Countries across the globe are struggling to combat issues such as escalating healthcare costs, poor or inconsistent quality of healthcare, rapid expansion in healthcare insurance and changing healthcare reform mandates. Growing consumerism, globalization, changing demographics and lifestyles, and growing incidences of diseases that are expensive to treat further exacerbate these. Resolving these issues is a daunting task faced by healthcare stakeholders, highlighting the need for proactive, collaborative and systemic models. Several initiatives and healthcare reforms have been developed in order to support the adoption and implementation of clinical decision support software (CDSS) solutions.

After a heart attack, there is often permanent damage to a portion of the heart. This happens, in part, because cardiac muscle cells are terminally differentiated and cannot proliferate after blood flow is blocked off to the heart. This partial healing can be attributed to heart disease being one of the leading causes of death. What if the cells could be stimulated to divide and the heart could be induced to repair itself? This was the question posed by George Washington University researcher Scott Shapiro, M.D., Ph.D., and his co-authors. They found cardiac regeneration may be a possibility with gene therapy.

Interventional radiologists have devised a way to access a woman's fibroids by flipping her wrist and treating via an arm not groin artery. It can be used to nonsurgically shrink noncancerous growths in the muscular wall of the uterus. Researchers found this to be less painful and traumatic for women, allowing them to immediately sit up and move after uterine fibroid embolization (UFE)—with no overnight stay. This is according to a March article in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology.

Memorial Hospital in Carbondale, Ill., has chosen Quail Digital’s healthcare wireless headset system. It will be used in catheterization and electrophysiology labs where all coronary and peripheral vascular interventions, device implants and electrophysiology procedures are performed.