Dsigning Out Medical Error DOME

email us | dome@domeproject.org.uk

The Problem

Aims

The ProblemDOME from DOME project on Vimeo.

One in ten hospital patients in the UK suffers unintended harm as a result of medical error - a key contributing factor is that clinical processes continue to evolve but the design of much ward-based equipment remains largely unchanged.

Aims

The Designing Out Medical Error (DOME) project aimed to better understand and map healthcare processes on surgical wards, establishing an evidence base to design equipment and products which better supports these processes and therefore reduce instances of medical error.

Live Chat: The Science of Antiaging

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel on 25 January 2012, 8:47 AM | 64 Comments

See below for the chat box. Join us each Thursday at 3 p.m. EST for a live conversation with leading scientists and expert reporters.

TODAY'S TOPIC

What’s the key to living a long life? Is it all in the genes, or are there antiaging strategies that might make a difference? This week onScienceLive, we’ll chat with experts on the science of aging. They’ll answer your questions on a variety of topics, including whether the human lifespan will continue to increase, what impact antiaging research could have on global demographics, and what the latest research says about what you can do to combat the ill effects of growing older

Join us at 3 p.m. EST on Thursday, 26 January, for a live chat on this page. You can leave your questions in the comment box below before the chat starts.

Save to my calendar

ADDITIONAL READING
:

HealthTap ???

https://www.healthtap.com/who_we_are/press

Overview Vision & Credo Our Team Investors Press Smile

You've heard the buzz. Now, check out what industry experts and professional journalists have been saying.

HealthTap 'just might make you raise both eyebrows in surprise'Read...

A company that is defying the oddsRead...

Doctors can build up reputation..and ultimately drive patients to their offline real-world practicesRead...

You tube : Education

How YouTube is part of a global economic transformation

February 2, 2012

[+]

The United States used to be the most educated society in the world. That's no longer true. (Credit: OECD)

Life in this world is not like it used to be just a few decades ago, and the availability of world-class education on-demand, at almost no cost, is likely to help things change all the more as this century unfolds.

YouTube now hosts more than 500,000 educational videos, on a wide variety of topics. The new mobile-friendly iTunes U also offers 500,000 educational resources and says that 60% of its viewership comes from outside the United States. This global consumption of U.S.-created online educational content may be the newest chapter in a radical transformation of global education over the past 50 years.

During the past 50 years, the expansion of education has contributed to a fundamental transformation of societies in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries,” wrote the authors of this year’s lengthy report, Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators. (500 page PDF).

Siblings Brain: Addiction

ADDICTION

Siblings Brain Study Sheds Light on the Roots of Addiction

By MAIA SZALAVITZ | @maiasz | February 3, 2012 | 

ASHLEY JOUHAR / GETTY IMAGES

Why do some people get addicted while others remain immune to the lure of drugs? Neuroscientists have been studying this question for years, asking whether the difference arises from particular variations in brain structure. But until now the research has not been clear on whether the brain changes seen in addiction are a cause or the result of excessive drug use.

A new study of siblings published Thursday in Science suggests that at least some of the brain differences come first. The study compared cognitive function and brain structure of 47 people with addiction, with 49 of their nonaddicted siblings and 50 healthy unrelated and drug-free volunteers./.../

Precision Medicine ?

Perspective

Preparing for Precision Medicine

Reza Mirnezami, M.R.C.S., Jeremy Nicholson, Ph.D., and Ara Darzi, M.D.

January 18, 2012 (10.1056/NEJMp1114866)

Article

References

Ms. H. is a 35-year-old woman from Japan who has had a cough for 3 weeks. Her physician sends her for an x-ray and CT scan that reveal an advanced lesion, which a biopsy confirms to be non–small-cell lung cancer. She has never smoked. Can anything be done for her?

Had Ms. H.'s cancer been diagnosed before 2004, her oncologist might have offered her a treatment to which about 10% of patients have a response, with the remainder gaining a negligible survival benefit and experiencing clinically significant side effects. But her diagnosis was made in 2011, when her biopsy tissue could be analyzed for a panel of genetic variants that can reliably predict whether the disease will respond to treatment. Her tumor was shown to be responsive to a specific targeted agent, whose administration led to a remission lasting almost a year; her only side effect was a rash.

This scenario illustrates the fundamental idea behind personalized medicine: coupling established clinical–pathological indexes with state-of-the-art molecular profiling to create diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic strategies precisely tailored to each patient's requirements — hence the term “precision medicine.” Recent biotechnological advances have led to an explosion of disease-relevant molecular information, with the potential for greatly advancing patient care. However, progress brings new challenges, and the success of precision medicine will depend on establishing frameworks for regulating, compiling, and interpreting the influx of information that can keep pace with rapid scientific developments. In addition, we must make health care stakeholders aware that precision medicine is no longer just a blip on the horizon — and ensure that it lives up to its promise./.../

Memory Loss from Dementia

Questions Help Tell Memory Loss from Dementia

By Nancy Walsh, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Published: February 02, 2012

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.

Action Points

• Researchers found that a simple questionnaire can help differentiate individuals experiencing normal age-related memory loss from those likely to be developing dementia.
• Note that those who often repeated questions, statements, and stories on the same day also were at very high risk for the development of amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

A simple questionnaire can help differentiate individuals experiencing normal age-related memory loss from those at risk for developing dementia, most notably by their orientation to time and patterns of repetitive speech, researchers found.

On the 21-item Alzheimer's Questionnaire, patients having trouble remembering the day, month, year, and time of day were almost 18 times more likely to have amnestic mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to dementia (OR 17.97, 95% CI 2.63 to 122.77, P=0.003), according to Michael Malek-Ahmadi, MSPH, and colleagues from the Banner Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz.

Those who often repeated questions, statements, and stories on the same day also were at very high risk (OR 13.12, 95% CI 3.02 to 57.66, P=0.001), the researchers reported online in BMC Geriatrics./.../

Spread of Alzheimer’s

Path Is Found for the Spread of Alzheimer’s

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

From left, Li Liu, Scott A. Small and Karen Duff examining a mouse brain. Dr. Small and Dr. Duff used mice to study Alzheimer's.

By GINA KOLATA

Published: February 1, 2012

Alzheimer’s disease seems to spread like an infection from brain cell to brain cell, two new studies in mice have found. But instead of viruses or bacteria, what is being spread is a distorted protein known as tau.

Multimedia

Graphic

In Alzheimer’s, a Tangled Protein

Related

• Health Guide: Alzheimer's Disease

The surprising finding answers a longstanding question and has immediate implications for developing treatments, researchers said. And they suspect that other degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson’s may spread in a similar way./.../

Social Justice

From Dennis Raphael:
Social Justice
Based on   

200TH ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE
The Perpetual Challenge of Infectious Diseases
Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., and David M. Morens, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:454-461February 2, 2012
 Interactive Timeline

The Perpetual Challenge of Infectious Diseases.
Among the many challenges to health, infectious diseases stand out for their ability to have a profound impact on the human species. Great pandemics and local epidemics alike have influenced the course of wars, determined the fates of nations and empires, and affected the progress of civilization, making infections compelling actors in the drama of human history.1-11 For 200 years, the Journal has captured the backdrop to this human drama in thousands of articles about infectious diseases and about biomedical research and public health efforts to understand, treat, control, and prevent them./../

sustainable development

RESILIENT PEOPLE 
RESILIENT PLANET
A   F u t u r e   Wo r t h   C h o o s i n g

Report

The High-level Panel on Global Sustainability presents its report to the Secretary-General on 30 January 2012 in Addis Ababa.

The 22-member Panel, established by the Secretary-General in August 2010 to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable development and low-carbon prosperity, was co-chaired by Finnish President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma. The Panel's final report, "Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing", contains 56 recommendations to put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible.

• Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing (full report)
  * Please note that the full report has not yet been formatted as a publication. The publication version will be available in mid-February 2012.
   
• Overview of the Report
  [Overview in letter size paper] [Overview in A4 size paper]

Please click here to view the Press Release of the launch of the report.