MedTechFuture.com

The more wired the hospital, the better off its patients: there are fewer deaths and complications, and lower bills. That’s the conclusion of a large study of Texas hospitals released earlier this week. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of hospitals and doctors’ offices in the United States are wired, and the country lags far behind other developed nations in implementing such systems. However, legislators and health-technology specialists hope to change that with a $20 billion cash influx, part of the U.S. government’s proposed stimulus bill.

Dubbed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), the plan would encourage doctors and hospitals to use electronic record-keeping and ordering systems by providing $18 million in incentives through Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. Starting in 2011, physicians who show that they are “meaningfully” using health IT would be eligible for $40,000 to $65,000, and hospitals would be eligible for several million dollars. The incentives would be phased out over time, with penalties in place by 2016.

The bill allocates $2 billion over the next two years for planning and training, including ensuring that new programs adhere to specific interoperability standards. That will be crucial in making certain that data can be transferred between different medical centers and physicians, and that doctors are schooled in how to incorporate electronic record keeping and other technologies into their practices. It would also strengthen privacy and security laws to protect the growing amount of personal medical information that will become electronic.

More information available from the Technology Review.

Research done by scientists in Italy and Switzerland has shown that carbon nanotubes may be the ideal “smart” brain material. Their results are a promising step forward in the search to find ways to “bypass” faulty brain wiring.

The research shows that carbon nanotubes, which, like neurons, are highly electrically conductive, form extremely tight contacts with neuronal cell membranes. Unlike the metal electrodes that are currently used in research and clinical applications, the nanotubes can create shortcuts between the distal and proximal compartments of the neuron, resulting in enhanced neuronal excitability.

The study was conducted in the Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry at EPFL in Switzerland and led by Michele Giugliano (now an assistant professor at the University of Antwerp), University of Trieste professor Laura Ballerini and Maurizio Prato, also from the University of Trieste. “This result is extremely relevant for the emerging field of neuro-engineering and neuroprosthetics,” explains Giugliano, who hypothesizes that the nanotubes could be used as a new building block of novel “electrical bypass” systems for treating traumatic injury of the central nervous system. Carbon nano-electrodes could also be used to replace metal parts in clinical applications such as deep brain stimulation for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease or severe depression. And they show promise as a whole new class of “smart” materials for use in a wide range of potential neuroprosthetic applications.

Source: http://actualites.epfl.ch/presseinfo-com?id=693&newlang=eng

By injecting stem cells directly into the brain, scientists have successfully reversed neural birth defects in mice whose mothers were given heroin during pregnancy. Even though most of the transplanted cells did not survive, they induced the brain’s own cells to carry out extensive repairs.

Transplanted stem cells have previously shown promise in reversing brain damage caused by strokes, as well as by neurological diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s. But their use in treating birth defects is relatively new. In recent years, a handful of research teams have been developing stem-cell-based therapies for rodents with real or simulated birth defects in the brain.

More on this research at Technology Review.

Technorati Tags: birth defects, stem cells

For the 30% of clinically depressed people who don’t respond to medication, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new, noninvasive treatment option. With NeuroStar TMS, a wand held over the head delivers highly focused magnetic pulses to a part of the brain linked to depression. A typical course of treatment would involve 40-minute sessions at a psychiatrist’s office five times a week for four to six weeks. In two clinical trials, roughly half of patients said that their symptoms were reduced by at least 50%.

Technorati Tags: depression