Information technology has provided doctors with the ability to interpret huge amounts of data and come with accurate diagnosis, as well as treatment plans. This article describes a couple of creative ways in which information technology is being used creatively to benefit patients.
Source: MIT Sloan

Medical scientists have come closer to creating transplantable blood vessels with the help of smooth muscle tissue. These blood vessels can be grown whenever required, they can also be stored for the period of a year before being used on a human patient. Animal experiments have been promising and shown that these vessels, can last for up to a year without showing any noticeable degradation.
Source: The Economist

Researchers at the Harvard Medical School have been able to reverse the ageing process in mice. And it’s not a simple slowing down or stabilization of the ageing process, but a dramatic reversal. Old feeble mice who were subject of the experiment turned into healthy animals after an enzyme called telomerase was reactivated in them.
Source: Guardian

Seattle Genetics Inc. and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co have developed a new drug for cancer which work like a guided missile. The drug SGN-35 is a combination of a cancer-seeking antibody with a tumor-killing chemical. It has cleared cancer to undetectable levels in 53 percents with anaplastic large cell lymphoma, and also cut tumor size by at least half in another 33 percent. The antibody guides the drug to cancerous cells at very high concentrations thus it prevent the drug from entering the bloodstream or affecting healthy tissues.

Drug resistant bacteria turning into superbugs are a growing problem. An antibiotic resistant form of bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) which is commonly found in hospitals is associated with around 19,000 deaths in the United States every year and that’s only one strain. Canadian researchers have hit upon an innovative way of treating this problem; they treat these superbugs as computers and assume the role of hackers looking for the bug’s CPU and shutting it down to render it harmless.

Pathogens becoming drug-resistant defeat the treatment process and send drug researchers back to their labs to restructure the drugs, which is a labor intensive and extremely time-consuming process. Unfortunately instances of development of drug resistant bacteria is becoming more regular forcing people to go back to older antibiotics which were discarded in the first place because of their toxicity. The World Health Organization has already sounded an alarm about antibiotic resistance.

EMRs or electronic medical records have been immensely helpful in making the delivery of medical services cheaper, faster and more accurate. But now they have another significant use as well, scientists believe that great possibilities lie in the mining data that is accumulated in EMRs. Such data would help scientists conduct researches quickly and cheaply. Among other things they would be able to better understand the connections between the genes that people are born with and the diseases that they develop later in life.

Alzheimer’s is a much dreaded condition, most people are struck by it unaware and then gradually lose their memory and reasoning power among other mental capabilities as their brain degenerates irreversibly. Now researchers have come up with low-cost method of predicting the chances of a person developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: Science Daily

There are many research projects underway around the world which seek to understand how effective carbon nanotubes would be in delivering medicines directly to human cells. A breakthrough in this area would take medical technology to an entirely new level. It would help treat specific diseased cells in the human body without affecting or harming neighboring cells. However until now it was believed that carbon nanotubes could be harmful as they do not break down naturally. Many researchers had suggested that this could lead to greater problems including severe inflammation and even cancer.

Electronic devices have been used within the human body since a long time, for example pacemakers and cochlear implants. But it has been difficult to insert and use integrated circuits on biological tissues as they are inflexible and cannot be wrapped around curved or pliable surfaces found within the human body.