BMJ Innovations

Introduction: Favourable pain relief results on evoking autonomous twitches at myofascial trigger points with Electrical Twitch Obtaining Intramuscular Stimulation (ETOIMS). Aim: To document autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysfunction in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) from blood pressure (BP) and pulse/heart rate changes with ETOIMS. Methods and materials: A patient with persistent pain regularly received serial ETOIMS sessions of 60, 90, 120 or ≥150 min over 24 months...

Randomised clinical trials are designed to determine whether a particular treatment is appropriate to make a significant difference to the health of a defined population and to aid its approval for use. For an accurate, cheap and simple assessment to see if a treatment benefits an individual person, all that is needed is a pen, paper, simple pocket calculator and daily recording of a few variables. It requires the ability to read and write and to understand addition and division. Factorial design of experiments is used to show the impact of several variables and their interaction on the person's health status...

The Extension of Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) project is a novel educational intervention designed in New Mexico to transfer subspecialty knowledge about hepatitis C virus (HCV) to primary care providers, thereby increasing patient access to HCV care. The ECHO model has been shown to deliver educational benefits and to result in good treatment outcomes for HCV-infected individuals in the USA; however, this approach has not been assessed in a European setting. We sought to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and implementation of the ECHO model in Ireland using a pilot study...

INTRODUCTION: Autonomous twitch elicitation at myofascial trigger points from spondylotic radiculopathies-induced denervation supersensitivity can provide favourable pain relief using electrical twitch-obtaining intramuscular stimulation (ETOIMS). AIM: To provide objective evidence that ETOIMS is safe and efficacious in migraine and persistent pain management due to decades-old injuries to head and spine from paediatric American football. METHODS AND MATERIALS: An 83-year-old mildly hypertensive patient with 25-year history of refractory migraine and persistent pain self-selected to regularly receive fee-for-service ETOIMS 2/week over 20 months...

BACKGROUND: Patient engagement is an essential aspect in the research/development of biopharmaceutical products and disease management. Improving the lives of patients requires a deep understanding of their medical conditions, experiences, needs and priorities. However, a consistent definition of patient centricity is lacking. A series of initiatives was conducted to define patient centricity and its important principles impacting the biopharmaceutical industry. METHODS: Interviews, questionnaires and literature reviews were conducted involving key stakeholders to initially identify issues of importance to patients, healthcare providers and payers...

The use of smartphones, mobile networks and associated health applications (known as apps) is now almost universal. Countries with low medical resources need assistance in their delivery of healthcare. This is particularly true where there are limited numbers of specialised physicians or nurses with respect to cancer screening. As smartphones become more universal, real-time and near-real-time expert medical consultations and telediagnosis are becoming more common. This leads us to believe that there will soon be a demand for mobile cancer screening services, which will be particularly useful for women living in rural areas or doctor-less inner city communities...

OBJECTIVE: Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) is a significant cause of maternal morbidity and mortality. The most common cause is an inability of the uterus to contract adequately after childbirth. In bimanual compression (BMC), one hand is placed within the vagina and the other hand is on the abdominal wall to compress the uterus. It is effective, but very uncomfortable for the woman. We designed a device that could replicate BMC without inserting a hand vaginally, therefore being less invasive...

BACKGROUND: Healthcare-focused hackathons are 48-hour platforms intended to accelerate novel medical technology. However, debate exists about how much they contribute to medical technology innovation. The Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech) has developed a three-pronged model to maximise their effectiveness. To gauge the success of this model, we examined follow-up outcomes. METHODS: Outcomes of 12 hackathons from 2012 to 2015 in India, Uganda and the USA were measured using emailed surveys...

BACKGROUND: Governments, universities and pan-African research networks are building durable infrastructure and capabilities for biomedical research in Africa. This offers the opportunity to adopt from the outset innovative approaches and technologies that would be challenging to retrofit into fully established research infrastructures such as those regularly found in high-income countries. In this context we piloted the use of a novel mobile digital health platform, designed specifically for low-resource environments, to support high-quality data collection in a clinical research study...

BACKGROUND: The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can be one of the most stressful hospital environments. Alongside providing intensive clinical care, it is important that parents have the opportunity for regular physical contact with their babies because the neonatal period is critical for parent-child bonding. At present, monitoring technology in the NICU requires multiple wired sensors to track each baby's vital signs. This study describes the experiences that parents and nurses have with the current monitoring methods, and reports on their responses to the concept of a wireless monitoring system...

We undertook a systematic review evaluating the effectiveness and cost of health-focused innovation design contests. We followed Cochrane guidance and systematically searched eight databases. Articles were included if they reported an open contest focused on improving health, required participants submit finished design solutions and contained a prize structure. We searched 3579 citations, identifying 29 health-focused innovation design contests which collectively received 15494 contest submissions. Contests solicited submissions worldwide (7) and exclusively from North America (13), Asia (4), Africa (2), Australia (2) and Europe (1)...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

While health policy scholars wish to encourage the creation of technologies that bring more value to healthcare, they may not fully understand the mandate of venture capitalists and how they operate. This paper aims to clarify how venture capital operates and to illustrate its influence over the kinds of technologies that make their way into healthcare systems. The paper draws on the international innovation policy scholarship and the lessons our research team learned throughout a 5-year fieldwork conducted in Quebec (Canada)...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Open-source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so anyone can study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or the hardware based on that design. Some open-source hardware projects can potentially be used as active medical devices. The open-source approach offers a unique combination of advantages, including reducing costs and faster innovation. This article compares 10 of open-source healthcare projects in terms of how easy it is to obtain the required components and build the device...

IMPORTANCE: Advances in mobile technology have resulted in federal and industry-level initiatives to facilitate large-scale clinical research using smart devices. Although the benefits of technology to expand data collection are obvious, assumptions about the reach of mobile research methods (access), participant willingness to engage in mobile research protocols (engagement), and the cost of this research (cost) remain untested. OBJECTIVE: To assess the feasibility of a fully mobile randomised controlled trial using assessments and treatments delivered entirely through mobile devices to depressed individuals...

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of at-risk drinking and alcohol use disorders is increasing. Advances in technology have resulted in numerous smartphone applications for this disorder. However, there are still concerns about the evidence base of previously developed alcohol applications. OBJECTIVE: The following study aims to illustrate how the authors have made use of innovative methodologies to overcome the issues relating to the accuracy of tracking the amount of alcohol one has consumed; it also aims to determine user perceptions about the innovative tracker and various other features of an alcohol self-management application among a group of individuals from the general population of a developed country (Canada)...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

One of the biggest problems in global health is the lack of well trained and supported health workers in less developed settings. In many rural areas there are no physicians, and it is important to find ways to support and empower nurses and other health workers. The Knowledge Translation Unit of the University of Cape Town Lung Institute has spent 14 years developing a series of innovative packages to support and empower nurses and other health workers. PACK (Practical Approach to Care Kit) Adult comprises policy-based and evidence-informed guidelines; onsite, team and case-based training; non-physician prescribing; and a cascade system of scaling up...

Despite the benefits derived from the use of assistive technologies (AT), some parts of the world have minimal or no access to AT. In many low-income and middle-income countries (LMIC), only 5-15% of people who require AT have access to them. Rapid demographic changes will exacerbate this situation as populations over 60 years of age, as well as functional limitations among older populations, in LMIC are expected to be higher than in high-income countries in the coming years. Given both these trends, AT are likely to be in high demand and provide many benefits to respond to challenges related to healthy and productive ageing...