The agency issued a report on sodium intake in April 2007, which found that most people in all age groups were overdoing it when it comes to salt.

In July 2009, a report released by World Action on Salt — a British-based group established in 2005 to help gradually reduce global salt intake — found that sodium levels in a selection of processed and fast foods tended to be higher in Canada than in other countries.

Sodium levels in selected products

per 100 g servingKellogg’s Bran Flakes

• Canada: 861 mg
• United States: 258 mg

Burger King onion rings

• Canada: 681 mg
• UK: 159 mg

KFC popcorn chicken

• Canada: 908 mg
• Malaysia: 560 mg

Source: World Action on Salt and Health

Ref Source

Half of all heart attacks in the U.S. occur in people with normal cholesterol levels. Baffled? So were doctors, until November. That’s when Dr. Paul Ridker at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital confirmed a separate, perhaps equally powerful, risk factor for heart disease: inflammation, the same culprit behind arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Smaller studies had hinted at the link in the past, but Ridker’s recent research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that when people with normal cholesterol and high levels of CRP — a protein marker for inflammation in the blood — took statins, their CRP levels plummeted and their heart attack risk fell 54%. Compare that to the 20% reduced risk in people who take statins to lower cholesterol alone. Doctors say cholesterol and fatty plaques are still the main indicators of heart disease, but inflammation may be just as important, playing a key role as a trigger: It increases the instability of plaques, making them more likely to rupture, block heart vessels and cause a heart attack.

Only after the trials are done, which is estimated to take about two months, can health officials recommend a vaccination program. It would be voluntary and would have to be rolled out in stages because not nearly enough doses for all Americans will be ready in the fall even if there are no testing or production problems.

For the trial, healthy adult volunteers will be recruited at eight sites and given one or two shots, each containing 15 or 30 micrograms of vaccines made by two different companies. Some will get the injections concurrently with seasonal flu vaccines.

South Africa launches AIDS vaccine clinical trials.South Africa,announced the launch of clinical trials of the first AIDS vaccines created by a developing country with assistance from the National Institute of Health,US on Monday.

The field of AIDS vaccine research is so filled with disappointments some activists are questioning the wisdom of continuing such expensive investments, saying the money might be better spent on prevention and education.

Will it be a new begining in management of AIDS disease..for more information..

This year, the 20th for Best Hospitals, institutions are ranked in 16 specialties, from cancer and heart disease to respiratory disorders and urology. A total of 4,861 hospitals were considered; 174, or less than 0.4 percent of the total, were ranked in even one of the 16 specialties.

America’s Best Hospitals, an annual ranking of the country’s elite medical centers, is a tool for patients who need medical sophistication most facilities cannot offer. Unlike other rankings and ratings that grade hospitals on how well they execute routine procedures like outpatient hernia repair or manage common conditions like low-grade heart failure, the U.S. News approach looks at how well a hospital handles complex and demanding situations—replacing an 85-year-old man’s heart valve, diagnosing and treating a spinal tumor, and dealing with inflammatory bowel disease, to name three examples. High-stakes medicine.

For more information ….

How will it change medicine today is a subjet of debate.

NASA first pioneered the concept of telehealth when sending across astronauts to space,today the applications of telehealth have trickled down to our everyday life as Personalized Medicine

Personalized Medicine

With the advent of miniaturized devices and wireless communication, the way in which doctors care for patients has changed dramatically. The next decade will bring a new realm of precision and efficiency to the way information is transmitted and interpreted and thus the way medicine is practiced. Empowering clinicians to make decisions at the “point-of-care” has the potential to significantly impact health care delivery and to address the challenges of health disparities by providing diagnostic capabilities to communities with limited access to large healthcare facilities. The success of such a shift relies on the development of portable diagnostic and monitoring devices for near-patient testing that, when combined with suitable telehealth technologies, effectively empower clinicians or other providers to make decisions at the point-of-care. Results are immediate as samples do not have to be shipped off-site to a centralized laboratory. This is further complemented by their ability to carry out multiple assays such as blood gases, electrolytes, chemistries, coagulation, hematology, glucose, and cardiac markers simultaneously. The NIBIB has contributed to advances in this area by funding the development of sensor and microsystem technologies for point-of-care testing. These instruments combine multiple analytical functions into self-contained, portable devices that can be used by non-specialists to detect and diagnose disease, and can enable the selection of optimal therapies through patient screening and monitoring of a patient’s response to a chosen treatment. These technological advances limit the reliance on submission of samples to centralized laboratories, with results available within minutes as opposed to several hours or days, enabling clinicians to make decisions regarding treatment at a time when these decisions can have the greatest impact. In specific cases, sensors and microsystems can enable patient self-testing, and can contribute to the realization of personalized medicine by creating a link between the diagnosis of disease and the ability to tailor therapeutics to the individual.

http://www.techgadgets.in

As health care of an individual is always changing,and mobile phones are now a part of our life,it is but natural,applications about health management on mobile phones become a part of our lives in upcoming years.

Mayo clinic is now forging on its Mobile startegy,in a interview on Mobile health news-Scott Eising discuss about Mayo Clinic group Mobile road map

There are two strategies there — we have a referring physician portal today that is a secure portal where a physician who wants to refer a patient to Mayo logs in, fill out a profile on that patient, submit it and upload things like medical records that may be necessary for the referral. The patient may or may not end up coming to Mayo, but if they do, then the portal is where we refer back to that referring physician the status of the visit and the opinion or the outcome of it. So we are doing some user research right now and asking that group which aspects of that referring physician portal might be of more value if they were accessible via mobile devices. Certainly, you could imagine an alert or a reminder sent to the referring physician when new information was pushed to their portal. Maybe we could provide them some sort of preview into that information via mobile device or a way to put in a simple request for a referral from their device. So, we have a user survey out to that group so we can find out how we can better optimize that experience for those users. Obvioulsy being a tertiary destination medical center, referrals are a big part of where our patient base comes from. They are looking for that specialty expertise that Mayo provides and that they can’t get in their community. Referring physicians are an important partner for bringing patients to Mayo or for patients finding their way to Mayo.

In a study by the Oxoford economics,this subject has been highlighted.‘

Health experts agree that while the current flu epidemic that started in Mexico in April 2009 may weaken during the summer,

it could re-appear in the autumn, possibly in a stronger form. Besides the assessment of the likelihood of such a pandemic breaking out that relates to medical and health policy factors, it is useful to evaluate the possible economic mpact should a pandemic occur. Using historical benchmarks of previous flu pandemics and of the SARS episode, we have estimated the economic impact of a global flu pandemic.

Under reasonable assumptions about infection and death rates (30% and 0.4% respectively), the duration of the pandemic (six months from October 2009) and responses by households and businesses to the pandemic, we estimate that world GDP would be cut by around US$2.5 trillion in the six months of the pandemic, or 3.5% of 2009 GDP.

]]> http://blog.vitaniumhealth.com/2009/07/swine-flu-2-0/feed/ 0 http://blog.vitaniumhealth.com/2009/07/mobile-health-applications/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:13:51 +0000 admin http://blog.vitaniumhealth.com/?p=126 Technologies and personalized medicine-This could have been a very unlikely combination,a few years ago.Now,with the growth of technologies,mainly mobile technologies which enable users to be untethered themselves from their desk have changed the face of medicine forever.

published on Apr 16th 2009 by economist-

Developing countries are using mobile phones to leapfrog to personalised medicine

In co-operation with MTN, a big mobile carrier in South Africa, American academics and several other innovative groups, iTeach has launched Project Masiluleke. Using a form of text messaging similar to SMS, this sends out up to a million short messages a day, encouraging the recipients in their local language to contact the national AIDS hot line. The response has been spectacular, especially among young men who have proved hard to reach in the past. When people ring, they are often told about clinics outside their immediate community; in future they will be offered special test kits they can use at home.

Similarly,UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION

MHEALTH ALLIANCE ACTIVITY

In keeping with the rapid evolution of the mHealth industry, the Alliance will maintain a broad vision. Its initial activity will focus on thought leadership, global advocacy and collaboration, and implementation. The Alliance will provide:

• Thought leadership to the mHealth sector through: rigorous market research on the size and dynamics of the global mHealth market; presenting the “opportunity for mHealth” by commissioning white papers; undertaking regional conferences and impact studies, and consulting.

• Global advocacy and collaboration in the areas of policies, regulations, interoperability, best practices and support of relevant mobile and related health standards.

• Partnership for selective implementations in areas such as project design and support, project funding, and driving the public-private collaboration necessary for successful mHealth projects to be nationally and regionally scaled.

Can Mobile technologies really change medicine!