Stroke Patient Improvement with a Brain-Computer Interface
University of Adelaide researchers have shown that it is possible for stroke patients to improve motor function using special training involving connecting brain signals with a computer. In a "proof-of-principle" study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers described how this brain-computer interface (BCI) produced a 36% improvement in motor function of a stroke-damaged hand.
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New App Uses Smartphone Selfies to Screen for Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst prognoses - with a five-year survival rate of 9 percent - in part because there are no telltale symptoms or non-invasive screening tools to catch a tumor before it spreads. Now, University of Washington researchers have developed an app that could allow people to easily screen for pancreatic cancer and other diseases - by snapping a smartphone selfie.
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Artificial Intelligence Predicts Dementia Before Onset of Symptoms
Imagine if doctors could determine, many years in advance, who is likely to develop dementia. Such prognostic capabilities would give patients and their families time to plan and manage treatment and care. Thanks to artificial intelligence research conducted at McGill University, this kind of predictive power could soon be available to clinicians everywhere.
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Self-Powered Paper-Based 'SPEDs' may Lead to New Medical-Diagnostic Tools
A new medical-diagnostic device made out of paper detects biomarkers and identifies diseases by performing electrochemical analyses - powered only by the user's touch - and reads out the color-coded test results, making it easy for non-experts to understand. The self-powered, paper-based electrochemical devices, or SPEDs, are designed for sensitive diagnostics at the "point-of-care," or when care is delivered to patients, in regions where the public has limited access to resources or sophisticated medical equipment.
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Researchers Uncover Security Issues with Health Apps for Dementia Patients
Use caution when entering personal health information into a convenient app on your mobile device, because not all apps are created equal when it comes to protecting your privacy, warns McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School clinicians. In a recent paper, a team of McLean Hospital researchers reported that many health apps designed to assist dementia patients and their caregivers have inadequate security policies or lack security policies altogether.
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Using Machine Learning to Improve Patient Care
Doctors are often deluged by signals from charts, test results, and other metrics to keep track of. It can be difficult to integrate and monitor all of these data for multiple patients while making real-time treatment decisions, especially when data is documented inconsistently across hospitals. In a new pair of papers, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) explore ways for computers to help doctors make better medical decisions.
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Smartphone App may Help Older Adults Manage Serious Mental Illness and Chronic Health Conditions
The use of new technologies in geriatric psychiatry shows promise for advancing personalized medicine and improving patient care. A new study in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry describes the successful adaptation of an integrated medical and psychiatric self-management intervention to a smartphone application for middle-aged and older adults with serious mental illness.
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