ProCPR Blog

The iPad has changed a lot in the world since it was announced nearly two years ago.  It’s made it into the education system in many places, and has found its’ way into hospitals as well.  We’ve collected some of the best iPad Apps for Doctors, Patients and Med Students.  We’ll be expanding this list as we find more applications.  Let us know if we’re missing any that you use.

1. Interactive Anatomy

The NOVA Series Collection
Pocket Body
Skeletal System
Visible Body

2. EMH Records

DrChrono
iChart EMR
Nimble EMR

3. Radiology

Mobile MIM

4. Educational

Epocrates

5. Assistive Technology

Proloquo2Go

Today I learned about another great advance in medical technology.  This one could be another very important step toward the eradication of cancer, and it was developed by a high school student.  Nanotechnology has helped 17-year-old Angela Zhang to develop what one fellow researcher’s calling the “Swiss Army knife of cancer treatment,” as her gold and iron-oxide nanoparticle does double duty delivering the drug salinomycin to the site of a tumor, in addition to aiding MRI and photoacoustic imaging.

Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells – Biochemistry

MENTOR: Dr. Zhen Cheng, Stanford University

“I was surprised by the survival rate of patients who had undergone current cancer therapy.”

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Over the last few years, I have seen a number of stories about machines that can perform CPR.  Personally, they kind of scare me.  I think of all the things that can potentially go wrong with a machine performing chest compressions, and the time that it could take to get it set up for proper depth of chest and in the proper location.

On the other hand, when a person does CPR, they may not properly compress to the appropriate depth and waste a lot of time by not doing proper compressions.

The device is called LUCAS 2, and according to Dr. Kenneth Deloge, it is more effective than human professionals.  The rate of survival among patients who receive chest compressions from the machine is 20% higher than when professionals gave the chest compressions.

The LUCAS 2, however, is cost prohibitive like many medical devices.  It costs approximately $13,000.

There are other advantages to the machine that remind me of the High Performance CPR techniques that I learned about a few weeks ago.  It can continue to do chest compressions in situations where humans can not, providing uninterrupted compressions.  The device is, in part, based on hands-only CPR.  New research has shown that the body stores enough oxygen to stay alive for seven minutes, but the body also needs constant blood flow, which is provided by chest compressions, when the heart stops pumping blood for itself.

-via Concord Monitor | LUCAS 2 website with more information

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Hi-tech nurses in Portsmouth’s hospitals have ditched traditional notepad and pens for an electronic alternative – saving the NHS £220,000 ($330,000 USD) a year.

The digital notation devices communicate wirelessly with hospital records through a BlackBerry smartphone.  This enables the nurses and midwives to store patient information remotely and securely, transferring data almost instantly.

The Portsmouth NHS Trust believes its PaperIQ digi-pens save time and money by cutting the amount of data entry in half.

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Looking to get a balance platform for your clinic?  You might find yourself paying about $18,000 for the medical device.  A study was recently published in the medical journal Gait & Posture showing that the $99 Wii Balance Board is “clinically comparable” to the medical devices.

When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of “excellent” quality. “I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up,” said lead researcher Ross Clark, in an interview with New Scientist.

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Being out in the field, paramedics will tell you that most car accidents could have been avoided.  In fact, currently there are many laws being discussed regarding the banning of cellphone use while driving.  Many people are texting and driving, and it has caused death.  Isn’t a life worth more than 160 characters (the total length that a text message can be)?

There are car companies that are working on making advances in technology that can drastically decrease the number of accidents each year.  The fact that we’re not all jumping on this advancement seems pretty foolish to me.  “Car Crash Stats: There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed. About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States — one death every 13 minutes.”

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Robots that can cook, dance to Michael Jackson songs or guide the blind are among the gadgets aimed at helping humans cope with illnesses on display in Spain at one of the world’s biggest annual gatherings of new technology enthusiasts.

Standing 58 centimetres (23 inches) tall and with a plastic shell for a body, a humanoid robot called Nao drew a crowd at the Campus Party in Valencia as it danced to Jackson’s “Billie Jean” with a black hat on its head.

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This is something that I haven’t heard about until I found this article.  It makes sense, though, as there aren’t many more than a few thousand around worldwide.  Firefighters in Sandy, Oregon are convinced, having used the device to save a life, that it’s one of the best purchases the department has made, and it cost them $15,000.  But they’re quick to brush that off, as EMT First Responder and volunteer firefighter Jon Turcotte said: “We can’t put a price on the value of a human life. The cost is irrelevant.”

Nathan Jaqua, an EMT Basic and student firefighter had this to say of the device: “This has changed the way we work a cardiac arrest incident. We use the same skills, but it changes the entire atmosphere.”

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A study was recently conducted using new imaging technology.  It found that “silent” heart attacks may not only be far more common than suspected, but also more deadly.  Some studies estimate that these heart attacks, often painless, affect 200,000 people in the United States each year.   Duke University’s Dr. Han Kim suspects the numbers may be far higher.

Unrecognized Myocardial Infarctions, the name given to these silent heart attacks, are not yet fully understood, in terms of both prognosis or how often they occur.

Doctors are usually able to tell whether a patient has had a recent heart attack by looking for changes in a number of places.  They look for signature changes on a test of the heart’s electrical activity called an electrocardiogram.  They also check for particular enzymes in the blood.

Doctors will also look for changes on an electrocardiogram called Q-waves.  The only problem is that not all silent heart attacks will result in Q-waves.  Patients who suffer from the silent heart attacks are then treated for heart disease alone.

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