June 23, 2006
Pharmacology & Google
Two recent phamacology related items are worthy of mention.
USBMIS (US Biomedical Information Systems) and McGraw-Hill have launched the Basic Concepts In Pharmacology guide. It is available for both the Palm and Pocket PC platforms.
Basic Concepts in Pharmacology contains an organized approach to the hundreds of drugs covered in pharmacology classes today. The unique design and ease of organization in this application yields greater retention and reduces stress for the pharmacology student preparing for a course review or for board exams.
The PDA edition provides all of the same valuable information as the print edition, as well as many additional features that can only be found within the PDA edition, in addition to the overall convenience of portable, mobile technology.
Exclusive PDA features include:
* Automatic updates to all chapters reflecting the latest advances in practice
* Bookmarks personalize your application for the information you access most frequently
* Interlinked content and a comprehensive index for easy searching
* Key concepts and definitions highlight essential information
* Charts, Tables and Illustrations allow easy comprehension of complex material
For more information, the website is http://www.usbmis.com/mhph/
Also Google & Epocrates join forces.
You can now look up Epocrates drug info via Google!
If you are a Gmail account holder, you can subscribe to Epocrates® Online via "Google Co-op."
With this service, you will automatically see links to FREE Epocrates drug monographs at the top of your results list when doing Google drug searches.
For more information see the Google Co-op page
June 18, 2006
Trust Me, I'm A Robot
The latest issue of the Technology Quarterly published by the Economist, presents a special article on how robots will learn to do no harm. They cite a number of industrial accidents where robots have inadvertently injured or killed humans.
They point out that many of the accidents would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer. The laws appeared in "I, Robot", a book of short stories published in 1950 but decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction remain in the realm of fiction.
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics
Let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics.... We have:
One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. Isaac Asimov, 1950
According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. By the end of 2003 there were more than 600,000 robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers—a figure predicted to rise to more than 4m by the end of next year. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety and ethical guidelines now, said Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Some Recent Advances in Robotics
Just how far have we come with robotics? A review of a news search in the last week reveals that our science has progressed substantially. Not quite as far as the sophistication of our science fiction movies but recent robot news demonstrates that we have added functionality, mobility, touch and many more behaviors to robotics today.
Touch
University of Nebraska researchers announced an invention that gives robots a highly refined sense of touch. Medicine is the most likely application for the technology, The high-resolution touch sensor could allow surgeons to tell at the level of a single layer of cells whether or not they have excised a cancerous tumor in its entirety.
Sports
Robotic Shortstop
A four-wheel drive robotic short stop capable of reaching reach speeds of about 30 feet per second uses a motion-sensing camera to determine when a ball is put into play, and an on-board computer system that calculates trajectory. Using that information, the cyber-fielder hurries to gather the ball with a foam pad -- a glove is a feature to be added in the future. It boasts an impressive .750 fielding percentage. Better than many major league infielders.
Classroom Substitute
Vincent is taking part in the early stages of an experiment that could revolutionize the teaching of seriously sick children worldwide. Using technology developed by scientists at two Canadian universities, the robot pairs enable children confined to their beds not only to continue their studies, but also to maintain contact with their friends and peers.
Speed-Reading Robots
Deep in the basement of the Stanford University library, hidden among the volumes of Homer and Shakespeare, is Stanford's fastest reader. It is a robot, invented in Switzerland, that can scan up to 1,000 pages an hour. It turns the pages itself, and even blows air to separate them when they're stuck together.
New Mars Mission Team Member: Robot BridgetScientists recently unveiled a robotic rover vehicle nicknamed Bridget that will be the centrepiece of the most advanced attempt to find life on Mars. The 10ft by 6ft, six-wheeled vehicle, called an "autonomous robotic scientist", will be able to patrol the surface of Mars carrying sophisticated equipment and panoramic cameras, enabling it to operate without the need for detailed supervision from ground control
Surgical robot
West Virginia University Hospital now has a new tool in its arsenal to fight the disease, a surgical robot officials say offers patients advantages over and better results than traditional surgery. Instead of one large incision, the robot, called the da Vinci, uses several tiny openings, cameras and three-dimensional imaging to make the surgery “more precise,” according to hospital officials.
Diagnosis from the Inside
Worm-inspired robot crawls through intestines. A robot designed to crawl through the human gut by mimicking the wriggling motion of an undersea worm has been developed by European scientists. It could one day help doctors diagnose disease by carrying tiny cameras through patients' bodies.
As the Economist article elucidates, our substantial progress in robotics needs to be tempered with safety. In addition to the possibility of robots posing a possible physical danger, could they be dangerous to humans in less direct ways, by bringing out their worst aspects, from warfare to pedophilia? As Ron Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, puts it, “if you kick a robotic dog, are you then more likely to kick a real one?" Roboticists can do their best to make robots safe—but they cannot reprogram the behavior of their human masters.
June 13, 2006
National Health Care Network Bill
Legislation, aimed at establishing a nationwide health information technology network was introduced recently by U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kansas. According to the proposed legislation, individuals would be able to file their medical information with an accredited health information bank that is registered and regulated through the Federal Trade Commission and the attorney general. Individuals would have complete ownership of their entire medical health record, have the rights to review the contents of the record and have the ability to add personal health information at their discretion.
Health information banks would manage medical information in the same way financial institutions, such as banks and credit card companies, manage financial data. The system, which could be accessed at the point of service using patient swipe cards, would allow physicians and other providers real-time electronic access to patient health records and eliminate the cumbersome and unreliable paper-based system.
The legislation also would give patients the option of selling their record data on a blinded basis for research and other authorized purposes. Revenue from the sales would be tax-free and split equally between the patient and his or her health record bank. Proceeds also could be shared with health care providers and payers as an incentive for them to contribute additional data to the banks.
This year, the United States is expected to spend $2 trillion on health care, according to Representative Moore. "If we fail to act now, the situation will get much worse. In fact, health care spending is expected to double to $4 trillion by 2015." The savings generated by the independent health record bank program would be substantial. A Rand Corpporation study found that the use of electronic medical records could result in potential annual savings of $162 billion. By comparison, the cost of maintaining an electronic health record system would be $10 billion a year, resulting in more than $150 billion in net savings.
June 09, 2006
Artificial Hippocampus
According to a recent news report, Theodore Berger, a neuroscientist and researcher from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has developed the first artificial hippocampus that is designed to help individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.
Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing. The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease.
Any device that mimics the brain clearly raises ethical issues. The brain not only affects memory, but your mood, awareness and consciousness - parts of your fundamental identity, says ethicist Joel Anderson at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.
The researchers developing the brain prosthesis see it as a test case. "If you can't do it with the hippocampus you can't do it with anything," says team leader Theodore Berger. The hippocampus is the most ordered and structured part of the brain, and one of the most studied. Importantly, it is also relatively easy to test its function.
The job of the hippocampus appears to be to "encode" experiences so they can be stored as long-term memories elsewhere in the brain. "If you lose your hippocampus you only lose the ability to store new memories," says Berger. That offers a relatively simple and safe way to test the device: if someone with the prosthesis regains the ability to store new memories, then it's safe to assume it works.
The inventors of the prosthesis had to overcome three major hurdles. They had to devise a mathematical model of how the hippocampus performs under all possible conditions, build that model into a silicon chip, and then interface the chip with the brain.
No one understands how the hippocampus encodes information. So the team simply copied its behavior. Slices of rat hippocampus were stimulated with electrical signals, millions of times over, until they could be sure which electrical input produces a corresponding output. Putting the information from various slices together gave the team a mathematical model of the entire hippocampus.
They then programmed the model onto a chip, which in a human patient would sit on the skull rather than inside the brain. It communicates with the brain through two arrays of electrodes, placed on either side of the damaged area. One records the electrical activity coming in from the rest of the brain, while the other sends appropriate electrical instructions back out to the brain.
The hippocampus can be thought of as a series of similar neural circuits that work in parallel, says Berger, so it should be possible to bypass the damaged region entirely
(Click Image to Enlarge)
Memory tasks
Berger and his team have taken nearly 10 years to develop the chip. They are about to test it on slices of rat brain kept alive in cerebrospinal fluid, they will tell a neural engineering conference in Capri, Italy, next week.
"It's a very important step because it's the first time we have put all the pieces together," he says. The work was funded by the US National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
If it works, the team will test the prosthesis in live rats within six months, and then in monkeys trained to carry out memory tasks. The researchers will stop part of the monkey's hippocampus working and bypass it with the chip. "The real proof will be if the animal's behaviour changes or is maintained," says Sam Deadwyler of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who will conduct the animal trials.
The hippocampus has a similar structure in most mammals, says Deadwyler, so little will have to be changed to adapt the technology for people. But before human trials begin, the team will have to prove unequivocally that the prosthesis is safe.
June 07, 2006
Creating Decision-Support Healthcare Tools for Consumers
In response to the trend of increasing consumer involvement in health care decision making, Shaller Consulting and Forrester Research in conjunction with the California Healthcare Foundation have put together a publication called Creating Decision-Support Tools That Work. It examines the various forms and functions of tools available to help consumers make more informed choices and summarizes evidence regarding the effectiveness of these tools, and offers possible strategies for overcoming limitations to their widespread use.
The report outlines key barriers that limit consumers’ use of these tools and suggests practical steps to address those barriers by improving the design, content, format, and distribution of information tools.
A related report by Forrester Research, Health Care Cost Comparison Tools: A Market Under Construction, examines the potential for using online tools to compare the cost of health products and services.
Publications:
(in pdf format)
Consumers in Health Care: Creating Decision-Support Tools That Work
Health Care Cost Comparison Tools: A Market Under Construction
Links:
California Healthcare Foundation
June 04, 2006
Update on One Laptop Per Child
An update from our story from last December on MIT's $100 notebook computer destined to educate and connect children of the world.
Here is a brief video that demonstrates a functional pre-production model and the OLPC website gives additional information including countries to be piloted and lots more information.
June 02, 2006
Remote Caregiving for the Elderly
An assisted-living facility in Oregon uses RFID technology to monitor the residents. Badges are worn that signal to dozens of infrared and radio-frequency sensors inside the facility and outside on the grounds information to track residents 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The device monitors location, movement and acvity level, weight and many other data. It is so sensitive that it can even capture fluctuations in breathing.
"The thing that really makes this place work is the monitoring technology," the owners point out and explain that data has no agenda. "Data's not trying to make someone look better or worse." It can show if a resident is spending too much time in bed or too restless. The data can also be used to to tell whether an aide takes too long to respond when a resident pushes a call bell or whether a resident is losing too much weight. Once an aide was accused of goofing off. But the data showed he was the staffer who spent the most time with residents. The data give residents a freedom that they wouldn't have in other long-term care facilities.
Most of the individuals in this facility have some type of dementia yet, they are free to roam, inside and out. Because people are monitored at this assisted living facility, there's no need to build fences - no locked doors. The facility is called Oatfield Estates in Milwaukie Oregon.
Links:
Other technologies for the elderly from the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST)