French company CardioRenal, which specializes in improving treatment at home for patients with severe chronic kidney disease, has secured €3.3 million from business angels and longstanding company shareholders as part of a round of seed capital financing.
Medical equipment made using Solvay’s Udel high-performance polysulfone (PSU) thermoplastic will be recycled at the end of their useful lives in a new sustainability initiative that the company has embarked on with Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials (MCAM).
Volastra Therapeutics, an oncology company focused on exploiting chromosomal instability (CIN) as a vulnerability for cancer cells, will collaborate with Bristol Myers Squibb to discover, develop and commercialize new medicines.
French company Ubiplug, a designer and developer of medical devices to enhance the healthcare of patients undergoing vascular access procedures, has obtained ISO 13485:2016 certification for its Quality Management System (QMS).
Siemens Healthineers and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF have announced a partnership to help strengthen fragile health systems in sub-Saharan Africa by improving access to diagnostics and linkage to treatment
Cleveland Clinic London exterior
Cleveland Clinic opened their Cleveland Clinic London Hospital on 29 March. The 184-bed state-of-the-art hospital, at 33 Grosvenor Place in central London is the newest location in Cleveland Clinic’s expanding global footprint and the second in London, following the opening of Cleveland Clinic Portland Place Outpatient Centre in September 2021.
As part of one of the world’s top hospital systems – as determined in Newsweek’s World’s Best Hospitals 2022 list – Cleveland Clinic London provides patients access to a global network of physicians and specialists to provide the highest quality care, as well as world-class patient experience built around the best practices and core values of Cleveland Clinic. It will offer a doctor-led model of care that is innovative, empathetic and based on research and education.
The eight-story facility will treat a wide range of complex conditions, with a focus on heart and vascular, digestive disease, neurosciences and orthopaedics. The hospital has 184 inpatient beds, including 29 ICU beds and eight operating theatres, a 41-bed neurological rehabilitation ward and a staff of approximately 1,150 caregivers.
Cleveland Clinic London patient room
Equipped with the latest technology, Cleveland Clinic London has the ability to care for a complex patient population, supported by an acute admissions unit and 24/7 intensive care specialists in the ICU, a model that enhances patient safety and experience. Alongside its core focus areas, the hospital also offers a full range of medical sub-specialties and comprehensive services for imaging, labs and interventional radiology.
The Cleveland Clinic health system, which employs more than 72,000 caregivers worldwide, has pioneered many medical breakthroughs, including coronary artery bypass surgery, the first face transplant in the United States, and most recently the first uterus transplant in the United States.
Cleveland Clinic London Hybrid Operating Room
“For more than 100 years, Cleveland Clinic has been at the forefront of medical innovation and specialized health care,” said Tom Mihaljevic, M.D., Cleveland Clinic CEO and President. “We believe that touching more lives is our ethical imperative. With the opening of Cleveland Clinic London, we are extending our unique model of care to more patients than ever.”
Brian Donley, M.D., CEO of Cleveland Clinic London, said: “This is an eventful moment for the entire Cleveland Clinic family. We are excited to be bringing our unique model of care to the U.K., combining London’s world-renowned physicians and research with Cleveland Clinic’s 100-year history of technological advances and clinical expertise. We will provide patients with an unparalleled experience and the highest quality care.”
Cleveland Clinic London ICU
Cleveland Clinic’s latest facility combines the health system’s integrated care approach with its leadership in medical innovation to meet the unique needs of each patient. The hospital is equipped with the most advanced medical and surgical technologies, including innovative laser and robotic surgery capabilities. It will offer the most advanced minimally invasive procedures, such as transcatheter aortic valve implantations (TAVI); Cleveland Clinic was one of the early pioneering centres of TAVI and has since become a world leader in this specialized treatment.
Cleveland Clinic London is one of the first private hospitals in the U.K. that can conduct intraoperative imaging for brain and spinal cord disorders, a leading tool in preventing reoperations. The hospital is also equipped with a 41-bed neuro-rehabilitation suite with technologically advanced robotic equipment.
Cleveland Clinic London is also the first U.K. hospital to use advanced technology such as pharmacy barcoding and robot-powered medicine administration tracking, offering an additional level of safety in the delivery of medicine. Patients and caregivers will have access to the most advanced electronic medical records, allowing caregivers to make faster and more effective decisions about patient care, and giving the patient easier access to information about their treatment.
Cleveland Clinic London Operating Room
Cleveland Clinic is among the first hospitals in the United States to publish outcomes. Since 2004, it has required all clinical specialties to collect and publish comprehensive data every year. In 2008, the health system was the first to disclose industry relationships of its clinicians and again, in 2015, Cleveland Clinic was the first medical center to display patients’ ratings and comments about the care they receive. Cleveland Clinic London will report data and outcomes to key U.K. national registries. The hospital will publish detailed information on its treatment outcomes, with the goal of helping existing and future patients make informed decisions about their care options.
The IHF Awards are recognized around the world as the premier awards programme to honour hospitals and healthcare organizations.
In its seventh year, the International Hospital Federation Awards 2022 (IHF Awards) return to recognize the excellence and outstanding achievements of hospitals and health service providers around the globe.
A new category — American Hospital Association Excellence Award for Healthcare Workers’ Wellbeing – has been added to honour initiatives by hospitals to support their workforce. Workforce wellbeing had been much talked about even before COVID-19, and the pandemic has made this even more relevant. Many hospitals around the world have started initiatives and efforts to support their workforce. The IHF Awards deem it important to recognize and honour these initiatives.
Entries are now being accepted for the following award categories:
Learn about the Categories, the Submission Criteria and submit your entry here: https://worldhospitalcongress.org/awards/
Entries must be submitted through the IHF online submission platform. Nominations will be accepted until 31 May.
The awards will be presented to the winners at a special Awards Ceremony at the 45th IHF World Hospital Congress which will be held on 9-11 November in Dubai, UAE
The situation in Ukraine is a major concern for all of us, and the escalation of violence that has been reported on many different channels is alarming.
On 25 February, we released a message of solidarity with the people and the healthcare community in Ukraine.
The escalation of violence impacting hospitals and healthcare personnel is being reported by many authorities including:
Attacks on hospitals, healthcare workers, and ambulances are not acceptable. No matter the context. No matter the reasons. It is a violation of International Humanitarian Law, and we firmly stand against it.
Many international organizations and local actors are working hard, both inside Ukraine and in the neighbouring countries, such as Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and Romania to support refugees, mainly women and children. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has issued an alert that the number of refugees could reach 4 million rapidly.
IHF Members want to help, but the Ukrainians have limited logistical capacity to manage donations. We are recommending to the IHF community to get involved (either with financial or supplies support) through organizations acting in the field in neighbouring countries, or to the headquarters of these organizations. These trusted organizations have the capacity to redistribute the donations in a strategic manner.
Many organizations are providing emergency assistance in the region. The IHF would suggest supporting the following:
There are also initiatives that our members and partners have shared with us that we believe you will be interested to discover and support. For example:
If you are a healthcare professional who wants to volunteer, or if you want more information, you can contact Rafael Gotsens, International Medical Director, Teladoc Health, Inc. (rgotsens@teladochealth.com).
Núria Malats
Pancreatic cancer is not one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers, but it is one of the most lethal due to its early local extension and metastatic behaviour. Some of the reasons for this high fatality rate are late diagnosis of the disease, especially since symptoms are unspecific and appear rather late, and limited therapeutic options.
Using patient samples provided by a number of clinical collaborators, researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by Núria Malats, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, led by Peer Bork, have found a molecular signature of 27 microorganisms in stool samples that could predict whether patients are at high risk of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common pancreatic cancer, and even diagnose patients with earlier stages of the disease.
A patent has been applied for to develop a pancreatic cancer diagnostic kit that detects these microbial genomes in stool samples in a rapid, non-invasive, and affordable way. The study was published in the journal Gut [1].
The symptoms of pancreatic cancer are silent and often appear in the late stages of the disease, when tumours usually cannot be removed through surgery. Therefore, there is an urgent need for non-invasive, specific, and affordable tests that are able to detect the disease early and improve patient survival.
“In many cases, once pancreatic cancer is detected, it is too late. We need to diagnose the disease at a much earlier stage, before symptoms appear. To do this, we need to identify and define the population at risk and have good screening tests to detect the cancer when it is still curable,” the researchers pointed out.
Recent data suggest that the microorganisms that coexist with cells in the human body – the microbiome – may play a role in the origin and development of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
To study this possible relationship in depth, the researchers conducted a unique case-control study with 136 individuals (57 newly diagnosed patients, 50 controls, and 27 patients with chronic pancreatitis) who were deeply characterized at epidemiological and clinical levels and from whom samples of saliva, faeces and pancreatic tissue were taken to analyse their microbiome. The subjects were recruited from two Spanish hospitals in Madrid (Ramon y Cajal Hospital) and Barcelona (Vall Hebron Hospital).
Contrary to common belief, the oral microbiome was not found to be associated with pancreatic cancer but faecal microbes were. “Sophisticated biostatistical and bioinformatics analyses have allowed us to construct a signature of 27 stool-derived microbes, mostly bacteria, that discriminates very well between cases with pancreatic cancer and controls, both in their most advanced and earliest stages,” said Malats and Bork. This gene signature was validated in an independent study carried out in two German centres, Frankfurt (Goethe University Hospital) and Erlangen (University Clinic Erlangen), and in 5792 faecal metagenomes from 25 studies in 18 countries. It is currently being studied in a Japanese population.
However, pancreatic cancer is a disease with a very complex aetiology and multiple risk factors such as age, obesity, diabetes, chronic pancreatitis, smoking, high alcohol consumption, blood type, and family history of cancer. To avoid biases and to ensure that the microbes identified are associated with pancreatic cancer and not with obesity, diabetes, or other risk factors, the authors controlled for these clinical and demographic variables in the analysis.
“This level of analysis is unprecedented in pancreatic cancer metagenome studies,” the investigators said.
As the researchers write in the pages of Gut, the high predictive value of this stool gene signature could serve as a biomarker to define the population at risk and, if validated in clinical trials, it could be used for early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. “Currently, screening programmes are targeted to families with pancreatic cancer aggregation, which represent only 10% of the burden of the disease. The inclusion in these screening programmes of a stool analysis to identify the identified microbial signature could help to detect the rest of the population at risk,” they added.
This research has been carried out in collaboration with the CNIO Epithelial Carcinogenesis Group led by Paco Real, the CNIO Molecular Cytogenetics Unit led by Sandra Rodríguez, the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital Oncological Department led by Alfredo Carrato, the Vall d’ Hebron University Hospital Digestive Disease Department with Xavier Molero, the Translational Hepatology Section in Goethe University Hospital led by Jonel Trebicka, and the group of Stephan Kersting in University Clinic Erlangen.
This study has been funded by the World Cancer Research, the European Research Council, the European Regional Development Fund, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Carlos III Institute of Health, AESPANC-ACANPAN (Carmen Delgado and Miguel Pérez-Mateo grant) and the European Union (#018771-MOLDIAG-PACA, #259737-CANCERALIA).
Reference:
[1] Kartal E, Schmidt TSB, Molina-Montes E, et. al. A faecal microbiota signature with high specificity for pancreatic cancer. Gut. 8 March 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2021-324755
There’s considerable interest in using cannabis-based medications to help treat drug resistant epilepsy, but clinicians have little guidance on how or when to prescribe these products. A working group comprised of paediatric and adult epilepsy specialists, clinical pharmacists, pharmacologists, and cannabis researchers from across Australia recently developed an interim “consensus advise” for prescribers and published it in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology [1].
The document provides an overview of the different cannabis medicines currently available for treating epilepsy in children and adults, with information on dose, drug interactions, toxicity, and type and frequency of symptom and seizure relief. The consensus advice will be updated as new evidence emerges and will provide the structure for a more definitive guideline in the future.
“In the absence of a registration dossier, scientific experiments and case reports are helpful to provide some guidance to optimized dosing. However, as in this guidance, observational data obtained from clinical practice, which often includes information not included in scientific experiments or even early clinical trial data, such as treating patients with other comorbidities, taking multiple medications, and patient diversity, can be very helpful to clinical practice,” said senior author Jennifer H. Martin, MBChB, MA, PhD, FRACP, a researchers at the University of Newcastle and the Director of the Australian Centre for Cannabis Clinical and Research Excellence.
The authors write: “Although interim, this consensus advice addresses much of the current practice gap by providing an informed overview of the different cannabis medicines currently available for use in the treatment of epilepsy in paediatric and adult settings, with information on dose, drug interactions, toxicity, type of seizure and frequency of symptom relief.”
[1] John Lawson, Terry O’Brien, Myfanwy Graham, et. al. Expert advice for prescribing cannabis medicines for patients with epilepsy – drawn from the Australian clinical experience. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. 8 March 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1111/bcp.15262
April 2024
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