HealthManagement.org's Most Clicked Stories

Every week HealthManagement.org publishes top healthcare management, leadership and best practice news of the week in dedicated newsletters. We know you’re busy, so we do all the work and pick the best three stories to send you. Read on for a variety of topics that piqued record interest recently.

 

Endoscopy Market Set for Growth

 

New industry market research shows that the global market for endoscopic devices is tipped to grow at a CAGR of 7.06 percent until 2020. North America is the largest market for endoscopic devices followed by Europe.

The Asian market is set to grow significantly until 2020 with a projected 7.91 percent CAGR revenue growth.

 

The research, conducted by Novonous, covers Rigid Endoscope, Flexible Endoscope, Endoscopy Visualisation, Capsule Endoscopes and Endoscope Accessories.

 

One of the key drivers behind the growth is an increasing awareness about colon cancer. On a management front, in coming years, some of the key challenges for stakeholders to prepare for will be stricter medical regulations and fluctuating exchange rates.

 

The report identifies key industry bodies and associations and their role in the global endoscopic device market along with political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental analysis.

 

Statin vs Nonstatin Therapies for Lowering LDL-C

 

A study published in JAMA was conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School to evaluate the association between lowering LDL-C and relative cardiovascular risk reduction across different statin and nonstatin therapies. LDL-C is an established risk factor for cardiovascular disease. It is widely accepted that statins successfully lower LDL-C. However, the clinical benefit of nonstatin therapies on lowering LDL-C still remains uncertain.

 

Researchers conducted a meta-analysis and review of 49 trials. The analysis included 312,175 participants with 36,645 major vascular events and 9 different interventions to lower LDL-C. The analysis showed that there was a similar association between absolute reductions in LDL-C and lower relative risks for major vascular events across therapies that work through upregulation of LDL receptor expression. 

See more at: https://iii.hm/5m2

 

Radiation and DNA Damage

 

Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their collaborators have identified two characteristic patterns of DNA damage in human cancers that are caused by ionising radiation. The research published in Nature Communications, could help doctors identify tumours that may be the result of radiation as well as determine the right treatment strategy. The findings can also explain how radiation causes cancer.

 

While it is already known that ionising radiation such as gamma rays, x-rays and radioactive particles damage the DNA and can cause cancer, it is not clear how this happens or how many tumours can be caused by radiation. See more at: https://iii.hm/5ce

 

eHealth for Cardiology - Benefits Need to Be Demonstrated
 

Despite widespread eCardiology applications, research is showing smaller effects as assessment becomes more robust. It is becoming difficult to demonstrate added value other than patient preference and convenience, according to experts speaking at the European Congress of Cardiology in Rome this summer.

 

When cardiac patients are not attending rehabilitation programmes, then telerehabilitation programmes may close the gap, improving adherence and demonstrating benefits. Telerehabilitation plus standard cardiac rehabilitation is more effective and less costly than standard CR alone in the long term. However, the challenge is to sustain the benefits of telerehabilitation in the long-term in a cost-effective way.

 

Ines Frederix, from Antwerp University, outlined their ongoing investigations, which build on the findings from the Tele-REHAB III trial, as well as ongoing investigations into telerehabilitation strategies after acute coronary syndromes.

 

Telemedical care provides the means to address inadequate risk factor control and unhealthy lifestyle behavior and improve adherence, said Frederix. 

See more at: https://iii.hm/55m

 

Lego-like Ultrasound Imaging for Cells

 

Scientists are now saying that, in the future, protein-engineering techniques could lead to colourful ultrasound images that penetrate cells deep within our bodies.

 

Ultrasound imaging is used for disease diagnosis and visualising developing babies in the womb through sound wave technology. The next phase in ultrasound is the coloured imaging of cells deep within the body, like those connected with tumours of gut bacteria, rather than solely anatomy.

 

Protein-shelled structures known as gas vesicles, can be worked with proteins with the aim of improving ultrasound methods. The vesicles can assist in the detection of specific cell types and create informative multicolour images.

 

The benefits of gas vesicles? The give off clearer signals, target specific cell types and help create colour ultrasound images. In the years ahead, such gas vesicles could be given to a patient for the purpose of obtaining visuals of specific tissues of interest.

 

Senior author on the research paper on gas vesicles, Mikhail Shapiro, likened it to engineering with molecular Legos. The team said they wanted to bring ultrasound down to the molecular and cellular level in the future.

 
High-Performance Hospitals Keep AMI Patients Alive in the Long Term

 

According to a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine by Yale School of Medicine researchers, short- and long-term risk of death after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is associated with hospital performance.

 

Risk-standardised mortality rates are widely used to measure quality and hospital performance. However, it is not known whether differences among hospitals in the early survival of patients with AMI are associated with differences in long-term survival. To address this issue, Bucholz and colleagues compared life expectancy among patients admitted to high-performing hospitals with life expectancy among patients admitted to low-performing hospitals.

See more at: https://iii.hm/664

 

Fee Models Desperately Need Improvement for Telehealth Care

 

Leading telehealth provider, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) has said that as healthcare moves towards valuebased care, the national reimbursement framework has to improve for telehealth in general and Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) in particular

 

“Remote patient monitoring allows providers a way to educate,engage and empower patients to improve their overall health status,” Michael Adcock of UMMC told HealthManagement.org. “The move towards value based care will drive more focus to these types of technology enabled programs. Until then, improvements under the national fee for service models are needed.”

 

Mississippi has been in the spotlight for having some of the highest diabetes rates in the country as well as being amongst the highest spenders on care for this disease.

 

Addock said limited access to healthcare services in parts of the state and poor nutrition had exacerbated the high figures until a viable telehealth programme was introduced to fight the trend. The success has spawned expansion into other diseases.

See more at: https://iii.hm/5xi

 

Burnout Syndrome in Critical Care: What Needs to Happen Now?
 

Following the release of the U.S. Critical Care Societies Collaborative C all to Action on Burnout Syndrome, ICU Management & Practice interviewed co-authors Ruth Kleinpell and Vicki Good from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

 

Kleinpell said there was a tendency for healthcare professionals experiencing burnout not to admit or recognise it and that admitting their feelings might be perceived as a sign of weakness. “The CCSC Call to Action is intended to highlight the importance of preventing and addressing burnout in ICU healthcare professionals, and to bring recognition that burnout is common among members of high-stress professions,” she said.

 

Burnout is commonly caused by emotional, mental and physical exhaustion related to excessive or prolonged stress, she added.

See more at: https://iii.hm/4ht 

Radiologists Can Detect Breast Cancer in 'Blink of an Eye'

 

A study conducted by investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the University of York in the UK and MD Andersen Cancer Center in Texas tests the ability of experienced radiologists' to sense when a mammogram is abnormal. The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

For the purpose of the investigation, visual attention researchers showed mammograms to radiologists for half a second and found that they could identify abnormal mammograms at better than chance levels. The ability was further tested through a series of experiments in order to determine what signal alerts radiologists to the presence of an abnormality.

See more at: https://iii.hm/54s

 

Expert Tips on How to Train Doctor Leaders

 

Doctors must lead the way as healthcare moves towards new payment and care delivery models say executives at the country’s largest health systems.

 

The industry needs more physician leaders to drive the movement from volume to value, experts at a physician leadership panel discussion in the District of Columbia overseen by the Council of Accountable Physician Practices (CAPP ).

 

Screening early in the recruitment process should be undertaken in order to note doctors who have promise for a future leadership role. Succession planning is also recommended with leaders being encouraged to have a possible successor in place before leaving.

 

CAPP offers a series of articles on physician leadership for healthcare systems not yet cultivating potential leaders fully. The aim is to “translate the experience of national leaders”.

See more at: https://iii.hm/5t3

Risk Prediction Model for Atrial Fibrillation

 

In a study published in the JAMA Cardiology, Darbar and colleagues found that the risk prediction model for atrial fibrillation (AF) developed by investigators on the Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology-Atrial Fibrillation (CHAR GE-AF) trial does not accurately predict incidence of the condition.

 

Various risk models have been developed and are currently used to identify the patients at risk for atrial fibrillation. They aim at reducing the risk for stroke, heart failure and death from atrial fibrillation. The question is whether these widely-accepted prediction models are effective when applied to electronic medical records (EMRs).

 

Professor Dawood Darbar, chief of cardiology at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, closely worked with a team of researchers and physicians in order to address this issue. “A number of atrial fibrillation risk prediction models have been developed but this is the first study that has attempted to validate them in the EMR setting,” Professor Danbar told HealthManagement.org.

See More at: https://iii.hm/665

 

HIMSS Cybersecurity Hub

 

HIMSS launched a new, interactive Cybersecurity Hub in October. The move was part of the HI MSS Innovation Centre located in Cleveland.

 

HIMSS describe the hub as an “immersive learning environment aimed at de-mystifying the evolving threat landscape for executives, healthcare providers, IT professionals, policymakers and the general public.”

 

The hub will be an in-person exhibit that allows visitors to engage with a series of standalone interactive modules that simulate security-related scenarios. This will be followed with guidance through a selection of vendor solutions for addressing the security issues that arose from the scenarios. HI MSS said that the multi-sensory journey showed how various points of care connect through electronic data and highlights that security risks can be encountered and the latest solutions designed to mitigate risk.

See More at: https://iii.hm/666