Month: March 2014

Why happiness is healthy

You might call it a sense of well-being, of optimism or of meaningfulness in life, although those could also be treated as separate entities. But whatever happiness is, we know that we want it, and that is just somehow good.

We also know that we don’t always have control over our happiness. Research suggests that genetics may play a big role in our normal level of subjective well-being, so some of us may start out at a disadvantage. On top of that, between unexpected tragedies and daily habitual stress, environmental factors can bring down mood and dry up our thirst for living.

Being able to manage the emotional ups and downs is important for both body and mind, said Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard School of Public Health.

“For physical health, it’s not so much happiness per se, but this ability to regulate and have a sense of purpose and meaning,” Kubzansky said.

Why be happy?

Many scientific studies, including some by Kubzansky, have found a connection between psychological and physical well-being.

It’s not as simple as “you must be happy to prevent heart attacks,” of course. If you have a good sense of well-being, it’s easier to maintain good habits: Exercising, eating a balanced diet and getting enough sleep, researchers said. People who have an optimistic mindset may be more likely to engage in healthy behaviors because they perceive them as helpful in achieving their goals, Kubzansky said.

Lower blood pressure, normal body weight and healthier blood fat profiles were also associated with a better sense of well-being in this study.

For now these studies can only show associations; they do not provide hard evidence of cause and effect. But some researchers speculate that positive mental states do have a direct effect on the body, perhaps by reducing damaging physical processes. For instance, another of Kubzansky’s studies found that optimism is associated with lower levels of inflammation.

If what you mean by happiness is specifically “enjoyment of life,” there’s newer evidence to support that, too. A recent study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that people ages 60 and older who said they enjoyed life less were more likely to develop disability over an eight-year period. Mobility was also related to enjoyment of life. This study does not prove that physical problems are caused by less enjoyment of life, but suggests a relationship.

Where happiness comes from: genes + environment
There is substantial evidence that genetics play a big role in happiness, according to Nancy Segal, psychologist at California State University, Fullerton, and author of “Born Together — Reared Apart.”

Research has shown that identical twins tend to have a similar level of happiness, more so than fraternal twins. And in identical twins, one twin’s happiness is a better predictor of the other twin’s current or future happiness than educational achievement or income, Segal said.

“If you have happy parents and happy children, I think that people usually assume it’s because the children are modeling the parents,” she said. “But that’s not really so. You need to make the point that parents pass on both genes and environments.”

What’s more, there seems to be a certain level of happiness that individuals have generally, to which they usually gravitate, Segal said. That level depends on the person, and the situations he or she is in.

Even if genetics has a big influence, though, that doesn’t mean anyone is biologically stuck being unhappy, she said. It might take more work if your baseline mood is low, but certain therapies have proven useful for elevating psychological well-being.

The environment is still quite important for psychological well-being, too, Kubzansky said.

“To say to someone, ‘Don’t worry, be happy,’ is kind of not looking at the whole picture of, what are the environmental constraints on things they can do?” Kubzansky said.

Source: cnn

Genetic test could help identify kids at low-IQ risk

Researchers claimed to have developed a genetic test that could spot children with impaired thyroid function at risk of developing low IQ.

After studying the genetic and IQ data of 3123 children under 7 with a common gene variant, researchers found that those with thyroid hormone levels less than the normal range had a four-fold greater risk of having an IQ less than 85 if they also had reduced thyroid hormone levels, News.com.au reported.

Lead researcher Peter Taylor, from the University of Cardiff, said that kids with satisfactory thyroid hormone levels, together with the genetic variant, have normal IQ levels, which raises the possibility that children at risk could be treated with standard thyroid hormone tablets to compensate for impaired thyroid hormone processing.

Source: Business Standard

E-Cigarettes Won’t Help You Quit, Study Finds

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Contrary to some advertising claims, electronic cigarettes don’t help people quit or cut down on smoking, a new study says.

Users of e-cigarettes inhale vaporized nicotine but not tobacco smoke. The unregulated devices have been marketed as smoking-cessation tools, but studies to date have been inconclusive on that score, the study noted.

“When used by a broad sample of smokers under ‘real world’ conditions, e-cigarette use did not significantly increase the chances of successfully quitting cigarette smoking,” said lead researcher Dr. Pamela Ling, an associate professor at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at University of California, San Francisco.

These findings — based on nearly 1,000 smokers — are consistent with other studies and contradict the claims frequently found in e-cigarette advertising, she said.

“Advertising suggesting that e-cigarettes are effective for smoking cessation should be prohibited until such claims are supported by scientific evidence,” Ling said.

For the study, Ling’s team analyzed data reported by 949 smokers, 88 of whom used e-cigarettes at the start of the study. One year later, 14 percent of the smokers had quit overall, with similar rates in both groups.

“We found that there was no difference in the rate of quitting between smokers who used an e-cigarette and those who did not,” Ling said. There was no relationship between e-cigarette use and quitting, even after taking into account the number of cigarettes smoked per day, how early in the day a smoker had a first cigarette and intention to quit smoking, Ling added.

However, the researchers noted that the small number of e-cigarette users may have limited the ability to find an association between e-cigarette use and quitting.

The report, published online March 24 in JAMA Internal Medicine, also found that women, younger adults and people with less education were most likely to use e-cigarettes.

One expert said the study is flawed and shouldn’t be taken seriously. “It’s an example of bogus or junk science,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University School of Public Health.

“That’s because the study does not examine the rate of successful smoking cessation among e-cigarette users who want to quit smoking or cut down substantially on the amount that they smoke, and who are using e-cigarettes in an attempt to accomplish this,” Siegel said. “Instead, the study examines the percentage of quitting among all smokers who have ever tried e-cigarettes for any reason.”

Many of the smokers who tried e-cigarettes may have done so out of curiosity, Siegel said. “It is plausible, in fact, probable, that many of these 88 smokers were not actually interested in quitting or trying to quit with electronic cigarettes,” he said. “These products have become very popular and have gained widespread media attention, and it is entirely possible that many of these smokers simply wanted to see what the big fuss is all about.”

Calling that a “fatal flaw” in the research, Siegel said it “destroys the validity of the authors’ conclusion.” It would be a tragedy, he said, if policy makers use the study to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation purposes.

Erika Ford, assistant vice president for national advocacy at the American Lung Association, said the study confirms what is already clear — “e-cigarettes are not associated with quitting among smokers.”

Ford noted that most e-cigarette companies no longer make claims that their products help smokers quit. “But there is a need for the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to begin their oversight of these products. It’s time for the FDA to find out which products are making no smoking claims and which ones might be in violation of current law,” she said.

The FDA plans to introduce regulations for e-cigarettes, but hasn’t yet. In the past, the agency has warned companies about making false claims and for poor manufacturing practices.

Source: webmd

Scientists create stem cells from a drop of blood

Scientists at A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) have developed a method to generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from a single drop of finger-pricked blood.

The method also enables donors to collect their own blood samples, which they can then send to a laboratory for further processing. The easy access to blood samples using the new technique could potentially boost the recruitment of greater numbers and diversities of donors, and could lead to the establishment of large-scale hiPSC banks.

By genetic reprogramming, matured human cells, usually blood cells, can be transformed into hiPSCs. As hiPSCs exhibit properties remarkably similar to human embryonic stem cells, they are invaluable resources for basic research, drug discovery and cell therapy.

In countries like Japan, USA and UK, a number of hiPSC bank initiatives have sprung up to make hiPSCs available for stem cell research and medical studies.

Current sample collection for reprogramming into hiPSCs include invasive measures such as collecting cells from the bone marrow or skin, which may put off many potential donors. Although hiPSCs may also be generated from blood cells, large quantities of blood are usually required.

In a paper published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, scientists at IMCB showed for the first time that single-drop volumes of blood are sufficient for reprogramming into hiPSCs. The finger-prick technique is the world’s first to use only a drop of finger-pricked blood to yield hiPSCs with high efficiency. A patent has been filed for the innovation.

The accessibility of the new technique is further enhanced with a DIY sample collection approach. Donors may collect their own finger-pricked blood, which they can then store and send it to a laboratory for reprogramming.

The blood sample remains stable for 48 hours and can be expanded for 12 days in culture, which therefore extends the finger-prick technique to a wide range of geographical regions for recruitment of donors with varied ethnicities, genotypes and diseases.

By integrating it with the hiPSC bank initiatives, the finger-prick technique paves the way for establishing diverse and fully characterised hiPSC banking for stem cell research.

The potential access to a wide range of hiPSCs could also replace the use of embryonic stem cells, which are less accessible. It could also facilitate the set-up of a small hiPSC bank in Singapore to study targeted local diseases.

Loh Yuin Han Jonathan, principal investigator at IMCB and lead scientist for the finger-prick hiPSC technique, said, “It all began when we wondered if we could reduce the volume of blood used for reprogramming. We then tested if donors could collect their own blood sample in a normal room environment and store it. Our finger-prick technique, in fact, utilised less than a drop of finger-pricked blood. The remaining blood could even be used for DNA sequencing and other blood tests.”

Stuart Alexander Cook, senior consultant at the National Heart Centre Singapore and co-author of the paper, said, “We were able to differentiate the hiPSCs reprogrammed from Jonathan’s finger-prick technique, into functional heart cells. This is a well-designed, applicable technique that can unlock unrealized potential of biobanks around the world for hiPSC studies at a scale that was previously not possible.”

Hong Wanjin, executive director at IMCB, said, “Research on hiPSCs is now highly sought-after, given its potential to be used as a model for studying human diseases and for regenerative medicine. Translational research and technology innovations are constantly encouraged at IMCB and this new technique is very timely. We hope to eventually help the scientific community gain greater accessibility to hiPSCs for stem cell research through this innovation.”

Source: India medical Times

China Smog Is Economic, Regional Health Problem, WHO Chief Says

China’s air pollution is a regional health issue and impacts the economy in terms of foreign investment and talent retention, the United Nation’s health agency chief said.

“Talented people have actually talked to me, and they’ve changed their decision to settle in China because of the air pollution,” World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan said today in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Hong Kong. “I think Chinese authorities understand this and they know what’s going on.”

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said earlier this month that pollution is a major problem and the government will “‘declare war’’ on smog by removing high-emission cars from the road and closing coal-fired furnaces. Air pollution led to genetic changes that may have sapped learning skills in children whose mothers were exposed to a Chinese coal-fired power plant a decade ago, researchers reported on March 19.

Pollution in Beijing today rose to more than 10 times levels considered safe by the World Health Organization. The concentration of PM2.5 — the small particles that pose the greatest risk to human health — hit 270 micrograms per cubic meter in the Chinese capital as of 12 p.m., a U.S. Embassy monitor said. The WHO recommends 24-hour exposure to PM2.5 levels of less than 25.

Smog produced by China affects not just the country, Chan said, as winds can carry pollutants across borders to neighboring states and even further afield. Pollution from China’s export manufacturers travels across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S. West Coast, contributing to smog in Los Angeles, according to a University of California, Irvine study published in January.

Source: bloomberg

Home Remedies for Sinusitis

Diet Choices: Although this may sound like common sense, many people fail to eat properly when they suffer from sinusitis, often because it is not very enjoyable, as your sense of taste is often compromised. However, as you are probably well aware, your diet impacts every part of your health, both what you intentionally include, as well as what you intentionally avoid.

For sinusitis, a small, balanced diet of grains, lentils, and vegetables is the best choice, since it boosts your body’s immune system and regulates your metabolism to flush out toxins. On the other side of the coin, you should avoid any food that generates more mucous in the sinuses. Basically, you should avoid dairy products like cheese, milk, yogurt, and wheat. Also, in a strange twist, citrus juice and fruits can often increase mucous, despite the fact that citrus fruits are often used as a home remedy for boosting the immune system.

Herbal Options: Adding certain herbs to your diet can have strong effects on the nasal sinuses, as well as on the immune system’s ability to flush out toxins, eliminate mucous, and alleviate the symptoms. Some of these are strong stimulants or contain antioxidants, but the main reason for their use, either in food or in some sort of mixed liquid, is to flush out the mucous in the nose where the infection is usually located. Some of the best herbs for stimulating this emptying of the sinuses is garlic, onions, horseradish, and cayenne pepper. They might make you cry or force your nose to run, but consuming some of these herbs might be your best chance of eliminating sinusitis without allopathic medicine.

Wasabi: As with the herbs listed above, wasabi is specifically praised as a method of intensely affecting the sinuses, which is why we experience the “clearing of sinuses” when we eat too much of it at once. This same effect can be used to flush the mucous and toxins out of the sinuses and into either the stomach or the mouth before it is eliminated from the body.

Apple Cider Vinegar: This useful beverage, which is suggested for many different illnesses, is known to thin mucous and make it less viscous, thereby keeping it from blocking up your breathing and perpetuating the condition.

Grapefruit Seed Extract: This oil can be dropped in the mouth (but only a few drops) or mixed in water, as a way to eliminate the sinus infection very rapidly. However, never take this on an empty stomach, as it is very powerful and can make you sick.

Neti Pots: Using a neti pot has been a technique for centuries, and it is very simple and effective. Simply purchase a neti pot from any drugstore or health shop and fill it with warm distilled or bottled water. Then, pour the water into one nostril and allow it to

come back out the other. It can be an uncomfortable or strange sensation, but it can easily flush out toxins and other materials that you don’t want to remain in your system.

Inhaling Steam: As simple as this sounds, inhaling steam is one of the most popular home remedies for sinusitis. Boiling a pot of water, taking a hot shower, or utilizing an actual steam machine for sinusitis relief can quickly warm the mucus and reduce its consistency, therefore allowing you to blow it out of your nose or spit it out. If you can get rid of the mucous that is making you sick, you’re much more likely to defend against the development of chronic rhinosinusitis. Using humidifiers can also be a good idea while sleeping to help the healing process overnight!

Peppermint Tea: One of the active ingredients in peppermint tea is menthol, which cuts through mucous and thins it out, allowing it to flush easily out of your system. The combination of heat, steam, menthol, and liquid in peppermint tea can be a fast-acting solution for sinusitis of all varieties.

A Final Word of Caution: As mentioned earlier, more serious, long-lasting varieties of sinusitis should not be taken lightly, and if you want relief, allopathic options are normally quite mild and the side effects are limited. However, it is always your choice of whether to use home remedies or medical treatment. Just pay attention to your body and do your best to get healthy!

Source: Organic Facts

 

4 Easy Ways to Keep Yourself Feeling Young

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Excellent health over 50 can be yours if you know how to take good care of yourself. If you’ve recently passed your 50th birthday, then it’s easy to think that your health will now take a downhill turn. However, there are some things that you can do to keep yourself feeling young and healthy.

1. Keep Yourself Active

Just because you are getting older doesn’t mean that you can start easing into a sedentary lifestyle. Even though aging is accompanied by certain health conditions like joint pain, muscle aches and such, these symptoms can usually be relieved with the right amount of exercise. If you’ve never been physically active before, now is the time to get moving. To avoid overwhelming your body, start with moderate exercises. Yoga, walking, swimming and ballroom dancing are all ideal exercises for women over 50. Not only are they easy enough to perform, but they can also be enjoyable.

It’s also important to incorporate exercise into your everyday routine. For instance, instead of hiring someone to do mow your lawn, maintain your garden or paint your house; do these chores yourself. Not only will these activities keep you moving, but they will also give you a sense of accomplishment.

2. Keep Your Weight in Check

One of the downsides of aging is that your metabolism also slows down. This means that it becomes much easier for you to gain weight. You might have gotten away with eating a lot in your 20’s and 30’s without gaining a pound, but now that you’re in your 50’s, you might find yourself gaining weight with just a handful of peanuts. A lot of women also tend to gain weight around their middle section when they reach their elder years.

You can keep yourself fit by lowering your daily caloric intake to the amount of calories that you can burn. Your doctor and some online tools can help you determine your caloric requirement, but you can easily find this out by simply listening to your body. For instance, if you seem to be gaining weight even though you are eating a normal amount of food, then it’s possible that you now require less food to function. Cut back on meal portions and see if it helps.

3. Cherish Your Social Relationships

Your friendships and social bonds also play an important role in your health. In fact, having support from loved ones can boost your immune system, increase heart protection, speed up surgery recovery and improve your longevity. There could be many explanations behind this link between social support and health. One of these explanations is that social support helps you battle stress. Friends listen to your problems and lend you support throughout the trying times in your life. This can greatly reduce your stress. As you probably know, stress is a common factor that contributes to many chronic illnesses.

4. Improve Your Diet

You can also keep yourself feeling young with the foods you eat. Foods that are rich in antioxidants can be greatly beneficial for you at this point. Antioxidants help by battling free radicals which cause aging symptoms and diseases. Include an array of colorful fruits and vegetables in your diet to ensure you’re consuming an abundance of antioxidants.

Source: Fit day

Ebola outbreak in West Africa infects 80, killing 59

An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has killed at least 59 people in Guinea and is suspected to have spread to neighbouring Liberia.

Health workers in Guinea are trying to contain the spread of the disease which causes severe internal bleeding. In neighbouring Liberia, health officials said they are investigating five deaths after a group of people crossed the border from Guinea in search of medical treatment.

“The team is already investigating the situation, tracing contacts, collecting blood samples and sensitizing local health authorities on the disease,” Liberian Health Minister Walter Gwenigale said.

The Ebola virus leads to severe hemorrhagic fever in its victims and has no vaccine or specific treatment. The new cases mark the first time in 20 years that an outbreak of the virus has been reported in West Africa.

Sierra Leone on high alert

Already health workers fear the outbreak could overtax Liberia and Guinea, both deeply impoverished countries with severely limited medical facilities. Officials in Sierra Leone are also on high alert and have sent medical teams to the border with Guinea, though no cases have emerged so far.

“The Ebola fever is one of the most virulent diseases known to mankind with a fatality rate up to 90 per cent,” said Ibrahima Toure, Guinea’s country director for the aid group Plan International.

“Communities in the affected region stretch across the borders and people move freely within this area. This poses a serious risk of the epidemic becoming widespread with devastating consequences,” he said.

The World Health Organization said it is dispatching experts to help ministry officials in Guinea.

Panic erupts

Efforts were underway to keep the virus from reaching the capital of Conakry, home to some 3 million people. Panic erupted Sunday amid reports that two of the deaths had occurred in the capital. However, on Monday authorities said that those cases were only under investigation and later proved not to be positive for the virus.

As the government issued messages on state radio and television urging people to wash their hands and avoid contact with sick people, medical officials said supplies of chlorine and bleach were running out at stores.

“I usually take a taxi to get to work but in order to avoid contact with strangers, I’m going to walk instead, said Touka Mara, a teacher in Conakry.

Authorities said that goods in Conakry that had been imported from the affected part of the south were being quarantined as a precautionary measure.

Ebola was first reported in 1976 in Congo and is named for the river where it was recognized. Ebola outbreaks were reported in Congo and Uganda in 2012.

The virus can be transmitted through direct contact with the blood or secretions of an infected person, or objects that have been contaminated with infected secretions. During communal funerals, for example, when the bereaved come into contact with an Ebola victim, the virus can be contracted, health officials said.

Source: msn news

Can Google Glass Transform Medical Education?

Google Glass looks exciting for the medical world, and presents a particularly powerful opportunity for medical education(for examples, see Forbes article here or Phys.org here). A white paper by the Department of Emergency Medicine, Singapore General Hospital says, “simulation-based training has opened up a new educational application in medicine. It can develop health professionals’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes, whilst protecting patients from unnecessary risks”. Google Glass is taking simulation to the next level and making it more real, as the patients treated are real.

Yet the underlying concept of simulation-based-learning in medicine isn’t new. Neither are the individual components of Google Glass (such as the video recording feature and the possibility of sharing procedures online with any number of students). The biggest innovation might be having all this in one device. As Aristotle said, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Medical education is often a two stage process. In stage one, doctors in training need to study voluminous tomes and pass exams; stage one is the collection and storing of knowledge – perhaps too much knowledge. Richard Barker says in his book 2030, the future of medicine, that “as our bio-medical insights continue to fragment traditional diseases into multiple molecular disorders, keeping pace with advances gets tougher and tougher; … ‘head knowledge’ needs to be complemented by online decision support, distilling the wisdom and experience of the best specialist and putting it at the fingertips of the practitioner”. In other words, clinicians are starting to need real-time knowledge on tap.

Stage two focuses on learning through direct patient contact under the guidance of seniors, and Barker’s position suggests that stage two may never really end. Google Glass would support this stage of the curriculum, helping to simulate the practice of medicine, teach decision making, and then allow collaboration long after qualification. With a teacher demonstrating on patients (or that earlier revolution: a mannequin) with a headset camera, the learner is brought straight into the operating theater.

Google Glass is similar to a standard pair of glasses. It has an optical head-mounted display, sitting just above the right eye. Features include a built-in GPS, microphone and Bluetooth, and a camera which can record and live-stream videos to a Google hangout. Particularly useful is voice activation which would allow surgeons to, for example, do a web search for latest research or access EMRs or even real-time patient metrics without “breaking scrub” (compromising operating room sterility). As well as improving the provision of care, this ought to give students a more holistic understanding of each case.

Dr. Rafael J. Grossmann, Surgeon, mHealth Innovator and Google Glass Explorer was the first to perform a Google Glass-aided surgery, including remote teaching contexts and offering clinical advice remotely via Google hang-out. Orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Selene Parekh followed with a demo of foot and ankle surgery, and then plastic surgeon Dr. Anil Shah used the device while carrying out a rhinoplasty. Recently, Medical News Today wrote about a surgeon who live-streamed a procedure using Google Glass and a tablet device.

Grossman says that exposing students to the real life of a surgeon and their problems is critical for training and students should learn and mimic best practices early on. Furthermore, he adds that Google Glass education goes beyond the operating room, “Google Glass is a great start with practically limitless opportunities. “For example, how to connect with patients, how to teach bedside manner, how to prepare patients for surgery can all be best taught from real life examples. Google Glass records it and demonstrates best practice, from A to Z through the responsibilities of a practitioner,” he says.

Plus, of course, these Google Glass recorded procedures can be shared across the globe. Innovator Armando Iandolo, co-founder of Surgery Academy and his team have created an application for Google Glass that lets surgeons stream a heads-up view of procedures to students anywhere in the world. The big, bold innovation is to connect these streams in MOOCs (massive open online courses), says Iandolo. He and his co-founder are currently crowd-funding the idea on Indigogo. “Students will access an operating theatre online and watch a surgical intervention, live, for the procedure of their choice”, says Iandolo. “As we enter Universities, we want to become an integral part of the medical student’s study curriculum”.

MOOCs aren’t new either, but with the Surgery Academy everything seems to fall in place. By bringing the learner straight into theatre, simulation via Google Glass makes courses operate more like apprenticeships.

The patient would need to give their approval, but this is surely quite reassuring for the patient: which practitioner – and one good enough to teach – wants to screw up while being live-streamed to hundreds of students and fellow physicians?

The speed at which Google Glass eventually becomes a standard educational support tool is less certain, and we can learn from previous waves of innovation. In 2010, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine introduced a new mobile device program (medical students received laptops, iPhones and iPads). To assess its value, educators there how medical learners use mobile technologies. Their white paper concluded, “Students would adapt their use of mobile devices to the learning cultures and contexts they find themselves in.” Device value needs to be taught. It depends on how welcome new tech is perceived to be in classrooms, by students, teachers, and the wider ecosystem.

A typical fear is that, especially early in the curriculum (stage one above), medical students will miss out on basic knowledge. Search and find functions make it easier to zero in on an answer, but perhaps without the rich context and basic knowledge provided by reading cover to cover. Students – and teachers – could work just ‘for the test’.

Well, books have always had indices. It’s the process of search which has been accelerated, and there is no evidence that students would treat a digital medical textbook differently than its paperback version. In fact digital isn’t a replacement for the traditional textbook; it’s an opportunity to augment it. There is a generational shift in the learning styles of medical students, Mihir Gupta writes in a KevinMD article. Digital allows the stodgy textbook to be augmented with visual and multimedia, which will suit certain learning styles. “Innovative digital resources are vital for helping students retain knowledge and simplify difficult concepts”, says Gupta. These new resources are great for quick access to updated medical knowledge, but “it will not replace textbook learning, nor should it”.

Lucien Engelen, Director of the Radboud Reshape Center at Radboud University Medical Center, is currently working on various applications for Google Glass in medicine. He says that the only way to get Google Glass into education is “to make it part of education innovation”. He says, “Take some high profile doctors, professors and nurses and some patients and have them run some tests. All of a sudden the advantages (of Google Glass) seem to fall in place seamlessly”.

Frances Dare is Managing Director of Accenture Connected Health Services, which has partnered with Philips on a Google Glass proof of concept. She agrees with Engelen, cautioning that it is important to create an environment in which experimentation can take place and to understand the type of training needed to prepare clinicians to use Google Glass effectively and safely in practice.

But don’t bet against Google Glass. After all, educators have argued for decades over calculators in math class. Engelen says that he really doesn’t think of Google Glass as something special: it’s just another computer form-factor facing the same barriers of acceptance. It will take some time and discussion over privacy to achieve it, but the new wave is coming.

Source: HIT

Caribbean: 1 In 5 Unaware Of TB Diagnosis, Says Health Organisation

The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) says one in five people infected with tuberculosis in the Americas, including the Caribbean, remains unaware of the disease.

PAHO said this is due to “failure to access health services or because they are not properly diagnosed.” In 2012, PAHO said regional countries reported 220,000 cases of tuberculosis, and an estimated 19,000 people died from the disease.

But it said an additional 60,000 people are believed to have TB, who have not yet been diagnosed.

“This situation not only endangers their lives, it also facilitates further transmission of TB, producing more disease and generating socioeconomic costs for individuals, families and communities,” PAHO warned.

It issued the statement in commemoration of World TB Day that sought to raise awareness on the tuberculosis burden in the world, as well as the efforts made for its prevention and control.

Throughout the years, PAHO said this commemoration has offered the opportunity to mobilize the political, economic and social commitment for the prevention and control of TB in the countries.

For the 2014 campaign, PAHO said it will follow the worldwide focus on TB diagnosis and case detection of those still not reached, “with emphasis in the Americas on vulnerable populations, social determinants and large cities.”

Source; National news agency of Bernama