March/April 2022

Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that one in four people are affected by mental or neurological disorders, 50 m suffer from epilepsy, and 50 m from Alzheimer’s disease. According to the Journal of Neurosurgery, 69 m globally have some type of traumatic brain injury. With these numbers rising daily, there is an urgent need to understand what is happening inside the brain. Brain scanning technology has advanced dramatically in recent decades, but it still faces significant limitations. read more

Health care systems account for about 10% of the carbon dioxide emitted annually in the USA. In fact, American hospitals produce approximately 6 million tons of waste each year and use approximately 7% of all water consumed in commercial and institutional settings. As climate change becomes a daily reality rather than just a future possibility, major hospital systems are actively pursuing ways to reduce their carbon footprint. In this series, IEEE Pulse explores what steps are being taken and what challenges remain in conversation with different health care systems. This feature focuses on the climate change goals of Providence Health and Services. read more

Tardigrades are miniscule aquatic animals, only about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Yet they are renowned for their ability to survive a number of punishing physical extremes. Now, scientists studying tardigrades are beginning to uncover the secrets of their super survival skills. In the process, they are discovering unique biological mechanisms that may help to solve real-world, human health problems. read more

Although many surgeries, including spinal procedures, have been much improved with robotics in recent years, the additional technology has created associated issues with its use in the space constraints of the operating room (OR). This is especially true with monitors and their small screen sizes, which make it difficult for surgeons to see details during procedures. Solving such problems and finding the optimal position for viewing as well as ensuring integration with current technology were primary objectives in the development of iSight, a wireless augmented reality (AR) system designed by Dr. Chetan K. Patel, MD, in collaboration with startup Altair Innovations. Patel is an orthopedic spine surgeon and executive medical director for spine surgery at AdventHealth Neuroscience Institute. read more

For the one in five adults who suffer from chronic pain, treatment largely relies on pharmaceuticals, which can come with serious downsides [1]. “They mitigate pain, but in the long term lead to such significant side effects and consequences that the burden from the treatment many times starts to exceed the burden from disease, and it attacks the person’s quality of life,” says Padma Gulur, M.D., professor of anesthesiology and head of the Pain Relief and Opioid Mitigation Innovation Science (PROMIS) Laboratory, Duke University. read more

Technologies to provide early predictions of breast cancer risk, to identify which hospital patients actually should have their vital signs monitored overnight and which should be left to their restorative sleep, and to swiftly identify rare infant diseases are all joining the ranks of approaches that are powered by artificial intelligence (AI). read more