News from BBC London
Medical teams could be rewarded with bonuses for successful operations under a plan being considered by the UK’s largest hospital trust.
The Imperial College Healthcare Trust in London said it is to launch a pilot scheme aimed at “rewarding excellence” with better resources and research.
The Department of Health says it wants to strengthen a scheme which rewards surgeons for high performance.
Molecular biology in orthopaedics is an evolving branch. It encompasses learning about gene expressions in various orthopaedic disorders to aspects of experimental treatment developments which include gene therapy for Arthritis.
Experimental treatments
There are various centres which are pioneering in this field including
There is also Society for Molecular Orthopaedics called
Books about Molecular Orthopaedics
Websites about Molecular Orthopaedics
To day I saw an interesting post in Reuters news it talks about narrative medicine. It is about Emotional writing which helps to make feel better. Link
Some cancer patients may find that putting their emotions down in writing helps improve their pain and general well-being, a study suggests.
Such writing, part of a concept called “narrative” medicine, has been seen as a way to aid communication between seriously ill patients and their doctors.
But the act of writing, itself, may also help patients better understand themselves and their needs, according to the study team, led by Dr. M. Soledad Cepeda of Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston.
To look at the question, they randomly assigned 234 cancer patients to one of three groups: one that was asked to perform narrative writing; one that filled out a standard questionnaire about pain symptoms; and one that stayed with standard care only.
AirStrip Technologies, L.P., a pioneer in medical software applications for handheld devices, today announced it is in the advanced stages of development for its innovative AirStrip OB™ medical application for the new Apple iPhone 3G.
AirStrip OB, which is already available for use on PDAs and Smartphones, will allow obstetricians to use their iPhones to remotely access virtual real-time and historical waveform data for both the mother and baby directly from the hospital’s labor and delivery unit utilizing only a cell phone connection. A beta version of the AirStrip OB iPhone application will be completed by the end of the month, with AirStrip OB scheduled to be available for use by physicians on iPhones during the fourth quarter of 2008.
More medical software for Iphone 3g here
The AirStrip OB iPhone application will provide users with multi-touch capabilities to quickly scroll and zoom through critical data, including contraction and fetal heart waveform patterns. The AirStrip OB iPhone version will be taking advantage of not only the expanded iPhone screen size, but also Apple’s newly announced push notification service to send alerts to physicians based on individual physician customization. Furthermore, AirStrip OB on the iPhone will allow doctors to add patients to a “My Patients” list that will help physicians navigate through data more efficiently when time is of the essence.
“The Apple iPhone 3G represents a quantum leap forward in handheld technology, and we know Apple is excited about our proven success and its possibilities on the iPhone,” said Trey Moore, CTO of AirStrip Technologies. “Our aggressive development schedule ensures that we will continue to realize our goals of delivering our products on any device utilizing any type of wireless connection. This ultimately places AirStrip OB within reach of virtually any hospital and doctor that wants to implement this technology to improve patient safety, mitigate risk and improve overall communication among caregivers.”
The FDA-cleared AirStrip OB solution is the only product of its kind available in the U.S. and is already in use in more than 40 hospitals and hospital chains using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. The product allows secure access to this vital data, ensuring the physician can keep a close eye on patients’ progress from virtually anywhere.
A.D.A.M one of the leading medical education software is now available on Iphone.
More medical software for Iphone 3g here
With this tool, you can easily find out what to do about any symptoms — wherever you are! Learn self care, when to go to the doctor, and when it is an emergency. Whether you are traveling on vacation with your family, or on a business trip and feeling ill, an extensive library of symptom guidance is at your fingers – all within just a couple of taps.
Not all effects of nicotine are bad. BBC news reports that nicotine can boost learning memory and attention. Still this is not a reason to smoke as smoking kills people.
Nicotine has toxic effects, and carries a strong risk of addiction, but scientists have shown it can also boost learning, memory and attention.
I am trying to get a dedicated server because some of my websites reached the critical point that they are not been able to cope with shared webhosting. I am going to blog about my search for good dedicated server.
First point I learnt is that there are two categories – managed dedicated servers, unmanaged dedicated servers.
I have noted some important difference between managed and unmanaged dedicated servers from this website and a discussion points here.
There are typically two categories of dedicated servers: managed and unmanaged. Managed servers are usually operated by the Web host, while the client provides the Web site data. In these cases, a good host will fully monitor the server and have technicians standing by in case of difficulty. An unmanaged server is operated and maintained by the client; the Web host provides the storage space, physical security, and bandwidth. However, often a Web host will have a consultant available to assist clients operating an unmanaged server – this is usually provided at a nominal fee.
More Iphone software that could be helpful for doctors. I found this here.
More medical software for Iphone 3g here
WildEyes is a new iPhone document viewer app, that makes use of Mobile Safari’s ability to display a good variety of document types. WildEyes is developed by Databinge, who are responsible for the excellent TimeCapsule iPhone backup app – and currently lets you view the following document types:pdf, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, text files, images
The gender of donor and recipient plays a larger role in kidney transplants than previously assumed. Female donor kidneys do not function as well in men due to their smaller size. Women have a higher risk of rejecting a male donor kidney. Therefore, in the future, gender should be considered more in the allocation of donor kidneys, say researchers from Basel and Heidelberg.
These results are based on an analysis of the “Collaborative Transplant Study”, the world’s largest database with long-term results of organ transplants under the leadership of Professor Dr. Gerhard Opelz, Medical Director of the Department of Transplantation Immunology at the Institute of Immunology of Heidelberg University Hospital. Researchers Professor Dr. Alois Gratwohl, Basel University Hospital, and Professor Opelz published their analysis in the medical journal The Lancet (Vol. 372, p. 49).
The researchers analyzed data from almost 200,000 organ recipients who received a kidney transplant between 1985 and 2004. Overall, transplanting a female kidney was less successful than a male kidney. This is attributed to the fact that due to their smaller size, female kidneys have fewer nephrons the active components of the kidneys that filter urine.
Immunological rejection problems occurred most frequently when women received a male kidney for them, the risk that the organ would be rejected was eleven percent higher in the first year after the operation than for other donor-recipient combinations. And even two to ten years after the operation, the risk of rejection was still 10 percent higher than for other groups.
“The higher rate of rejection is most likely caused by the gender-specific Y chromosome in men,” explains Professor Opelz. In the future, gender should be one of the factors considered when making a decision on assigning an organ to a patient.
However, the higher risk of rejection in women is partially compensated by the effect of more nephrons in a male kidney, so that on average, female recipients of male kidneys do not have significantly poorer overall results.
The allocation of organs for German patients is organized in coordination with five other European states by the computer of the organ distribution center Eurotransplant. Donor kidneys are assigned according to criteria (waiting time, compatibility, etc.) set by the commission for organ transplants of the German Medical Association. The computer program was also developed by the immunologists from Heidelberg.
Immune functions associated with the Y chromosome and which can lead to rejection of the organ need to be studied more closely in the future, emphasizes Connie L. Davis, kidney expert at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA) in an editorial in The Lancet. However, a recommendation to transplant only same-sex organs is not yet appropriate, because long-term success is good even if the donor and recipient are of the opposite sex, says Davis.
References:
Alois Gratwohl, Bernd Dhler, Martin Stern, Gerhard Opelz: H-Y as a minor histocompatibility antigen in kidney transplantation: a retrospective cohort study. The Lancet – Vol. 372, Issue 9632, 5 July 2008, Pages 49-53
