Medician.info

Way back (in internet time) in 2006 we posted about Virgin Airways’ plans to use the Tempus from RDT in their aircraft for long haul flights. The Tempus is a minimal training vital signs monitor for use in way out of hospital settings that can transmit all the recorded data to medical control on the ground or other locations. Now, in 2010, the plan has been implemented and several other carriers use the device as well. Recently The Economist wrote it up and included a gripping tale of its use:

HALF way through a flight from Mumbai to London, a male passenger complained of a swollen right hand and an inability to bend his fingers. The flight attendants were uncertain about what to do and hooked the passenger up to a small device which took and transmitted vital signs, including his pulse, blood pressure and a picture of his hand, to a ground-based medical team.

As the passenger’s condition worsened, the device was also used to transmit an electrocardiographic (ECG) trace. The resulting information was used to rule out heart problems, and the passenger was stabilised and monitored with the assistance of a doctor on the flight. The decision was made to continue the journey rather than divert to the nearest airport.

The article goes on to detail RDT’s future plans for the Tempus, including making it more rugged for military applications and including ultrasound and a laryngoscope.

The Economist: An online medic…

Product page: Tempus IC…

Previously: Virgin Atlantic To Introduce On-Board Telemedicine

The website City Stories publishes walks which tell you important stories about the city you are in. If you’re in London or planning a visit, you’ll be happy to know that their first walk is Medical London, and has been produced in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection. It is a tour of Bloomsbury and the surrounding area, covering some important parts of London’s medical heritage. It accompanies the Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures book. The walk covers three miles and takes about two hours to complete. An iPhone app has been developed which gives you the full audiovisual experience, with a map showing all steps, video, audio, pictures and written information. The text was written by the historian Richard Barnett and the walk is narrated by Dilly Barlow. The app is available for free from the app store. Alternatively the walk is also available for download as MP3, as a PDF booklet or for view on the website.

iTunes link: City Stories Medical London Bloomsbury…

Homepage: City Stories Walk: Medical London walk…

End stage renal disease is a devastating condition in which dialysis may help prolong life, but the only real cure is a kidney transplant. The pioneering of the kidney transplant has saved countless numbers of lives, however end-stage renal disease continues to grow in prevalence and the supply of kidneys remains limited. Patients wait for years to obtain kidneys, and even once a kidney is finally transplanted patients face a lifetime of immunosuppressive drugs and fears about the donor kidney being rejected.

UCSF has been working on an ambitious project to create an artificial kidney using a combination of tissue engineering and MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technology. The scientists hope that one day this device can actually be used in lieu of a kidney transplant and not just as a stop-gap measure. The device has been shown to be effective in a larger external version, and as an implantable animal model.

Here is more from the press release:

The device, which would include thousands of microscopic filters as well as a bioreactor to mimic the metabolic and water-balancing roles of a real kidney, is being developed in a collaborative effort by engineers, biologists and physicians nationwide, led by Shuvo Roy in the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences.

The treatment has been proven to work for the sickest patients using a room-sized external model developed by a team member in Michigan. Roy’s goal is to apply silicon fabrication technology, along with specially engineered compartments for live kidney cells, to shrink that large-scale technology into a device the size of a coffee cup. The device would then be implanted in the body without the need for immune suppressant medications, allowing the patient to live a more normal life.

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The team has established the feasibility of an implantable model in animal models and plans to be ready for clinical trials in five to seven years.

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The two-stage system uses a hemofilter to remove toxins from the blood, while applying recent advances in tissue engineering to grow renal tubule cells to provide other biological functions of a healthy kidney. The process relies on the body’s blood pressure to perform filtration without needing pumps or an electrical power supply.

Press release: UCSF unveils model for implantable artificial kidney to replace dialysis

Flashbacks: Wearable Artificial Kidney (WAK); New Device Points Way to Artificial Kidney Implants; An Update On The Progress of Wearable Artificial Kidney; Kidney Cell Engineering Hits Bottleneck;