The Operating Theatre Journal November 2020

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Digital health is on the rise due to COVID-19 and is in the spotlight at virtual.MEDICAFrom apps to wearables, from robotics and AI to big data, start-ups are getting in on the action in the Internet of Medical ThingsMEDICA in Düsseldorf is a world-leading platform for the medical technology business and the healthcare industry and has always been one of theplaces to be for the entire sector as it covers current digital health trends, innovative products and services for linking all of the major stakeholdersin medical care. Consequently, digital health is a mainstay of virtual.MEDICA (https://virtual.MEDICA.de), which, due to the pandemic, will bebroadcasted online by MEDICA from 16 – 19 November. It will be in fully digital format with many exhibitors and themed highlights and will beglobally accessible.It’s evident that the corona pandemic has given the digitalisation of the healthcare sector a huge boost. It’s now easier for doctors to offerpatients video appointments, and restriction regulations relating to case numbers and service provision have been lifted here. Providers of digitalhealthcare solutions reacted quickly by putting out a multitude of test offers for relevant software tools, many of which were free. Start-upsposition themselves as a creative partner in developing digital solutions for the medical technology industry. Using remote health applications,big data analyses or artificial intelligence (AI) in the medical sector is considered to have high potential and all of these specialisms are under thespotlight in the virtual.MEDICA programme, for example in the English sessions in the Conference Area at the MEDICA CONNECTED HEALTHCAREFORUM and the MEDICA HEALTH IT FORUM.The MEDICA CONNECTED HEALTHCARE FORUM kicks off with a bang on its launch day (16.11.) with the finale of the 12th Healthcare InnovationWorld Cup. The top 12 start-ups for the Internet of Medical Things will be presented here from 2 pm. PKvitality from France will be one of theparticipants. They have developed a watch that enables users to discreetly monitor their blood sugar levels. A trend indicator and graph displayshelp the wearer to improve their control of their blood sugar.This forum offers another exciting pitch format with the 9th MEDICA Start-up COMPETITION (17.11. from 2 pm) and healthcare innovations inhealth apps, diagnostics, robotics and even AI from the start-up scene. Among the numerous remarkable COMPETITION applications, Mediquo fromSpain deserves a special mention. They are presenting a professional tool for enhancing communication between doctors and patients. Anothercompetitor, GenuSport, have gameified knee rehabilitation. These companies will be competing in the health app segment. In the diagnosticssector, Higo from Poland offers tools that can be used to examine children at home and then send the data to the doctor for a diagnosis. Artificialintelligence is being used by Evercot AI from Germany, among others, in order to capture brain changes, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, glioma andParkinson’s disease remotely. H Robotics from Korea has developed a device in the robotics segment that can be used for wrist, elbow, ankle andknee exercises to assure rehabilitation at home.COVID-19 – Redefining Connected HealthProf. Dirk Brockmann of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin will appear in the “COVID19 – Redefining Connected Health” section, held from 2 pm onWednesday 18. November within the Conference Area at virtual.MEDICA. He initiated the Corona data sharing app from the Robert Koch Institute,which is also being discussed in the virtual sessions of the MEDICA MEDICINE + SPORTS CONFERENCE 2020. Once it has been voluntarily enabled,the data sharing app collects data from wearables such as fitness bracelets and is intended to help the Robert Koch Institute estimate the spreadof infection. This has enabled scientists to better assess the current epidemiological situation and use it as an early warning system. In the samesession on Wednesday, solutions for measuring temperature will be presented by Dr. Holger Hendrichs from greenTEG. Core body temperatureis an important vital parameter in determining a person’s state of health. greenTEG offers a unique core body temperature measuring sensor forcontinuous non-invasive measurement. It can, for example, be used for monitoring purposes when integrated into a wearable for people who needadditional care or even, with regard to COVID-19, implemented as a type of early warning system for company employees.Clinically validated wearables can be used to capture a wide variety of cardiorespiratory signals, such as respiratory volume and frequency, bloodoxygen saturation, heart rate, lung sounds and core body temperature. These wearables can thus help doctors to care for patients remotely andform diagnoses, whether it be for sleep apnoea, pulmonary hypertension or severe acute respiratory syndrome. Dave Hughes of Novosound willgive a lecture on a relevant solution which involves wearable ultrasound sensors that is used in pulmonary diagnoses and recovery management.Digital applications for allThe excitement continues right through to the closing day (19.11) with start-ups and their innovations at the MEDICA CONNECTED HEALTHCAREFORUM. On this date, numerous developer teams will present their innovations under the MEDICA DISRUPT label. In one session (held from 3:40pm), Laszlo Bax from Braingaze will explain how digital biomarkers enable early detection of cognitive impairments. The extent to which AI iscapable of detecting brain disease early will be described by Roland Amba Assam of Evercot AI.It’s becoming clearer and clearer that digital health applications open up a wide variety of options in terms of prevention, diagnosis and therapy,and are not only advantageous for the treating doctor but also benefit to patients as hand-held digital helpers. The German Federal Institute forDrugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) is also backing digital healthcare applications. With the Digital Healthcare Act (DVG) and the Digital HealthApplications Ordinance (DiGAV), the legislating body has laid the foundations for making apps available to the 73 million members of the statutoryhealth insurance bodies available quickly - and this project has also raised the hopes of many start-ups. The President of BfArM, Prof. Karl Broich,gives an overview of the current status and acceptance of medical applications and even dares to state his predictions for them from 4 pm onWednesday 18 November. The DiGA App Store, which is already available, acts as a digital healthcare application directory. Dr. Benedikt Zacherof Munich, who co-founded this directory, will explain the significance of this special app store.Start-ups and the backers behind themAs one of the first digital healthcare investors, Flying Health states that it invested in digital healthcare in 2012 and brought the first app onprescription onto the market in 2014. Currently, Flying Health participates in the heal capital venture capital fund. The German Associationof Private Health Insurers (PKV - Verband der Privaten Krankenversicherungen) thus promotes start-ups and their innovative digital healthcareproducts. Lina Behrens, the Managing Director of Flying Health, will chair the “From treatment to prevention” session on Monday 16 Novemberfrom 10 am at the MEDICA HEALTH IT FORUM. One of the start-ups supported here is HelloBetter. They develop and market online training coursesthat promote mental wellbeing.24 THE OPERATING THEATRE JOURNAL www.otjonline.com
Their portfolio comprises a range of online offers to help deal with stress, depression and anxiety disorders and additional special programmesfor patients who experience these symptoms in conjunction with a chronic disease such as diabetes and preventive training sessions, which arealso appropriate for the corona pandemic. One specific HelloBetter course is intended to support users in reinforcing their own mental health. Dr.Hanne Horvath, a Co-Founder of HelloBetter, Dennis Hermann from Kaia Health and Benjamin Westerhoff of the Barmer health insurance groupwill all appear in this session held within the scope of the MEDICA HEALTH IT FORUM.Combating the virus with data donationsBeing fasterthancorona.org is the objective of the website that Dr. med. Tobias Gantner founded and operates with a pan-European team. Thefounder and CEO of HealthCare Futurists GmbH, which holds its head offices in Cologne, will chair the “Sharing is caring - Data Sharing & DataDonations” session on Tuesday 17 November from 10 am. As with the data sharing app from RKI, this project also wants to collect altruistic datadonations but without a direct link to wearables. Instead, they use clear medical hypotheses. “Ultimate success, for us, would be gaining moreknowledge on COVID-19 due to our initiative”. The potential hypotheses could be: “Are there medications that protect specific groups of people”,or “ Who is really at high-risk, and in what situation?”. The web app creates course records for the data donators via an anonymised survey. Theevidence of the data does not reach the standards set for randomised, placebo-controlled clinical studies, but the total quantity of data generated(big data) does support the notion that the data is useful for finding rudimentary patterns that indicate correlations and, in ideal scenarios, evencausation. The AI implemented here is thus not used for therapeutic decisions. Instead, it is used for pattern recognition. The aim is to definecomputer-generated biomarkers using the evaluation of the data collected. Arthritic patients that are treated with chloroquine could be aninteresting group in which to research the course of COVID-19. The data are not just analysed by the group themselves here. The information iscompletely anonymised and sent to other researchers, institutes and individuals upon request, after an external check of the scientific hypothesishas been carried out. “We wanted to expand the toolbox for epidemiology a bit,” states Dr. Gantner.The entire programme for virtual.MEDICA 2020 (16 - 19 November), which hosts one German and one English stream every day in the Conferencearea, can be called up online from the middle of October. Online visitors can register to participate for free now at: https://virtual.MEDICA.de.The ventilation technology from Getinge that isgroundbreaking both for premature babies and adultsBorn 12 weeks too early with a 50/50 chance at survival, Sabina Checketts has grown up to become a neonatal doctor herself, using new therapiesand sophisticated technology to improve outcomes for premature babies. One such technique called NAVA, invented by Getinge, utilizes sensorsto help babies on ventilators breathe more easily and naturally—and it’s increasingly being used on adults. And a new randomised study shows thatNAVA can significantly shorten the time on the ventilator.Thirty-three years after her early birth, Sabina now works as a neonatal doctor in London. The ventilator that helped Sabina survive was a far cryfrom what she sees today when she treats premature babies. “We’ve gone from a mode of ventilation where you were breathing for the baby toone now where we can breathe with the baby as well,” she says.Watch the mini-documentary about the NAVA technology, also featuring Sabina Checketts - http://bit.ly/OTJ3kLjMNOAs vulnerable premature babies fight to stay alive one of the most critical issues is something most people never think twice about - breathing. Apivotal advance in neonatal medicine - and one that has a major impact in adult critical care - has been the development of better ventilators.One ventilation technique that breathes with the patient is called Neurally Adjusted Ventilatory Assist (http://bit.ly/OTJ2HSzHLC), or NAVA,developed by Getinge, a global leader in intensive care technology for both infants and adults.In most intensive care units 20% of patients consume 80% of ventilation resources, which may lead to increased complications and unwantedoutcomes.1 NAVA, is also approved for adults, and the features that make the technique successful for neonates, translates well to adult patients.“NAVA is a way to do a little better job,” says Sherry Courtney, a director of clinical research in neonatology, who has worked with prematurebabies since the 1980s. “The diaphragm is a muscle. When it contracts, we’re going to breathe. When it relaxes, we’re going to exhale. So, NAVAsenses the breathing using a catheter that goes down into the stomach and rests close to the diaphragm.”Electrodes on the catheter sense contractions in the diaphragm, resulting in an almost instantaneous signal that the patient wants to breathe.Synchronously, the ventilator supplies air. And when the electrodes sense the end of diaphragmatic contractions, the ventilator allows exhalation.“NAVA just provides a little support, depending on the breath. The patient can be breathing as the patient wishes,” says Sherry Courtney.Adults on ventilators generally start with a functioning diaphragm, but it will quickly become weaker if a machine breathes for them for too long.Getinge Medical Director Miray Kärnekull says that advanced ventilator technologies like NAVA are used regularly in adult patients in Europe tokeep patients’ diaphragm muscles active.And in a very recent multicenter randomised controlled trial, results showed that patients with acute respiratory failure on NAVA spent significantlyless time on the ventilator and experienced less extubation failure compared to conventional lung-protective mechanical ventilation.Read more about the new independent study on the effects of NAVA - http://bit.ly/OTJ34Jc3ul“In addition to helping maintain the diaphragm’s tone, the synchrony of a NAVA ventilator means patients don’t fight against the ventilator,” MirayKärnekull continues. “To prevent that, adults usually need to be sedated. With NAVA, doctors can reduce sedatives, allowing for earlier weaningwith fewer complications.”“It’s really a groundbreaking technology”, says Miray. “NAVA gives the clinician a way to personalise not only the ventilation, but also the weaningprocess for adult patients. “These exciting advances have allowed physicians like Sabina Checketts to celebrate even more success stories. Sabina decided to become a doctorat an early age, when her mother routinely pointed out a man walking down the street on his way to the hospital and said, “That’s the doctor whosaved your life”. That experience motivates her to be a positive force in the families of the babies she treats.“When I talk to parents about the fact that I was premature, there’s always a sense of surprise, I think a little bit even shock, you know. Oh, oh,and you’re a doctor,” Sabina says. “I think it’s a nice way to say to them that prematurity shouldn’t be a limit on what a child can do.”“I mean, the advances we’ve made in even just the last 10, 15, 20 years mean the outcomes are much better than they used to be. And seeingme, who developed before that, as a newborn doctor, I give them a sense of hope and possibility, I think.”Read more about the NAVA technology http://bit.ly/OTJ3kLjMNO1. Icuregswe.org. (2016). Start - SIR-Svenska Intensivvardsregistret. Available at: http://www.icuregswe.org/en/ [Accessed Dec 2. 2015].Find out more 02921 680068 • e-mail admin@lawrand.com Issue 362 November 2020 25
Page 1 and 2: £2.00November 2020 Issue No. 362 I
Page 3 and 4: November 2020 Issue No. 362 ISSN 17
Page 5 and 6: Introducing the newCS Spine Frame+
Page 7 and 8: Covid-19 What have we learned about
Page 9 and 10: Trying to catch up withday-to-day d
Page 11 and 12: Mölnlycke Procedure TraysSave 40%
Page 13 and 14: http://bit.ly/OTJtheatreSummitGetin
Page 15 and 16: Lithotomy Stirrups from Melyd Surgi
Page 17 and 18: Vygon signs exclusive agreement wit
Page 19 and 20: Hospital InnovationsStay Safe PPE R
Page 21 and 22: nightentify’s newwill aationsbrin
Page 23: Discovering the many more pages ava
Page 27 and 28: MMI SpA Launches Breakthrough Techn
Page 29 and 30: Reduced manual handlingfor transpor

The Operating Theatre Journal November 2020

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?