News • Politics
UK urgently needs a joined up approach to recruitment of international doctors
The UK urgently needs a joined up and strategic approach to the recruitment of international health professionals, argue experts in The BMJ.
Workflow
News • Workflow
Advanced autosampler and liquid handling system improves lab productivity
Laboratories can now automate manual steps and achieve high sample throughput and high productivity with a new autosampler and liquid handling system intended for use in pharmaceutical, contract research, food safety, environmental, clinical research and forensic workflows.
Article • Value based lab medicine
Meeting the challenge of modern laboratory demands
Faced with the constant challenge of increasing demand and a backdrop of falling reimbursement, Mayo Clinic in the United States has adopted an innovative and proactive approach to managing its laboratory services. That has seen the US-based medical giant embrace a variety of tools and reference materials to aid clinician decision making, improve care and lower costs. Dr Curt Hanson, Chief…
Article • Hospital tracking system
Embracing technology to improve patient flow
Digital bed management systems being trialled in NHS hospitals to improve patient flow are showing early signs of success. Innovations such as patient tracking and real-time location of equipment and staff to help make hospital stays more efficient are being tested at 10 sites. Project leader Bernard Quinn is particularly optimistic about technology that monitors bed availability and patient flow.
Sponsored • Innovation
A unique imaging platform for dynamic X-ray applications
Over the last 60 years, medicine has made major advances in diagnosis, treatment and surgery. Radiography and Fluoroscopy imaging are essential to medical science. As a result, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s) need to deliver ever more sophisticated turnkey platforms for their systems which are dedicated to end-users. Thales has designed a platform that meets all of these needs. ArtPix…
News • Wayfinding study
Virtual reality might help reorganise hospital layouts
With support from a research grant from the Academy of Architecture for Health Foundation, a West Virginia University researcher is leading a study that will help address the functional complexity of large hospitals. Shan Jiang, assistant professor of landscape architecture in the School of Design and Community Development, and her research team will utilize immersive virtual reality technologies…
Article • Initiative
Knowledge dissemination key to defeating cancer?
Half of cancers can be avoided if institutions would exchange knowledge, according to Joxel García, executive director of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who opened the Center’s meeting in Madrid in October 2016. Technology has progressed enormously and there has never been that much knowledge of cancer to prevent it and find treatment tools.
Article • Profession
The growing role of a hospitalist
New words are consistently spun out in the USA and frequently assimilated into ‘American English’. Take the term ‘hospitalist’ (little used in European English), which was coined by the renowned academic physician Robert M Wachter (University of California, San Francisco) and his colleague Lee Goldman, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996. Lisa Chamoff…
Sponsored • Motorised system
Protec brings movement into X-ray
A motorised PRS 500 B X-ray system, added to the portfolio of Protec, specialist in traditional analogue X-ray film processing machines, ‘combines efficiency, high work precision and optimum operating comfort,’ the manufacturer reports. ‘In addition to the user-friendly touch display, it also offers an automatic retraction of the tubular column, which adapts to the position of the bucky in…
News • Digitalization
Carestream introduces upgrade to DR
Carestream Health makes converting to DR easy and affordable with the launch of its Carestream DRX-Transportable System/Lite. The system equips facilities to convert room-based or mobile imaging systems to digital radiology through use of a wireless tablet PC that gives users complete control of the X-ray system and displays diagnostic images as they are acquired.
Article • Computational pathology
The tipping point for digital pathology
Digital pathology has been the next big thing for about a decade. Yet, today only a few pathology laboratories are fully equipped to digitise their workflow, mainly for legal or financial reasons.
Article • Digital Pathology
Europe’s most advanced histopathology unit
Among the earliest centres to embrace the concept of digital pathology, the Leeds Digital Pathology Project began in 2003 thanks to a Department of Health grant. Today the centre is Europe’s largest.
News • Cloud computing
New tools to ease lab work
Beckman Coulter Diagnostics introduces a new integrated system of technologies and capabilities called DxONE, designed to ease data access and usability. DxONE was created in response to the increasing challenges faced by laboratory technicians to expedite result times, reduce costs, maneuver personnel shortages and navigate network consolidations.
News • Preventing errors
Writing prescriptions by hand might be a really bad idea, study says
In a small study of opioid prescriptions filled at a Johns Hopkins Medicine outpatient pharmacy, researchers found that handwritten orders for the drugs contribute heavily to a trio of prescribing and processing errors in contrast to those created electronically.
Sponsored • compact & clever
Premium Portable Ultrasound
Konica Minolta, leading company in the medical imaging market, introduces its Premium Portable Ultrasound solution, Sonimage HS1.
Sponsored • Workflow
Opt for state-of-the-art visual technology
In today’s digitised world, hospitals are already embracing the benefits which technology brings to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Against a backdrop of stretched resources and operational scrutiny hospital managers are able to address the needs of multiple stakeholders through hospital-wide digitalisation.
Article • Intervention
Hybrid ORs: not equally beneficial for all facilities
The hybrid operating room is one of the most innovative developments in the surgical sector. The combination of interventional and minimally invasive surgical procedures is exciting for many clinical disciplines. The room design, intraoperative imaging techniques as well as interdisciplinary collaboration play a pivotal role in this.
Sponsored • MALDI Tissuetyper
The rapifleX is now available as TOF/TOF
The MALDI Tissuetyper is a system that records spatially resolved mass spectra directly from tissue. This allows the direct measurement of proteins, lipids and other molecular classes without the need for antibodies or molecular probes. This results in highly multiplexed datasets in which hundreds or thousands of compounds are measured simultaneously.
Sponsored • Automation
Proven Practices for Lab Automation Success
Cost constraints, higher workloads, and a shortage of qualified staff are three distinct market trends driving demand for greater efficiency in the laboratory. The goals of automation are to make workflow more efficient, improve the turnaround time and predictability, and reduce errors - all while accommodating future growth. Automation also frees up staff for other activities. Report: Franz Walt
Article • Automated tasks
Fast, efficient, cheaper microbiology diagnostics
A fully automated clinical microbiology laboratory system went into service at Heidelberg University Hospital this April. Produced by medical technology firm BD Life Science, this first installation at a German university hospital will play a major role in a study exploring the potential benefits of lab automation in containing the spread of pathogens in a hospital.
Sponsored • IT
LabCentre - agility and accuracy for all disciplines
Laboratories are an essential part of effective modern healthcare. They provide clinicians with vital information that helps them make life-saving decisions, diagnose conditions and monitor patient treatment.
Article • Emergency
POC ultrasound flies to work
The massive earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 killed more than 9,000 people and injured more than 23,000. Within days, medical teams from other countries had offered services to the disaster relief effort.
Article • Pediatrics
Children distracted by DVDs in scanner
The Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, has installed a Siemens Healthcare Magnetom Aera 1.5-Tesla system incorporating special features to help relax younger patients. Within months of the installation of the wide bore machine, which has comfort enhancing features, there has been a significant fall in the number of patients aged 4-17 requiring general anaesthetic ahead of undergoing an…
News • Patient comfort
New MRI coils decrease scan time
New, screen-printed, flexible MRI coils may be able to reduce the amount of time it takes to get an MRI scan. Researchers funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have developed light and flexible MRI coils that produce high quality MRI images and in the future could lead to shorter MRI scan time periods.
Article • Futuristic
Humber River Hospital is oh so smart
‘Humber River Hospital, Toronto, Canada, could come straight out of a science fiction series that provides Star Trek-like healthcare services with hall-cruising robots delivering food, medications and supplies to staff, electrochromic windows, video conference capabilities at patients’ bedsides and real-time location systems, to name but a few futuristic features. Yet, this is now and for…