The Healthcare Standard

The Machine Whisperers: This Startup Improves Machine Health Through Digital Transformation

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Various predictive and preventive maintenance methods for industrial machinery have been around for a long while now. The newest technology disrupting this mix, though, revolves around continuous diagnostics and didn’t get its start on the manufacturing floor. It came instead out of the medical devices world.

Gal Shaul is one of two co-founders and CTO of Augury, an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) company focused on production machine health. Years ago, while he was working as a software developer of a medical device startup, he was visiting a client’s site to understand why their product wasn’t functioning properly. When he arrived, Gal could hear right away that the machine’s cooling fan was clogged. That got him thinking about monitoring the sounds machines make to prevent failures. That episode eventually led him to partner with his fellow co-founder and CEO, Saar Yoskovitz, who was working on machine learning solutions for speech recognition at the time, to launch Augury in 2011. Their goal was to develop hardware and software, combining Artificial Intelligence and the IIoT, to improve reliability within the manufacturing industry based in part on the sounds that machinery makes.

 

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The Healthcare Standard

Could Immunotherapy Treat Diseases Besides Cancer?

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Approaches for boosting the body’s immune system are being tried for autoimmune and heart conditions, but it is too early to know how well they will work in people

Immunotherapy has transformed cancer care. Now the tools and new knowledge created by this strategy for treating disease by stimulating the body’s immune system are beginning to be employed for everything from fighting autoimmune illnesses to preventing tissue rejection in organ transplants.

Although still mostly confined to scientific labs, the use of this approach outside of cancer has tremendous potential, researchers say, because the immune system is fundamentally involved in every organ and in many health conditions. “The opportunity exists to move what we call the immunorevolution beyond cancer,” says Jonathan Epstein, a cardiologist and chief scientific officer for the University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine).

 

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The Healthcare Standard

MUSC’s College of Pharmacy Receives Largest Donation to Date

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The Medical University of South Carolina. Alycia Araneo Craft recently made history after she gave the College of Pharmacy at the Medical University of South Carolina not only its largest gift, but also the largest gift ever to an MUSC college. File/Leroy Burnell/Staff

Alycia Araneo Craft recently made history after she gave the College of Pharmacy at the Medical University of South Carolina not only its largest gift, but also the largest gift ever to an MUSC college.

The previous titleholder for the largest donation to the college was her father, Michael P. Araneo, who created one of the largest discount pharmacy stores in the Southeast in the 1950s.

“I want us to work together to keep the MUSC College of Pharmacy the very best in the country,” Craft said in a press release.

 

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The Healthcare Standard

Massachusetts Man Indicted for $45K Insurance Fraud Scheme

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A Salem, Mass., man was indicted in connection with a scheme to set up a shell company to fraudulently collect benefits under a long-term care insurance policy, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced.

Benjamin Johnson, 47, was indicted by a Statewide Grand Jury for one count of larceny of more than $250 by false pretenses and one count of making a fraudulent insurance claim. He will be arraigned in Essex Superior Court at a later date.

The Attorney General’s Office alleges that between March 2016 and January 2017, Johnson operated a shell home health care company called White Shores Home Health. Using this company, Johnson collected money from John Hancock Life Insurance Company by billing them for treatment not rendered under his father’s long-term care insurance policy.

Johnson allegedly stole more than $45,000 by claiming he was his father’s health care aide, when in fact he failed to provide care to his father.

 

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The Healthcare Standard

Former Gov. Mark Parkinson Grows Closer to WSU With Honorary Doctorate

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Former Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson has been close with Wichita State University for as long as he can remember.

“I grew up in Wichita, and among my first memories of life are being five or six years old and listening to Wichita State basketball games on the radio,” Parkinson told The Sunflower.

But Parkinson’s relationship with the university was strengthened even further this month, after the Kansas Board of Regents approved an honorary doctorate degree for the Shocker alumnus.

“It’s very meaningful to me to be recognized by your alma mater and a school that I’ve had a lifelong relationship with,” Parkinson said.

A graduate of Wichita Heights High School, Parkinson earned summa cum laude honors with his bachelor’s degree in political science from WSU in 1980. He later graduated from the University of Kansas School of Law.

 

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The Healthcare Standard

For Kids With Asthma, Depression Makes ER Visit More Likely

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MONDAY, Sept. 30, 2019 (HealthDay News) — New research suggests that anxiety and depression can make it hard for some kids to manage their asthma.

Young patients with all three conditions ended up in the emergency room nearly twice as often as kids who only struggle with asthma, the study found.

“Asthma self-management is complex, requiring recognition of symptoms, adherence to medication and avoidance of triggers,” explained study first author Dr. Naomi Bardach. She is from the University of California, San Francisco’s department of pediatrics and Institute for Health Policy Studies.

“The symptoms of anxiety and depression can make it more challenging to follow treatment, leading to more ER visits,” she added in a university news release. “There also may be a greater tendency to use the ER for supportive services, even in the absence of a serious asthma attack.”

Though many of these emergency department visits are not necessary, they account for 62% of asthma-related costs, the investigators found.

Anxiety and depression are more common in children with asthma than in those without the lung disease, the researchers noted. Among the asthma patients in the study, just over 11% had anxiety and nearly 6% had depression. This compared with about 7% and 3%, respectively, for children aged 3 to 17 in the general population, based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

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The Healthcare Standard

Pedestrian Rushed to Hospital for Life-Saving Treatment After Being Hit by Car in St. Louis County

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ST. LOUIS COUNTY (KMOV.com) – A pedestrian was rushed to the hospital for life-saving treatment after being hit by a car in St. Louis County Monday morning.

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The Healthcare Standard

Heart Attack: Symptoms Are More Likely to Occur in People That Do This Activity

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Heart attack happens when a blockage in a person’s coronary artery causes part of their heart muscle to be starved of blood and oxygen. It requires urgent medical attention to minimise the damage done to the heart muscle. While it is well understood that unhealthy lifestyle decisions can raise a person’s risk of having a heart attack, drawing comparisons and working out the extent of the risks associated have not always been clear. A recent study assessed the threat posed by engaging in a certain sedentary activity.

While it has previously been reported that sitting for long periods of time increases a person’s risk of cardiovascular complications and a shortened life expectancy, recent findings published in the Journal of the American Heart Association suggests that not all types of sitting present the same level of risk.

The study, led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, found that leisure-time sitting (while watching TV) – but not sitting at work – was associated with a greater risk of heart disease and death among the study’s more than 3,500 participants.

 

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The Healthcare Standard

Artificial Intelligence Needs Patients’ Voice to Remake Health Care

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Patients’ stories — what doctors call patient histories — are the bedrock of medicine. “Listen to your patient; they are telling you the diagnosis,” an aphorism attributed to Dr. William Osler2, the founder of modern medicine, still holds true today. The disappearance of patients’ stories3 from electronic health records could be one reason that artificial intelligence and machine learning have so far failed to deliver their promised revolution of health care.

The medical industry’s fascination with artificial intelligence is understandable. Advancements in medicine have dramatically improved patient outcomes, and there is every reason to believe that machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence, and the like will do the same. But before we jump on the AI bandwagon, I offer this caution: consider the source of the data it is dependent on.

Health care AI companies currently harness data from electronic health records (EHRs) to build their products. EHRs are incomplete at best, dangerous at worst4. They are so saturated with answers to questions required by insurance companies’ reimbursement rules and core measures from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that they end up having little to do with actual patient care.

 

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The Healthcare Standard

No Time For A Break: Nurses Reveal What Short-Staffing is Doing To Their Well-Being

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Whole shifts without a sip of water show what a national nurse shortage looks like close-up

Tell someone outside the NHS that many nurses go through an entire shift without even a sip of water and they will probably look at you in disbelief.

Then try explaining that some employers don’t allow their nursing staff to keep water bottles at work or a jug in the staff room, and watch bafflement turn to outrage.

Yet in the NHS, nurses almost expect to finish work exhausted and dehydrated, having gone without a break no matter how intense the shift.

 

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