The trial was led by Dr. Steven Schwartz, opthalmologist and chief of the retina division at the Institute. Although the results are extremely promising, only two patients were treated. The trial will have to be preformed successfully many more times before the procedure can be accepted as an option for care.

Nevertheless, the preliminary findings represent a milestone in the therapeutic use of stem cells and may pave the way for a new therapy to treat eye diseases. The research was recently published online in the journal The Lancet.

Study: Embryonic stem cell trials for macular degeneration: a preliminary report

Source: UCLA Newsroom

Organized by Bill Gates and united by a new World Health Organization (WHO) strategy, which outlines goals and objectives for the enhanced control, prevention, elimination and eradication of neglected tropical diseases, thirteen 13 pharmaceutical companies — Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eisai, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, MSD, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi — have agreed to share their experimental compound libraries. They have also pledged to provide 14 billion treatments over the next decade.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $363 million. With funds from various other partners totaling $785 million, the project aims to erradicate many neglected tropical diseases, including blinding trachoma, leprosy, chagas disease, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, guinea worm, lymphatic filariasis, river blindness, schistosomiasis and yaws.

WHO director general, Margaret Chan, was encouraged by the show of unity during the launch at the Royal College of Physicians in London:

These ancient diseases are now being brought to their knees with stunning speed. With the boost to this momentum being made today, I am confident almost all of these diseases can be eliminated or controlled by the end of this decade.

Source: Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases

LowestMed’s proprietary technology effectively makes prescription drug pricing transparent. The LowestMed app includes more than 1,000 of the most popular brand name and generic drugs, which comprise more than 95% of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the nation.

According to Brad Bangerter, CEO of LowestMed:

Most consumers don’t realize that prices can vary widely by pharmacy, and that up until this point the only way to do price comparisons on a local level was to go to each pharmacy and submit an insurance claim. With the LowestMed app, for the first time consumers are empowered with the full transparency to identify the least expensive drug prices in their area. We do for the pharmacy marketplace what Travelocity or KAYAK does for the travel industry, providing a one-stop, fast, convenient and easy way for consumers to maximize savings on their medications.

The app also includes a free LowestMed discount card, which when displayed at the point of sale provides savings of 10 to 85 percent off of retail prices.

In addition to the mobile app, users can also compare prices and lookup thousands of additional drug price comparisons at the LowestMed website.

Source: LowestMed

The technology was recently published in the journal Biomedical Microdevices. A 20mm long, 5mm wide swimming tail made of copper and flexible polymer vibrates due to the magnets in the MRI machine and propels the capsule endoscope in the stomach. Propulsion speed is on the order of several millimeter per second.

What makes this endoscope truly different from current “capsule endoscopies,” which involves swallowing a pill-sized camera that takes pictures continuously until it is passed, is that electronics and microsensors embedded in the robotic endoscope will allow an operator to manipulate the magnetic field and guide the movement of — literally steer — the device through the GI tract.

In the future, the microswimmer may allow doctors to find difficult-to-diagnose, early stage cancer or allow for treatments such as biopsies or local drug delivery.

Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University

Life Technologies announced yesterday that it has achieved that milestone with the release of the new benchtop Ion Proton Sequencer, which is designed to sequence the entire human genome in a single day (existing DNA sequencing technologies take a week or longer) for $1,000 USD.

Priced at $149,000 USD (a fraction of the cost of existing DNA sequencing technologies), the Ion Proton Sequencer is based on the next generation of semiconductor sequencing technology.

Literally “sequencing by synthesis,” the technology detects hydrogen ions that are released during the polymerization of DNA. Ion semiconductor sequencing differs from other sequencing technologies in that no modified nucleotides or optics are used.

The technology is likely to drive genome sequencing into the clinic in a big way — the price of equipment and reagents is affordable for large medical practices or hospitals. Since every state requires newborns to be screened for at least 29 genetic diseases, babies may be some of the first to have their entire genome sequenced in a healthcare setting.

Source: Life Technologies

Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) and Microsoft Research Connections are working together to develop a non-invasive, technological solution that promises to improve both the health and overall quality of life for people with diabetes: a contact lens that, instead of correcting vision, monitors blood glucose levels.

Blood-glucose levels can be measured via sensors embedded in the contact lens. Using a type of micro heads-up display (HUD), the contact lens natural user interface (NUI), which makes interacting with the sensor seamless, would replace blood tests with real-time, continuous feedback of glucose and insulin levels to the wearer. The prototype contact lenses include an embedded LED display, a wireless data communication link and a power harvesting unit.

Bio-Nanotechnology professor Babak Parviz at UW, explains:

What is inside the blood, to a degree, appears on the surface of the eye. So there is a reflection of the body chemistry directly on the surface of the eye. If you have a contact lens that can sample that surface, analyze it, and maybe send out the information through a radio, this contact lens, in principle, can give us information about what’s happening inside the body without actually going into the body or collecting a blood sample.

Source: Microsoft Research

The mobile diagnostic device measures key vital signs — blood pressure, pulmonary function, temperature — and may even be able to read simple samples, sending all information directly to your smartphone. The Medical Tricorder additionally asks screening questions to provide recommendations.

According to the video below, the device can alert you about flu or disease outbreaks tailored to your family’s needs and offers advice on what to do next.

Source: Scanadu

The electrode array is made of a pliable material only about one-quarter the thickness of a human hair. It contains 360 amplified and multiplexed electrodes, which allows for minimal wiring (only 39 wires are needed to sample all the electrodes simultaneously). The flexible, foldable device can be situated not only on the brain surface but also inside grooves and fissures or even between the cortical hemispheres, areas that are physically inaccessible to conventional rigid electrode arrays.

Recently tested in animal models, the array recorded spiral waves of brain activity during epileptic seizures not previously observed. The patterns resemble those seen in the heart during ventricular fibrillation, raising the possibility of fighting epilepsy with some of the same methods used to treat cardiac arrhythmias, like focal destruction or ablation of abnormal circuits.

According to Brian Litt, M.D., an associate professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and principal investigator of a study appearing in the November edition of Nature Neuroscience:

The new technology we have created can conform to the brain’s unique geometry, and records and maps activity at resolutions that have not been possible before. Using this device, we can explore the brain networks underlying normal function and disease with much more precision, and its likely to change our understanding of memory, vision, hearing and many other normal functions and diseases.

Source: Penn Medicine

The new health information technology company will develop and market an open, interoperable technology platform and innovative clinical applications focused on enabling better population health management to improve outcomes and the overall economics of health and wellness. The joint venture will combine Microsoft’s expertise in building platforms and ecosystems with GE Healthcare’s experience in clinical and administrative workflow solutions.

The as of yet unnamed new company will deliver a distinctive, open platform that will give healthcare providers and independent software vendors the ability to develop a new generation of clinical applications. The venture will develop healthcare applications on the platform using in-house developers and the platform will connect with a wide range of healthcare IT products. GE Healthcare IT will immediately be able to connect existing products to the platform, helping current customers to derive new insights.

The two companies will contribute the following intellectual property:

• Microsoft Amalga, an enterprise health intelligence platform that brings historically disparate data together and makes it easy to identify and act on insights into clinical, financial or operational performance.
• Microsoft Vergence, a technology that brings single sign-on, context management and multi-factor authentication together on a clinical workstation.
• Microsoft expreSSO, a solution to simplify and streamline the organizational rollout of single sign-on.
• GE Healthcare eHealth, a framework for delivering clinical applications on top of a connected healthcare community. Its foundation is a portal technology that provides clinicians a web-based, simple way to view patient data from a health information exchange.
• GE Healthcare Qualibria, a clinical knowledge application environment that helps ensure that organizations can more effectively manage to the latest measures of quality and thrive in today’s performance-based world.

The long-term vision of the venture is to create new value by offering a healthcare performance management suite that includes many of these products.

Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, said:

The complementary nature of GE Healthcare’s and Microsoft’s individual expertise will drive new insights, solutions and efficiencies to further advance the two companies’ shared vision of a connected, patient-centric healthcare system. The global healthcare challenges of access, cost and quality of care delivery are creating a new focus on the performance and accountability of healthcare delivery systems –- in every country, at every level of care. This venture will demonstrate what is possible when leading companies with complementary capabilities work together to meet a common goal.

Source: Microsoft

Presented in video format and featuring cancer survivors, physicians, scientists, advocates and Ronnie Andrews, the president of Clarient, the personalized medicine campaign covers what indivdualized cancer treatment means, what makes a patient’s cancer different, treatment decisions, expert insights and more.

Sponsored by GE Healthcare, the campaign focuses on education, helping patients to understand how no two cancers are the same, and how molecular-level testing may identify unique characteristics that can help doctors select alternative cancer treatment options:

Advances in our understanding of cancer have proven the disease to be far more complex than originally thought. In recent years, we’ve learned each person may have different gene abnormalities that drive their cancer. This may explain why one breast cancer patient might respond well to a given therapy while another will derive little or no benefit from the same therapy. Advanced molecular-level testing may give your doctor more information on your cancer to select the therapy and medicines most appropriate for your disease. Molecular-level testing may be instrumental in helping you gain access to clinical trials that test cutting-edge treatments and medicines.

Information on the Is My Cancer Different? website will be shared with doctors, families and caregivers to create a landscape of awareness about how individualized cancer diagnostics and treatments can help drive positive outcomes.

The Is My Cancer Different? initiative has a companion campaign called Simple Acts of Sharing, which aims to get one million people to share the question in one million minutes (just over 694 days). You can find out more about Is My Cancer Different? on Facebook and Twitter.

Source: Is My Cancer Different?