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Brain injuries can vary greatly in their severity, but assessing the extent of the damage is far from a simple undertaking. Scientists in the UK have developed a new AI algorithm that could help narrow the margin for error, with the ability to detect and categorize different types of brain lesions to gauge the impact of an injury.

One of the tools doctors use to assess brain injuries is a CT scan, which can reveal signs of damage, such as lesions, on the brain. But analyzing these scans to reach a diagnosis is a time-consuming process for radiologists, and given the complex nature of the organ, it can see tell-tale signs often overlooked.

“CT is an incredibly important diagnostic tool, but it’s rarely used quantitatively,” said Professor David Menon, from the University of Cambridge and senior author of the new study. “Often, much of the rich information available in a CT scan is missed, and as researchers, we know that the type, volume and location of a lesion on the brain are important to patient outcomes.”

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” said Andy McMurray, co-founder and CIO of Medal, an AI-based software company developing tools for health care, during an interview with Healthcare IT News.

This is especially true in the operating room, where surgery teams at the University of Iowa Hospital have reduced surgical site infection by 74% using DASH Analytics’ high-definition care platform (HDCP). This system observes data from the operation in real time and compares it to a patient’s history and its own infection models. Toward the end of the procedure, it automatically provides the surgeon with recommendations to reduce infection during wound closure. Furthermore, it notes whether the surgeon follows its suggestions or not and compares that to the outcome of the patient. This information is then used to both improve its infection model and improve the surgeon’s own performance in future surgeries.

Advances in AI build off of each other. One breakthrough opens the doors for more possibilities in the future, which in turn leads to even more breakthroughs at an exponential rate. Just as the Industrial Revolution automated back-breaking physical labor, the AI Revolution is poised to automate mind-numbing mental labor. Based on what we’ve seen in the last 10 years alone, we can expect to see this boom very soon.

New research reveals fascinating links between thoughts and immunity.

The stem cell treatment is derived from human placentas and is being developed by New Jersey biotech company Celularity. The early-stage trial will include up to 86 coronavirus patients with symptoms who will receive infusions of the stem cell therapy to assess the its safety and whether it prevents the patients from developing more severe illness, The New York Times.

The stem cells from the placenta used in this treatment are “natural killer” cells that guard a developing fetus or newborn from viruses in the mother. Celularity has been testing this treatment approach in cancer patients.

Initial results from the early trial are expected 30 to 60 days after the first patients receive their dose, Dr. Robert Hariri, Celularity’s founder and chief executive, told The Times.

Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador and founder of Bioquark, interviews Dr. Robert Hariri, MD, PhD, surgeon, bio-medical scientist and highly successful serial entrepreneur in two technology sectors: bio-medicine and aerospace.

Dr. hariri utilizes biomedicine to aid human longevity:

Continue reading “Dr Robert Hariri Talks of Using Stem Cell Therapies for Human Health and Aging” »

US President Barack Obama called the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a threat to global security on Tuesday and broadly expanded the US response by ordering thousands of troops to the region along with an aggressive effort to train health care workers and build treatment centres.
He called on other countries to quickly provide more helpers, supplies and money.
“If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people affected, with profound economic, political and security implications for all of us,” Obama declared after briefings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Obama acted under pressure from regional leaders and international aid organisations who pleaded for a heightened US role in confronting the deadly virus, especially in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
“In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic,” Obama said.
“It’s spiralling out of control, it is getting worse.“
The stepped-up US response includes sending 3,000 troops to the region, including medics and corpsmen for treatment and training, engineers to help build treatment facilities and logistics specialists to assist in patient transportation.
Obama also announced that Major General Darryl Williams, head of US Army Africa, will head a military command centre based in Liberia.
The announcement came the same day the World Health Organisation warned that the number of West African Ebola cases could begin doubling every three weeks and that the crisis could end up costing nearly 1 billion US Dollars to contain.
Nearly 5,000 people have become ill from Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal since it was first recognised in March.
The World Health Organisation says it anticipates the figure could rise to more than 20,000.
Obama described task ahead as “daunting” but said what gives him hope is that “the world knows how to fight this disease.“
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‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’ — George W. Bush warned about getting ahead of something like COVID-19 way back in 2005.
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In US news and current events today, listen to Pres. Bush urgently stress the importance of being prepared for a pandemic back in 2005. In this clip, Pres. George W. Bush addressed the Nat’l Institutes of Health about having a game plan to fight future pandemics. Pres. Bush was reportedly alarmed after reading a history book about the 1918 flu pandemic where millions had died. Out of that interest came a grand outline for future administrations to follow in response to a global pandemic.

Continue reading “George W. Bush Urged Us to Prepare for Future Pandemics in 2005 | NowThis” »

Avi Schiffmann has been procrastinating on his school work, but he has a good excuse. The 17-year-old high schooler is the creator of one of the most visited coronavirus trackers in the world, which he says now takes up “100 percent” of his free time.

The coronavirus pandemic doesn’t look like it will be over any time soon, and Schiffmann plans to continue actively tracking it until the end. As long as the site is up, he says he will keep working at it and adding new features. Once the pandemic is safely over, he’ll take the servers down, and maybe make a page that compares COVID-19 to SARS or the Spanish flu. He thinks it might be a historical piece on the coronavirus people can look back on.

Avi Schiffmann’s coronavirus tracker is a one-stop shop for all the information about COVID-19 the average person might want to know. It constantly updates with statistics for countries around the world on infections, deaths, recovered, and rates of change using data scraped from the WHO, CDC, and other government websites.

Therapeutics company Sorrento has made what it believes could be a breakthrough in potential treatment of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that leads to COVID-19. The company released details of its preclinical research on Friday, announcing that it has found an antibody that provides “100% inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection of healthy cells after four days incubation.” The results are from a preclinical study that still has to undergo peer review. It was an in vitro laboratory study (meaning not in an actual human being), but it’s still a promising development as the company continues to work on production of an antibody “cocktail” that could provide protection against SARS-CoV-2 even in case of mutations in the virus.

Sorrento says it believes this antibody, which is labelled STI-1499, stood out among billions of candidates it has been screening from its extensive human antibody library for its ability to completely block the interaction of the SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein with a human cell target receptor. That means it prevents the virus from attaching to the host’s healthy cell, which is what leads to incubation and infection.

The nature of the antibody’s efficacy means that Sorrento currently believes it will be the first antibody to be included in the cocktail it is developing, which will be made up of a large number of different antibodies that show efficacy in blocking the attachment of the spike protein, in order to provide multiple avenues of protection that are designed to remain effective even if the virus mutates in transmission from person to person, or within the same individual. One of the big outstanding questions that researchers are working on answering currently is just how mutagenic SARS-CoV-2 actually is, as many coronaviruses like the common cold show a tendency to mutate pretty quickly, rendering long-lasting cures and treatments difficult to develop.