Healthcare – Page 18

Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Giving poop is the new giving blood

February 2, 2019

A side effect of donating blood is the self-satisfaction in knowing that you’ve done your duty to help save a life. The whole process only takes about 15 minutes and you’re rewarded with a juice box and free cookies. While giving blood is super important—and always will be—if you really want to go the extra mile, you should consider donating your poop for use in fecal transplants, too.

According to a new report published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, “super-donors” are those whose microbiomes are swarming with good bacteria—ideal candidates to provide material for fecal transplants. With the help of these super poopers, doctors are working to eradicate irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, type 2 diabetes, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, and certain cancers.

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China, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine

Ping An Good Doctor launches commercial operation of One-minute Clinics in China

January 25, 2019

Ping An Good Doctor’s first One-minute Clinic in Wuzhen, outside of Shanghai. Credit: Ping An Good Doctor.

The company announced last week then it had placed its One-minute Clinics across 8 provinces and cities in China and signed service contracts for nearly 1,000 units.

Last year, Ping An Good Doctor, a one-stop healthcare ecosystem platform from China, piloted unstaffed clinics that employ artificial intelligence called “One-minute Clinics” in the Wuzhen Scenic Area outside of Shanghai, which connect patients with a clinician on Ping An Good Doctor’s in-house medical team. Just last week, the company announced that it had placed its One-minute Clinics across 8 provinces and cities in China and signed service contracts for nearly 1,000 units, providing healthcare services to more than 3 million users.

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3D Printer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

How 3D technology is revolutionizing face transplants

January 23, 2019

From modeling to printing, it’s all about seeing inside someone’s head.

Face transplants are an ideal setting to fuse medicine with the growing world of 3D printing and imaging. The left image is a rendering of what face transplant recipient Cameron Underwood’s face looked like before his surgery; the right is a planned rendering based on the donor’s face.

Cameron Underwood received a new face on January 6, 2018. By the time his surgery ended, everything below Underwood’s eye sockets had been replaced with the face of organ donor William Fisher.

A face transplant is exactly what it sounds like—replacing the disfigured face of one person with the whole, undamaged face of a very recently deceased person. Eduardo Rodriguez, plastic surgeon and face transplant specialist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York who performed surgery on Underwood, insists this surgery is a way to give these patients “a second chance at life.” Without a new face, patients like Underwood have great difficulty speaking, swallowing, eating, expressing themselves, as well as all the other things we do with our faces that we never think twice about.

A physician in France performed the first successful face transplant surgery in 2005. Since then, only 40 other such surgeries have been done around the world. Rodriguez has performed three of those surgeries, including Underwood’s.

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Cancer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Researchers successfully turn breast cancer cells into fat to stop them from spreading

January 22, 2019

Researchers have been able to coax human breast cancer cells to turn into fat cells in a new proof-of-concept study in mice.

To achieve this feat, the team exploited a weird pathway that metastasising cancer cells have; their results are just a first step, but it’s a truly promising approach.

When you cut your finger, or when a foetus grows organs, the epithelium cells begin to look less like themselves, and more ‘fluid’ – changing into a type of stem cell called a mesenchyme and then reforming into whatever cells the body needs.

This process is called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and it’s been known for a while that cancer can use both this one and the opposite pathway called MET (mesenchymal‐to‐epithelial transition), to spread throughout the body and metastasise.

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Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Wearables

The world’s first “artificial pancreas” already hit the market in 2017

January 18, 2019

Good news for people with type 1 diabetes. In case you missed it, the first “artificial pancreas” was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is now ready for prime time.

Innovative medical technology company Medtronic’s MiniMed 670G is the first device to combine an automated glucose monitor and an insulin pump. It administers an accurate amount of insulin as needed and will also automatically shut off insulin release when a drop in sugar levels is detected. This minimizes the risks of taking too much or too little insulin, both of which can have fatal consequences.

Medtronic describes the MiniMed 670G as “the first hybrid closed loop system in the world.” The device only requires patients to input mealtime carbohydrates and calibrate the sensors periodically, allowing them to live life more freely. It also helps them sleep well through the night and wake up with healthy glucose levels.

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3D Printer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Patient receives 3D-printed rib implant in breakthrough procedure

January 11, 2019

3D printing made some big advances in the medical domain last year, and it seems like that trend isn’t going to slow down any time soon. Proving that point is an impressive procedure recently carried out in Bulgaria, in which a patient received one of the first 3D-printed ribs as part of a potentially lifesaving operation. It demonstrated a new approach to create rib implants, using a process called fused deposition modeling (FDM), which is cheaper in both machine and material costs than other similar attempts.

“[The] patient, Ivaylo Josifov, was diagnosed with a rib deformation,” Mateusz Sidorowicz, director of marketing at 3DGence, the company which made the 3D printer, told Digital Trends. “The doctors were concerned that the deformity may progress, and decided to replace the rib with an implant. Unfortunately, traditional implants — made from titanium, for example — are very expensive. Also, the titanium itself is not a perfect material for replacing ribs.”

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3D Printer, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Scientists find a way to 3D print one pill for all that ails you

January 9, 2019

Multiple medications with different release times—all in one pill.

Last year, the FDA approved a 3D-printed pill for the first time. And now, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a method to make 3D printing medicine even better. NUS Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Assistant Professor Soh Siow Ling, with the help of PhD student Sun Yajuan, created a cheap, simple way to prompt a 3D printer to create multiple medications with different release formulas—all in one pill.

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Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Goodbye surgery? Scientists just made eye drops that dissolve cataracts

January 8, 2019

It could mean a cheap, painless way to restore vision to thousands.

Most of us take our vision for granted. As a result, we take the ability to read, write, drive, and complete a multitude of other tasks for granted. However, sight is not so easy for everyone. Indeed, for many people, simply seeing is a struggle.

There are more than 285 million people worldwide who have vision problems. According to the Fred Hollows Foundation, an estimated 32.4 million people around the world are blind. Ultimately, 90% of these people live in developing countries, and more than half of these cases of blindness are caused by cataracts. Indeed, cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world.

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AI, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, IBM, Wearables

IBM fingernail sensor tracks health through your grip

December 28, 2018

Its AI could detect the development of a disease.

The strength of your grip can frequently be a good indicator of your health, and not just for clearly linked diseases like Parkinson’s — it can gauge your cognitive abilities and even your heart health. To that end, IBM has developed a fingernail sensor that can detect your grip strength and use AI to provide insights. The device uses an array of strain gauges to detect the deformation of your nail as you grab objects, with enough subtlety to detect tasks like opening a pill bottle, turning a key or even writing with your finger.

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App, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Ingestible capsule can be controlled wirelessly

December 26, 2018

Electronic pill can relay diagnostic information or release drugs in response to smartphone commands

Researchers at MIT, Draper, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed an ingestible capsule that can be controlled using Bluetooth wireless technology. The capsule, which can be customized to deliver drugs, sense environmental conditions, or both, can reside in the stomach for at least a month, transmitting information and responding to instructions from a user’s smartphone.

The capsules, manufactured using 3-D-printing technology, could be deployed to deliver drugs to treat a variety of diseases, particularly in cases where drugs must be taken over a long period of time. They could also be designed to sense infections, allergic reactions, or other events, and then release a drug in response.

“Our system could provide closed-loop monitoring and treatment, whereby a signal can help guide the delivery of a drug or tuning the dose of a drug,” says Giovanni Traverso, a visiting scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he will be joining the faculty in 2019.

These devices could also be used to communicate with other wearable and implantable medical devices, which could pool information to be communicated to the patient’s or doctor’s smartphone.

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Cancer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Lasers cure nearly 50% of patients with prostate cancer in new study

December 20, 2018

Experts have honed a cutting-edge method to kill off tumors with less damage to healthy cells.

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and STEBA Biotech have announced the success of the unique method they developed to fight prostate cancer. This treatment, which the group of expects called “transformative,” has shown promising results.

Under development since 2011, vascular targeted photodynamic therapy (VPT), as the procedure is called, is carried out in a two-step process. Patients are first introduced to WST11 — a compound extracted from some benthic bacteria, or bacteria that dwell at the bottom of the sea. These bacteria are particularly special, though, as they are highly light-sensitive.

Optical fibers are then inserted through an area called the perineum, found between the the testes and the anus, and directly into the prostate gland. Afterwards, the scientists turn on a red laser that is induced through the optical fibers. This process utilizes the photosensitivity of the WST11 drug and activates it. Upon activation, free radicals are released within the area, attacking and destroying the tumors. Unlike conventional treatments which might affect a general area of body cells, this treatment is localized. The nearby cells are left more or less unharmed.

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Analysis, Healthcare, Human Behavior

Why Millennial men don’t go to therapy

December 18, 2018

The most depressed generation won’t get help despite having more access than ever before

About eight years ago, Eugene was in the midst of transferring colleges when he noticed how his mood sagged, seemingly at random times, triggered by the smallest things. He had spent the previous two years at a California State University “smoking, drinking and playing computer games” before realizing that he was treading water and wasting time. He felt envy toward friends who had a career path, but also contempt for other students who were either coasting or were just plain dumb.

Eventually, Eugene dropped out of school, aiming to transfer to a more prestigious private university. But over the next few months, daily routines like pulling himself out of bed and getting dressed loomed over him with daunting effect. “I just didn’t feel great,” he says. “Everything looked bad, and I couldn’t shake it. Then you wake up one day and think things like, Why don’t I just fucking kill myself? That made me step back, and wonder what was really wrong.”

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