healthcare technology

Today we’re accustomed to going on the Internet to visit websites, send e-mails, shop online, run mobile apps, and even get up to the second and down to the inches directions from satellites orbiting the earth. We’re seeing medical devices and related hardware moving faster towards the same kinds of consumerization, their sensors switching from analog to digital native, becoming more mobile, and perhaps most importantly, becoming part of the “Internet of Things” (IoT) by generating enormous amounts of coveted clinical data.

What’s going to be even more spectacular is that you’ll soon be wearing smart watches that can know your vital signs, electronic “bandaids” that can sense whether wounds are healing, and many other personal medical devices that continuously monitor things going on within and around your body. These kinds of devices will make up what will soon become the “Medical Internet of Things” (mIOT). mIOT devices will generate significant amounts of data and managing this data becomes what’s known as a “big data” problem. The reason is obvious – data flowing continuously from your body comes in rapid velocity, large volumes, and many different kinds of variety.

As we create and upgrade future devices, our designers must realize that they’re no longer just making standalone devices, they’re likely crafting a system component that fits into a larger system of systems ecosystem that is creating and moving around enormous amounts of coveted data. Coveted because that data can be used to improve diagnostics, tailor clinical workflows, improve patient safety, and advance care coordination. All of these kinds of tasks and the data that will make them possible become even more important as payment models move from FFS to outcomes-driven.

Read more: http://medcitynews.com/2014/02/keeping-medical-device-designs-relevant-big-data-world-slideshow/#ixzz2tf5cOHMI

Cardiologists in Los Angeles have developed a gene-therapy technique that allows them to transform working heart-muscle cells into cells that regulate a pigs’ heartbeat. This procedure, described today in the Science Translational Medicine, restored normal heart rates for two weeks in pigs that usually rely on mechanical pacemakers. The experiment, researchers say, could lead to lifesaving therapies for people who suffer infections following the implantation of a mechanical pacemaker.

"We have been able for the first time to create a biological pacemaker using minimally invasive methods and to show that the new pacemaker suffices to support the demands of daily life," Eduardo Marbán, a cardiologist at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and lead author of the study, told the press yesterday. The approach is practical, added Eugenio Cingolani, a cardiogeneticist also at Cedars-Sinai and a co-author of the study, because "no open-heart surgery is required to inject this gene."

In the study, researchers injected a gene called Tbx18 into the pigs’ hearts. This gene, which is also found in humans, reprogrammed a small number of heart-muscle cells into cells that emit electrical impulses and drive the beating of the heart. The area in which this change occurred — about the size of a peppercorn — doesn't normally initiate heartbeats.

"We were able to get the biological pacemaker to turn on within 48 hours," Marbán said. To get the gene to the heart, the researchers sent a modified virus into the right ventricle through a catheter. The viral vector isn’t harmful, the researchers said, because the virus they employed was engineered to be "replication deficient" — meaning that it will not reproduce and spread beyond the heart.

Overall, the results of the study demonstrate that the pigs who received the gene therapy experienced an increase in heart rate that allowed them to be much less dependent on backup pacemakers. In contrast, the backup pacemakers were responsible for more than 40 percent of the beats in pigs who didn’t receive the gene therapy, but still underwent surgery.

more at http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/16/5906563/biological-pacemakers-gene-therapy-heart-muscle-cells