November 7th, 2010 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Research
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I don’t consider myself a right-wing healthcare fear monger, but if I were this study would be worthy of amplification. As reported concisely in the New York Times, from the journal Demography (not previously known to me), population researchers reported that even though elderly Americans have more medical problems than their peers in Britain, older Americans live longer once they make it to 70. Why would this be?
Is it because Americans who reach 70 are “heartier” than Britons, as Columbia University PhD (but now on leave and working at HHS) Sherry Giled says. Or is better survival of the American elderly one of the benefits of the “fury of American medicine?” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
October 21st, 2010 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Research, True Stories
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Dr. Novella has recently written about this year’s seasonal flu vaccine and Dr. Crislip has reviewed the evidence for flu vaccine efficacy. There’s one little wrinkle that they didn’t address — one that I’m more attuned to because I’m older than they are.
I got my Medicare card last summer, so I am now officially one of the “elderly.” A recent review by Goodwin et al. showed that the antibody response to flu vaccines is significantly lower in the elderly. They called for a more immunogenic vaccine formulation for that age group. My age group. One manufacturer has responded. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
April 1st, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, News, Research
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An Australian company called Simavita is releasing an incontinence detection device to be used in nursing homes across New South Wales. The SIMsystem uses a strip that detects liquid and a cellular device to send a note to a nursing station or a care provider.
From the product page:
The SIM™box, when fitted into the individual resident’s stretchpants (SIM™pants), transmits sensor readings from the SIM™strip in the SIMpad® over a wireless network to the SIM™server. The SIMsystem™ Manager software running on the SIM™server then detects key information about continence events and determines when to alert care staff about an event requiring attention.
Alerts are sent via text message to the carer’s mobile phone or via the facility’s paging system if preferred. As carers are often unable to immediately respond to events, the software will display a summary log of alerts and manual observations can also be entered. The final bladder chart includes all observations in one easy-to-read report. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*