April 20, 2006
Physicians Grow More Tech Savvy
Physicians are warming up to health IT in their everyday practices, according to a report released Wednesday by Manhattan Research, Information Week reports.
The report finds that physicians are using the Internet, especially Yahoo and Google, and that they often access online information during patient consultations.
In addition, the report finds that physicians are using digital music players, with approximately 40% reporting that they have used iPods or other digital music players. And 487,000 physicians reported that they use "new media," including streaming video, downloadable audio content and blogs.
Approximately 75% of physicians said they have used or are interested in using online customer service interfaces with pharmaceutical companies.
The report states, "Leading the shift toward the 'digitization' of health information, the data reveal continued growth of physicians using electronic medical records of electronic prescribing."
April 19, 2006
ESP: Emotional Social Intelligence Prosthesis
Scientists at MIT's Media Lab are developing a wearable device they say is capable of helping people read the subtlest, most nuanced emotions in another person by tracking the movements of that person's eyebrows, lips, and other facial features.
This technology can be used to help people with autism in their everyday lives. One of the disorders associated with autism is a condition some scientists call ''mind blindness," the inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes and understand that person's emotions. There are about 1 million to 1.5 million Americans with autism, according to the Autism Society of America.
By wearing this device, they could better negotiate the complex map of expressions they encounter on the faces of the people they talk to or meet, possibly helping them keep jobs and make friends.
At a recent conference called Body Sensor Networks 2006 international workshop, two MIT researchers wore tiny cameras mounted on wire rods extending from their chests to demonstrate the Emotional Social Intelligence Prosthetic, or ESP.The video cameras captured facial expressions and head movements, then fed the information to a desktop computer that analyzed the data and gave real-time estimates of the individuals' mental states, in the form of color-coded graphs.
The system's software goes beyond tracking simple emotions like sadness and anger to estimate complex mental states like agreeing, disagreeing, thinking, confused, concentrating and interested. The goal is to put this mental state inference engine on a wearable platform and use it to augment or enhance social interactions,
The ''emotional social intelligence prosthetic" device is the latest in technology that focuses on helping computers read and relay human emotions. But while the technology has traditionally focused on helping machines understand people, now it is being used to help people understand people.
April 09, 2006
Using Your Brain To Control Your Computer
According to a recent article in Wired "Now That's Using Your Brain," a study is underway at The Wadsworth Center in New York State to use brain waves to type and send email messages.
The goal of brain-wave typing is to open up a world of communication with caregivers and loved ones for people disabled by ALS, cerebral palsy or high-level spinal-cord injuries. With little or no muscle control, communicating clearly, or even at all is difficult, if not impossible.
Researchers in the brain-computer interface, or BCI, Group are enrolling patients in trials of a system that could enable them to send e-mail and communicate using their brain waves. They hope to have five to 10 people testing the interface by June.
How it works
A caregiver uses a laptop to start up the system. An electrode-laden skull cap tracks brain activity with an EEG and relays it to an amplifier. Brain waves are then translated into computer activity. The patient has an additional screen to use for communication.
Patients computers show them a matrix of images or letters that flash rapidly in a random sequence. When users focus on the letters or pictures they want to select, a spike occurs in the brain's electrical activity, and after several cycles with the same result, the system selects that letter or image. Communication is slow -- users create two to four words per minute.
Scientists also developed the sensory motor rhythm, or SMR, system, which allows users to concentrate on moving various body parts to manipulate a cursor on a screen.
A scientist with late-stage ALS is already using the system. He had previously used an eye-gaze system, in which a camera tracked his eye movements -- not a very satisfactory system for him. Now, he's using the BCI to send e-mail and do other tasks four to six hours a day.
April 04, 2006
A Video Game as Treatment
HopeLab announced the release of Re-Mission(TM), the first video game scientifically shown to improve health-related outcomes for young people with cancer, an underserved and overlooked population who are at greater risk for adverse cancer outcomes. The game is available free of charge to young people with cancer concurrent with the release of positive results from the Re-Mission Outcomes Study. The study is the first-ever randomized, controlled trial focused exclusively on adolescents and young adults with cancer. Data from the study showed statistically significant improvements in cancer-related self-efficacy, social quality of life, cancer-specific knowledge, and adherence to prescribed medication regimens in patients who played Re-Mission.
Players fly a nanobot called Roxxi through a cancer patient's body on missions that range from free-roaming exploration to run-and-gun combat. Along the way, power-ups engine energize weapons like chemotherapy, radiation and diet as well as a response to complications like bacterial infection, nausea, fever and constipation.
Re-mission wraps a true-to-life cancer simulation in a gaming interface that helps kids visualize the disease and vanquish it. The goal is to increase players' control over their circumstances.
Re-mission Video (the making of Re-mission)
April 01, 2006
Search Engine For Biomedical Specialists
A research team from the Biotechnology Centre at the Technical University of Dresden has designed a special search engine. Transinsight is a company focused on the life sciences that provides products and solutions for intelligent search technologies. Their main product is GoPubMed
GoPubMed can search literature repositories, websites, intranets and desktops. It indexes results and thus allows users to explore a large body of results in a structured manner.
In contrast to classical search engines, GoPubMed can answer questions using its background knowledge in molecular biology, medicine, drug development and food science. To illustrate this point, a search for 'aspirin inhibits' on a classical search engine returns a large number of unstructured results that do not answer the user's original question. On the other hand, a search with GoPubMed reveals that the most frequently mentioned pathway for 'aspirin inhibits' is the cyclooxygenase pathway.
Thanks to its groundbreaking and competitive product, the young company has already won its first corporate customer – Unilever in the UK. The company states that "GoPubMed helps us to quickly screen the vast literature for hidden gems and to discover trends in science."
The start-up company has also been quick to attract investment. This past January, it was announced that Transinsight had received €500,000 of seed funding from Germany's recently established High-Tech-Gründerfonds and a further undisclosed sum from a private investor in Hamburg.