At conhIT – Connecting Healthcare IT, Europe’s leading event for the Health IT industry which takes place from 19 to 21 April in Berlin – a competition will be presenting an award for the best health app once again.
This event, part of the internationally recognized AppCircus series, will be taking place for the second time, and is regarded as the world’s biggest competition for mHealth apps. Taking part gives companies and mHealth app developers an opportunity to present their products to an outstanding audience and to increase awareness of their companies in the Health IT sector. At conhIT 2016 more than 7,500 visitors and some 400 exhibitors are expected to attend.
The competition will be looking for an app that assists the daily work of medical professionals, nurses and patients and can be used in Europe in hospitals, rehab centres, care homes and general patient care.
The award ceremony will take place on 20 April 2016 in the mobile health zone at conhIT. This section of the exhibition focuses on innovations and trends in mobile health applications.   
The winner of the conhIT AppCircus competition will be nominated for the Mobile Premier Awards, the world’s biggest app exhibition at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
www.conhit.com

A new hybrid molecule developed in the lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering shows promise for treating breast cancer by serving as a

Researchers examined the internal design of syringes to see if variations affected the transmission of hepatitis C virus.
As many as 21 million people worldwide inject drugs, putting them at heightened risk for infection from blood-borne pathogens such as the hepatitis C virus (HCV), especially if syringes are shared.

A newer type of syringe designed to reduce HCV transmission by decreasing the so-called dead space

If there is a technical exploration of the human body that the physician practice in any medical examination to diagnose or prescribe additional tests, it is palpation. The brain, however, has the distinction of being not possible to feel without a very invasive procedure (opening of the skull) reserved for rare cases. Drawing on seismology, researchers from Inserm led by Stefan Catheline (Inserm Unit 1032 ‘Applications of Ultrasound therapy’) have developed a non-invasive method of imaging of the brain by MRI which gives the same indications as physical palpation. A term may be used for early diagnosis of brain tumours or of Alzheimer’s disease.
The Inserm researchers have managed, via MRI to detect natural brain shear waves using computational techniques borrowed from seismologists and known as ‘noise correlation.’ They were able to draw of brain elasticity image.
‘If this method can be developed in the clinic, it would be both a comfort for the patient and the doctor because today vibrating the brain is painful enough. Of course, this method will be complementary to the existing ones and the future is a multimodal medical diagnosis, ‘says Stefan Catheline, Senior Research Director Inserm author of this work.
‘Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, hydrocephalus involve changes in the hardness of brain tissue. This new technique could detect those changes and be used to prevent brain biopsies.’
This method of brain palpation could have other application areas such as the analysis of the development of neurodegenerative processes, the impact of a traumatic injury or tumour, or the response to treatment.

INSERM http://tinyurl.com/zhyjj9x

Piezoelectric materials turn mechanical stress into electrical energy, and vice versa. In 1997, researchers developed piezoelectric materials that were 10 times better at coupling electrical and mechanical responses than prior state-of-the-art materials. But even scientists did not understand why the newer materials were so responsive.
Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and their research partners have used neutron scattering to discover the key to piezoelectric excellence in the newer materials, which are called relaxor-based ferroelectrics. (A ferroelectric material has electrical polarization that is reversed by application of an electric field.) Their findings may provide knowledge needed to accelerate the design of functional materials for diverse applications.
Relaxor-based oxide ferroelectrics have revolutionized piezoelectric devices. In medical ultrasound, for example, the mechanical pressure of sound waves generates images of a person’s interior. Compared with the performance of traditional materials, the stronger response of relaxor-based ferroelectrics yields a more detailed electrical signal that produces better images. Instead of having somewhat blurry guidance from 2D images to diagnose a cause of pain, assess prenatal condition, guide a biopsy or assess damage after a heart attack, doctors now rely on finely detailed 3D imagery. These modern materials also made it possible to focus ultrasound waves for non-invasive medical treatments of conditions such as tumours or gallstones. This technology passes individual beams harmlessly through tissue; the beams converge on a target where their effects are concentrated, like light passing through a magnifying glass to ignite paper.
‘We figured out at an atomic level why certain materials are so great at mechanically responding to an electric field by changing shape or size,’ said lead author Michael Manley of ORNL. ‘The finding provides a basis for high-performance actuators and sensors.’ Compared to traditional polycrystalline materials, the newer piezoelectric crystals generate a greater mechanical force in response to an applied electric field.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://tinyurl.com/j57s466