Dr. Siri is hiding on your wrist
TheApple Watch harbours undisclosed hardware capable of measuring blood oxygen content as revealed by iFixit's teardown.The hardware is not activated yet, but I don't understand how securely it has been made inaccessible by third party software. There is speculation that Apple is waiting upon FDA approval to enable the device for medical indications.The currently inactive hardware is a pulse oximeter which, as previously mentioned, enables the noninvasive measurement of blood oxygen content. You may recognize a pulse oximeter as the red light that is clamped onto a patients finger in a hospital.If the FDA approves the devi...
Source: Bayblab - April 27, 2015 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Dr. Siri is hiding on your wrist
The Apple Watch harbours undisclosed hardware capable of measuring blood oxygen content as revealed by iFixit's teardown. The hardware is not activated yet, but I don't understand how securely it has been made inaccessible by third party software. There is speculation that Apple is waiting upon FDA approval to enable the device for medical indications.The currently inactive hardware is a pulse oximeter which, as previously mentioned, enables the noninvasive measurement of blood oxygen content. You may recognize a pulse oximeter as the red light that is clamped onto a patients finger in a hospital.If the FDA approves the de...
Source: Bayblab - April 26, 2015 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Time your next heart attack to conincide with national cardiology meetings
Surprisingly,high-risk patients with heart failure and cardiac arrest admitted to US teaching hospitals during dates of national cardiology meetings had lower 30-day mortality rates. The surprise is that outcomes improved despite the absence of the cardiologists who attended the meetings. While the cause of this correlation and the generalizability of the methodology are unclear, the finding is very significant.A Freakonomics podcast covering this study expressed the magnitude of this effect in a powerful comparison. While the combination of common interventions (beta-blockers, statins, aspirin, and blood thinners) reduce ...
Source: Bayblab - April 13, 2015 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Time your next heart attack to conincide with national cardiology meetings
Surprisingly, high-risk patients with heart failure and cardiac arrest admitted to US teaching hospitals during dates of national cardiology meetings had lower 30-day mortality rates. The surprise is that outcomes improved despite the absence of the cardiologists who attended the meetings. While the cause of this correlation and the generalizability of the methodology are unclear, the finding is very significant. A Freakonomics podcast covering this study expressed the magnitude of this effect in a powerful comparison. While the combination of common interventions (beta-blockers, statins, aspirin, and blood thinners) reduc...
Source: Bayblab - April 12, 2015 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
The rising cost of cancer drugs
A recent research letter in JAMA oncology presented a quick analysis of the costs of cancer drugs. The article cites evidence that cancer drug prices are rising faster than prices of drugs in other therapeutic areas. The authors found no significant price difference between next-in-class drugs and novel drugs. Drugs that were granted US FDA approval based upon disease response rate were priced significantly higher than drugs approved based upon overall survival or progression- or disease free survival, however no significant relationship between cost and the percentage improvement in end point was found. The authors conclu...
Source: Bayblab - April 8, 2015 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
The rising cost of cancer drugs
A recent research letter in JAMA oncology presented a quick analysis of the costs of cancer drugs. The article cites evidence that cancer drug prices are rising faster than prices of drugs in other therapeutic areas. The authors found no significant price difference between next-in-class drugs and novel drugs. Drugs that were granted US FDA approval based upon disease response rate were priced significantly higher than drugs approved based upon overall survival or progression- or disease free survival, however no significant relationship between cost and the percentage improvement in end point was found. The authors conclu...
Source: Bayblab - April 7, 2015 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Dendroclimatology: The divergence problem
I was reminded aboutdendroclimatology when reading abook about the geological evidence of climate change by E. Kirsten Peters. Dendroclimatology is the study of inferring past climactic conditions based upon tree ring width and/or density. The resulting data is high resolution since a tree ring is formed every year. Tree ring width and/or density correlates well with various climate parameters like sun, water, and temperature. Using techniques from dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), long climate records of thousands of years can be reconstructed using this technique. For example, summer temperature anomalies for the past...
Source: Bayblab - February 13, 2015 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Dendroclimatology: The divergence problem
I was reminded about dendroclimatology when reading a book about the geological evidence of climate change by E. Kirsten Peters. Dendroclimatology is the study of inferring past climactic conditions based upon tree ring width and/or density. The resulting data is high resolution since a tree ring is formed every year. Tree ring width and/or density correlates well with various climate parameters like sun, water, and temperature. Using techniques from dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), long climate records of thousands of years can be reconstructed using this technique. For example, summer temperature anomalies for the pa...
Source: Bayblab - February 12, 2015 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Skiing Robots!
While I welcome our new robot overlords, I'm unsure that I want them to be better at skiing than me. Hats off to a team from Slovenia and another team from the University of Manitoba for making robots that are cool enough to ski. (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - February 4, 2015 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Richard Dawkins debates homeopathy with Dr. Peter Fisher (2007)
Richard Dawkins made a television documentary called "The enemies of reason" in 2007. A large portion of the first part of the documentary is on homeopathy. You can watch ithere. While I think it was a pretty good documentary that consisted of legitimate criticism, it was edited for television and was focused on "gotcha" moments. I think it also missed out on an educational opportunity to explain the rigorous methods of a well conducted randomized controlled trial. I recently ran across Dr. Peter Fisher's defence of NHS funding for homeopathy in the 'uncut' interview with Dawkins from the documentary.This was probably the ...
Source: Bayblab - December 15, 2014 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Richard Dawkins debates homeopathy with Dr. Peter Fisher (2007)
Richard Dawkins made a television documentary called "The enemies of reason" in 2007. A large portion of the first part of the documentary is on homeopathy. You can watch it here. While I think it was a pretty good documentary that consisted of legitimate criticism, it was edited for television and was focused on "gotcha" moments. I think it also missed out on an educational opportunity to explain the rigorous methods of a well conducted randomized controlled trial. I recently ran across Dr. Peter Fisher's defence of NHS funding for homeopathy in the 'uncut' interview with Dawkins from the documentary.This was probably the...
Source: Bayblab - December 15, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Nature enables sharing of articles
The journal Nature now enables subscribers to share articles for free though hyperlinks to a proprietary document format. The hyperlink to the article can then be subsequently shared by anyone. A year subscription to Nature costs $200 and an article costs around $30. While this is a somewhat awkward model in my opinion, I appreciate that such a prestigious journal can demonstrate some flexibility and adapt to the changing publishing business.Here is a link to a paper on the identification of the remains of Richard III in the proprietary ReadCube format. (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - December 3, 2014 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Nature enables sharing of articles
The journal Nature now enables subscribers to share articles for free though hyperlinks to a proprietary document format. The hyperlink to the article can then be subsequently shared by anyone. A year subscription to Nature costs $200 and an article costs around $30. While this is a somewhat awkward model in my opinion, I appreciate that such a prestigious journal can demonstrate some flexibility and adapt to the changing publishing business. Here is a link to a paper on the identification of the remains of Richard III in the proprietary ReadCube format. (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - December 3, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
Accidental discoveries
Below is a video on accidental chemical discoveries. The last two were particularly interesting to me, the discovery of Teflon, and Gore-Tex. The real challenge it would seem to me would be seeing the potential and figuring out uses for newly synthesized chemicals. (Source: Bayblab)
Source: Bayblab - November 17, 2014 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Rob Source Type: blogs
