For some diseases, a simple blood test is all that's needed to estimate severity or confirm a diagnosis. Not so for multiple sclerosis. No single lab test can tell doctors what type of MS a patient has, nor whether it's responding to treatment. But by better tracking patients' symptoms and potential triggers with help from a new iPhone app,

Information shared on social media is being regularly used in research projects without users' consent, a study suggests. Experts have called for tighter control of the practice, with fresh guidelines needed to ensure personal data is being used appropriately. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh say ethics frameworks around consent, privacy and ownership for such studies are not keeping pace with technological developments.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki University Hospital (HUH), Finland, have developed software based on machine learning, which can independently interpret EEG signals from a premature infant and generate an estimate of the brain's functional maturity. Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the method is the first EEG-based brain maturity evaluation system in the world.

A multidisciplinary group that includes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Washington at Tacoma has developed a novel platform to diagnose infectious disease at the point-of-care, using a smartphone as the detection instrument in conjunction with a test kit in the format of a credit card.

Novel smartphone and tablet applications (apps) for atrial fibrillation patients and healthcare professionals have been launched by heart experts. The objectives and design of the apps are outlined in a paper published online today in EP Europace,(1) with a summary published in the European Heart Journal.(2)

Parents of children with ADHD can feel desperate for resources or treatments to help their children who struggle with inattention, distractibility and impulsiveness affecting school and home. Researchers at Lehigh University have discovered that brief online or in-person behavioral therapy for parents is equally effective in improving children's behavior and parental knowledge - a potential game changer for parents strapped for time and access.

People who monitor their own blood pressure at home are most likely to see a benefit if they combine it with individually tailored intensive support, according to a new systematic literature review and meta-analysis published in PLOS Medicine by Richard McManus of the University of Oxford, UK, and colleagues.