Electronic Contact Lenses for Blood Glucose Monitoring

January 9, 2012 | by

Diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced. Ask anyone with the condition and they will tell you: using a spring-loaded needle to prick their fingers monitor blood glucose (i.e.sugar) levels several times a day is painful procedure.

Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) and Microsoft Research Connections are working together to develop a non-invasive, technological solution that promises to improve both the health and overall quality of life for people with diabetes: a contact lens that, instead of correcting vision, monitors blood glucose levels.

Electronic contact lens

Scanadu Medical Tricorder

January 6, 2012 | by

We are the last generation that will know so little about our health. That’s the vision of medical tech startup Scanadu. The company has created a scanner they are calling the Medical Tricorder, which is aimed at parents who want to monitor their children’s health in order to make better decisions.

The mobile diagnostic device measures key vital signs — blood pressure, pulmonary function, temperature — and may even be able to read simple samples, sending all information directly to your smartphone. The Medical Tricorder additionally asks screening questions to provide recommendations.

According to the video below, the device can alert you about flu or disease outbreaks tailored to your family’s needs and offers advice on what to do next.

Source: Scanadu

Ultra-thin Brain Implant Could Treat Neurological and Psychiatric Illness

January 4, 2012 | by

Reflecting a convergence of skills and advances in electrical engineering, materials science and neurosurgery, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia have developed a flexible brain implant that conforms to the brain’s surface and may make possible a whole new generation of brain-computer interfaces for treating neurological and psychiatric illness and research.

Brain array

GE Healthcare And Microsoft Partner To Launch Health Information Technology Company

January 2, 2012 | by

GE Healthcare and Microsoft recently announced plans to create a joint venture aimed at helping healthcare organizations and professionals use real-time, system-wide intelligence to improve healthcare quality and the patient experience.

The new health information technology company will develop and market an open, interoperable technology platform and innovative clinical applications focused on enabling better population health management to improve outcomes and the overall economics of health and wellness. The joint venture will combine Microsoft’s expertise in building platforms and ecosystems with GE Healthcare’s experience in clinical and administrative workflow solutions.

GE Healthcare and Microsoft

The as of yet unnamed new company will deliver a distinctive, open platform that will give healthcare providers and independent software vendors the ability to develop a new generation of clinical applications. The venture will develop healthcare applications on the platform using in-house developers and the platform will connect with a wide range of healthcare IT products. GE Healthcare IT will immediately be able to connect existing products to the platform, helping current customers to derive new insights.

The two companies will contribute the following intellectual property:

  • Microsoft Amalga, an enterprise health intelligence platform that brings historically disparate data together and makes it easy to identify and act on insights into clinical, financial or operational performance.
  • Microsoft Vergence, a technology that brings single sign-on, context management and multi-factor authentication together on a clinical workstation.
  • Microsoft expreSSO, a solution to simplify and streamline the organizational rollout of single sign-on.
  • GE Healthcare eHealth, a framework for delivering clinical applications on top of a connected healthcare community. Its foundation is a portal technology that provides clinicians a web-based, simple way to view patient data from a health information exchange.
  • GE Healthcare Qualibria, a clinical knowledge application environment that helps ensure that organizations can more effectively manage to the latest measures of quality and thrive in today’s performance-based world.

The long-term vision of the venture is to create new value by offering a healthcare performance management suite that includes many of these products.

Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, said:

The complementary nature of GE Healthcare’s and Microsoft’s individual expertise will drive new insights, solutions and efficiencies to further advance the two companies’ shared vision of a connected, patient-centric healthcare system. The global healthcare challenges of access, cost and quality of care delivery are creating a new focus on the performance and accountability of healthcare delivery systems –- in every country, at every level of care. This venture will demonstrate what is possible when leading companies with complementary capabilities work together to meet a common goal.

Source: Microsoft

The Best of Highlight HEALTH 2011 – The Year in Review

December 30, 2011 | by

This December (in fact just four days ago) Highlight HEALTH celebrated its fifth year promoting advances in biomedical research. To observe the event, for the next two months we’re holding prize pack giveaways.

Would you like to win two free books, two magazine subscriptions and a Webicina T-shirt? To enter the giveaway, simply subscribe to the Highlight HEALTH Network email updates.

As the year draws to a close, let’s take a look back at the top stories readers were interested in for 2011. We’ve compiled two top ten lists of the most-viewed stories for the year, one as measured by the absolute number of page views and the other as measured by the average number of page views per day posted.

2011 top 10 on Highlight HEALTH