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Device Shows Concussion Effects Linger Off The Field

It’s an August tradition: Football training camps open, and we’re treated to warnings about working out in the heat.

In the past few years, however, when it comes to football, there’s been a new emphasis on traumatic brain injury (TBI). This has caught our eyes here at MedGadget.

We’ve covered innovative impact-sensing helmet technology before (as well as smart helmets for temperature monitoring). But for the athlete with a concussion, what happens off the field? Unless a neurologist is involved, it’s up to the players and trainers to follow guidelines or make guesses about when to return to play.

Hopefully that will change, and a device like BrainScope will lead the way. When we first covered BrainScope, they were positioning their new device, based on controversial technology, as a sideline decision-making aide. Now their research seems to be focused on the weeks and months post-concussion. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Defibrillator Concept Fun For The Kitchen, Bad For The ER

This clever and funny Toast/e/r (“ER” included in the name) is by designer Shay Carmon. Note the QRS complex grill:

 

Concept page: Toast/e/r…

(via Gizmodo)

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Advances In Telemedicine Ease Patient Care

Ralph Terenzio, a patient with the Center for Connected Health, checks his blood pressure using remote monitoring equipment.Monitoring vital signs remotely saves time and money for everyone: patients, physicians, facilities and insurers. Heart failure is a particular target because its increasingly common, its easily triggered (by as little as too much salt on food, for example), it costs so much to manage in the hospital, and it’s so easily avoided.

Remote monitoring equipment made even easier with wireless connections can take vital signs, and even ask standard questions every morning. The equipment puts patients in contact with nurses once they detect warning signs. That human touch is key. Case managers can screen out false alarms (avoiding alert fatigue) and can direct patients to the physician when needed. ACP Internist covered remote monitoring technology in its March issue. (Wall Street Journal, ACP Internist) Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

A Skin Cancer-Detecting Camera?

Yanko, the design blog we highlight occasionally, shows us a device design by Antonia Haaf meant to automatically detect melanoma, called Black Skin Cancer.

Details are vague, as they usually are with concept designs, but the device is meant to be placed over a suspected legion and “[analyze] 2D and 3D characteristics from melanocytic lesions with just one shot. Using a secret algorithm, the device recognizes critical lesions such as the nodular melanome.”

While pretty, commenter Widepers on the site points out: “Frankly, a magnifying glass and the skin doctor’s email might do the trick just as well.”

Yanko Designs: Detector VS Black Skin Cancer

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Evidence-Based Social Media In Medicine And Healthcare

I’ve started  a series on evidence-based social media in which I share peer-reviewed articles that focus on using social media in medicine or healthcare:

The key words used as well as the number and geographic location of searches can provide trend data, as have recently been made available by Google Trends. We report briefly on exploring this resource using Lyme disease as an example because it has well-described seasonal and geographic patterns.

Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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