acquisition of two organisations – digital specimen radiography specialists Faxitron Bioptics and BioZorb marker manufacturer Focal Therapeutics.
International SOS Foundation Launches New White Paper, endorsed by the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth and authored by Leading Legal Authority, Nathaniel Lacktman, Esq. and the International SOS Group Medical Director for Assistance, Dr Neil Nerwich.
Beckman Coulter launched the first and only cloud-based middleware offered by a major in-vitro diagnostics organization, designed to help low-volume laboratories deliver timely results for patient care by enhancing consistency, accuracy and efficiency.
Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) created a veritable hype. However, that initial awe was increasingly mixed with apprehension about the potential effects of AI on healthcare. In radiology, bleak dystopias are conjured up with AI replacing the human radiologist. A scenario that Dr Felix Nensa considers premature, to say the least.
Often referred to as the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of histopathology, the sample entry has posed considerable challenges in pre-analytics for several decades. We visited the Munich-based lab automation start-up Inveox GmbH. Time-intense, highly manual processes in labs are expensive, error-prone and the most common reason for irregularities in cancer diagnoses. In Germany alone, every year hundreds…
Synergy is key to ensuring Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play a critical role in helping radiologists raise their game. Integrating AI with innovative platforms to optimise workflow and make diagnosis more efficient, whilst also creating more accurate reports, offers enormous potential benefits to patients, clinicians and hospitals, according to industry specialist Tomer Zonens, Worldwide…
The IN-TIME study remains the only major trial to show a clear mortality benefit for remote monitoring in heart failure (HF) patients. A recent analysis by Hussar et al. suggests workflow processes such as daily, multiparametric data transmitted using Biotronik Home Monitoring, may be key to this benefit. Dr Wilfried Mullens, Head of the Heart Failure and Cardiac Rehabilitation Section at…