
Communication is Everything
It´s MEDICA time again: A top theme is the rapidly progressing networking process of the agents in the health care system thanks to new applications, in particular in the field of medical IT.

It´s MEDICA time again: A top theme is the rapidly progressing networking process of the agents in the health care system thanks to new applications, in particular in the field of medical IT.
Tumour ablation - and Radiofrequency (RF) ablation in particular - is getting more and more important in oncology. The therapy option offers benefits in terms of costs, ease of set-up and flexibility so that experts see the need to expand the applications of it.

Trotz der Einschränkungen, die ein hohes Alter mit sich bringt, eigenständig und selbstbestimmt leben: Der Kombination modernster Technik, Pflegedienstleistung und Hilfpersonal macht dies möglich. Die geschickte Verbindung von Pflegedienstleistungen, Hilfspersonal und moderner Technik bietet vielfältige Chancen, derartige neue Wohnkonzepte und Versorgungsmodelle zu…

Carestream Health, Inc., recently announced the industry`s first wireless DR detector that is the size of a standard cassette and can be used with existing wall stand or table-based Buckys. The CARESTREAM DRX-1 System, currently a work in progress, is expected to be available in many parts of the world during the first quarter of 2009.

The World of Health IT 2008 Conference & Exhibition is an innovative and forward-thinking event designed to deepen the understanding of specific healthcare ICT markets in Europe.

Patient monitoring technology offers enormous benefits for the patient. But reimbursement is insufficiently regulated all over Europe. Therefore, telemedicine generates a loss for the physicians although it can very well cut costs for all parties involved and improve the quality of care.

Optimal treatment of diabetes is very difficult to achieve since many obstacles have to be overcome such as expensive treatments, poor patient compliance or insufficient datac. With these challenges in mind, a new research project titled "Computerassisted Diabetes Risk Management (CDRM)" was put in place to examine how eHealth solutions can improve diabetes care.

Transapical aortic valve implantation (TA-AVI) is a new therapeutic strategy, which has been implemented successfully into clinical practice in several hundred patients suffering symptomatic aortic stenosis and an increase perioperative risk during the past two years. The Edwards SAPIEN™ prosthesis has been used.

The Acuson SC2000 volume imaging ultrasound system - reported to be the first system in the world to acquire non-stitched real-time full-volume 3-D images of the heart in one single heart cycle - is launched at the ESC meeting in Munich.
Intima media thickness (IMT) is a valuable research tool that can be used as surrogate end points in clinical trails, says Professor Stefan Agewall.

This summer, California-based Beckman Coulter Inc. began general distribution of its UniCel DxC 880i's integrated system in Europe.

Laparoscopy is playing an increasingly important role in urology and centres of excellence have been established to provide training in urological laparoscopic surgery.

Philips has added a new platform to its HD ultrasound products - the HD15 - which aims to provide small hospitals, clinics and private practices with advanced image clarity and broad application support for everyday use.

The first robotised tele-ultrasound examination has been performed by participants in the European Mobile And Robotised Tele-echography (MARTE) project, in collaboration with Robosoft, specialist in the development and production of service robot systems.
The ageing population and growing risk factors have made a significant impact on driving up the number of registered heart failure (HF) cases. Existing pharmacological strategies are improving the survival rates of acute and early-stage HF patients, ironically providing a growing body of patients with progression of the disease to HF.

Under the banner Hear today the heartbeats of tomorrow, at this year's ESC meeting GE Healthcare will showcase its latest cardiology technology for the management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) as well as several new products.
Pegasus/Heartview LLC has announced that clinical studies of its HeartVue 6S Heart Screening System - which obtained CE Mark Approval in Europe almost two years ago - have been completed according to FDA guidelines, as a pre-marketing condition for release in the USA.

`High performance systems need not be large,´ says Aloka, manufacturer of the new compact ProSound a7, which produces high-resolution images yet can be used in areas with little spare space. `Broadband Harmonics provides high sensitivity and penetration that is comparable to fundamental-frequency imaging resulting in a significant improvement above standard harmonic imaging,´ Aloka reports.

At this year's European Society of Cardiology (ESC) meeting, GE Healthcare will celebrate a decade of achievements since it acquired Diasonics Vingmed Corporation.

Martini Clinic, in the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) campus in Hamburg, is one of the world's major centres for nerve-sparing prostatectomy. The Martini physicians not only specialise in surgical intervention but are also at the cutting edge of diagnostics, being among the few in Germany to use sono-elastography, an innovative tool to detect prostate cancer. We asked Dr Georg Salomon (GS),…

At the Medizin Innovativ 2008 congress (9-10 July, Nuremburg, Germany) Professor Jens-Uwe Stolzenburg MD (right), Director of the Urology Clinic and Polyclinic at the University Hospital Leipzig, talked about his experiences with the da Vinci robot. Used by surgeons at University Hospital Leipzig since last October 2007, they performed 40 operations in the first two months.

While treadmill exercise stress testing is essential to detect cardiovascular disease, gaining clear cardiac images at peak stress level are not easy to gain using standard testing procedures. Now, however, researchers at the Ohio State University Medical Centre have designed equipment to provide high-resolution cardiac images at a critical testing stage, with results in under one hour.
Austria - Only 28% of the public would give first aid `no matter what´; 32% would be `very likely´ do so, according to a study by the market research institute Market.

The world's first installation of Cisco's telemetry system HealthPresence has been completed at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland. The system combines video, audio and call centre technology with medical information in a high-security network.