Needle Free Diabetes Care

Needle-Free Diabetes Care

Needle Free Diabetes Care Device

To say, Diabetes self-care is a pain—literally. It brings the constant need to draw blood for glucose testing, the need for daily insulin shots and the heightened risk of infection from all that poking. Continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps are today's best options for automating most of the complicated daily process of blood sugar management – but they don't completely remove the need for skin pricks and shots. But there's new skin in this game. Echo Therapeutics (Philadelphia, PA) is developing technologies that would replace the poke with a patch. Currently, the company is working on a trans-dermal bio-sensor that reads blood analyses through the skin without drawing blood. The technology involves a handheld electric-toothbrush-like device that removes just enough top-layer skin cells to put the patient's blood chemistry within signal range of a patch-borne bio-sensor. The sensor collects one reading per minute and sends the data without wire to a remote monitor, triggering audible alarms when levels go out of the patient's optimal range and tracking glucose levels over time.

The iPad: Not a healthcare-grade device??

The iPad: Not a healthcare-grade device?

Let’s not kid ourselves: Apple did not create the iPad for healthcare professionals. Might it still be of use to the healthcare industry? Almost everyone, including its competitors, agree that it will.“The iPad is a content consumption device that will enable doctors to review images, including zooming in on and annotating x-rays,” Mike Stinson, Motion Computing’s VP of Marketing told MobiHealthNews. “I don’t think the iPad is a real data acquisition device… So, the iPad will be in the mix and will become part of the workflow but it won’t replace slates like [Motion's C5] in the same way that [Motion's slates] haven’t replaced desktops.”What else is the iPad missing? In which other ways does it fall short for healthcare professionals? Here are a few common complaints or observations about the iPad’s hangups for HC workers:

1. The iPad has no camera, an important feature for any connected health tablet.
2. Despite the iPad’s rather impressive “up to” 10 hours of battery life, some have lamented Apple’s continued use of non-swappable batteries. Most tablets targeting the healthcare environment boast swappable batteries so clinicians can continue using them without waiting for a charge.
3. Industry onlookers have argued that the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen is not quite big enough for use with intensive medical applications.
4. Some people believe that the iPad is perhaps too big for many clinicians who would prefer a device that fits snugly into their pockets.
5. The iPad is not ruggedized and its screen will likely break if dropped. Many healthcare tablets claim to be drop resistant from about three feet.
6. The iPad’s inability to multi-task, meaning it can’t run more than one application at once is another big shortcoming that might hamper uptake for healthcare workers.
7. Most healthcare tablets have barcode scanners — the iPad does not.
8. Most healthcare tablets are easily disinfected, water-proof and dust resistant. The iPad does not appear to address any of those issues.
9. As another maker of healthcare tablets put it:
10. “First and foremost the iPad is a consumer device — that is the big thing,” Panasonic’s Senior Developer Greg Davidson told MobiHealthNews. “Doctors say it’s what they want, but when they go and talk to their IT departments and are told ‘it’s not running the right operating system;’ ‘it’s not easily sanitizable;’ ‘it doesn’t have the ports we need;’ or ‘it doesn’t run the particular apps we need.’”

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iPad vs. Tablets in Healthcare

X-ray Text of an interventional: shows new imaging system may cut X-ray exposure for liver cancer patients

X-ray Text of an interventional: shows new imaging system may cut X-ray exposure for liver cancer patients

Johns Hopkins researchers report that their test of an interventional X-ray guidance device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2013 has the potential to reduce the radiation exposure of patients undergoing intra-arterial therapy (IAT) for liver cancer.

3-D mammography improves cancer detection in dense breasts

3-D mammography improves cancer detection in dense breasts

A major new study being presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has found that digital breast tomosynthesis, also known as 3-D mammography, has the potential to significantly increase the cancer detection rate in mammography screening of women with dense breasts.

Breasts are considered dense if they have a lot of fibrous or glandular tissue but not much fatty tissue. Research has shown that dense breasts are more likely to develop cancer, a problem compounded by the fact that cancer in dense breasts can be difficult to detect on mammograms.
Other imaging modalities like ultrasound and MRI are often used to help find cancers that can't be seen on mammograms, but both modalities have higher rates of false-positive findings, which are suspicious findings that turn out not to be cancer. This higher false-positive rate often results in more tests and unnecessary biopsies, making MRI and ultrasound expensive to implement in high-volume screening programs, according to study lead author Per Skaane, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Radiology at Oslo University Hospital in Oslo, Norway.

Dr. Skaane and colleagues have been studying tomosynthesis as a promising breast cancer screening option that addresses some of the limitations of mammography by providing 3-D views of the breast.
"Tomosynthesis could be regarded as an improvement of mammography and would be much easier than MRI or ultrasound to implement in organized screening programs," Dr. Skaane said. "So the intention of our study was to see if tomosynthesis really would significantly increase the cancer detection rate in a population-based mammography screening program."

The researchers compared cancer detection using full-field digital mammography (FFDM) versus FFDM plus digital breast tomosynthesis in 25,547 women between the ages of 50 and 69. Breast density was classified based on the American College of Radiology's Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS). The BI-RADS breast density scale runs from 1 to 4, with 1 being the least dense and 4 being the most dense.

There were 257 malignancies detected on FFDM and a combination of FFDM and tomosynthesis in the study group, including 105 in the density 2 group and 110 in density 3. Of the 257 cancers, 211, or 82 percent were detected with FFDM plus tomosynthesis, a significant improvement over the 163, or 63 percent, detected with FFDM alone.

FFDM plus tomosynthesis pinpointed 80 percent of the 132 cancer cases in women with dense breasts, compared to only 59 percent for FFDM alone.
"Our findings are extremely promising, showing an overall relative increase in the cancer detection rate of about 30 percent," Dr. Skaane said. "Stratifying the results on invasive cancers only, the relative increase in cancer detection was about 40 percent."

Tomosynthesis not only improved the cancer detection rate in women with dense breasts, it also helped increase detection for women in the "fatty breast" BI-RADS categories. The addition of tomosynthesis to FFDM improved the cancer detection rate from 68 percent to 84 percent in women with BI-RADS density 1 or 2 breasts.
"Our results show that implementation of tomosynthesis might indicate a new era in breast cancer screening," Dr. Skaane said.