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3 years, 8 months ago

Degenerative disc disease is not a disease

Ranjeev Bhangoo
Directory:
Neurosurgery
Tags:
degenerative disc disease
LBP
lower back pain
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3 years, 8 months ago

Surgery for degenerative disc disease

Ranjeev Bhangoo
Directory:
Neurosurgery
Tags:
degenerative disc disease
LBP
lower back pain
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3 years, 11 months ago

Season's Greetings from the HealthPad Team

HealthPad
Directory:
Healthcare
Tags:
commentary

PEACE, HEALTH AND BEST WISHES FOR 2021
from the HealthPad Team

 

2020 has undeniably been a challenging year. A pandemic has led the world to a global crisis, claiming the lives of many and disrupting so many others with the consequences it brought.

But the impact of CoVid-19 managed to inspire a renewed sense of community and showed the potential of what can be achieved when we work together and support each other.

The HealthPad Team wishes for this spirit to endure in 2021. May you and your loved ones stay safe and well, have a Happy Holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Thank you for your continued support throughout 2020, we look forward to another year together!
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4 years ago

E-skin set to disrupt healthcare

HealthPad
Directory:
Medical Technology
Tags:
Apple Watch
artificial skin
commentary
e-skin
intelligent robotics
smart prosthetics
  • The ‘needle’ has moved significantly since the FDA approved the first artificial human skin in 1996
  • Researchers in Australia have developed an electronic artificial skin (e-skin) that reacts to pain just like real skin 
  • Researchers in the US have developed an e-skin that mimics the functions and properties of human skin
  • These are just 2 examples of 100s of e-skin developments currently taking place around the world
  • Research findings on the functions and properties of e-skin pave the way for enhancing non-invasive alternatives to skin grafts, improving consumer healthcare, developing smarter prosthetics and advancing intelligent robotics
  • Such improvements are likely to take place over the next decade
  • One possible near-term application for e-skin is to enhance the Apple Watch
  • The commercial beneficiaries of e-skin are more likely to be giant tech companies rather than traditional manufacturers of medical devices
  
E-skin set to disrupt healthcare
 
 
In September 2020 researchers from Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) published findings of a study entitled, “Artificial Somatosensors: Feedback Receptors for Electronic Skins” in Advanced Intelligent Systems. The study’s focus was an electronic artificial skin (e-skin) made of silicone rubber with integrated electronics with the capacity to mimic the functionality of real skin and almost instantaneously distinguish between less and more severe forms of pain. Just as nerve signals instantaneously travel to your brain to inform you that you have encountered something sharp or hot, the e-skin reported in this study triggers similar mechanisms to achieve comparable results. This represents a significant advance towards the next generation of biomedical technologies, non-invasive skin grafts, smart prosthetics and intelligent robotics: all large, underserved fast growing global markets.
 
A significant advance in bioengineering

According to Madhu Bhaskaran, the study’s lead author, a professor at RMIT and the co-leader of the University’s Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, the research is the first time that electronic technologies have been shown to mimic the human feeling of pain. “No electronic technologies have been able to realistically mimic that very human feeling of pain - until now. It’s a critical step forward in the future development of the sophisticated feedback systems that we need to deliver truly smart prosthetics and intelligent robotics,” said Bhakaran.
 
Her remarks were emphasised by Md Ataur Rahman, a researcher at RMIT who said, “We’ve essentially created the first electronic somatosensors - replicating the key features of the body’s complex system of neurons, neural pathways and receptors that drive our perception of sensory stimuli . . . . While some existing technologies have used electrical signals to mimic different levels of pain, our new devices can react to real mechanical pressure, temperature and pain and deliver the right electronic response . . . .  It means our artificial skin knows the difference between gently touching a pin with your finger or accidentally stabbing yourself with it - a critical distinction that has never been achieved before electronically.”
 
Combination of three smart technologies

The RMIT device combines three ”game-changing” technologies to deliver its superior sensing capabilities, all previously designed and patented by Bhakaran’s team. The first is a stretchable, transparent and unbreakable electronic device made of oxide materials and biocompatible silicone, which allows it to be as thin as a piece of paper. The second is a temperature-reactive coating that is, “1,000 times thinner than a human hair”, which can transform when it comes into contact with heat. The third is a “brain-mimicking memory”, which facilitates electronic cells to simulate your brain’s ability to remember temperature and pain thresholds and store these in its own long-term memory bank. Further development is required to integrate these technologies into biomedical applications and demonstrate their stability over time, but crucially says Bhaskaran, “the fundamentals - biocompatibility, skin-like stretchability - are already there."
 
E-skin research has been progressing for decades

E-skin research is not new and has been developing for at least the past three decades. Here we cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of such research, but we can give a flavour of its history and briefly describe another e-skin that mimics human skin, which was reported in the February 2018 edition of Science Advances.
 
As early as the 1970s, researchers were exploring the potential application of tactile‐sensing simulation and had demonstrated certain touch sensors, but with low resolution and rigid materials. Notwithstanding, over the ensuing two decades significant breakthroughs were achieved in malleable and stretchable electronic devices for various applications. More recently, tactile sensors with enhanced performance have been developed based on different physical transduction mechanisms, including those affecting: (i) the change in the electrical resistivity of a semiconductor or metal when mechanical strain is applied (piezoresistivity), (ii) the ratio of the change in electric charge of a system to the corresponding change in its electric potential (capacitance), and (iii) the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials in response to applied mechanical stress (piezoelectricity). Parallel to these advances, significant progress also has been made in design, manufacturing, electronics, materials, computing, communication and systems integration. Together, these developments and technologies open new areas for applications of bioengineered systems.
 
Breakthrough e-skin by a US group

The 2018 e-skin research study reported in Science Advances was led by Jianliang Xiao, a Professor of Mechanics of Materials and Wei Zhang, a Professor of Chemistry, both from the University of Colorado Boulder. They describe the characteristics of their e-skin, as “thin, translucent, malleable and self-healing and mimics the functions and properties of human skin.” Reportedly the e-skin has several distinctive properties, including a novel type of molecular bond, known as polyamine, that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms, which the researchers have embedded with silver nanoparticles to provide enhanced mechanical strength, chemical stability and electrical conductivity. “What is unique here is that the chemical bonding of polyamine we use allows the e-skin to be both self-healing and fully recyclable at room temperature,” said Xiao. Further, the e-skin’s malleability enables it to permanently conform to complex, curved surfaces without introducing excessive interfacial stresses, which could be significant for its development. The Boulder group has created a number of different types and sizes of their wearable e-skin, which are now being tested in laboratories around the world.
 
In the Commentary

In this Commentary we not only report the research findings of the two e-skin studies mentioned above, but we also describe, in simple terms, how you experience pain to illustrate the achievement of the Australian researchers from RMIT. We then describe human skin, its capacity to be wounded and traditional skin graft therapies to deal with such wounds. We briefly reference the invention of the first artificial human skin to receive FDA approval and highlight some of the massive and significant technological and market changes that have taken place since then. We conclude by suggesting that, over the next decade as e-skin technologies are enhanced, their potential healthcare applications are more likely to be owned and controlled by giant tech companies than traditional manufacturers of medical devices. More about this later. In the meantime, let us return to Bhakaran’s new pain-sensing e-skin and briefly describe the devilishly complex functionality of how you experience pain.
The function of pain and how you experience it
 
Your skin constantly senses things and your sensitivity to pain helps in both your survival and your protection. Pain prompts reflex reactions that prevent damage to tissue, such as quickly pulling your hand away from something when you feel pain. Notwithstanding, your pain response only begins when a certain threshold is breached. For example, you do not notice pain when you pick up something at a comfortable temperature, but you do when you prick your finger or touch something too hot. Consider this brief, over-simplified, description of how you experience pain.


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Can 3D printing and the use of new alloys reduce the high costs of producing and marketing spinal implants?
When you prick your finger on something sharp it causes tissue damage, which is registered by microscopic pain receptors in your skin. These send electrical signals through your nerve fibres that are bundled together with others to form a peripheral nerve. These electrical signals pass up your peripheral nerve and spinal cord to your neck area. Here they are transferred from one nerve cell to another by means of chemical messengers. The signals are then passed to three areas of your brain: one, the somatosensory cortex, that deals with physical sensation, another, the frontal cortex, which is linked with your thinking and a third area, your limbic system, which is associated with your emotions. All this occurs in nano seconds and results in you instantaneously feeling pain, wincing and becoming irritated when a pin pricks your finger.
 
Human skin and traditional skin grafts

Skin is your body’s largest and most versatile organ, which is unlike any other, not least because you wear it on the outside of your body. Not only is your skin a huge sensor packed with nerves for keeping your brain in touch with the outside world, it provides you with free movement. Adults carry  between 1.5 and 2.0 square metres of skin on their bodies, which weighs about 3.5kgs (≈16% of your body weight). Your skin is a “smart”, multifunctional organ that not only serves as a protective shield against heat, light, injury and infection, but also it is a sensory organ that regulates body temperature, stores water and fat, prevents water loss and helps to produce vitamin D when exposed to the sun. Skin wounds are relatively common and can be caused by trauma, skin diseases, burns or removal of skin during surgery. In the US alone, each year some 35m cases require clinical intervention for major skin loss.Your skin has three layers. The thin, outer layer that is visible to the eye is called the epidermis and the deeper two layers are called the dermis and hypodermis. Due to the presence of stem cells, a wound to your epidermis is able to stimulate self-regeneration. However, in cases of deeper injuries and burns, the process of healing is less efficacious and leads to chronic wounds. Any loss of full-thickness skin more than 4cm diameter needs to be treated immediately. Traditional ways of dealing with significant losses of skin have been skin grafts. The most common is to use either your own shin (autograft) or the skin from another person (allograft). Skin  grafts can also be obtained from a non-human source, usually a pig (xenograft). Autographs suffer from the fact that you may not have enough undamaged skin to treat the severity of your injury. Allografts and xenografts suffer from the possibility of rejection or infection. These challenges drove a need to develop an artificial skin.
 
The first FDA approved artificial human skin

The first artificial human skin to receive FDA approval was invented in the late-1970s by John Burke, a Professor of Surgery at the Harvard University Medical School and Chief of Trauma Services at Massachusetts General Hospital and Ioannis Yannas, a Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Burke had treated many burn victims and realized the need for a human skin replacement. Yannas had been studying collagen, a protein found in human skin. In the mid-1970s the two professors teamed-up to develop a material - an amalgam of plastics, cow tissue and shark cartilage - that became the first commercially reproducible, artificial human skin with properties to resist infection and rejection, protect against dehydration and significantly reduce scarring. In 1979 Burke and Yannas used their artificial skin on a woman patient, whose burns covered over half her body. In the early 1990s the Burke-Yannas skin was acquired by Integra LifeSciences Corporation. In March 1996 the company received FDA approval for it to be used on seriously burned patients, and Integra Artificial Skin became the first tissue regeneration product to reach the market. Since then, it has been used in therapies throughout the world and has saved and enhanced the lives of innumerable severely burned people. More recently, the Integra Artificial Skin has also been used in a number of other indications.
 
Technological advances and market changes since the first artificial skin

Since Integra’s launch of the first FDA approved artificial human skin, healthcare markets and technolgies have changed radically. In the mid-1970s when Professors Burke and Yannas came together to develop their artificial skin, Apple and Microsoft, two giant tech companies with interests in healthcare, were relatively small start-ups, respectively founded in 1976 and 1975.  it would be more than another  decade before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (1989), and then another decade before the internet became mainstream. The tech giants, Amazon and Google, also with interests in healthcare, were not founded until some years after that: 1994 and 1998 respectively. Over the past four decades substantial progress has been made in tissue engineered skin substitutes made from both artificial and natural materials by employing advances in various fields such as polymer engineering, bioengineering, stem cell research, nanomedicine and 3D bioprinting. Notwithstanding, a full thickness bioengineered skin substitute with hair follicles and sweat glands, which can vascularize rapidly is still not available. 
 
Market changes, e-skin, the Apple Watch and giant tech companies

In closing, we briefly focus on one potential near-term application for e-skin - to enhance the capabilities of the Apple Watch.  We do this to emphasise the significant market shifts, which are occurring in healthcare and the large and growing impact that giant tech companies are having on the sector.

The Apple Watch was first released in April 2015 by Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, as a fashion accessory. Notwithstanding, its focus quickly shifted and within three years it had become a FDA approved medical device. The watch, not only can detect falls, but it also has 3 heart monitoring capabilities: one recognises and sounds an alarm when your heart rate is low, a second detects irregular heart rhythms and a third is a personal electrocardiogram (ECG), which is a medical test that detects heart problems by measuring the electrical activity generated by your heart as it contracts. According to Strategy Analytics, a consumer research firm, in 2019, an estimated 30.7m Apple Watches were sold worldwide; 36% higher than the 22.5m watches Apple sold in 2018.

In 2020, during the coronavirus public health emergency, the FDA expanded its guidance for non-invasive patient-monitoring technologies, including the Apple Watch’s ECG function. This expanded use is intended to help facilitate patient monitoring while reducing patient and healthcare provider contact and exposure to CoVID-19.
 
Currently, the Apple Watch is worn like any other watch and if it is loose, its data harvesting capacity could be compromised. In the form of a watch, e-skin would conformally adhere to irregularly shaped surfaces like your wrist. The two e-skins described in this Commentary; both with intrinsic stretchability could potentially facilitate the Apple Watch to be more integrated with the wearers own skin.

The unstoppable march of giant tech companies into healthcare
 
Today, not only do giant tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have their global market presence as a significant comparative advantage to enter and expand into healthcare, but they also have unparalleled data management capabilities. Since the invention of artificial skin by Burke and Yannas healthcare has become digital and global. Because giant tech companies’ have superior access to individuals’ data and state-of-the-art data handling capabilities; they know customers/patients significantly better than any healthcare provider. This, together with their global reach, positions giant tech companies to provide discerning patients with the healthcare solutions they need and increasingly demand.
 
IBM Watson Health estimates that by the end of 2020, the amount of medical data we generate will double every 73 days. According to Statistica, an analytical software platform, new healthcare data generated in 2020 are projected to be 2,314 exabytes. Traditional healthcare providers cannot keep up with this vast and rapidly growing amount of health information, despite the fact that such information is increasingly significant as healthcare shifts away from its traditional focus on activity and becomes more outcomes/solutions orientated. Giant tech companies are on the cusp of meeting a large and growing need to understand, structure and manage health data to build a new infrastructure for the future of healthcare.
 
Takeaways

The potential impact of e-skin is significantly broader than enhancing the Apple Watch. The research findings reported in this Commentary suggest that e-skin is well positioned to disrupt substantial segments of healthcare over the next decade. Findings published in Advanced Intelligent Systems and Science Advances suggest that one potential application is for e-skin to be seamlessly integrated with human skin. This not only positions it to become the next generation for a number of traditional MedTech applications, such as non-invasive skin grafts, but also to deliver a step change in the consumer health market by producing breakthroughs in human-machine interfaces, health monitoring, transdermal drug delivery, soft robotics, prosthetics and health monitoring. If traditional manufacturers are to benefit from e-skin they will need to adapt and transform their processes because the natural fit for e-skin technologies is industry 4.0, [also referred to as smart manufacturing and the Internet of Things (IoT)], which is expected to become more pervasive over the next decade as developments of e-skin unfold. Industry 4.0 combines physical production and operations with smart digital technology, machine learning and big data to create more solution orientated healthcare ecosystems and thereby tends to favour the giant tech companies and their growing healthcare interests.
 
#e-skin #artificialskin #AppleWatch 
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4 years, 1 month ago

Changing the code of life

HealthPad
Directory:
Medical Technology
Tags:
commentary
CRISPR
CRISPR technology
DNA sequencing
gene editing

Changing the code of life



Congratulations!
 
On 7 October,  the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it had awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to two women scientists: Emmanuelle Charpentier (L), a French microbiologist, geneticist and biochemist,  who is now the director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, Germany, and Jennifer Doudna (R), an American biochemist  who is a professor of chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology at UC Berkeley.

The scientists developed a simple, cheap, yet powerful, and precise technique for editing DNA, which is called CRISPR-Cas9 (an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) and popularly referred to as a pair of ‘genetic-scissors’. The technology endows science and scientists with extraordinary powers to manipulate genes to cure genetic diseases, improve crops to withstand drought, mould and pests, and affect climate change, and is considered to be the most important discovery in the history of biology. The Nobel citation refers to Charpentier’s and Doudna’s scientific contribution as a, “tool for rewriting the code of life”, which has “a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, by contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true”.

For more than four years HealthPad has been following and publishing Commentaries on the scientists’ work. Our Commentaries have a large and growing global following of leading physicians, scientists, policy makers, journalists and students. The Commentaries listed below about CRISPR techniques, which we re-publish to celebrate Charpentier’s and Doudna’s Nobel Prize, have had more than 120,000 views.
 
Gene editing positioned to revolutionise medicine
1 Feb 2017
 
Gene editing battles
15 Mar 2017
 
Who should lead MedTech?
18 Jul 18
Base-editing next-generation genome editor with delivery challenges
17 oct 2018
CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing a 2-edged sword
31 Oct 2018
Will China become a world leader in health life sciences and usurp the US?
27 Feb 2019
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4 years, 1 month ago

Some lesser-known causes that raise Blood Pressure

Paul Steven
Directory:
Healthcare
Tags:
blood pressure control
blood pressure monitor

“I’m sweating a lot these days. I’m losing my temper in no time. Perhaps my BP needs to be checked”!
These are common notions and you must have experienced such thoughts at some point of time or the other. BP (blood pressure) checking is one of the first steps taken by your doctor while he or she examines you for some health complaints that you have made! Before discussing the common and the lesser-known causes of abnormally high blood pressure, let’s start with what blood pressure (BP) is?


Blood pressure is the pressure exerted by the flowing blood on the walls of the arteries. The numbers look like a fraction where the ‘numerator’ figure is known as systolic pressure and the ‘denominator’ figure called the diastolic pressure. What do these numbers denote?


The systolic pressure is a higher figure and is a measure of the pressure in the arteries when the heartbeats, the diastolic one is when the heart rests in between two beats. Normal blood pressure reads – 120/80mmHg. A figure that is abnormally and consistently higher than this denotes hypertension (or high blood pressure).


Normally, a patient with high blood pressure is advised to consume fewer amounts of sugar, kept on medication, and sometimes prescribed to take low cholesterol foods (if cholesterol on the artery walls increases the pressure). However, some lesser-known factors might lead to Hypertension. They have been elucidated here in this article.


Some lesser-known causes of Hypertension


Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Years of repeated interrupted breathing causes the nervous system to release certain chemicals that consequently raises the blood pressure. Interrupted breathing also results in lesser oxygen in the body that adversely affects the blood vessel walls!


Low potassium profile
Our kidneys are responsible for maintaining a balance of sodium and potassium in our bodies. Suppose, you are on a low-salt diet and you rest assured that the blood pressure level in your body will remain unaffected. That's not the case! You could still have high blood pressure if there is an insufficient intake of fruits, veggies, fish, and dairy. Bananas, broccoli, spinach, etc. are good sources of potassium.


The use of NSAID
NSAIDs are Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs such as Ibuprofen and other pain killers used in large quantities and over longer periods often damages kidney functioning. Like I already said, your kidneys are responsible for maintaining the sodium balance. This balance keeps the functioning of the blood vessels intact. When the balance is disrupted some amount of vasoconstriction could possibly raise the BP of your body.


Anxiety or the “doctor’s chamber” effect
A rise of up to 10 points for systolic and 5 points for diastolic pressure is a common phenomenon when the patient is inside the doctor’s chamber and is being examined. This is simply due to the anxiety that makes the blood run faster through the vessels. This raises both the pulse and the BP!


The use of decongestants
Decongestants squeeze the blood vessels. When the same amount of blood has to pass through a narrower passage, blood pressure is raised. Pseudoephedrine and phenylephrine are drugs that are responsible for such a condition. Sinus and congestion problems due to cold have other over-the-counter solutions for high BP individuals.


Dehydration
Lack of water supply to the cells of your body results in tightening up the blood vessels. That raises your BP. Why does this happen? Actually, the brain sends some signals to the pituitary gland to release certain hormones. This chemical results in the shrinking of the vessels. The kidneys release a lesser amount of pee to retain the remaining water that the body possesses. This again triggers the vessels of the heart to squeeze more!

The list is quite a long one - Overuse of antidepressants, consumption of too much sugar, and several other factors may be responsible for a raised blood pressure level!
However here is a quick read on common FAQs about Sphygmomanometers

 

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4 years, 2 months ago

Urethral Stricture Disease in Men

Stella Ivaz
Directory:
Urology
Tags:
Urethral Stricture
Urethroplasty

Urethral Stricture Disease In Men (209.8 KB)
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4 years, 2 months ago

Narcissism and a second more devastating wave of CoVID-19

HealthPad
Directory:
Medicine
Tags:
commentary
coronavirus
coVID-19 pandemic
narcissism
  • The CoVID-19 pandemic has been controlled by government policies that restrict individual behaviour 
  • Even if the accelerated vaccine development goes to plan and is successful, government restrictions will be necessary for some time yet 
  • Recent research suggests that, at the height of the CoVID-19 pandemic, people with narcissistic and other “dark” personality traits flouted public health restrictions  
  • Research has also shown that the coronavirus can be spread by a relatively small group of individuals who break public health protocols 
  • Could a small group of asymptomatically infected individuals with narcissistic traits trigger a renewed and significantly more devastating outbreak of CoVID-19?
  
Narcissism and a second more devastating wave of CoVID-19
 
 
Research suggests that in early 2020, at the height of the CoVID-19 pandemic, people with narcissistic and other “dark” personality traits, (Machiavellianism and psychopathy) flouted public health restrictions, such as social distancing, stay-at-home measures, mask-wearing and hand washing, introduced to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
 
The fastest and deepest global economic shock in history

The outbreak of CoVID-19 in December 2019 started an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans in Wuhan, China, which quickly became a pandemic responsible for the fastest and deepest global economic shock in history. In a matter of weeks, stock markets collapsed, credit markets froze, huge bankruptcies occurred, unemployment rose above 10% and annual GDP rates contracted by 8% or more. In the absence of either a vaccine or a therapy, the social and behavioural sciences were used by governments to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts to reduce the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. 
 
Measures were successful and as nations regained control of the virus’s transmission and reduced the burden on their healthcare systems, restrictions were relaxed or removed to re-energise damaged economies and encourage more viable lifestyles with the virus still in circulation. In many countries, this increased the incidence levels of CoVID-19, hospitalisations and deaths; and governments had no alternative but to re-instate selected restrictions on people’s behaviours.
 
Now, some ten months after the initial outbreak, governments throughout the world are bracing themselves in the knowledge that a relatively small group of people who flout restrictions could cause the coronavirus to return, which some analysts suggest could be more devastating than the impact of its initial outbreak. This is because healthcare systems have been significantly weakened and are struggling to cope with huge backlogs of patients whose treatments have been delayed because of the coronavirus, economies have been damaged, and the annual winter flu epidemic is expected in most Western developed nations.
 
In this Commentary

This Commentary describes the findings of three recent studies, which examine the relationships between the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy) and behaviours related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that, at the height of the pandemic in March and April 2020, people with narcissistic and psychopathic personality traits were more likely to ignore rules, such as hand washing, social distancing, staying-at-home and mask-wearing and therefore could have become super spreaders of the disease. The Commentary focusses on narcissistic traits. We begin by underlining some of the challenges of developing and manufacturing a CoVID-19 vaccine at scale, which is safe and effective. We then describe Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and the R number, which governments have used to explain how well the virus is being controlled. We also describe the lesser known K metric, which is critical to epidemiologists’ attempts at understanding how CoVID-19 is actually transmitted. We then briefly describe the concepts of super spreaders and super-spreading events, which help to explain how a relatively small group of people can have a significant impact on the transmission of the coronavirus. Brief descriptions of the findings of three recent research studies follow. These suggest that people with narcissistic and other “dark” personality traits, break public health restrictions. Finally, we draw attention to the limitations of the studies and provide some “takeaways”.
 
Developing and scaling vaccines is challenging

Although scientists look likely to produce a CoVID-19 vaccine much faster than anyone could have predicted, and governments have pre-purchased about 4bn doses of these for delivery at the end of 2020, developing a safe and effective vaccine at scale is challenging. The failure rate of vaccines that reach advanced clinical trials is as high as 80%. Some CoVID-19 vaccines in production that receive regulatory approval might only provide partial or temporary protection, others might require more than one dose to be effective. So, even if the accelerated vaccine development goes to plan and is successful, it is not altogether clear whether this would secure protection for enough people throughout the world to halt the spread of the virus in the medium term. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that, behavioural techniques to slow or stop the spread of the coronavirus will be needed for some time yet, and people with narcissistic personality traits could reduce the effectiveness of these endeavours.
 
Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Narcissism is a pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration and a lack of empathy. The condition has its genesis  in Greek mythology, and a beautiful and proud young man called Narcissus, the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. Many fell in love with Narcissus, but he only showed them disdain and contempt. When Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and revenge, learned of this she decided to punish Narcissus for his behaviour and led him to a pool where he saw his reflection in the water and fell in love with it. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is rare. Although the term NPD has been used since 1968, only in 1980 was it officially recognized in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is a taxonomic and diagnostic manual published by the American Psychiatric Association. Notwithstanding, in all probability we all know someone with narcissistic tendencies, which we often dismiss as just a “big ego” problem. And, if we are honest, at some point in our lives, we have demonstrated some narcissistic traits. The signs and symptoms of NPD include: (i) having an exaggerated sense of self-importance and a sense of entitlement, (ii) wanting constant, excessive admiration, (iii) expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it, (iv) exaggerating achievements and talents, (v) believing that you are superior and desiring to associate with equally ‘special’ people, (vi) having an inability or unwillingness to  recognize the needs and feelings of others, (vii) expecting special favours and unquestioning compliance, and (viii) taking advantage of others to get what you want. Although research in social and personality psychology has added significantly to our general understanding of narcissism, it has been one of the least studied personality disorders, mainly because of its low societal urgency and health costs. The causes of NPD are unknown, and the condition remains a controversial diagnosis. Some researchers think that overprotective or neglectful parenting styles may have an impact. Genetics and neurobiology also may play a role in the development of NPD. Given the challenges of diagnosing the condition, prevalence rates vary significantly. For instance, in the US, reported prevalence in the general population varies from 0.5% to 5%. NPD is less frequently identified in psychiatric settings, but more often seen in private clinical settings and applied to higher-functioning patients.
 
R number

In early 2020, during the height of the coronavirus crisis, politicians throughout the world and public health officials constantly referred to the R or R0 number to indicate the spread of the virus. As a consequence, most people now know that R refers to the average number of people one person with coronavirus is likely to infect. R is calculated through a combination of data and modelling, which includes hospital and intensive care admissions, people testing positive, deaths and surveys of people’s contacts. R indicates whether the number of infected people is increasing or decreasing. When R is above 1, the virus will grow exponentially in a population with no immunity. At 1, the disease remains steady. Below 1, the virus will gradually infect fewer people, until the epidemic dries up. However, in real life, some people with the disease infect many others, while others with the coronavirus do not spread the disease at all. This means that the R number hides significant differences between individuals and their impact on virus transmission.
K number

To compensate for this, epidemiologists use an additional metric referred to as K, which describes the pattern of CoVID-19 transmission. K is the statistical value, which indicates  the variability in the number of new coronavirus cases that each person has infected. A high K value (>5), tells us that most people are generating similar numbers of secondary cases. A low value for K (>1)  tells us that a small number of infected people can trigger significant numbers of new cases relatively quickly.
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CoVID-19 shifts power and influence from West to East
Key to controlling CoVID-19

Epidemiologists believe the K number, or the role played by variable transmission of the coronavirus, is critical to controlling its spread. Notwithstanding, what makes controlling the transmission of the coronavirus more challenging is the fact that many highly infectious people are asymptomatic. According to research findings of a paper published in the June 2020 edition of The Annals of Internal Medicine, 40% to 45% of those infected by CoVID-19 display no signs or symptoms of the disease at all, which suggests that, “the virus might have a greater potential than previously estimated to spread silently and deeply through human populations”. Thus, understanding why and how the virus is transmitted is key to gaining control of the CoVID-19 pandemic and stopping a second wave of cases.
 
Super-spreaders

As we have suggested, there is wide variability in the behaviours of infected individuals and their subsequent roles in spreading the coronavirus. A paper published in the June 2020 edition of Wellcome Open Research analysed the spread of CoVID-19 from China and estimated the K value to be as low as 0.1.  This suggested that 80% of new coronavirus cases were caused by only about 10% of infected individuals. An infected individual who breaks the rules is likely to generate significantly more secondary cases that an infected person who does not broach public health protocols. The Wellcome paper demonstrates how a relatively small number of infected people who flout government guidelines could become ‘super-spreaders’ and cause CoVID-19 to quickly rebound, even if locally eradicated. Thus, identifying and tracking super-spreaders, is fundamental to preventing future outbreaks.
 
Super spreading events

Super spreaders are responsible for super spreading events, which are not well understood and are challenging to study. Although there is no universally agreed definition of a super spreading event, it is generally assumed to be an incident in which someone passes on the virus to six or more people. Examples of super-spreading events of CoVID-19 include outbreaks in Seoul nightclubs in South Korea,  meat packing plants in the US and overcrowded clothes factories in the UK.
 
Three studies

We now turn to the findings of three recent research studies, which suggest that some super-spreaders of CoVID-19 might be people with specific personality traits. The first study we describe is entitled, “Adaptive and Dark Personality Traits in the Covid-19 Pandemic”. It is published in the June 2020 edition of the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science and was carried out by Pavel Blagov, who is the director of the Personality Laboratory at Whitman College, USA. The second and third studies are Polish and both published in the July 2020 edition of  Journal of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. One is entitled “Adaptive and maladaptive behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic”, and was conducted by researchers from SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. The third study is entitled, “Who complies with the restrictions to reduce the spread of COVID-19?”, which was carried out by researchers from the University of Warsaw.
 
The Whitman College Study

In late March 2020, Blagov surveyed 502 American adults, to assess their personalities and gauge how compliant they were with public health protocols for reducing the impact of CoVID-19 such as; social distancing, wearing protective gear or following basic hygiene rules. While the majority of participants reported adherence to public health restrictions, some did not. The  study found that individuals with the so-called "Dark Triad" personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy) were more likely to purposely disregard protocols intended to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The respondents who showed disinterest in the recommended health procedures scored higher on sub-traits of meanness and disinhibition. According to Blagov, it is possible that rule breakers become super-spreaders of CoVID-19 and “have a disproportionate impact on the pandemic by failing to protect themselves and others”.  

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At the height of the pandemic, narcissists and others with dark personality traits tended to act contrary to public health recommendations. They showed less inhibition to risk and disregarded other people's safety; manifestations of which included, not covering themselves when sneezing or coughing in public, touching communal facilities, not staying at home, not keeping their distance from others and not washing their hands frequently. The  study concludes that, “there may be a minority of people with particular personality styles (on the narcissism and psychopathy spectrum) that have a disproportionate impact on the pandemic by failing to protect themselves and others.”
The  SWPS Study

These findings are supported by the  SWPS study, which is based on an online survey of 755 people (332 male and 423 female) between 15th and 29th March 2020, which was during the first month of the national CoVID-19 lockdown in Poland. The cohort was middle class with ages ranging from 18 to 78, (M = 45.83, SD = 14.98). Over 40% of the participants had either a high school or a university education.  Findings suggest that people with narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies were more likely to hoard essentials during lockdown mainly because they had a heightened sense of entitlement, which manifested itself in being greedier and more competitive.

Also, researchers suggest that participants with narcissistic personalities tend to be self-centred and lack empathy, and therefore more likely to exploit other people. People with psychopathic tendencies may be more cruel, deceitful and manipulative while coming across superficially charming.  According to Bartłomiej Nowak, the lead author of the study, narcissists are: (i) more impulsive, (ii) focused on self-interest, (iii) tend toward risk-taking and (iv) less likely to comply with measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
 
The Warsaw Study

The Warsaw study set out to use the CoVID-19 pandemic to understand who complies with public health restrictions  to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Researchers hypothesised that narcissistic and psychopathic personality traits of rivalry and lack of empathy may be associated with less compliance towards government imposed coronavirus restrictions. The study was based on an online survey carried out between 14th and 30th April 2020, which was at the height of the coronavirus crisis in Europe. There were 263 participants (27.8% male, 71.5% female, 0.8% “other”) aged between 18 and 80  (M = 28.96, SD = 10.64) and about half (49%) had a university education. 
 
The study’s findings support those of the previous two studies described above. Researchers found that compliance with public health guidelines to control CoVID-19 was low among participants who had narcissistic tendencies. Participants scoring low on agreeableness and high on aspects of narcissism and psychopathy were less likely to comply with public health restrictions. People with narcissistic traits had a sense of entitlement and perceived the restrictions as the Government forcing its will upon them.
 
Limitations of the studies

All three studies have limitations, which include being based upon relatively small samples. Data are cross sectional rather than time series and collected at the beginning of public health restrictions when it seems reasonable to assume that “people may be more likely to engage in prevention and adhere to restrictions”. The US and Poland are both developed economies with different cultures that might not be relevant for other regions of the world and, in the case of the two Polish studies, participants were drawn from a relatively homogeneous group.
 
Takeaways

Findings of the three studies described in this Commentary are not sufficiently robust to definitively say that people with narcissistic traits are super-spreaders of CoVID-19. Not everyone who defies coronavirus restrictions does so because of dark personality characteristics. Indeed, there are many factors at play in understanding behaviours during the coronavirus pandemic. Notwithstanding, from the evidence presented in the three papers, it seems reasonable to suggest that people with narcissistic tendencies, and who are asymptomatically infected with the coronavirus, could become super-spreaders and have a disproportionate impact on the transmission of CoVID-19.
 
#coronavirus #pandemic #coVID-19 #narcissism
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4 years, 2 months ago

Akruti Clinic for Cosmetic & Plastic Surgery in Hyderabad

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Akruti hospital in Hyderabad

Akruti Clinic for Cosmetic & Plastic Surgery in Hyderabad, this one of best hospital in Hyderabad. Akruti conveys its hearty thanks to all the patients for their positive reviews which made us be ranked as Number 1 Center for Cosmetic Surgery in Hyderabad by Times Health Survey. We thank once again for the trust and faith reposed in Akruti.
Akruti is established with the sole mission to deliver world-class, holistic, and affordable plastic & cosmetology care. Akruti is a one-stop destination for pertinent care with extreme compassion and advanced technology.
Over the years, we have developed a lot however the values we built remain the same to meet our patients’ expectations with great attention.

Leadership & Excellence
With a commitment to deliver the best-desired results in all the procedures we do through advanced medical technology, exemplary treatment, and compassionate conduct.

Care & Service
Just beyond our duty, we cultivate a culture where every one of us in the team is committed to express the utmost care for the patients and treat their caregivers in the right way.

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4 years, 4 months ago

MedTech must digitize to remain relevant

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Medical Technology
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coronavirus
coVID-19 pandemic
Internet of Things
IoT
Since we first published this Commentary just over a year ago it’s received over 10,000 views. We’re republishing it  as colleagues have suggested that the digitization of MedTech is more relevant today because of the impact CoVID-19 has had on the industry.
  • Two Boston Consulting Group studies say MedTech innovation productivity is in decline
  • A history of strong growth and healthy margins render MedTechs slow to change their outdated business model
  • The MedTech sector is rapidly shifting from production to solutions
  • The dynamics of MedTechs' customer supply chain is changing significantly and MedTech manufacturers are no longer in control
  • Consolidation among buyers - hospitals and group purchasing organisations (GPO) - adds downward pressure on prices
  • Independent distributors have assumed marketing, customer support and education roles
  • GPO’s have raised their fees and are struggling to change their model based on aggregate volume
  • Digitally savvy new entrants are reinventing how healthcare providers and suppliers work together
  • Amazon’s B2B Health Services is positioned to disrupt MedTechs, GPOs and distributors 
  • MedTech manufacturers need to enhance their digitization strategies to remain relevant
 
MedTech must digitize to remain relevant
 
MedTech companies need to accelerate their digital strategies and integrate digital solutions into their principal business plans if they are to maintain and enhance their position in an increasingly solution orientated healthcare ecosystem. With growing focus on healthcare value and outcomes and continued cost pressures, MedTechs need to get the most from their current portfolios to drive profitability. An area where significant improvements might be made in the short term is in MedTechs' customer facing supply chains. To achieve this, manufacturing companies need to make digitization and advanced analytics a central plank of their strategies.
 
In this Commentary
 
This Commentary describes the necessity for MedTechs to enhance their digitization strategies, which are increasingly relevant, as MedTech companies shift from production to solution orientated entities. In a previous Commentary we argued that MedTechs history of strong growth and healthy margins make them slow to change and implement digital strategies. Here we suggest that the business model, which served to accelerate MedTechs' financial success over the past decade is becoming less effective and device manufacturers need not only to generate value from the sale of their product offerings, but also from data their devices produce so they can create high quality affordable healthcare solutions. This we argue will require MedTechs developing  innovative strategies associated with significantly increasing their use of digital technology to enhance go-to-market activities, strengthen value propositions of products and services and streamline internal processes.
 
MedTechs operate with an outdated commercial model
 
Our discussion of digitization draws on two international benchmarking studies undertaken by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The first,  published in July 2013 and entitled, “Fixing the MedTech Commercial  Model: Still Deploying ‘Milkmen’ in a Megastore World” suggests that the high gross margins that MedTech companies enjoy, particularly in the US, hide unsustainable high costs and underdeveloped commercial skills. According to BCG the average MedTech company’s selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses - measured as a percentage of the cost of goods sold -  is 3.5 times higher than the average comparable technology company. The study concludes that MedTechs' outdated business model, dubbed the “milkman”, will have to change for companies to survive. 
 
BCG’s follow-up 2017 study
 
In 2017 BCG published a follow-up study entitled, “Moving Beyond the ‘Milkman’ Model in MedTech”, which surveyed some 6,000 employees and benchmarked financial and organizational data from 100 MedTech companies worldwide, including nine of the 10 largest companies in the sector. The study suggested that although there continued to be downward pressure on device prices, changes in buying processes and shrinking gross margins, few MedTech companies “have taken the bold moves required to create a leaner commercial model”.
 
According to the BCG’s 2017 study, “Overall, innovation productivity [in the MedTech sector] is in decline. In some product categories, low-cost competitors - including those from emerging markets - have grown rapidly and taken market share from established competitors. At the same time, purchasers are becoming more insistent on real-world evidence that premium medical devices create value by improving patient outcomes and reducing the total costs of care”. The growth and spread of value-based healthcare has shifted the basis of competition beyond products, “toward more comprehensive value propositions and solutions that address the entire patient pathway”. In this environment, MedTechs have no choice but to use data to deliver improved outcomes and a better customer experience for patients, healthcare providers and payers.
 
MedTech distributors increasing their market power and influence
 
Although supply chain costs tend to be MedTechs' second-highest expense after labour, companies  have been reluctant to employ digital strategies to reduce expenses and increase efficiencies. As a consequence, their customer supply chains tend to be labour intensive relationship driven with little effective sharing of data between different territories and sales teams. Customer relations are disaggregated with only modest attention paid to patients and payors and insufficient emphasis on systematically collecting, storing and analysing  data to support value outcomes.  
As MedTech manufacturers have been slow to develop strong and effective data strategies, so MedTech distributors have increased their bargaining power through M&As and internationalisation. Some distributors have even assumed marketing, customer support and education roles, while others have launched their own brands. MedTechs' response to these changes has been to increase their direct sales representatives. However, consolidation among buyers - hospitals and GPO’s -  and the extra downward pressure this puts on prices, is likely to make it increasingly costly for MedTechs to sustain large permanent sales forces. 

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Advantages of distributors but no way to accurately measure sales performance

Notwithstanding, the distributor model is still common with MedTechs and has been successful in many markets for a long time. Independent distributors are often used when producers have small product portfolios. In smaller markets, distributors are employed primarily to gain economies of scale as they can combine portfolios of multiple companies to create a critical mass opportunity and  obtain better and faster access to markets.
 
MedTechs have a history of investing in sales force effectiveness (SFE) typically to increase the productivity of sales representatives. Sales leaders have some indication that this pays-off through incremental revenue growth and profits, but they struggle to assess the true performance of such investments not least because SFE includes a broad range of activities and also it is almost impossible to obtain comparative competitor data.
 
Changing nature of GPOs
 
GPO’s also have changed. Originally, they were designed in the early 20th century to bring value to hospitals and healthcare systems by aggregating demand and negotiating lower prices among suppliers. Recently however they have raised their fees, invested in data repositories and analytics and have been driving their models and market position beyond contracting to more holistic management of the supply chain dynamics. Notwithstanding, many GPO’s are struggling to change their model based on aggregate volume and are losing purchasing volume amid increasing competition and shifting preferences.
 
New entrants
The changing nature of MedTechs' customer supply chain and purchasers increasingly becoming concerned about inflated GPO prices have provided an opportunity for data savvy new entrants such as OpenMarkets. The companyprovides healthcare supply chain software that stabilizes the equipment valuation and cost reduction and aims to reinvent how healthcare providers and suppliers work together to improve the way healthcare equipment is bought and sold. OpenMarkets’ enhanced data management systems allow providers to better understand what they need to buy and when. The company represents over 4,000 healthcare facilities and more that 125 equipment suppliers; and provides a platform for over 32,000 products, which on average sell for about 12% less than comparable offerings. In addition, OpenMarkets promotes cost efficiency and price transparency as well as stronger collaboration between providers and suppliers.
 
Amazon’s B2B Health Services
 
But potentially the biggest threat to MedTech manufacturers, GPOs and distributors  is Amazon’s B2B Health Services, which is putting even more pressure on MedTechs to rethink their traditional business models and to work differently with healthcare providers and consumers. With a supply chain in place, a history of disrupting established sectors from publishing to food and a US$966bn market cap, Amazon is well positioned to disrupt healthcare supply chain practices, including contracting. In its first year Amazon’s B2B purchasing venture generated more than US$1bn and introduced three business verticals: healthcare, education and government. Already, hundreds of thousands of medical products are available on Amazon Business, from hand sanitizers to biopsy forceps. According to Chris Holt, Amazon’s B2B Health Services program leader, “there is a needed shift from an old, inefficient supply chain model that runs on physical contracts with distributors and manufacturers to Amazon's marketplace model”.

“If you look at the way a hospital system or a medical device company cuts purchase orders, identifies suppliers, shops for products, or negotiates terms and conditions, much of that has been constrained by what their information systems can do. I think that has really boxed in the way that companies’ function. Modern business and the millennials coming into the workplace, can’t operate in the old way,” says Holt.

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Millennials are used to going to Amazon and quickly finding anything they need; even the most obscure items. According to Holt, “A real example is somebody who wants to find peanut butter that is gluten-free, non-GMO, organic, crunchy and in a certain size. And they want to find it in three to five clicks. That’s the mentality of millennial buyers at home, and they want to be able to do the same things at work. . . . The shift from offline traditional methods to online purchasing is very significant. It is our belief that the online channel is going to be the primary marketplace for even the most premium of medical devices in the future. That trend is already proven by data. So, we’ve created a dedicated team within Amazon Business to enable medical product suppliers to be visible and participate in that channel.”
MedTechs fight back
 
According to the two BCG reports, MedTech companies can fight back by using digital technologies to strengthen and improve their go-to-market activities. This, according to BCG, would enhance MedTechs' connectivity with their customers and help them to learn more about their needs. Indeed, employing digitization to improve customer-facing activities could help standardise order, payment and after-sales service behaviour by defining and standardizing terms and conditions. This could provide the basis to help MedTechs increase their access to a range of customers - clinicians, institutions, insurers and patients - and assist them to tailor their engagements to the personal preferences of providers and purchasers. This could provide customers with access to product and service information at anytime, anywhere and could form the basis to implement broader digitalized distribution management improvements, which focus on value-based affordable healthcare in the face of escalating healthcare costs and variable patient outcomes.
 
Predictive models
 
Many companies use predictive-modelling tools to forecast demand and geo-analytics to speed delivery and reduce inventories. Online platforms provide customers with an easy way to order products and services, transparently follow their shipping status and return products when necessary. Barcodes and radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, which use electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags that contain electronically stored information attached to products, help customers track orders, request replenishments and manage consignment stock.
 
Back-office improvements
 
Further, the 2017 BCG study suggests that MedTechs only have made limited progress in improving their back-office operations. Many manufacturers  have more employees in their back offices than they do in their customer-facing functions and fail to leverage economies of scale. There is a significant opportunity for MedTechs to employ digital strategies to enhance the management of their back-office functions, including centralizing certain activities that are currently conducted in multiple individual countries.
 
Takeaway
 
For the past decade MedTech manufactures have been slow to transform their strategies and business models and still have been commercially successful. Some MedTech companies are incorporating digital capabilities into their products by connecting them to the Internet of Things (IoT), which potentially facilitate continuous disease monitoring and management. Notwithstanding, such efforts tend to be isolated endeavours - “one-offs” - and are not fully integrated into companies’ main strategies. This could run the risk of MedTech executives kidding themselves that they are embracing digitization while underinvesting in digital technologies. The two BCG studies represent a significant warning since digitization is positioned to bring a step-change to the MedTech sector, which potentially could wound successful manufacturers if they do not change.
 
Post scriptum
 
CoVID-19 has forced MedTechs to temporarily digitize their sales and marketing strategies as doctors and hospitals have restricted physical access, but still many MedTech companies look forward to returning to their single rep-based go-to market strategy when the coronavirus crisis is over. The question MedTechs need to ask themselves is, “Do our customers think that digital means of receiving sales and marketing information are significantly more effective and therefore should become permanent?”.
 

#COVID19 #pandemic #coronavirus #MedTech #internetofthings #IoT
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