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  • Israel is using AI to flag high-risk covid-19 patients

    27 Apr, 2020
    One of Israel’s largest health maintenance organizations is using artificial intelligence to help identify which of the 2.4 million people it covers are most at risk of severe covid-19 complications. Maccabi Healthcare Services says the system—which it developed with AI company Medial EarlySign—has already flagged 2% of its members, amounting to around 40,000 people. Once identified, individuals are put on a fast track for testing.
    The AI was adapted from an existing system trained to iden...
  • Meet Violet, the Robot That Can Kill the COVID-19 Virus

    27 Apr, 2020

    In just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has crossed borders and oceans, killing thousands, sickening millions, and forcing millions more to reckon with the economic and personal chaos of closures and lockdowns.

    Yet as the global infection count rises, the crisis has also given rise to acts of ingenuity. The pandemic has set off a global race for both an effective vaccine and for the accurate, rapid-response tests that will be necessary before workplaces can safely reopen. Vacci...
  • Boston Dynamics just opened up this robot tech to help tackle COVID-19

    27 Apr, 2020
    Company behind Spot the robot dog has published application designs for robots on GitHub that could help staff reduce their chances of infection and perform essential high-risk duties.

    Boston Dynamics has open-sourced some of its robotics technology to help protect healthcare workers battling the coronavirus.

    The robotics firm has developed a healthcare toolkit that it hopes will allow mobile robots to carry out essential functions that reduce the exposure of frontline healthcar...
  • Forecasting the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospital demand and deaths for the USA and European Economic Area countries

    27 Apr, 2020
    Hospitals need to plan for the surge in demand in each state or region in the United States and the European Economic Area (EEA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Planners need forecasts of the most likely trajectory in the coming weeks and will want to plan for the higher values in the range of those forecasts. To date, forecasts of what is most likely to occur in the weeks ahead are not available for states in the USA or for all countries in the EEA.
    This study used data on confirmed COVID-1...
  • NASA team developed a ventilator tailored for coronavirus patients in 37 days!

    27 Apr, 2020

    The engineers at NASA have developed a high-pressure ventilator prototype specifically tailored to help coronavirus patients, according to the agency.
    It's called VITAL, or Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally. And after passing a critical test at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York earlier this week, NASA is hoping for fast-track approval of the ventilator in the coming days so it can be used to help coronavirus patients."We were very pleased with ...
  • Could dogs help detect COVID-19?

    27 Apr, 2020

    Late last month, a team of researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the registered charity Medical Detection Dogs, and Durham University, all in the U.K., announced an intriguing new initiative.

    The team wants to explore the potential of using dogs to detect COVID-19 in people who may have developed the disease.

    This idea came from the fact that canines are very adept at picking up on subtle signs of illness thanks to their acute sense o...
  • 3D Printing and COVID-19, April 24, 2020 Update

    27 Apr, 2020




    The University of Michigan and Michigan Medicine have designed a 3D printable, personalized ventilator splitting device which makes it possible to tailor air pressure to multiple patients from a single ventilator unit. The VentMI device helps to address the most crucial issue with the vent splitters we have seen designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that each patient needs specific rates of pressure to perform effective treatment and not further damage their ...
  • Transforming ORs into ICUs

    27 Apr, 2020

    Treating patients in New York City, the global epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic — where there have been more than 15,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 to date — has required innovative solutions to problems of limited resources. In late March, demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds and mechanical ventilation exceeded baseline capacity at New York–Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center. At the same time, many of our operating rooms (ORs) and postanesthesia care units (PACUs) were n...
  • Reusable 3D-printed Metal Filters Being Tested by ExOne

    27 Apr, 2020
    Most of the large 3D printing companies, including ExOne, have noted that their global supply chain clued them into the wide-ranging impact of the coronavirus outbreak early on, pushing them to consider the effects the disease would have both on manufacturing operations and medical supplies. ExOne CEO John Hartner told 3DPrint.com that this got the company thinking about its potential role in the supply chain.


    It was when the company recognized the medical waste accumulating as a r...
  • Covid-19 and Kidney Transplantation

    27 Apr, 2020

    Kidney-transplant recipients appear to be at particularly high risk for critical Covid-19 illness due to chronic immunosuppression and coexisting conditions.1 At Montefiore Medical Center, we identified 36 consecutive adult kidney-transplant recipients who tested positive for Covid-19 between March 16 and April 1, 2020. A total of 26 recipients (72%) were male, and the median age was 60 years (range, 32 to 77). Fourteen recipients (39%) were black, and 15 recipients (42%) were Hispanic. T...
  • Johnson & Johnson Announces Collaboration to Expand Manufacturing Capabilities For its COVID-19 Vaccine

    27 Apr, 2020
    Company Signs Agreement with Emergent BioSolutions in the U.S. As Part of its InvestmentFirst in Series of Anticipated Strategic Collaborations Designed to Further the Company’s Goal of Ensuring Global Supply of a Safe and Effective Vaccine for COVID-19
    Johnson & Johnson (the Company) (NYSE: JNJ) on 23rd April 2020 announced a collaboration between the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and Emergent BioSolutions, Inc. to support the manufacturing of its lead inve...
  • Assessing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as a contributing factor to coronavirus (COVID-19) fatality

    27 Apr, 2020
    AbstractNitrogen dioxide (NO2) is an ambient trace-gas result of both natural and anthropogenic processes. Long-term exposure to NO2 may cause a wide spectrum of severe health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, heart and cardiovascular diseases and even death. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between long-term exposure to NO2 and coronavirus fatality. The Sentinel-5P is used for mapping the tropospheric NO2 distribution and the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for evaluati...