North Cumbria Integrated Care deploys Better Meds ePMA

North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust has rolled out a new e-prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) solution to eliminate the need for paper records and improve the consistency of patient care.

Working with CGI, an independent IT and business consulting services firm, and Better, North Cumbria Integrated Care has rolled out the Better Meds ePMA solution to all of its community hospital inpatient settings.

The digital system enables North Cumbria Integrated Care to deliver increased quality and consistency of care for its patients across the trust.

Paul Fieldhouse, clinical director of pharmacy at North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The new system is already transforming the way medicines are prescribed and administered across our hospitals. Of all our digital projects, e-Prescribing is the biggest step forward in patient safety.”

The solution facilitates the prescribing of medicines and the recording of its administration, plus supports pharmacy reconciliation and

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National data guardian says suppliers must share NHS core values

NHS national data guardian Dr Nicola Byrne has advised national policymakers that they should ensure key suppliers must share NHS core values.

The guidance, provided as part of a blog on advice she has been offering on the proposed new federated data platform, appears to provide a warning about the expected award of the contract to Palantir, due to the risk of undermining public confidence.

“I have also counselled that the programme should remain mindful of the NHS’s core values, and how the track record and values demonstrated by any organisations procured to deliver on a large-scale data programme align with them,” Byrne said.

Palantir, which is the incumbent supplier, has been a lightning rod for concerns about the national patient database project, due to its close links to US national security agencies and right-wing founder Peter Thiel.

In a November blog post entitled ‘In pursuit of balance:

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Speculation rife on who will be the next NHS CIO

At the Tech UK London Health and Social Care Industry Dinner last night speculation was rife on who will be named the next national NHS chief information officer (CIO).

With a job advert published earlier this week, the favourite talk among industry insiders was who may be the person to fill the seat about to be vacated by Simon Bolton, interim CIO at NHS Digital, who had been due to become interim CIO at NHS England.

Bolton was at the dinner, but did not speak.  However the other national NHS CIO, Sonia Patel, did for the second year in a row. Patel joked that unlike her former NHS boss, Matthew Gould, now CEO of London Zoo, “I’m not planning to go to the zoo or jungle any time soon”.

A sign perhaps that Patel, who was first recruited in 2020 to be national CIO, before being unceremoniously moved sideways into

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Smartphone and Cheap Earbuds for Accessible Newborn Hearing Test

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a low-cost hearing test for newborns. Traditionally, the equipment for such testing is quite expensive. As newborns cannot let us know if they can hear something, the test is based on creating a noise within the ear canal and then listening to the vibrations created by the specialized hair cells within.

The UW researchers used cheap earbuds that are connected to a small microphone that can listen to the vibrations of the hair cells. A smartphone app then analyzes the sounds and can provide guidance to attend a specialist if abnormal results arise.

Performing a hearing test with newborns is important to make sure that they receive the support they require if it turns out that they have a hearing issue. However, in many places in the world, people do not have access to the testing equipment required for these procedures.

“There

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In-Office Pediatric Ear Tube Procedures: Interview with Preceptis Medical’s Greg Mielke

Preceptis Medical, a medtech company based in Minnesota, created the Hummingbird Tympanostomy Tube System. The device allows ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeons to insert ear tubes in the comfort of their office. The procedure requires only local anesthetic and is intended to be less distressing for pediatric patients than the conventional approach, which requires general anesthesia.

The Hummingbird device provides a “one-pass” approach to ear tube placement, with an ear drum incision and tube placement occurring with a few simple manipulations of the device. Medgadget spoke with Steve Anderson, CEO of Preceptis Medical, back in March 2021. Since then, the Hummingbird system has received FDA clearance for an expanded indication in all children aged 6 months and up.

Medgadget had the opportunity to speak with Greg Mielke, Chief Commercial Officer at Preceptis Medical, about the technology and what the latest FDA clearance meant for the company.

See a

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Cool Gadgets Emblem Inventory Illustrations, Photos & Vectors

Cool GadgetsYou can spend your cash on all sorts of weird gadgets, from Bluetooth-enabled toothbrushes to toasters that print your selfie in your breakfast. Nanoleaf has been a frontrunner in the smart home decor subject since its triangular Aurora lighting panels became one of the most interactive beauties to grace anybody’s residence walls. Nanoleaf adopted up the triangular techno vibe with a equally interactive, however much more versatile, sq. design called Canvas. These light squares do every thing from react to sound, mirror colours playing on a screen, help contact-based mostly games, and even reply to good house management gestures. Beyond all of this, they are modular, permitting you to construct some actually gorgeous (and unique to you) mild wall designs.

There is no scarcity of contenders in this class, however the Final Ears (UE) Megaboom speaker ($300) stands out as a stylin’ audio accessory that’s waterproof, comes in 4 colour … Read more

Implanted Magnets for Prosthetic Control

Engineers at MIT have developed a system that could let users of robotic prostheses to more sensitively control their bionic limbs. The technology involves implanting pairs of small magnetic beads into muscles. When the muscles contract, the beads move closer together, allowing prosthetic devices to more precisely calculate a user’s intentions and mirror these.

Current systems measure the electrical activity in muscles, but this is not as accurate as measuring actual muscle movement. Medgadget last covered the technology in August 2021, and since then, the researchers have tested it in turkeys, showing that the implanted magnets do not cause inflammation or irritation. Importantly, they can assist in very accurately measuring muscle length as the turkeys traversed an obstacle course (yes, really), reflecting real-world conditions outside the lab.

Each year seems to bring new improvements in assistive tech, such as novel robotic prostheses and wheelchairs. Hopefully, in the future, patients who

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Device Measures Hemoglobin More Accurately in Dark Skin

Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington, in collaboration with Shani Biotechnologies, a local firm, have created a point-of-care device that can accurately measure hemoglobin levels and perform pulse oximetry in individuals with dark skin. At present, methods to determine hemoglobin levels at the point of care, such as pulse oximetry, are inaccurate in individuals with higher levels of melanin in their skin, and there is a clear need to develop alternatives that work for everyone. Instead of the red-infrared light used by common pulse oximeters, this new device relies on a blue-green light in addition to assessing skin tone and using algorithms when calculating hemoglobin levels and oxygen saturation.

Pulse-oximeters are a very useful way to determine how much oxygen the hemoglobin in your blood is carrying. For those with potentially serious respiratory diseases, such as COVID-19, the readings can indicate if a dangerous exacerbation is occurring and

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Ferrobot Swarms for Rapid Viral Testing

At the University of California Los Angeles, scientists have developed a handheld lab kit that can conduct automated pooled testing for viral diseases, including COVID-19. The technology consists of a microfluidic platform that relies on swarms of magnetic discs, which the researchers have termed “ferrobots”, to shuttle samples through the device and mix them with reagents before reaching an area where a loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay takes place.

The assay amplifies hallmark nucleic acid signatures and allows for rapid identification of a viral pathogen. Cleverly, the device is designed with rapid mass testing in mind, and is conceived as first analyzing pooled samples from multiple individuals, and then automatically testing individual samples if the pooled sample yields a positive result. The result is a technology that can quickly assess large groups of people, with less reagents, expense, and time than conventional diagnostic approaches.    

The pandemic has fallen from the headlines,

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Extra Hot Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy

Researchers at Oregon State University created a new type of hyperthermic magnetic nanoparticle that is intended to assist in destroying tumors through localized heating under an alternating magnetic field. Previous iterations of such technologies could heat up to about 44 degrees Celsius (111 F), which was only effective in easy-to-access tumors that can be reached with a hypodermic needle, allowing a clinician to inject a large number of the nanoparticles directly into the tumor. For difficult-to-access tumors, intravenous delivery of the nanoparticles is required, but this typically only results in a small number of particles reaching the tumor, meaning their heating potential is usually not enough to cause sufficient damage. These latest particles are highly efficient at heating, reaching temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 F), and making systemic application of such therapeutics a more feasible prospect.

Delivering magnetic nanoparticles to a tumor and then heating them up

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