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Sensium brings the healthcare professional closer to the patient by delivering greater reassurance, immediacy and efficacy of treatment, and brings the patient closer to the healthcare professional by creating a detailed and accurate picture of an individual’s care requirements.

The Sensium™ system for continuous, wireless and intelligent body monitoring is unlocking a much more cost-effective, higher quality and more personalised system of patient care throughout the treatment and diagnostic cycle – from the hospital ward to the home health demands.

Integrated solution for patient care

Sensium is a revolutionary system for intelligent wireless body monitoring that transforms real-time vital signs data acquisition and analysis at the bedside and beyond. Sensium enables a new generation of ultra-small, unobtrusive body-worn monitors that deliver cost-effective continual observation and patient management in both general ward and outpatient settings. By automating the continuous acquisition of multiple physiological readings, Sensium allows precious staff resources to be re-deployed/optimised and delivers high quality data that can be integrated into an electronic health record for vastly improved treatment and diagnostics.

For healthcare professionals, Sensium opens a completely new window on patient physiology – enabling unprecedented levels of analysis and unlocking entirely new areas of knowledge and understanding.

For patients, Sensium provides greater reassurance with minimal intrusion, higher levels of care, and more individualised treatment.

For hospital executives, the Sensium system helps to achieve improved safety (through earlier detection of adverse events) and lower costs, by reducing the need for expensive ICU-based care and allowing patients to be discharged from general ward environments more quickly.

Sensium in the hospital environment

The Sensium system enables remote and continuous monitoring of multiple vital signs input from both ambulatory and non-ambulatory patients, and in general ward and outpatient telecare scenarios.

Sensium delivers highly accurate data and analysis based upon continuous, intelligent monitoring.  This data can be analysed within the context of key physiological parameters – individual to each patient – offering the ability to provide alarm services to clinical staff should vital signs data fall outside of a pre-determined range.  In the general ward environment, vital signs data is transmitted wirelessly either to the bedside monitor or, for ambulatory patients, to the nearest base station, via the ultra-low power Nanopower Sensor Protocol wireless link.  Data from multiple base stations is then delivered over any network to the software-based Sensium server, which can be integrated seamlessly into the existing hospital IT system or database.

In telecare/home monitoring and outpatient scenarios, Sensium provides continuous data acquired from a patient’s normal environment, enabling more effective treatment and diagnostics for a wide variety of long-term chronic conditions, including heart disease and diabetes.   Real-time vital signs data is acquired from the mobile patient and transmitted to a standard mobile device (cellphone or PDA), which acts as a network node.  From there, it can be sent over the standard cellular network to the Sensium server before being integrated into the hospital IT system.  All acquired data can then be made available to hospital staff via the nurse’s station or wirelessly to a doctor’s PDA or Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA), and alarm services set up to page a doctor should “problem” data be flagged and a potential issue indicated.

The integrated end-to-end  Sensium system allows key physiological data taken from multiple patients to be  integrated with existing health information systems to become a total patient  care package and clinical repository of data.

Galenson writes that Picasso, a conceptual innovator, pretty much knew what he was going to create even before he created it, and came up with new ideas at a rapid pace early in his career. Cezanne, by contrast, was an experimental innovator, slowly rehashing and improving on a particular concept until he nailed it. Consequently, his greatest works–or at least the ones most valued by collectors–didn’t come until later in his life.

These two types of innovations, which Galenson argues, and which Gladwell agrees, can be extended into other arenas, such as music, and more to the point of this conference, healthcare innovation. For the purposes of Ideaworks for Healthcare  had some interesting points to make. Many people are mistakenly hoping for a quick fix derived from a bold breakthrough, such as conceptual innovator Pablo Picasso achieved in the art world. Instead, Gladwell said, we should pursue step-by-step experiments, like those of experimentally innovative painter Paul Cezanne.

“We are in danger of approaching the healthcare problem like it’s a Picasso problem and not a Cezanne problem,” Gladwell said. “With really complex problems, you can’t start with a grand idea,” he said. “You need a trial-and-error method.” ‘We don’t need a Picasso to solve our healthcare problems. We need a Cezanne,’” he said.

Comparing the U.S. and the Japanese automotive industries, he said that the big three have traditionally relied on the big hits, be it the muscle cars of the 60s, the minivans of the 80s, and the SUVs of the 90s. “In this way, the U.S. automobile industry are Picassos–which is the only time you’ll hear that in a sentence,” he quipped.

The Japanese, though, while rarely, if ever, coming out with a new style of car, slowly innovate to perfect those models, such as Toyota’s hybrid engine. Gladwell also drew examples from the pharmaceutical industry, which, ironically, is focused on Picasso-style innovation even though their most successful products–namely, Viagra and Lipitor–came out of Cezanne-style innovation.

So why the health care businesses nowdays so fixated on the quick fix? It’s a lot less riskier. The conceptualists, says Gladwell, can approach a company’s board and say, We’re going to solve this problem, and this is how we’re going to do it. Experimentalists, on the other hand, don’t necessarily know where their research is going to lead them, will probably take longer, and have a tougher time articulating their plan of action. With limited budgets and patience, it’s the former that get funded. But increasingly, Gladwell says, we’re encountering problems that can only be solved through extended trial and error.

“I’m waiting for a politician to stand up and say, ‘We don’t need a Picasso to solve our healthcare problems. We need a Cezanne,’” he said.

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The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell


Blink
Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell

What The Dow Saw
Malcolm Gladwell

Buy Malcolm Gladwell’s books here at Bol

Ideaworks 09 (www.ideaworksforhealthcare.com) – which will be held at The Grove hotel in Hertfordshire, England, from Wednesday 21 to Friday 23 October 2009 – is an independent forum to explore the most innovative and radical thinking on the future of healthcare technology. Delegates from business, technology and healthcare organisations worldwide will challenge and inspire one another towards improving healthcare through the power of ideas.

Keynote speakers include social commentator Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers, Blink and The Tipping Point) whose gift for articulating fresh ideas has influenced a generation of business leaders.  Mr Gladwell will open the discussion by addressing whether we are at healthcare’s ‘Tipping Point’ and how to accelerate a new era of innovation in healthcare.

• Ideaworks 09 designed to inspire creative thinking among clinicians, care providers and technologists

• Guest speakers include Malcolm Gladwell, author ‘Tipping Point’, and David Brailer, former U.S Government ‘Health Innovation Czar’

David Brailer, America’s first ‘Health Innovation Czar’ and Chairman of Health Evolution Partners, will explore strategies for managing change in healthcare systems. Other creative minds include:

• Dr Brian Cohen, chief technology officer at iSOFT, who has more than 20 years experience in developing systems for healthcare markets worldwide,
• Nigel Milan, Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia,
• Dr Glyn Hayes, Secretary General of The European Institute for Health Records, and President, of the U.K Council for Health Infomatics Professions,
• Jon Hoeksma, Co-founder and Director of eHealth Media.

iSOFT’s first invite-only Ideaworks symposium will focus around three agendas:

• Personalised medicine and genomics: How healthcare providers can use genomics to develop personalised health plans.
• The semantic web:  Web 3.0 – hype or Holy Grail for healthcare IT?
• Human/machine interface:  Bridging the gap between the human cognitive model of what people want to accomplish and the computer’s understanding of the user’s task.

Gary Cohen, Executive Chairman & CEO of iSOFT, said: “There have been a number of ‘tipping points’ in healthcare innovation throughout history, and technology is right now driving another transformation in how care is provided on a global scale. The spirit of Ideaworks is to inspire creative thinking among clinicians, care providers and technologists by bringing together some of the world’s leading thinkers to inject fresh ideas and engender change that has real benefits for billions of people.”

For patients in the PLATO study, the reduction in risk of cardiovascular events with ticagrelor occurred early and this benefit increased over time compared to clopidogrel. -Ticagrelor demonstrated a consistent positive effect across multiple secondary efficacy endpoints including CV death (and separately for all-cause mortality); myocardial infarction; the composite of myocardial infarction, stroke, and all-cause mortality. -Among patients who received a stent during the study, a 33% reduction in risk of definite stent thrombosis was achieved with ticagrelor. -Co looks forward to filing Brilinta with regulatory authorities in the fourth quarter. -The PLATO study confirmed the clinical safety profile of previous ticagrelor studies which showed no difference in major bleeding compared to clopidogrel.

When PLATO minor bleeding was added to the major bleeding results, ticagrelor showed an increase versus clopidogrel (16.1% vs 14.6%, p=0.008). -There was also an increase in non-procedural related bleeding with ticagrelor. Within the patient subgroups of gender, weight, history of stroke/TIA, ticagrelor showed no increase in the incidence of major bleeding versus clopidogrel. -Consistent with phase II data, ventricular pauses (slowing of heart rhythms) occurred more often with ticagrelor but without associated symptoms or clinical consequences for the patient. -Dyspnoea was reported more frequently by patients on ticagrelor (13.8% vs 7.8%, p<0.001) but did not represent new or worsening heart failure or lung disease. Only one in 100 ticagrelor patients overall stopped taking study medication due to dyspnoea. -The PLATO results have confirmed AstraZeneca’s intention to submit the NDA and MAA with regulatory agencies during the fourth quarter of this year.

Six human volunteers began clinical trials a year ago, and the results are “extremely encouraging”, as measured in control of Parkinson’s symptoms and in side effects such as brain inflammation, neurosurgeon Stephane Palfi said today.

Another half-dozen volunteers will be recruited for the trial, said the Henri Mondor Hospital in Paris.

If all goes well, a so-called Phase III trial, involving a large number of patients to assess the treatment for safety and effectiveness, will start in 2013.

The tentative trials on humans were authorised after three-and-a-half years of experiments on macaque monkeys that had been given neurotoxins to replicate Parkinson’s.

The monkey experiments are reported on Wednesday in the US journal Science Translational Medicine.

The gene therapy, called ProSavin, restored the monkeys’ dopamine levels, corrected motor problems and prevented dyskinesias, the term for jerkiness, rigidity and tremor.

There was “80 per cent recovery” among the animals, “and the results were stable for up to 44 years after treatment”, said Bechir Jerraya another neurosurgeon involved in the trial.

Parkinson’s is characterised by the loss of cells that produce dopamine, a critically important neurotransmitter that ferries chemical messages within the brain.

In about one-third of cases, it also results in dementia. Parkinson’s affects at least one per cent of people over the age of 65.

Well-known people with Parkinson’s include the late pontiff John Paul II and film actor Michael Fox.