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Multiple clinical trials have explored potential vaccines against HIV since the first reports of infection in the early 1980s, but HIV possesses numerous immune defences that prohibit a person’s immune system from creating an accurate response following HIV inoculation. The Vectored ImmunoProphylaxis (VIP) approach, developed by researchers at the Ragon Institute at MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), uses an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector to transmit signals to muscle cells to churn out antibodies that block the virus. The method showed promise in a phase I clinical trial carried out by the National Institute of Health, which was recently described in Nature Medicine.

AAV vectors can safely transfer DNA to cells in humans, and two AAV-based genetic treatments have already been licenced by the FDA. The AAV vector used in this clinical trial contains the genetic sequence for a broadly neutralising HIV-1 antibody, which hinders HIV’s ability to connect to CD4, an immune cell protein that HIV targets before invading the cell. When the AAV therapy (called AAV8-VRC07) is injected into a patient, it inserts into the muscle cells, where the genetic pattern is perused and interpreted to produce large amounts of the broadly neutralising antibody (called VRC07), which is pumped out of the cells and travels through the blood to pursue their target. As a result, a large number of antibodies circulate that inhibit HIV’s interaction with the CD4 receptor on immune cells, thus blocking HIV’s entry into the cells.

Eight HIV-positive people who had been on stable antiretroviral medication for at least three months were enrolled in the phase I clinical research. The researchers discovered that injecting AAV8-VRC07 into the muscle was generally well tolerated. All eight people had detectable levels of VRC07 in their blood, with three of them having the highest levels. For up to three years, these quantities were steady and near their peak concentration in six people. (The trial is still continuing, and some volunteers have been followed for a shorter period of time than others.) Three of the eight participants had an anti-drug immune reaction directed against a component of VRC07, and this reaction appeared to reduce VRC07 synthesis in two of them.

This is the first successful AAV-based production of any monoclonal antibody in individuals, says Alejandro B. Balazs, PhD, co-author who created the vector used for the trial and is a lead researcher at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, where his lab is continuing to develop this technology. It is also the first time they have got a method that can produce broadly antibody responses against HIV in humans, he adds.

The findings, according to Balazs, have far-reaching clinical implications for the prevention and treatment of HIV and other infections. The results show that the platform they developed is capable of establishing long-lasting antibody expression from a single dose. They may be able to develop efficient preventive medicines for a broad range of infectious diseases, from malaria to COVID-19, thanks to their capacity to encode any required antigen into these vectors. He confirms that this method could also be used to deliver other biologic medications to treat a variety of illnesses, ranging from autoimmune to cancer.

Balazs created the technology while a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Nobel winner David Baltimore, PhD. The clinical research, which took place at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, was funded by the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center.

In line with its vision to deliver an exceptional patient experience, Emirates Health Services (EHS), the largest health organization in UAE, in cooperation with Emitac Healthcare Solutions has implemented SEDCO’s patient experience management solution in 126 centers and over 700 healthcare departments distributed across the country. These centers include primary healthcare centers, specialized healthcare centers, preventive medicine centers, happiness centers, blood donation centers, and hospitals.

The advanced patient experience management solution by SEDCO streamlines the patient journey at every touchpoint from pre-arrival to post-service, while automatically routing patients across the different centers and healthcare departments to ensure smooth operations, reduce waiting time, and provide a stress-free patient experience. The features of the solution include mobile appointment booking and check-in, sms notifications, instant e-ticket issuance, queue management, digital signage system, and central management and business intelligence system.

An added benefit of the solution is to provide the healthcare authority with real-time data to plan and use their resources more efficiently by delivering insights into the day-to-day operations, identify areas of improvement, provide analysis of historical data, manage staff distribution, promote better communication within each department and overall provide a blueprint of a patient’s journey in the entire healthcare facility.

According to the latest study published by The Insight Partners, the global patient flow management solutions market size is driven by the rising adoption of a patient-centric approach by healthcare providers, rising numbers of start-ups, and shortage of medical staff. The industry is forecasted to reach $3.62 Billion by 2028 from $0.88 Billion in 2021; and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.3% during the said period.

Director of Technical Support Department at Emirates Health Services, Amal Karmostaje stated, “We are committed to implementing the latest innovations in accordance with the best international standards, to deliver an exceptional healthcare experience. SEDCO’s patient experience management system applies the smart journey concept; it automatically routes patients within the different departments of our centers and facilities, giving them the experience they deserve while giving us full control over our operations.”

Commenting on the implementation of the solution at EHS, Majdi Shawish, CEO at SEDCO, commented, “Advancements in technology have always had a major impact on the healthcare industry. The increasing use of smartphones is triggering the adoption of mobile based applications by the healthcare providers to streamline operations and thereby provide a better patient experience. We are immensely proud to partner with Emirates Health Services to take their patient experience to a new level. The system increases service efficiency at the organization’s centers, reduces opex costs, and optimizes staff allocations while increasing patient happiness.”

SEDCO system also streamlines between pre-booked and walk-ins, where EHS patients can issue a ticket for an appointment, pharmacy, lab, and radiology orders, ensuring a smooth routing across all of the organization’s facilities.

The system’s smart digital signage is integrated with an audio announcement system to call the next patient in queue. The digital screens also display healthcare tips and targeted ads to promote new medical services.

With live dashboards and advanced reporting system, EHS can centrally monitor each healthcare facility, operation, and KPIs such as service quality, utilization, and turnaround time. SEDCO system generates strategic reports to make more informed decisions in order to provide exceptional healthcare services while ensuring best resource allocation.

The patient experience management system is integrated with the CRM and other healthcare systems at the organization, including Khadamati, Customer Pulse, Blood Bank Management, and WAREED various services (appointments, pharmacy, lab, radiology, and smart journey management), enhancing the patient experience and EHS operations.

EHS patients can give their feedback about the service quality through SMS messages, together with the “Customer Pulse System”, empowering Emirates Health Services to measure and evaluate the patient feedback in order to enhance its healthcare services and increase patient satisfaction.

Texas Oncology announced today the establishment of Texas Oncology Surgical Specialties, organizing the diverse, specialized surgical capabilities of the practice to better serve patients. Texas Oncology’s surgical team has expanded significantly in recent years and now includes 124 surgeons, including specialists in breast, gynecologic, urologic, colorectal, neuro-oncology, thoracic, and surgical oncology. Texas Oncology surgeons performed more than 53,000 procedures last year.

“Texas Oncology is committed to providing comprehensive cancer care in the communities where our patients live. For many cancer patients, surgery is a critically needed method of treatment, whether alone or in combination with immunotherapy, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy,” said Steven Paulson, M.D., president and chairman of the board at Texas Oncology. “Our surgeons address varied and complex surgical cases with leading edge surgical techniques, working in collaboration with top tier hospitals across the state.”

Texas Oncology’s surgical specialty capabilities include robotic-assisted and minimally invasive procedures for patients with benign and malignant conditions. Techniques such as Hidden Scar™ in breast cancer surgery, Whipple procedures for pancreatic cancer, hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) surgery for certain cancers in the abdomen, and limb preserving bone cancer surgeries are among the many procedures performed.

Austin physician Michael G. Teneriello, M.D., FACOG, has been named chief surgical officer of the new Texas Oncology Surgical Specialties organization. In his 26 years with Texas Oncology, Dr. Teneriello has built the gynecologic oncology practice in Austin, actively participates in residency training at The University of Texas-Austin OB/GYN program and has conducted more than 30 clinical cancer trials as a national or principal investigator. Board certified in gynecologic oncology, obstetrics, and gynecology, he received his medical doctorate from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY. A Navy veteran, Dr. Teneriello completed his internship and residency at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD and fellowship training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“Texas Oncology Surgical Specialties reflects our commitment to exceptional patient care. Establishing an effective organizational structure will enable the practice to continue to grow its surgical capabilities to provide patients enhanced, integrated multi-disciplinary care wherever they are in Texas,” said Dr. Teneriello.

FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp. and one of the world’s largest express transportation companies, has been recognized for being the “Best Clinical Trial Logistics Provider” and for providing the “Best Last Mile Implementation” at the annual IMAPAC Asia Pacific Bioprocessing Excellence Awards 2022. These two awards recognize the exceptional healthcare expertise, services and technologies at FedEx that facilitate biomanufacturing excellence at enhanced speed, reduced costs and superior quality. The Asia Pacific Bioprocessing Excellence Awards 2022 was held in conjunction with the sixth Annual Biologistics World Asia 2022.

FedEx was shortlisted among the top five various logistics providers for both awards, with FedEx emerging as the winner for the two categories. Nominations were vetted by IMAPAC’s scientific board who are experts in the respective fields.

“This recognition is testament to our industry leading tech-led solutions that provide the precision and reliability needed to move temperature sensitive and time-critical shipments. We are proud of our advanced cold-chain solutions that have clearly gained the trust and recognition of our healthcare customers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, end-to-end logistics support has become even more important,” said Kawal Preet, president of Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (AMEA) at FedEx Express, “With the Asia Pacific region being the world’s fastest-growing clinical trial market, and the AMEA region estimated to be an $8.4 billion market for clinical trials by 2027, we will continue to innovate our healthcare solutions to support the rapid growth in this sector.”

“We are honoured to have our healthcare leadership recognized. FedEx is committed to pushing the boundaries of what the logistics industry can do for the healthcare sector through continuous innovation to enhance our solutions,” said Audrey Cheong, regional vice president, South East Asia, FedEx Express. “This award affirms our work as an organisation that has innovated and upheld the highest level of standards in Clinical Trial Logistics and Last Mile logistics solutions.”

The award comes amidst global recovery from the pandemic, during which FedEx teams have supported customers and the broader community through innovative cold chain technology that facilitates the delivery of key essential medical items. One example is the industry-first SenseAware, a sensory device that travels with high-value, time, temperature, and shock-sensitive shipments, enabling customers full access and round-the-clock visibility on the condition of a package enroute to its destination. For its leading role in protecting shipment integrity and keeping vaccines moving across the globe, FedEx was also named “Asia’s Best 3PLs for Vaccines” at the 2021 Asia Pacific Vaccine Excellence Awards.

A non-fungible token, often simply called an NFT, is a digital asset created with blockchain technology. They got their start in the world of art. It was a way for people to buy and sell digital artwork that was guaranteed with a digital contract. Analysts are wondering whether or not NFT contracts could also be used in other markets, such as healthcare. A team of ethics researchers and law and informatics specialists at the Baylor College of Medicine recently wrote a commentary about the uses of NFTs in healthcare.

In a commentary article in the prestigious journal Science, the physicians, informatics specialists and lawyers argued that NFTs could assist patients with maintaining more control over their private health information. The digital contracts offer an opportunity for patients to permit use of their personal health information and to track who accessed it, when, how and why.

The paper’s first author, Dr. Kristin Kostick-Quenet, stated that a person’s health information is outside of their control after it gets digitized. Once the information is contained in an electronic health record, it is often shared and exchanged. Dr. Kostick-Quenet is an assistant professor at Baylor’s Center for Medical Ethics and specializes in health policy. Continuing, Dr. Kostick-Quenet explained that NFTs could be used to help an individual take back control about who can see their health information and to participate in how their health information is used.

In this era of big data, health information is essentially a currency. It functions as a commodity, and companies make big profits from it. According to Dr. Amy McGuire, who was the senior author of the commentary piece in Science, using NFTs for health data could be the perfect solution for handling the large and rapidly changing marketplace of health information. Dr. McGuire went on to say that there are a lot of social, ethical and legal considerations that healthcare providers will need to keep in mind. The complexity and popularity of cryptocurrency make this a rapidly evolving situation.

Baylor’s research team points out that security flaws are still a major concern for NFTs. Privacy is also an issue. There are also disputes over who has the intellectual property rights of the healthcare information once it is digitized. The complex nature of NFTs means that the average person might not know how to make the most of the tool’s potential. Each of the paper’s authors stated that policymakers will need to consider both the benefits and the challenges of using NFTs to upend healthcare data as it is known today.

According to Dr. Kenneth Mandl, another co-author of the paper, there are current federal regulations that give patients the right to use an app of their choice to download their own healthcare data from their providers. These regulations allow individuals to receive their own data in a format that can be analyzed, such as a .csv file. Dr. Mandl states that there is a lot more research to do into whether or not NFTs or similar technologies could be used for enabling purposeful sharing of healthcare data. Smart contracts could also play a role.