Used Medical Equipment Discussion about reconditioned medical equipment

Not too long ago, medical professionals would have laughed at the concept of using their cell phones to improve their medical knowledge or enhance patient care, but the steady introduction of new iPhone apps is making this a reality. As a result, IT professionals and medical equipment suppliers are clamoring to create the next big mobile healthcare application.

Some of these apps are designed to augment existing medical equipment by helping doctors quickly reference comprehensive data about clinical lab test results. Other apps provide access to medical databases, reference materials and calculators that include medical formulas and important drug interaction information.

Anything that will allow for better patient care and reduce the risk of errors is welcome in the medical community. With this in mind, it won’t be long before medical equipment manufacturers start creating iPhone apps and user guides that correspond with their newest patient monitors and diagnostic tools.

Already, countless references and dictionaries are available as apps for the healthcare professional, including medical dictionaries, 3D animations of the human body, pharmaceutical guides, diagnostic tools, medical codes, Spanish medical translation tools, lab values, ECG analysis tools and growth charts – to name a few. And as doctors come to rely on these handy tools, the quality of the applications will certainly improve.

In addition to doctors, patients are also getting into the act by using a variety of apps for personal health management. Some of these are designed to track physical activity and help patients adhere to dietary restrictions while others help patients monitor their own vital statistics using home medical equipment, and then use a Bluetooth-powered app to communicate this information directly to their doctor’s office.

As more patients and doctors start to use these iPhone apps, it will enhance the quality and usability of medical equipment and ultimately improve our healthcare system.

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During the upcoming couple of years, manufacturers of radiation therapy equipment will be developing and incorporating new features that are fail safe into their machines. These features will prevent fatal radiation overdoses by employing new software in radiotherapy equipment.

Using newly configured linear accelerators, the new medical equipment will stop functioning if the plan for treating has not been checked. Radiotherapy machines need to be checked to ensure that devices that have modifying beams are placed correctly and the patient is in the proper position. Absent these checks that are quality assuring, some imaging equipment could present unnecessary danger to patients.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently convened a conference about this topic, attended by medical physicists, regulators, doctors, vendors and technicians. Their goal was to brainstorm ways to avoid radiation overdoses and exposures that are misaligned by updating the software in their radiotherapy machines.

Last year’s death of a 43-year old patient, who died from a fatal overdose of radiation, was a major topic of conversation at the meeting, and for discussing ways to help radiation therapy become more safe. His death was caused by three huge overdoses during his treatment for cancer of the tongue, which were caused by software glitches in the medical equipment.

Radiological product specialists from the FDA were quick to praise the medical equipment manufacturers in attendance for the steps they are taking to make the proposed software changes in their machines. It may be a bit more complicated to outfit radiotherapy machines that are older with this software, but medical physicists are confident that these changes will be implemented.

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Thanks to recent research conducted by North Carolina State University, microneedles may be more widely used in portable medical deivces. Until recently there has long been a real concern among medical professionals about the possibility of infection that could be a consequence of the widespread use of microneedle. These super-thin needles cause less tissue damage, less pain and minimal skin inflammation, and they could play a significant role in the treatment of patients with chronic conditions.

Two new approaches have been developed recently by the North Carolina State University research team, and their findings are expected to jumpstart the development of new medical equipment that use microneedles.

One process is done by coating microneedles with antimicrobial properties. When this step is taken, medical equipment that uses permanent or semi-permanent polyethylene glycol needles will not cause infection or adversely affect the skin. The coating is applied with a laser-based process that creates a thin film of antimicrobial silver on the surface of the needle.

A second process is used with degradable microneedles, which vanish on the skin’s surface after a single use, such as in delivering a vaccine. Here, the antimicrobial agent is used to make the degradable material itself. This way, as the microneedle dissolves onto the skin, it releases the built-in antimicrobial agent.

Researchers expect their findings to result in the widespread use of microneedles as an alternative to conventional ones, particularly in diabetes patients, who use needles frequently. Not only are they virtually pain-free, they are also much easier to use than traditional needles.
These findings may even point to the use of microneedles for the delivery of anti-cancer medications. Biomedical engineers from the university expect the medical equipment industry to begin incorporating the use of these needles into more portable medical devices in the near future.

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According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer caused 27,360 deaths in 2009, with over 192,000 new cases diagnosed. This type of cancer forms in the tissues of the male prostate gland, and is most commonly seen in older men.

Early detection of prostate cancer may not be enough to reduce the death toll from this silent disease. According to research presented at the annual SNM meeting in Salt Lake City last week, a new imaging agent could help doctors uncover the biological process that causes cancer to form in the prostate. Additionally, this new imaging agent can help clinicians better understand the molecular structure of prostate cancer, including the various tumor types and how the disease progresses.

Using medical equipment designed for optical imaging, researchers were able to capture the light emitted from a peptide-based imaging agent that targets activity within the receptors of certain tumor cells. By viewing those cells that show an overabundance of certain building block proteins, much can be learned about how prostate cancer thrives, migrates, and potentially invades other areas of the body.

By developing a unique “fingerprint” for each case of prostate cancer, this new type of medical equipment will allow oncologists to recognize the stage of the cancer more readily and prescribe a more personalized treatment program for patients. This new technology may represent a major development for understanding and treating prostate cancer.
According to the study by researchers at the Molecular Imaging Center at the Keck School of Medicine, certain tumor cells known as PC-3 were most visible with the peptide agent. The team expects similar imaging agents with medical equipment to be developed, which may be useful in tracking the effectiveness of new prostate cancer drugs.

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