News archive
April 2007

New postgraduate course in medical image computing at UCL
University College London's newcourse provides a rigorous background in medical image acquisition coupled with state-of-the-art medical image analysis for diagnosis and therapy.

Sensor identifies trace samples of cells and proteins in minutes
The sensor, which contains a millimeter-size cantilever, could have wide applications in medical diagnostic testing, detecting contamination in food products and monitoring for biothreat agents.

zinc oxide nanowire arrayZinc oxide nanowires make ultrasensitive photo-detectors
The high sensitivity and high gain of zinc oxide nanowire arrays could lead to new photo-detector architectures for sensing, imaging, memory storage and intrachip optical communications. 30 April 2007

Remote monitoring improves clinical outcomes for heart patients
According to Australian and Canadian research, remote monitoring for patients with chronic heart failure helped reduce heart failure admissions to hospitals and lowered all cause mortality by nearly 20%. 30 April 2007

Dental X-rays of carotid artery not enough to estimate stroke risk
A review of research on the detection of calcified tissue in the carotid artery by dental x-rays has found that the technique does not give enough evidence to estimate a patient’s stroke risk. 30 April 2007

Quest Diagnostics to Acquire AmeriPath for $2 Billion
The acquisition will boost Quest Diagnostics' position in cancer diagnostics with a focus on dermatopathology, anatomic pathology and molecular diagnostics. 27 April 2007

Abbott launches FreeStyle Lite blood glucose monitoring system
Abbott Diabetes Care has launched its FreeStyle Lite blood glucose monitoring system that allows people with diabetes to test quickly and more easily. 27 April 2007

A vision of the future of nanotechnology
Nanotechnology can help to overcome some of the world's biggest challenges, according to a new report, including the energy crisis, the need for better medical treatments, and the demand for clean water. 27 April 2007

Medtronic launches continuous glucose monitoring system for diabetics
The new system helps protect diabetes patients from high and low glucose levels, and maintain tighter glucose control. Features include predictive and rate-of-change alarms and expanded trend graphs. 24 April 2007

New molecular imaging agent identifies Alzheimer’s disease
A clinical study of 18F-AV-1/ZK (AV-1), a radiopharmaceutical for (PET) imaging of amyloid plaques in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), has shown that it distinguishes AD sufferers from healthy elderly subjects. 24 April 2007

Siemens wins contract to build first molecular imaging centre in the UAE
Siemens Medical Solutions has won a 16.7 million contract to build and operate a molecular imaging centre in Abu Dhabi. The facility will be the first of its kind in the region, providing diagnostic services for oncology, cardiology and neurology. 23 April 2007

Elekta acquires 3D Line Medical Systems
Swedish medical technology company Elekta has acquired Milan-based 3D Line Medical Systems S.r.l. The acquisition gives Elekta technology regarding stereotactic radiosurgery, dynamic IMRT treatments and radiation therapy. 23 April 2007

Smart phone for dyslexics reads aloud from text files and images
CapturaTalk is a new device aimed at people with dyslexia and other forms of reading and writing difficulties. It reads aloud any text from a file a user has saved in memory or from an image the user has taken with the integrated camera. 19 April 2007

Philips bedside patient monitors give evidence-based care guidance
Royal Philips Electronics has introduced ProtocolWatch, an application for its IntelliVue patient monitors that analyses patient monitoring data using evidence-based care protocols and gives guidance on screen. 19 April 2007

Agfa and Free University of Brussels in agreement to develop healthcare IT and imaging solutions. 19 April 2007

Door lock and bell with GSM phone aids emergency response for elderly
The GSM Doorbell, developed by Dutch company Waleli, is a mobile phone application that allows people to answer their doorbell, talk to visitors and even open the door, whether they are at home or not. 17 April 2007

Metal-free motor makes robotic biopsies safe for use with MRI
Engineers at the Johns Hopkins Urology Robotics Lab have developed a motor without metal or electricity that can safely power remote-controlled robotic surgical tools used for cancer biopsies and therapies guided by magnetic resonance imaging. 17 April 2007

Virtual home for Alzheimer's patients
A virtual home showing the best features suitable for Alzheimer's patients will be developed by the Division of Geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College, USA. 6 April 2007

Master patient index locates patient data from 100 million data sets in split second
Hewlett-Packard tests of the ICW Master Patient Index using 100 million patient data sets in one database, combined with queries made by up to 1,000 concurrent users, resulted in response times of less than a second. 4 April 2007

Mobile phones safe in hospitals
A study by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, USA, of mobile phone use in hospitals has found that they have no noticeable effect on medical devices in normal use. This dispels the long-held notion that they are unsafe to use in health care facilities, according to the researchers. 4 April 2007

Groundbreaking study shows hospital investment in IT does reduce costs
A two-year long study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Wharton School of Business of the use of information technology in US hospitals provides the strongest evidence that the investment does pay for itself, but it has to be comprehensive and given enough time to work. 3 April 2007

Computer training course for UK healthcare staff
The British Computer Society launched its new European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) Health Unit at Healthcare Computing 2007 in Harrogate in March. It is the first computer skills syllabus in the world specifically for users of healthcare systems. 3 April 2007

HIFU treatment for prostate cancer maintains 100% continence and potency
A study at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) using the Sonablate 500 high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) device to treat localised prostate cancer has found it completely effective in maintaining continence and potency. 3 April 2007

Microassembler for building micromachines
University of Illinois engineers have created a micro device that uses agile, human-like fingers that can assemble micromachines made of micron-sized parts. The device may be refined to manipulate parts and components for even smaller machines, perhaps down to the nano scale. 3 April 2007

Project to develop virtual people
A new project aims to create computer-generated virtual persons that interact with humans in a life-like manner. The methodology may prove valuable for developing more user-friendly archiving and retrieval of information, and for computer games, among other uses. 3 April 2007

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