South Korean artificial intelligence (AI) developer, VUNO Inc., announced a partnership with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., global medical device company to incorporate its AI-powered chest X-ray diagnostic solution, VUNO Med®-Chest X-ray™, into Samsung’s premium mobile digital X-ray system, GM85. The AI integrated X-ray suite is slated to debut in Korea and other major markets around the globe later this year. This is one of the latest extensions of VUNO’s ambition to leverage the full potential of AI to better orchestrate clinical workflows by empowering medical service providers to deliver patient-focused care.

VUNO’s AI algorithm has been successfully validated for its improved clinical utility and efficiency in academic journals and clinical settings. Such a proven track record of success along with its lightweight enabled integration capabilities is the key factor that has contributed to making this deal happen.

Samsung’s GM85, a premium mobile digital radiography system with a lightweight and ultra-compact design, combines a broad range of advanced technology including a quick charging and long-lasting battery to provide enhanced user-convenience and superior image quality. Featuring VUNO’s AI, the integrated mobile X-ray suite will be able to instantly deliver AI results on the spot upon scanning an image while the patient is still in the hospital. This will serve as a useful diagnostic support tool in the emergency room and intensive care units where real time analysis is critical and under other medical environments with limited or no network connections.

“I am delighted to partner with Samsung Electronics in embedding our best-of-breed AI solution into their mobile digital X-ray devices. This collaboration will bring us closer to making our market-ready AI applications more accessible across the globe. We will continue to focus on advancing our technology to deliver improved patient outcomes” said Hyun-jun Kim, co-founder, and CEO of VUNO.

“Incorporating VUNO’s AI technology, we can introduce a more sophisticated mobile X-ray system with AI enabled CAD,” said Woo-young Jang, Samsung Electronics’ Head of DR Business Team. “We will continue to extend our partnerships to develop a leadership position in the global X-ray market”.

VUNO Med®-Chest X-ray™ accurately and instantly detects and flags suspected chest abnormalities indicative of major pulmonary diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, lung cancer based on five of the most common thoracic findings such as nodule/mass, pneumothorax, interstitial opacity, pleural effusion, and consolidation. This solution has been in full commercial deployment in Korea and Europe after obtaining MFDS (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) approval and CE mark in August 2019 and June 2020 respectively.

About VUNO Inc.

VUNO is a Seoul-based leading AI medical software company that applies deep learning to develop data-driven AI medical solutions using medical imaging, pathology, biosignal and medical speech data. We strive to present a whole new level of experience to medical practitioners in their day-to-day workflows, empowering them to make better diagnostic decisions faster and more accurately and to provide quality patient care and treatment planning to patients.

Royal Philips, a global leader in health technology, has participated in an important research project to develop a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging technique that could potentially revolutionize the use of MR imaging in cardiology.

Reducing the procedure time for full evaluation of heart anatomy and function from about one hour down to a few minutes, this new technique has the potential to increase patient access to precision diagnosis, improve patient comfort due to shorter scan times, and lower the cost of care. The technique can be used with existing phased-array MRI scanners without modification. The results of a clinical trial to evaluate the technique were published in April, 2021, in JACC (Journal of the American College of Cardiology): Cardiovascular Imaging, one of the world’s highest impact journals in the field.

“In just over 20 seconds, all the information needed to know the shape and function of the heart has been acquired. And if you need to evaluate the degree of fibrosis after cardiac muscle death, another 20-second acquisition is all it takes, completing the cardiac study in less than a minute,” said Philips scientist Dr. Javier Sánchez-González, technical leader of the Philips team that contributed to the development and leader of the collaboration with CNIC.

During a conventional MR cardiac examination, patients are required to lie still inside the bore of the scanner for about one hour to accurately measure the function of their heart and assess the extent of damaged heart muscle. It requires multiple complex 2D and 3D image acquisitions that need to be captured and reconstructed. As a result, despite being non-invasive and involving no radiation exposure, MR imaging is still not widely used for cardiac imaging.

“The main cause is the time needed to do a full study. A complete study requires about an hour, a period that causes many patients not to finish the test due to the discomfort it causes them,” said Dr. Sandra Gómez-Talavera, researcher at the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC), cardiologist at the Hospital Universitario Fundación Jiménez Díaz (Madrid, Spain), and co-author of the JACC paper.

The new technique (called ‘Enhanced SENSE by Static Outer-volume Subtraction (ESSOS)) makes use of the fact that during a breath-hold, everything within the patient’s chest remains static, except their beating heart. After an initial image of the static part (outer volume) has been captured this MRI data is temporarily removed. The MRI signal of the beating heart can now more easily be subtracted from subsequent scan data, allowing up to four times faster acquisition of a 3D image of the heart. This results in a net acceleration factor of up to 32. Once the dynamic information of the beating heart is reconstructed, the static outer volume images are added back to generate a full 3D cardiac image showing heart anatomy and function, and allowing review from different views with good image resolution. If needed, a second contrast-enhanced isotropic 3D single breath-hold scan can reveal the extent of damage to the patient’s heart muscle.

The results of a clinical trial in which more than 100 patients with various cardiac pathologies were examined using both the conventional and the new MR protocol, with the resulting images being evaluated by expert radiologists, demonstrated excellent agreement between heart function measurements made using each technique, as well as excellent agreement in the images to characterize tissue damage to the patient’s heart muscle [4].

“We have shown in a large group of patients that cardiac MR imaging using this new technology obtains the same parameters as the usual technique but reduces the time that a patient has to be inside the machine by more than 90%,” said Dr. Borja Ibáñez, Director of the Clinical Research Department of CNIC, Cardiologist at the University Hospital Fundación Jiménez Díaz, and clinical leader of the work.

The research project to develop this new cardiac MR protocol was financed by the Carlos III Institute of Health, through a FIS technological development project, as well as a Translational Research Grant from the Spanish Society of Cardiology, the European Research Council (ERC), and the Community of Madrid.

While the collaboration between CNIC and Philips is currently at the research stage, the goal is to bring this ultra-fast and easy cardiac MR technique to clinical settings in the near future and support the common vision of benefiting more patients. Already today Philips’ integrated MR solutions offer new levels of ultra-fast and personalized cardiac MR. Examples include the company’s exam-shortening Compressed SENSE technology, ultra-fast early diagnosis of heart failure with Strain–encoded magnetic resonance imaging (SENC-MRI) and MyoStrain (by Myocardial Solutions), SmartWorkflow end-to-end workflow solution, and helium-free scanners. Learn more at MR Cardiac imaging | Philips Healthcare.

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips is a leading health technology company focused on improving people’s health and well-being, and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum – from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips generated 2020 sales of EUR 17.3 billion and employs approximately 77,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries.

About CNIC

The National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC), led by Dr. Valentín Fuster, has as its mission to enhance cardiovascular research and its translation to the patient. The center is financed by a pioneering formula of public-private collaboration between the Government of Spain, through the Carlos III Institute of Health, and the Pro CNIC Foundation that brings together 12 of the most important Spanish companies.

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 InterSystems, a creative data technology provider dedicated to helping customers solve the most critical scalability, interoperability and speed problems, has announced the availability of the latest version of its TrakCare® Unified Healthcare Information System, T2021.

This version of TrakCare includes new features inspired by the rapid response of healthcare organisations around the world to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The latest TrakCare update responds to the increasing demand for telehealth and virtual care with the introduction of integration with InterSystems HealthShare® Personal Community, a comprehensive, cross-EMR patient portal. This integration enables new features including outpatient bookings and the synchronisation of third-party app data integrated into patient records. The tool is also configurable, enabling further innovation in remote monitoring and patient engagement for TrakCare users around the world.

T2021 also boasts new capabilities including strengthened controls for medication, data and identity management. What’s more, the company has developed a new and more agile approach to software updates that helps healthcare professionals and patients benefit from the latest functionalities.

“Patients can book appointments and see their care provider from the comfort of their own home, while clinicians can use apps of their choice, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or WeChat, while still using their normal consultation workflows and maintaining access to clinical records,” said Dimitri Fane, director of product management, InterSystems. “The innovation put into T2021 represents the InterSystems commitment to providing powerful, innovative and easy-to-use tools into the hands of clinicians wherever they provide care in the new era of healthcare.”

TrakCare T2021 also takes advantage of the HL7® FHIR® repository capabilities of InterSystems IRIS for Health™, enabling secure and standards-based interoperability capabilities to enhance patient data sharing and support SMART on FHIR apps.

T2021 further enhances the clinician user experience with improved graphing functionality in Encounter Record, which provides a unified workspace for clinicians to compare information such as observation and medication data. A newly introduced Clinical Quality Monitoring dashboard improves clinical audit, medical record deficiency review and patient safety, while planned patterns of care can be better understood with the ability to perform systematic and retrospective reviews of clinical pathways.

New features such as Emergency Department Streaming deliver an improved care journey for patients, supporting healthcare professionals with case load management and prioritisation through triage scores.

“Our laser focus on customer partnering placed InterSystems at the heart of the most rapid developments in their response to COVID,” said Don Woodlock, head of healthcare solutions for InterSystems. “These learnings have resulted in one of the most exciting and transformative updates of TrakCare, creating a platform that will continue to be the foundation of the best patient care and the launchpad for further innovation.”

About InterSystems

Established in 1978, InterSystems provides innovative data solutions for organisations with critical information needs in the healthcare, finance and logistics sectors, and beyond. Our cloud-first data platforms solve interoperability, speed and scalability problems for organisations around the globe. InterSystems also develops and supports data management in hospitals through the world’s most proven electronic medical record, as well as unified care records for health systems and governments through a powerful suite of healthcare data integration solutions. The company is committed to excellence through its award-winning, 24×7 support for customers and partners in more than 80 countries. Privately held and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, InterSystems has 25 offices worldwide. For more information, please visit InterSystems.com/au.

Paragonix Technologies, Inc. announces the launch of its clinical global registry, GUARDIAN-LUNG (Global Utilization And Registry Database for Improved preservAtion of doNor LUNGs). The GUARDIAN-LUNG study is unlike any lung donation registry as it seeks to evaluate a missing piece of the organ donation process: the impact of methods and technologies used for lung preservation and transportation on the success of transplant surgery.

The clinical study is registered at clinicaltrials.gov and is open to all lung transplant centers that are looking to analyze patient outcomes based on donor lung preservation methods. Clinical investigators from the enrolling centers will pool their data and analyze the differences in clinical outcomes of patients who receive donor lungs preserved either in the Paragonix LUNGguard™ Donor Lung Preservation System or with traditional methods of storing in a consumer cooler on ice. The study will focus on short term post-transplant outcomes (within the first 48 hours), intermediate-term outcomes (within the first 30 days) and long-term outcomes (1-year survival).

“This unique registry will provide critical and contemporary data on lung transplant outcomes, with the potential to impact the process for both donors and recipients,” said Matthew Hartwig, MD, MHS, Chief of Lung Transplant Research at Duke University Health System. “Our program sees this registry as an important opportunity to make vast strides in how certain procedural details, including organ transportation, can improve patient outcomes. All programs should be seeking the opportunity to participate and contribute to this study.”

Paragonix has previously found that preservation method does positively impact a patient’s stay in the ICU1. The GUARDIAN-LUNG study follows the success of Paragonix’s first registry, GUARDIAN, for evaluating donor heart preservation, comparing historic ice storage to the Paragonix SherpaPak® Cardiac Transport System. In a recently presented multi-center clinical study, investigators found that the donor hearts preserved by the Paragonix SherpaPak system had statistically significant increases in total ischemic time and travel distance, meaning the organ was able to be effectively preserved outside a human body longer and be retrieved from donors at a greater distance from the recipient. An analysis of the patients with extended ischemic times found the portion of patients in the ICU for two weeks or more was reduced by 50 percent in the Paragonix SherpaPak cohort, and the portion of patients in the ICU for only a week or less was increased by more than double with the Paragonix system compared to ice storage.1

“Transplant surgery presents many unknowns and complexities. We’ve invested in these studies to better support the transplant teams and patients by providing insights that may help them in handling the dynamics of the entire operation, from transport to transplant,” said Lisa Anderson, Ph.D., CEO of Paragonix Technologies. “The first results of our GUARDIAN registry for heart preservation and transplantation sets an exciting and optimistic stage for what we can achieve for further supporting lung preservation and transplantation.”

“The importance of both the heart and lung registries is clear to transplant teams around the world: the more data we have on the variables of the entire transplant process, the more lives we can potentially save,” said Errol Bush, MD, Surgical Director, Advanced Lung Disease and Lung Transplant Program and Associate Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Insights gathered from the initial heart registry not only inform new approaches to organ preservation but show that preservation could be crucial in overcoming other considerations of the transplant procedure that may be challenging, such as donor and recipient characteristics.”

The LUNGguard System provides a highly controlled environment for hypothermic lung preservation, coupled with real-time digital monitoring to safeguard donor lungs throughout the entire transport journey via the Paragonix App where, historically, communication and coordination has been difficult. Paragonix’s centralized communication and data transfer capabilities are fully compatible with and integrated into the usage of the LUNGguard system. This system is based on the same architecture as the award-winning Paragonix SherpaPak system that has successfully transported over 800 donor hearts since clinical launch in 2018.

The GUARDIAN studies are the only and largest registries focused on donor organ preservation. Paragonix is committed to understanding the science of organ preservation, investing in the research to understand the impact of devices such as its SherpaPak® Cardiac Transport System and LUNGguard™ Donor Lung Procurement System.

About Paragonix Technologies
Paragonix Technologies markets organ transportation devices that safeguard organs during the journey between donor and recipient patients. Our devices incorporate clinically proven and medically trusted cold preservation techniques in a novel suspension system to provide unprecedented physical and thermal protection. Paragonix SherpaPak® CTS is the only commercially available FDA cleared and CE marked transport device for heart transportation.

Roche Diagnostics India has launched REACH, a wellness platform developed to help the emotional well-being of healthcare professionals. Because the world is battling COVID-19 pandemic, frontline healthcare staff (HCWs) are among the many most weak teams on the threat of psychological well being issues, an announcement from the corporate mentioned.

It notified that REACH goals to be a companion for frontline staff to hunt recommendation and assist from skilled counsellors whereas accessing tailor-made self-care content material to help their emotional well-being.

For the reason that outbreak of the pandemic, healthcare staff have discovered themselves amid chaos and panic and but have continued to supply their unwavering help to sufferers. Such a protracted interval of stress has made the HCW group weak to short- and long-term psychological well being implications, it talked about.

“REACH is an initiative to assist healthcare professionals address difficulties and challenges of their life extra effectively. By way of REACH, healthcare staff can have entry to counselling classes, self-help content material (informative movies, articles, behavior hacks, guided meditation movies) and self-assessment instruments on a wide range of subjects together with work-related challenges, parenting and relationship points, wellness and self-development. At current, REACH platform choices are open to all healthcare staff – clinicians, nurses, lab professionals and affected person navigators,” added the assertion.

All of the counsellors are professionally certified and are educated on privateness and confidentiality to make sure that any particular person looking for help will get the very best expertise. Up to now, REACH has been launched in choose hospitals together with Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), it mentioned.

Dr Rajendra Badwe, Director, TMC, acknowledged the necessity for emotional help for healthcare staff, quoting, “It’s time to be employee-centric along with being patient-centric in right this moment’s state of affairs.”

Echoing Dr Badwe’s thought, Sindhu Nair, Deputy Nursing Superintendent, Tata Memorial Hospital, mentioned, “Sustaining the equilibrium between bodily and psychological well being to steadiness the stress at work place and residential entrance took centre stage in the course of the testing occasions of COVID-19 pandemic. Together with self-motivation, which many frontliners relied on, app like “REACH” helped well being care staff to discover the internal self, thereby giving a lift to maneuver forward.”

REACH collaborated with the United Nurses Affiliation (UNA), Maharashtra, to increase the choices to their members, the assertion mentioned.

Jibin TC, President, UNA, appraised the distinctiveness of the programme quoting, “REACH helps in overcoming anxiousness and office stress, bettering profession and relationships. The method resulted in me feeling significantly better at work, increase the arrogance so as to add positivity to the job and to take necessary strides ahead in skilled and private relationships.”

Narendra Varde, Managing Director – Roche Diagnostics India and Neighbouring Markets, mentioned, “Well being care professionals are stretched to the restrict and are essentially the most weak to psychological well being points. You will need to present these frontline warriors with the instruments they should keep emotionally and mentally match earlier than they get right down to serving to sufferers. The scope of the challenge will present psychological well being help for our frontline caregivers and is a vital demonstration of how non-public sector innovation is important within the pandemic response.”