Pentagon Virus Detector Knows You Are Sick Before You Do

Imagine knowing you’ll be too sick to go to work, before the faintest hint of a runny nose or a sore throat. Now imagine that preemptive diagnosis being transmitted to a national, web-based influenza map — simply by picking up the phone.

That’s the impressive potential of an ongoing Pentagon-funded research project, spearheaded by geneticists at Duke University. Since 2006, they’ve been hunting for a genetic signature that can accurately assess, well before symptoms appear, whether someone’s been infected with a virus. Eight months into a $19.5 million grant from Darpa, the Pentagon’s out-there research agency, the expert behind the program is anticipating a tool with implications far beyond military circles.

Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg, director of Duke’s Institute for Genome Science & Policy, is collaborating with a team of colleagues to create a gadget that can detect viral infection hours before the sniffles. Between 2006 and 2009, his team made rapid strides in identifying 30 genetic markers, found through blood samples, that are activated by a virus.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/pentagon-virus-detector-knows-youre-sick-before-you-do/#ixzz0nvWvHSL3

Senate Panel Previews Electronic Health Technology

The effort, loosely called e-Health or e-Care, combines health-care technology with 21st-century Internet connectivity. It will allow doctors to interact with their patients through innovations such as video chats, telephone health checkups, and home-health monitoring devices that relay data over wireless Internet connections.

“The development of the broadband network and health information technologies has the potential to truly transform health care and simultaneously enable better outcomes and lowering costs,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

One of the new health technologies on display last Thursday was an automatic drug dispenser that can monitor and adjust medication dosages wirelessly, allowing doctors to tailor dosages of drugs such as insulin without having to schedule in-person visits with patients.

“What we’re talking about, folks, is using a device like this one,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, as he displayed the small device. “It attaches to the patient’s skin and is loaded with drugs that are administered in the exact way that the doctor prescribes – wirelessly.

“That means that a doctor can vary the doses based on the information the doctor is receiving [from the monitor]. The patient doesn’t have to go in to the doctor and then the pharmacy to change his or her prescription,” he said.

The data recorded by such devices would be automatically uploaded to a patient’s electronic health record, which could then be reviewed by a doctor from a computer or smart phone, allowing the doctor to monitor a sick patient in almost real time...

Revealed: Image Of The Ravaged Young Man Who Became The First Person In The World To Undergo A Full Face Transplant

Barely living: An MRI image showing the ravaged face of a man who accidentally blew his jaw, mouth and nose away with a shotgun. He has since become the first person in the world to undergo a full facial transplant

The nose is gone, the jaw has been blown away, and where the mouth should be there is only a gaping hole and scar tissue.

This is a Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) of the young man who made medical history last month when he became the first person in the world to undergo a full facial transplant - taken before his life-changing surgery.

Before the operation, described as the ‘holy grail of plastic surgery’, the man, a farmer in his 30s, was unable to breathe, swallow or talk properly.

He accidentally blew most of his face off, including his nose and jaw, with a gun five years ago.

Nine earlier surgical attempts to rebuild his face had failed.

A handful of partial transplants have been carried out since Isabelle Dinoire had her face repaired by French surgeons in 2005.

But until now, no one has had the skill or courage to replace an entire face.

The 24-hour operation involved 30 surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and other medical experts at the Vall d’Hebron hospital in Barcelona.

The man, who has not been named, received new facial muscles, skin, nose, lips, jaw, teeth, palate and cheekbones.

The full-face transplant operation took place on March 20 but details have only just been made public...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1268104/Worlds-face-transplant-takes-place-Vall-dHebron-hospital-Barcelona.html#ixzz0m1ZL8QHH