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his week, Medical News Today attended the
Future Healthcare Exhibition and Conference. Delegates presented us with
technology, both new and old, destined to push healthcare forward.
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Future
Healthcare is an annual event that takes place in London in the
United Kingdom.
It is a showcase of international
innovation in the healthcare space. This year, over 350 brands attended.
We spent much of our time listening
to short introductions to new products in the Health Innovators Theatre.
They all
had the potential to change the way that healthcare professionals deliver and
monitor healthcare.
As ever, data and the way experts
manipulate them featured heavily. As one presenter asked, "Data [are] the
answer, what is the question?"
However, there were also companies
attempting to reinvent old technologies using a fresh approach.
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Below is a brief introduction to
some of the products that piqued our interest this year.
1. Detecting dementia early
Today, Alzheimer's disease —
the most common form of dementia — is one of
the leading causes of death in the United States. As the
population's average age slowly rises, the number of deaths due to dementia are
likely to rise in line.
Despite this, catching dementia
early remains challenging. Oxford Brain
Diagnostics believe that their technology can catch the
condition years before symptoms become apparent.
Their secret lies in cortical
disarray measurement (CDM). In short, this technique enables scientists to
gather an "extra level of detail" from existing MRI scans. This allows them to detect
changes in the microanatomy of the brain.
Dr. Steven Chance — Oxford Brain
Diagnostics' CEO — told MNT that
"CDM extracts information about the microscopic structure of the brain's
gray matter by applying a unique analysis to a standard form of MRI scan."
"The method reveals the damage to the cerebral cortex
even in the early stages of disease because it is sensitive to disruption at
the cellular scale."
Dr. Steven Chance
Alongside the obvious benefits of
spotting the signs of dementia earlier, the technology might also assist the
pharmaceutical industry: Researchers could quantify how experimental drugs
affect the microstructure of the brain.
2. Blockchain for health
Healthcare has always been about the
patient, of course. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing push
to involve the patient more deeply. Particularly, there has been discussion
around how doctors store our data, who keeps them, and how they are shared.
Medicalchain want to
change how people access their medical records. By using secure blockchain
technology — most famous for its use in cryptocurrency — they have designed a
way that patients can view and, when necessary, share their data with
clinicians. Medicalchain have outlined their product in a white paper:
"Medicalchain
enables the user to give healthcare professionals access to their personal
health data. Medicalchain then records interactions with [these] data in an
auditable, transparent, and secure way on Medicalchain's distributed
ledger."
This technology, the company
believes, would empower the patient. Also, as online consultations become more
popular, this technology would help overcome some of their inherent privacy and
security issues.
The company hope that soon, their
services could be open to the public at large.
3. Mobile cancer screening
In 2018, globally, there were 570,000 new cases of cervical cancer. Around 90
percent of deaths from cervical cancer occur in low- and middle-income
societies.
Share
on PinterestThe hand-held EVA System.
Better screening and earlier
intervention could significantly reduce the mortalty rate.
MobileODT have designed a
battery-powered, hand-held colposcope called the EVA System,
which can take high-quality images of the cervix.
MobileODT worked with the National
Cancer Institute to develop a machine learning algorithm, called automatic
visual evaluation (AVE), that can produce an accurate diagnosis in minutes.
A prospective, multicenter pilot
study that scientists conducted in Korea showed that the device is more
than 90 percent accurate.
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Yael Misrahi — head of global
partnerships at MobileODT — outlined the product at Future Healthcare. MNT caught up with her after the
event, and she explained that one of the primary benefits of this system is
that "it is handheld and can be used by a nonexpert healthcare
provider."
Because the device is based on
smartphone technology, it is user-friendly and includes a "remote
consultation feature to consult experts either in real-time or during a quality
assurance check."
"[W]ith AVE — the machine learning algorithm for
detection of pre-cancer — there is no need for a scrape or a lab and a woman is
able to receive a result at the point of care rather than waiting several weeks
or months for a result."
Yael Misrahi
4. Upgrading disposable batteries
How batteries work has remained
relatively unchanged for decades. BlueThink — without altering the underlying
chemistry — have developed a way of making a common type of battery safer and
more cost-effective.
Share
on PinterestBlueThink's battery is compact, simply constructed, flexible, and
safe.
Manufacturers now widely use button
batteries in medical devices, as BlueThink's Javier Eduardo Nadal explained
to MNT:
"Medical devices are now
smarter and more user-friendly than ever before."
"This growing trend relies on
good design and the use of technologies like LEDs and screens to improve the
user experience, as well as connectivity to provide patients, doctors, and
healthcare systems with valuable data."
"All these innovative devices
have one thing in common: They need energy."
Button batteries are not without
their problems; if a person leaves them on a shelf for a long time, they lose
their charge. If they are incinerated — for instance, those of contaminated
disposable medical equipment — they explode.
They are also harmful to the
environment and a significant hazard for children if swallowed.
According to BlueThink,
they have found a way to mitigate all of the above. Using standard battery
technology but with a twist, they have created a flexible battery that a child
could safely swallow, that does not explode when incinerated, and that keeps
its charge when left on a shelf.
Importantly, it is also low-cost and
producible in large quantities.
Nadal
told MNT that
"[a] small amount of energy can make a big difference in a medical device,
but it must not compromise user experience, safety, or sustainability."
5. Robots vs. loneliness
Loneliness is a real, increasing
issue in the U.S. and globally. In fact, many healthcare professionals now
recognize loneliness as a risk factor for a number of medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease.
Share
on PinterestGenie Connect promises to combat loneliness.
For this reason, we need to address
loneliness with urgency.
Service Robotics Limited have
recently created an innovative solution that aims to bridge this gap.
Genie Connect is a
friendly looking miniature robot. The designers described it as "a
companion robot service that uses a friendly, intuitive, voice-enabled robot to
offer connectivity and support [...] older adults."
It can carry out commands in a
similar way to other popular virtual assistants, but it has a range of bespoke,
customizable features.
Genie Connect can have a conversation
and set up video chats with healthcare professionals and family members.
Service Robotics Limited designed it to help stimulate and engage the user's
mind. It also reminds the user when to take medication and attend appointments.
There is a common concern that
robots will take away the jobs of humans; in this case, Genie Connect fills a
gap that humans currently leave open.
6. Breathe more easily?
Perhaps the most unusual device we
saw at Future Healthcare 2019 was called SoeMac. According to its creators,
"SoeMac alternative
therapy creates energized oxygen, which your body can safely use to help
restore itself at night while you sleep."
SoeMac is a small, rectangular
device that gently whirrs. A user simply switches it on and leaves it by their
bed at night. According to the designers, it helps us breathe more easily and
sleep better.
They say that "it works by
drawing air inside and producing a bio-usable form of energized oxygen, known
as Singlet Oxygen Energy, or SOE."
"This can help your body to
carry out essential restorative work while you sleep at night, boosting the
effectiveness of your nighttime detoxification and bodily repair
functions."
It is crucial to note that so far,
no clinical trials back up these claims. However, SoeMac's creators are
planning studies in the near future. In particular, they hope that it might
give relief to people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Overall,
Future Healthcare 2019 was a thoroughly interesting event. It is always
exciting being party to the cutting edge of medical innovation.
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