The Medical Technologies That Are Changing Health Care

http://www.hhnmag.com/articles/3580-the-medical-technologies-that-are-changing-health-care

New, eye-popping medical technology provides earlier diagnoses, personalized treatments and a breathtaking range of other benefits for both patients and health care professionals. Longer-range research is focused on capturing much more sophisticated information than current products can, Reinhart says. A promising example is a patch that uses a combination of electrical and chemical signals to identify either the predisposition to or the existence of a particular disease.

That would provide an enormous advantage when it comes to illnesses that involve brain and nerve degeneration, such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s or Parkinson’s disease. Instead of conducting a test and comparing results with a norm, as is done today, continuous tracking of certain biomarkers would establish a personal baseline while an individual is still healthy. Readings that significantly move off the baseline would signal declining cognitive activity before symptoms ever arise, and physicians would be alerted to do further tests. “Now you get a much earlier readout that something has just changed in your body, so let’s talk to someone,” Reinhart says.

To reach that potential, three things must happen: improvements in sensor technology; better interpretation of massive amounts of data in a medically relevant, rigorous way; and development of earlier intervention strategies. “As we get better and better at this, we’re going to find that new therapeutic options are going to be open to us,” Reinhart says.

From the above article we can see that technology has indeed helped in saving many innocent lives. Human medicine and health sciences have improved. Doctors and medical students have embarked on medical technological tools to carry out extensive research on human health problems and challenges. This extensive research has resulted into the development of new drugs, treatments and devices which have helped in curing most challenging human diseases and this has helped in saving so many lives and it has also prolonged the human lifespan. Of course, while technology us beneficial, it is only as good as the person who has programmed it and the medical professional that is using it. In some cases, health care providers lean too heavily on this technology and don’t spend enough time getting to know their patients as individuals. Instead, they spend their time interacting with the equipment. Because of this, they could end up missing a symptom that may not necessarily fall into the “black and white” areas of the electronic medical records. It may be an underlying symptom that could indicate that something else is wrong in addition to the primary diagnosis, or perhaps could indicate an entirely different diagnosis altogether. In conclusion, we still cannot deny that indeed advancement in medical technology affects the society more positively than negatively as it helps to come up with new medince and treatment to cure new types of conplicated diseases.

DNA damage seen in patients undergoing CT scanning, study finds

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144634.htm

Using new laboratory technology, scientists have shown that cellular damage is detectable in patients after CT scanning, according to a new study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

“We now know that even exposure to small amounts of radiation from computed tomagraphy scanning is associated with cellular damage,” said Patricia Nguyen, MD, one of the lead authors of the study and an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford. “Whether or not this causes cancer or any negative effect to the patient is still not clear, but these results should encourage physicians toward adhering to dose reduction strategies.”

The study will be published online July 22 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging. Won Hee Lee, PhD, and Yong Fuga Li, PhD, both postdoctoral scholars, are the study’s other lead authors.

“The use of medical imaging for heart disease has exploded in the past decade,” said Joseph Wu, MD, senior author of the study. Wu is a professor of medicine and of radiology and the director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. “These tests expose patients to a nontrivial amount of low-dose radiation. But nobody really knows exactly what this low-dose radiation does to the patient. We now have the technology that allows us to look at very subtle, cell-level changes.”

Along with the burgeoning use of advanced medical imaging tests over the past decade have come rising public health concerns about possible links between low-dose radiation and cancer. The worry is that increased radiation exposure from such diagnostic procedures as CT scans, which expose the body to low-dose X-ray beams, can damage DNA and create mutations that spur cells to grow into tumors.

‘Legitimate concerns’

But there has been limited scientific evidence to date that shows the effects of this low-dose radiation on the body, according to the study. Currently, there is a bill winding its way through Congress to fund more research on the health effects of low doses of radiation, Wu said. This study’s findings point to the need for more research, he said.

“I think there are legitimate concerns about the exposure to low-dose radiation, but the problem is that it is difficult to prove a causal relationship with cancer,” Nguyen said. “Even though we show some damage is occurring at a cellular level, this damage is being repaired. It is the damage that escapes repair, or the cells that are not eliminated and are mutated, that go on and produce cancer. We can’t track those cells with current technology.”

In this study, researchers examined the effects on human cells of low-dose radiation from a wide range of cardiac and vascular CT scans. These imaging procedures are commonly used for a number of reasons, including management of patients suspected of having obstructive coronary artery disease, and for those with aortic stenosis, in preparation of transcatheter aortic valve replacement.

A CT scan, which is used for imaging and diagnostic procedures throughout the body, exposes patients to at least 150 times the amount of radiation from a single chest X-ray, the study said.

In 2007, the National Cancer Institute estimated that 29,000 future cancer cases could be attributed to the 72 million CT scans performed in the country that year.

Increase in DNA damage, cell death

But the reliability of such predictions depends on how scientists measure the underlying link between radiation and cancer in the first place, Nguyen said.

“Because we don’t know much about the effects of low-dose radiation — all we know is about high doses from atomic bomb blast survivors — we just assume it’s directly proportional to the dose,” said Nguyen. “We wanted to see what really happens at the cellular level.”

Researchers examined the blood of 67 patients undergoing cardiac CT angiograms. Using such techniques as whole-genome sequencing and flow cytometery to measure biomarkers of DNA damage, researchers examined the blood of patients both before and after undergoing the procedure.

Results showed an increase in DNA damage and cell death, as well as increased expression of genes involved in cell repair and death, the study said. Although most cells damaged by the scan were repaired, a small percentage of the cells died, the study said.

“These findings raise the possibility that radiation exposure from cardiac CT angiography may cause DNA damage that can lead to mutations if damaged cells are not repaired or eliminated properly,” the study said. “Cumulative cell death after repeated exposures may also be problematic.”

“We need to learn more because it’s not a benign effect even at these low dosages,” Nguyen said. “Our research supports the idea that maybe physicians shouldn’t just use the best image quality in all cases. We shouldn’t eliminate CT scans because they’re obviously important, but you can make it safer by reducing the doses, by getting better machines and technology, and by giving patients something to protect them.”

Nguyen added: “It is important to note that we did not detect any DNA damage in patients receiving the lowest doses of radiation and who were of average weight and had regular heart rates.”

Using new laboratory technology, scientists have shown that cellular damage is detectable in patients after CT scanning. This discovery has benefited since diagnosis can be more accurate with this new equipment. Better treatments and solutions can then be implemented for cancer patients as well as adhering to dose reduction strategies. This will in turn help reduce the sufferings of patients due to the side effects and pain from medicine.

However, such equipment also brings along adverse effects. In 2007, the National Cancer Institute estimated that 29,000 future cancer cases could be attributed to the 72 million CT scans performed in the country that year. This is due to the fact that in a CT scan, which is used for imaging and diagnostic procedures throughout the body, it exposes patients to at least 150 times the amount of radiation from a single chest X-ray. Therefore, this has brought negative effects to the society and other  equipment that are more safe should be used instead.

World War One: Medical advances inspired by the conflict By Owain Clarke

 

New heavy artillery and machine guns obliterated flesh and bone. And even if a soldier wasn’t instantly killed the dirt of the trenches meant wounds often became infected.

Millions died, and millions more were left disabled which, according to retired anaesthetist Dr Peter Lloyd Jones, secretary of the Museum for Health and Medicine for Wales at Cardiff University, led to huge new challenges for the medical profession.

“The weaponry was far more effective – 15% of all combatants in the British armed forces were killed and that was unprecedented,” he said.

Media captionOwain Clarke reports on how World War One led to advances in medicine

“On the other hand, of those that got injured but didn’t die, far fewer than before died of their injuries and that has to be down to well organised medical management.”

Faced with such carnage, the medical profession did, indeed, respond.

And two Welshmen were responsible for one of the most important advances – the Thomas splint – which is still used in war zones today.

It was invented in the late 19th Century by pioneering surgeon Hugh Owen Thomas, often described as the father of British orthopaedics, born in Anglesey to a family of “bone setters”.

But it was his surgeon nephew Robert Jones, later Sir Robert, who as a major general inspector for orthopaedics in the military, was mainly responsible for rolling out its use on the battlefield in World War One.

At the beginning of the conflict in 1914, 80% of soldiers with broken thigh bones died. The use of the Thomas splint meant that, by 1916, 80% of soldiers suffering that injury survived.

But there were other significant advances, including more widespread use of treatments and vaccinations for deadly diseases like typhoid.

In France, vehicles were commandeered to become mobile X-ray units. New antiseptics were developed to clean wounds, and soldiers became more disciplined about hygiene.

Also, because the sheer scale of the destruction meant armies had to become better organised in looking after the wounded, surgeons were drafted in closer to the frontline and hospital trains used to evacuate casualties.

Those lessons are just as relevant in war zones today.

Colonel Tina Donnelly, a nurse and army reservist who was commanding officer of the field hospital in Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, said their knowledge of how to treat leg injuries on the battlefield went back to their forefathers.

“Today we might not think of those injuries as being life threatening but in the First World War they would have been,” she said.

“If you fracture your thigh bone, minimum blood loss is about one and a half litres from a circulating volume of about five litres – not to immobilise would have been life-threatening.”

With hundreds of thousands of injured soldiers returning home, World War One also led to a new emphasis on rehabiliation and continuing care.

New techniques in facial surgery and burns were developed – and there were huge advances in prosthetic limb technology – to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of amputees.

And with existing healthcare capacity overwhelmed new hospitals were built across the country, including the Prince of Wales Hospital in Cardiff.

Dr Lloyd Jones said this transformed the shape of the healthcare system.

“Generally speaking medicine in Britain was pretty disorganised,” he said.

“You’d have a GP, you might have a cottage hospital down the road run by some local benevolent body, but there was no organisation – nothing bringing it all together.

“And that’s what the First World War did for Britain.”

this article talks about how world war 1 has changed medicine in great britain, as ironic as it sounds it was conflict that made healthcare better. the conflict in world war 1 forced doctors to come up with better medical treatments to treat injured victims of the war. which brought about advancements in prosthetic limb technology. these advancements have proven to be of great aid in our society, giving many amputees another chance to lead a normal life again. this article also said that world war 1 has changed the whole entire healthcare system in Britain, a healthcare that was once so unstable has evolved to be one of the strongest countries in medicine- and all these were only attainable with the help of technology. thus, i believe that the advent of technology in the medical industry has proven to have more positive outcomes than negative.

3D printed dinner

Link to article : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160729152432.htm

summary :

•  A 3D food printer that can fabricate edible items through computer-guided software and the actual cooking of edible pastes, gels, powders, and liquid ingredients — all in a prototype that looks like an elegant coffee machine.
•  3D food printers will produce an infinite variety of customized fresh, nutritional foods on demand, transforming digital recipes and basic ingredients supplied in frozen cartridges into healthy dishes that can supplement our daily intake.
• 3D food printing offers revolutionary new options for convenience and customization, from controlling nutrition to managing dietary needs to saving energy and transport costs to creating new and novel food items

My opinion :

1. Its an innovative way to eat a meal that is very nutritious.
2. Eco-friendly invention
3. Anyone who knows how to operate this machine can produce nutritious meals that is presented at its finest. Thus, user-friendly.

Rise of the Machines: The Future has Lots of Robots, Few Jobs for Humans

http://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/04/rise-machines-future-lots-robots-jobs-humans/

The robots haven’t  just landed in the workplace—they’re expanding skills, moving up the corporate ladder, showing awesome productivity and retention rates, and increasingly shoving aside their human counterparts. One multi-tasker bot, from Momentum Machines, can make (and flip) a gourmet hamburger in 10 seconds and could soon replace an entire McDonalds crew. A manufacturing device from Universal Robots doesn’t just solder, paint, screw, glue, and grasp—it builds new parts for itself on the fly when they wear out or bust. And just this week, Google won a patent to start building worker robots with personalities.

As intelligent machines begin their march on labor and become more sophisticated and specialized than first-generation cousins like Roomba or Siri, they have an outspoken champion in their corner: author and entrepreneur Martin Ford. In his new book, Rise of the Robots, he argues that AI and robotics will soon overhaul our economy.

There’s some logic to the thesis, of course, and other economists such as Andrew (The Second Machine Age) McAfee have sided generally with Ford’s outlook. Oxford University researchers have estimated that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades. And if even half that number is closer to the mark, workers are in for a rude awakening.

In Ford’s vision, a full-on worker revolt is on the horizon, followed by a radically new economic state whereby humans will live more productive and entrepreneurial lives, subsisting on guaranteed incomes generated by our amazing machines.

I see the advances happening in technology and it’s becoming evident that computers, machines, robots, and algorithms are going to be able to do most of the routine, repetitive types of jobs. That’s the essence of what machine learning is all about. What types of jobs are on some level fundamentally predictable? A lot of different skill levels fall into that category. It’s not just about lower-skilled jobs either. People with college degrees, even professional degrees, people like lawyers are doing things that ultimately are predictable. A lot of those jobs are going to be susceptible over time.

I think that with the rise of the machines, it will bring about some negative impacts on our daily lives. As we create robots which are more skilled and efficient in doing a job than us, these machines would slowly take over what we do daily. This might halt us from upgrading ourselves to pick up new skills. As a result, the economy might also be affected.

Millions of jobs may be lost to automation in Southeast Asia, U.N. agency says REUTERS JUL 7, 2016

ARTICLE HISTORY PRINT SHARE SINGAPORE – More than half of workers in five Southeast Asian countries are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation in the next two decades, an International Labour Organization study found, with those in the garment industry particularly vulnerable. About 137 million workers or 56 percent of the salaried workforce from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, fall under the high-risk category, the study showed. “Countries that compete on low-wage labor need to reposition themselves. Price advantage is no longer enough,” said Deborah France-Massin, director for the ILO’s bureau for employers’ activities. The report said workers have to be trained to work effectively alongside digitalized machines. Southeast Asia is home to more than 630 million people and is a hub for several manufacturing sectors, including textiles, vehicles and hard disk drives. Of the 9 million people working in the region’s textiles, clothing and footwear industry, 64 percent of Indonesian workers are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, 86 percent in Vietnam, and 88 percent in Cambodia. Garment manufacturers in Cambodia, who take orders from retailers such as Adidas, Marks and Spencer and Wal-Mart Stores Inc, employ about 600,000 people. Neighboring Vietnam is seeing record investment in its footwear and textiles industries, due to new free-trade pacts with major markets, including the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is the second-largest garment supplier behind China to the United States. The United Nations agency said technologies including 3-D printing, wearable technology, nanotechnology and robotic automation could disrupt the sector. “Robots are becoming better at assembly, cheaper and increasingly able to collaborate with people,” the ILO said. The textiles, clothing and footwear sector is at the highest risk of automation out of five industries analyzed in the study, including automotive and auto parts, electrical and electronics, business process outsourcing and retail. In the automotive and auto parts industry, more than 60 percent of salaried workers in Indonesia, and over 70 percent of those in Thailand face the risk of their jobs being displaced. Southeast Asia’s automotive sector, the seventh-largest producer of vehicles in 2015 globally, employs more than 800,000 workers, the report said. Known as the “Detroit of Southeast Asia,” Thailand is a regional production and export hub for the world’s top carmakers. The auto sector accounts for around 10 percent of Thai GDP and employs a tenth of its workers in manufacturing.

In essence, this article serves as in insight of whats going to happen in the near future in our society. It is and ever growing issue that many of us would lose our jobs and that many of us would have lesser job options. With the advent in technology, robots and smart machinery are taking on our role as humans and being more efficient in our jobs. They are better perfectionists that would ensure that the job is done well and quickly. Also, unlike humans the smart robots can work around the clock and thus allowing the job to be done faster.

 

 

Dolly the sheep’s cloned sisters enjoy good health despite their old age

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/27/health/cloned-sheep-age/index.html

Though growing old, Dolly’s sheep siblings are no worse for wear. Debbie, Denise, Dianna and Daisy, clones all derived from the same cell line as the first cloned mammal, show no signs of long-term health issues according to research published by Nature Communications.The clones are, in fact, in vigorous good condition despite the fact that they range in age from 7 to 9, or about 60 to 70 in human years.

Regardless of poor efficiency and a fuzzy understanding, somatic cell nuclear transfer has been undertaken in more than 20 species of mammals to create clones, according to Kenneth Sinclair, lead author of the new study.

A professor of developmental biology at the University of Nottingham, Sinclair did not participate in the original experiment to create Dolly, and cloning is not his primary interest.

It turns out, he inherited the sister clones — or “sestras,” for fans of the sci-fi TV show “Orphan Black” — along with nine other cloned offspring related to Dolly, from professor Keith Campbell. Now deceased, Campbell had worked with Wilmut at Roslin to create Dolly and continued his cloning research at the University of Nottingham.

Though higher than normal failures occur in early embryonic development, clones that get past the neonatal hump do well, by all accounts.

“We have data showing in multiple species that once an animal was born healthy, the animal would lead a normal life,” Cibelli said.

Still, Dolly herself died prematurely of lung disease in 2003. Though the illness that did her in had nothing to do with her origins, healthy aging among clones is a contentious issue, Sinclair and his co-authors wrote. Much was made of the fact that she’d been suffering from osteoarthritis, a sign of premature aging.

Mindful of Campbell’s legacy, Sinclair decided to assess the long-term health of the four most elderly members of his flock. And so the foster father measured the sheep’s blood pressure, metabolism, heart function, blood glucose levels and insulin levels and x-rayed their muscles and joints, looking for signs of premature aging.

What did Sinclair discover? Mild osteoarthritis, nothing else. The four sheep are “remarkably healthy,” Sinclair said in a university video (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2016/july/nottingham-dollies-prove-cloned-sheep-can-live-long-and-healthy-lives.aspx), adding that he has no conflicts of interest and no agenda.

The advancements in technologies leads to a much clearer understanding on how cloning works and we are taking a step closer to eventually figuring out how to clone humans. I feel that we should wary on how we approach this matter as cloning humans might lead to undesirable outcomes such as mutations that we have never seen before.

Microbes and biofuel

http://www.microbiologyonline.org.uk/about-microbiology/microbes-and-climate-change/microbes-and-biofuels

Scientists are now harnessing the power of microbes to produce biofuels such as ethanol. These biofuels are generally renewable and can be made through modified strains of bacteria such as E.coli and yeast. By increasing production on a large scale, it can help to supplement the world’s fuel needs.

I believe that this is a viable solution, but does not take into consideration the issues of providing more fuel to the world resulting in increased levels of carbon dioxide produced.

Disadvantages of using Technology

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/scams-on-the-rise-in-singapore-what-are-some-of-them

 

From the above article, we can see that there is a sharp increase in the number of people getting scammed. There are all types of scams, from sex scams to products scams to even making use of Government Sectors to obtain private information or cash. It is becoming more prevalent, that the more technology involves, the more harm that it brings about to society. No doubt, the evolution of technology does brings about connivance to our lives i.e we can communicate to anyone anywhere anytime, we get exposed to different cultures etc. However, weighing the pros and cons, can we really say that the societal harm and other negative impacts that are brought about by technology are insignificant? I personally thank the existence of such a genius piece of “equipment”, without it I’m not sure how I will function without my Youtube, without my music, without my movies. I would not be exposed to other cultures in the world e.g. Western Culture and Korean Culture. If people of the society are more cautious, the negative impacts that hackers and criminals brings about due to the evolution of technology can be avoided. The Government is already advertising methods and precautions to take to prevent one to fall victim to such scams.

A video about Bitcoins (The currency that hackers like to use now of days)

S$834.43 = 1 bitcoin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G3RoBHMu-o 

Another side point, we want robots to be smart and do work for us, but  we are afraid that they turn against us. Lol

First genetically modified humans could exist within two years

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/15/first-genetically-modified-humans-could-exist-within-two-years/

Editas Medicine has announced plans to start the first trials into a ground-breaking technique of genetically editing the DNA of patients suffering from a genetic condition that causes the blinding disorder. Caused by defects in a gene which instructs the creation of a protein essential to vision, this disorder could eventually cause patients to go completely blind. As gene editing is banned, the company would require special permission from health regulators to carry out the trials. However, this caused controversy as it fundamentally changes a person’s genetic ode which can then be passed down to offspring. There may also be unintended consequences for other parts of the genome and could lead to designer babies. Despite concerns, this new technology could be the cure to genetic diseases and result in huge improvements to our current medical technology.

I believe that gene editing and other such technology should be legalized. Though it is considered as altering what we are born with, I feel that the fact that it may be able to cure genetic diseases outweighs the unethical issues surrounding this topic. Despite the health concerns it poses, having the possibility that people born with diseases could be cured can bring hope to patients. As this kind of genetic engineering is not for aesthetic reasons but for health, I feel that such medical technology should be allowed as it can improve the lives of patients. Thus, I believe that genetically modifying diseases-causing genes should be legalized and accepted.