Lifeboat Foundation

IT is the backbone of modern healthcare, from patient records and medication management to diagnostic equipment, networking and communication systems. These healthcare IT professionals play a pivotal role in ensuring the accuracy, security, reliability and accessibility of health data. Hospital IT professionals also ensure that the technological backbones of these hospital systems operate correctly.

They ensure that doctors have real-time access to patient information, nurses can track medication schedules accurately and communication between departments is fluid and efficient. Without this critical support, the efficiency and safety of patient care is severely compromised. Simply put, the work of hospital IT teams is vital to the smooth operation of hospitals.

It is fair and appropriate to say that hospital IT teams are unsung heroes. The nature of working in IT is to keep everything running smoothly at all times. These dedicated, talented and hardworking IT experts are often ignored unless the infrastructure is not working or has failed. Nobody notices when hospital IT systems are operating properly; the IT teams only get noticed when things go wrong, and typically receive negative attention.

Aging is known to have profound effects on the human brain, prompting changes in the composition of cells and the expression of genes, while also altering aspects of the interaction between genes and environmental factors. While past neuroscience studies have pinpointed many of the molecular changes associated with aging, the age-related genetic factors influencing specific neuron populations remains poorly understood.

Recent studies on flies, mice, primates and human brain tissue utilizing single-cell or single-nucleus RNA-sequencing and genetic experimental techniques shed new light on these cell-type-specific changes. For instance, they unveiled the effects of aging on glial cells in the mouse and human brain, associations between cell-specific changes and modified chromatin proteins, and the influence of DNA methylation in the aging of various tissues.

Researchers at University of California (UC) San Diego and Salk Institute recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding how both age and sex impact human cortical neurons at a single-cell level. Their findings, published in Neuron, offer new insights into how aging affects cell composition, gene expression and DNA methylation across human brain cell types, while also uncovering differences between gene expression and DNA methylation in females and males.

MIT’s soft drone flies and grasps, swiftly picking up a bottle in a demo video:

Interestingly, the drone’s new capabilities allow it to catch objects that are moving at speeds of up to 0.3 meters per second.

Continue reading “MIT’s new drone with flying claws grabs objects mid-air at high speed” »

The use of the robot allows surgeries to be performed without opening the abdomen.

Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya says that a robot has been used for the first time in Israel to completely remove a patient’s pancreas.

The 78-year-old patient was diagnosed with multiple cystic tumors of the pancreas. Although this type of tumor is not considered cancerous, doctors say that left untreated, it could develop into a malignant pancreatic tumor in the future.

Continue reading “In Israel first, robot is used by doctors to completely remove patient’s pancreas” »

The mapping of 50,000 mysterious “knots” in the human genome may someday lead to the development of new cancer drugs, researchers say.

Scientists have grown blood stem cells in the laboratory for the first time in a move that could potentially end the need for stem cell transplants.

During a stem cell (or bone marrow) transplant, damaged blood cells are replaced with healthy ones and can be used to treat conditions such as leukaemia.

However, finding a donor match can be difficult and some patients die before a donor is found.

In this article, we explore how the latest advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have helped researchers explore areas of the genome that had previously been dismissed as uninformative.

Finally, the goal of any healthcare organization is to provide the best possible care to patients. Predictive AI can contribute significantly to this goal by enabling more accurate diagnoses, tailored treatment plans and earlier interventions.

From the patient’s perspective, this translates to better health outcomes, reduced hospital stays and increased satisfaction with their care. For healthcare organizations, improved patient experiences lead to higher patient retention rates, positive word-of-mouth referrals and better performance on patient satisfaction metrics, which are increasingly tied to reimbursement rates in many healthcare systems.

As we’ve explored, the benefits of predictive AI extend far beyond improved diagnostics and treatment plans. It’s a catalyst for operational excellence, financial optimization, availability of investments and long-term growth. From resource management to building an authoritative brand, predictive AI touches every aspect of the healthcare business environment.

Nowadays, there’s lots of buzz about spectacular new medical treatments, such as personalized cancer therapy with modified immune cells or antibodies. Such treatments, however, are very complex and expensive and so find only limited application. Most medical therapies are still based on small chemical compounds that can be produced in large quantities and thus at low cost.