Innovators Tackle Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

From Queen Mary, University Of London (via EurekaAlert!): A team from Queen Mary, University of London and Barts and The London NHS Trust has been named overall winner in the Respiratory Innovation category at the Medical Futures Innovation Awards, Europe's leading showcase of early-stage innovation in healthcare.

"The research team, most recently co-ordinated by Dr Joanne Stewart from Queen Mary, University of London invented a Nitric Oxide generating technology for prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia in intensive care patients. The system simply replaces the natural defence molecules which are critically low in these patients, and protects against infection. It is able to penetrate into the body tissues, and kills a wide variety of infective agents, including MRSA and E. Coli."

Hospitals working to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia (and most of them are or should be) might want to take note.

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Michael Porter On Health Care Reform

Michael Porter, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, proposes "A Strategy For Health Care Reform - Toward A Value-Based System." His proposals are fundamental, lucid and right-on, meaning they're sure to be opposed by some parties to the debate, the so-called "Yes, but..." crowd. Most important, in my opinion, is this: "... electronic medical records will enable value improvement, but only if they support integrated care and outcome measurement. Simply automating current delivery practices will be a hugely expensive exercise in futility. Among our highest near-term priorities is to finalize and then continuously update health information technology (HIT) standards that include precise data definitions (for diagnoses and treatments, for example), an architecture for aggregating data for each patient over time and across providers, and protocols for seamless communication among systems. "Finally, consumers must become much mor...

gapingvoid cartoon #378

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