In the News

9.19.12
newswise.com: BIDMC and Diagnostics for All Create First Low-Cost, Paper-Based, Point of Care Liver Function Test
Supported in part by a grant from CIMIT, a new postage stamp-sized, paper-based device could provide a simple and reliable way to monitor for liver damage at a cost of only pennies per test, say researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Diagnostics For All (DFA), a Cambridge, MA nonprofit dedicated to improving the health of people living in the developing world.

8.22.12
Xconomy: CIMIT, Induct Software Roll Out New Collaboration Platform for Healthcare
The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, has teamed up with Induct Software, a Norwegian startup with a Boston-area CEO, to unveil a new Web-based collaboration platform today. The software, called CoLab, is aimed at helping healthcare institutions worldwide speed up innovative approaches, share information, and eventually work together to improve patient care.

6.18.12
Array's Mosaic Knowledge Community: Rethinking the Healthcare Design Paradigm
The Center for Integration of Medicine & Innovative Technology (CIMIT) is dedicated to improving healthcare delivery on multiple fronts. Current approaches to healthcare are generally reactive and hierarchical. CIMIT proposes to shift those paradigms to new, more human-centered and integrated ways of working.

3.7.12
Science Daily: New Immune-System Sensor May Speed Up, Slash Cost of Detecting Disease
Funded with grants from CIMIT, inventors at Stanford University School of Medicine have developed an inexpensive, new medical sensor that has the potential to simplify the diagnosis of diseases ranging from life-threatening immune deficiencies to the common cold.

1.27.12
Science Daily: New Drug Release Mechanism Utilizes 3-D Superhydrophobic Materials
According to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, this new mechanism developed by CIMIT investigators uses air as a removable barrier to control the rate at which drug is released.

1.9.12
The Boston Globe: Colonoscopy in a Capsule
Funded with $200,000 in grants from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital are now developing a “swimming capsule’’ that they hope will combine the best of both approaches—the control of the endoscope with the safety and ease of a pill.

1.5.12
The Baltimore Sun: Senate President Miller Wants New University Research Center in Baltimore
System leaders have preliminarily discussed modeling the center on Boston's Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, a consortium of top teaching hospitals.

11.30.11
courant.com: Yale Undergrads Develop Skin-Imaging Device
Earlier this month, the students—all three of them now juniors, age 20—won the Collegiate Inventors Competition in Washington, D.C. That added $12,500 in prize money to the $100,000 they won in the 2011 CIMIT Primary Healthcare Prize competition.

11.22.11
CNBC.com: More Physicians Embrace Web-Based Health Solutions
Ron Dixon, a CIMIT investigator, and all ten doctors in his practice are currently testing web-based health solution software as part of the Virtual Practice Pilot program at Massachusetts General Hospital, which is studying the effectiveness of live office visits versus videoconfezrencing patient encounters.

10.26.11
Market Watch: American Skin Association (ASA) Honors Leading Physicians and Scientists
On October 25th, Dr. Parrish received the Humanitarian Award, the highest recognition of the American Skin Association (ASA), for his his wide-ranging lifetime professional contributions to the field of dermatology. Dr. Parrish is the first individual to have received both the David Martin Carter Mentor and Humanitarian Awards in the 25 year history of the ASA.

9.28.11
Science Daily: Saving Heart Attack Victims With Computer Science
Newly discovered subtle markers of heart damage hidden in plain sight among hours of EKG recordings could help doctors identify which heart attack patients are at high risk of dying soon. This research was funded by the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, the National Science Foundation, Quanta Computer, and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. The paper is titled "Computationally Generated Cardiac Biomarkers for Risk Stratification Following After Acute Coronary Syndrome." Ongoing research is supported by the American Heart Association.

8.11.11
Design News: MEMS-Enabled Artificial Lung (Text and Video)
In a pioneering approach to artificial organ development, engineers at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass. (one of CIMIT's four founding consortium institutions), are applying semiconductor manufacturing technology to the development of artificial organs such as lungs and kidneys. Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, the principal investigator in the tissue engineering research being conducted at Draper, is CIMIT's Co-Program Leader for Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering.

2.8.11
The New York Times: $1M Prize to Inventor of Tracker for A.L.S.
Neurologist, Dr. Seward Rutkove, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has won a $1 million prize — reportedly the largest ever for meeting a specific challenge in medical research — for developing a reliable way to quantify the small muscular changes that signal progressive deterioration.

1.26.11
The New Yorker (abstract): Going Viral. The Pentagon takes on a new enemy: swine flu.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started preparations for a new vaccine in April of 2009, right after swine flu entered the U.S., but the White House was concerned that the vaccine wouldn’t be ready in time for a pandemic. Mentions CIMIT Senior Advisor Michael Callahan, a DARPA physician specializing in infectious diseases and rapid response, who was working simultaneously on a vaccine.

1.24.11
Trade Press Release: CAE Healthcare launches CAE Caesar, an innovative trauma patient simulator
CAE Healthcare today announced that it has launched its CAE Caesar™ trauma patient simulator. CAE Caesar is a high-fidelity patient simulator designed primarily to enhance the initial and sustainment training of soldier medics and the training of tactical law enforcement medics, search and rescue teams and any organization involved in the care of trauma patients at "point of injury". Caesar utilizes technology developed by researchers at CIMIT in collaboration with TATRC and was conceived with contributions from military and civilian subject matter experts.

11.29.10
Boston Globe: Making pills passé
Researchers seek ways to send drugs precisely where they are needed, minus the side effects
Now, with implantable pumps, tiny particles of drug, and novel materials that can release medication at a controlled rate, researchers are experimenting with new channels to deliver drugs directly to areas of the body where they can be most effective.

11.23.10
Technology Review: Ron Newbower, scientist helps transform culture of medical research
After Ron Newbower earned his bachelor's degree in physics at MIT and a PhD at Harvard, he veered away from a conventional career in solid-state physics despite the innovation booms in electronics and semiconductors. His wife, a nurse, introduced him to issues facing medical professionals, so he took a risk and accepted a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to do research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), with an eye toward a career collaborating with clinicians.

11.12.10
The Straits Times: Safe hands' to prevent infections
The National University Hospital and Changi General Hospital will launch Project Safe Hands next year to curb hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) will help them develop and validate the initiative. Project Safe Hands was started from a collaboration between A*STAR and CIMIT (Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology) in Boston, USA, to promote hand hygiene as an effective measure to prevent the spread of HAIs.

More Project Safe Hands News:
- AsiaOne News
- Top News (UK)

11.11.10
CIMIT-supported technology garners TIME/CNN acclaim for innovation:
The 50 Best Inventions of 2010 - NeoNurture Incubator
Flying cars! Jet packs! Lasers that zap malaria-carrying mosquitoes! Here are the year's biggest (and coolest) breakthroughs in science, technology and the arts

11.4.10
Nature Medicine: Mountains to Climb
New medications to fight the altitude sickness suffered by mountain climbers promise to aid peak performance. But the same drugs could also yield new treatments for people with breathing disorders. Brendan Borrell meets one man at DARPA, the US Defense Department's research agency, who's trying to move mountains for a new therapy.

9.1.10
WGBH Podcast: Dr. Ron Dixon on The Callie Crossley Show - Communication Technologies And Healthcare

8.31.10
WBUR.org Podcast: Dr. Ron Dixon - 60 Percent Of Visits Could Happen Online

8.24.10
Health Affairs: Enhancing Primary Care Through Online Communication
Ronald F. Dixon is an internist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, and CIMIT Principal Investigator. He directs the Virtual Practice Project at Mass General.

From Abstract: The effective delivery of primary care requires more frequent information exchange and communication than the typical office visit allows. Although industry leaders endorse health information technology (IT) to improve health outcomes and reduce costs, there has been less attention devoted to the use of this technology to deliver care. Using Internet-based technologies such as secure messaging, videoconferencing, and remote physiological monitoring can provide information to improve the patient-provider relationship and the quality of health care.

8.18.10
MassHighTech: Out-of-the-ordinary life science ideas offer potential business success
Turning a “cool idea” into the “next big thing” takes perserverence, an unwavering commitment to a vision, and usually, in the life sciences, a boatload of cash. Local entrepreneurs say the challenge lies in convincing funders (or customers) of the value proposition of the product, whether by presenting data to show the financial gain the product offers, or providing a compelling picture of how it addresses an unmet medical need.

8.16.10
Boston Globe: Prescription for primary care. Q&A with Dr. Ron Dixon, Mass. General internist urges online communication between physician and patient.

8.6.10
Mass General Magazine: Smart Tech Revolution. Born of a premise that physicians should dispense drugs to patients correctly, the Smart Pump is one homegrown invention that’s saving lives.
The Smart Drug Infusion Pump, a portable, bedside device little known to those who work outside the medical profession, which lies at the heart of the last decade’s revolution in patient safety. Born of a basic premise — that physicians should dispense the correct drug to each patient at the correct time and in the correct dose — the Smart Pump is one homegrown invention that’s saving lives.

8.6.10
Mass General Magazine: An Interview with David Judge, MD
Employees of Massachusetts General Hospital were asked in the spring if they wished to become patients of a new clinic called the Ambulatory Practice of the Future ( APF), a pilot project that aims to solve some of the challenges facing primary care. The APF, which opened in June, is led by David Judge, MD.

7.15.10
MIT News: In The World - Breath of life
Low-cost portable ventilator could be a lifesaver for people in remote locations and for hospitals in the developing world.

6.30.10
The New England Journal of Medicine Letter to the Editor
in response to article: Newborn-Care Training and Perinatal Mortality in Developing Countries

6.7.10
Boston Channel 5: Incubator Made From Car Parts Saves Lives.
Inexpensive Medical Devices Designed For Impoverished Countries - A group of doctors and engineers in Boston has dedicated themselves to designing inexpensive medical devices that could save some of those millions of lives.

4.20.10
GOVMONITOR.com: Singapore Launches Medtech IDEAS Programme
Speech by Mr. S Iswaran, Senior Minister of State for Trade & Industry and Education at the launch of Patient Support Development Centre and Respiratory Care Technical Centre in Hill-Rom’s Asia Pacific Innovation Centre.

4.18.10
Soldier Systems: Negative Pressure Wound Therapy
Applying negative pressure or suction to a wound promotes healing by keeping fluid from building up in the wound. A few years ago students in an MIT mechanical engineering class decided to work on a pump to provide suction for wounds. With the help of Dr. Robert Sheridan from Massachusetts General Hospital, the students developed a simple, inexpensive, and lightweight version of the system that required no power supply and could be left in place for days.

4.14.10
MIT news: In The World - Better wound treatment for all
A streamlined version of 'negative-pressure' wound therapy is put to the test in Haiti — and could have 'enormous potential' across the developing world.

3.23.10
MedTech-IQ: Graduate Student Designs Cheap, Portable Wound-Healing Device
In mid-February after a massive earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a wound-care team from Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston traveled to the devastated capital. The team's task was to help care for scores of patients suffering from the large open wounds that accompany amputations, crushed limbs, and other injuries. Among the team was MIT graduate student Danielle Zurovcik, who had developed a cheap and portable version of the negative-pressure devices currently used to speed wound healing in hospitals.

3.19.10
Technology Review: A Cheap, Portable Wound-Healing Device
After the Haiti earthquake, physicians tested a vacuum pump meant to speed healing.

3.2.10
MIT News: In Profile: Alex Slocum
Teaching and tinkering, and teaching how to tinker, are the driving forces for longtime MIT mechanical engineer

2.16.10
Gosh, that's neat! Blog: iPhone Apps for the Clinic
Islet – Diabetes Assistant: A mobile Diabetes management application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Islet 2.2 allows quick and easy recording of blood glucose readings, carbohydrate intake, insulin injections, and exercise, as well as email export. The app’s author, a Princeton undergrad, recently received a $100,000 grant from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) to build a more in-depth online portal for the app.

1.31.10
Boston.com: Newton doctor mentors surgeons in Nigeria
FOR WOMEN’S HEALTH: As director of minimally invasive gynecological surgery at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Dr. Keith Isaacson has led medical teaching trips in recent years to Israel, Sicily, Brazil, and Mexico. Last month the Newton resident traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, where he trained a dozen surgeons in hysteroscopy, a minimally invasive procedure to treat uterine polyps, fibroids, and endometrial cancer.

1.27.10
NewScientist: Drug could turn soldiers into super-survivors
A LUCKY few seem to be able to laugh in the face of death, surviving massive blood loss and injuries that would kill others. Now a drug has been found that might turn virtually any injured person into a "super-survivor", by preventing certain biological mechanisms from shutting down.

1.3.10
Projo.com: A new medical relationship: Physicians, healers, botanicals
The world of relationships is seeing a new medical marriage — one between traditional healers (once called shamans and witch doctors) and those from university hospitals. For example, physicians treating epilepsy, an illness affecting 50 million people worldwide, are partnering with village healers to bring treatments to patients in developing countries. The new alliance is emerging as doctors grapple with huge unmet medical needs and search for culturally sensitive solutions.

12.23.09
HIStalk: HIStalk Interviews Jeffrey Robbins
Jeff Robbins is founder, president, and CEO of LiveData.

12.3.09
Medical News Today: World First: Rectal Tumor Removed Through Anus, Avoiding Painful Abdominal Incisions
The world's first patient to have a malignant rectal tumor removed through the anus, thus avoiding painful abdominal incisions, was a 76-year old woman who was able to leave the Barcelona hospital where she was treated 5 days later, with no complications, and is said to be making an excellent recovery.

Additional Coverage on Transanal Endoscopic Microsurgery (TEM) Surgery: EndoNurse, EurekAlert!, LittleAbout, blog.taragana.com, Procto-Med.com, HealthCareTips.org

10.30.09
MassDevice: Sean Hogan Q&A, IBM's vice president of global healthcare delivery systems on how data collection and analysis will change the face of the healthcare industry.
Sean Hogan has a front-row seat for one of the great inflection points in the history of healthcare. The VP of Global Healthcare Delivery Systems for computing colossus IBM leads the development of the company's healthcare industry solutions. Not a bad spot to be in, considering how much investment is being poured into healthcare information systems from players as diverse as Google and the U.S. government.

10.28.09
MassDevice: GE Healthcare CTO Harsh: "We're still practicing sick care" CIMIT Congress features
local innovation and high-profile speakers.
From his perch atop the technology pipeline at GE Healthcare, Michael Harsh sees a couple of areas in which the healthcare industry must make a significant leap forward before it can move from what he calls "sick care" to providing true "healthcare."

10.27.09
Running a Hospital Blog: CIMIT Advances
The two young men featured are Nevan Hanumara and Conor Walsh, Ph.D. candidates in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. You see them here at the current Innovation Congress of CIMIT, being held in Boston. CIMIT is a multi-institutional cooperative venture with the mission of improving patient care by facilitating collaboration among scientists, engineers and clinicians to catalyze the discovery, development and implementation of innovative technologies, emphasizing minimally invasive approaches.

10.18.09
Boston.com: 10 cc’s of technology, stat! Symposium explores ways consumer devices can help us heal
Set aside for a moment the whole messy, Washington-centric debate about restructuring our health care system. When will we start talking about how we can use technology to be healthier and improve the interactions we have with our doctors? New England is a center of gravity for what I think of as the new health interface.

10.14.09
Utne Reader Names Three Boston Residents as “Visionaries”
National Magazine Selects Locals Among 50 People who are Changing the World
Utne Reader names three Boston residents as visionaries who are making their individual marks on the world. Nawal Nour, Kristian Olson and John Wilbanks are among 50 people the magazine has included in its November-December issue, on newsstands Oct. 20.

10.9.09
Medical News Today: LiveData Wins SBIR Phase II Grant To Develop Integrated Clinical
"Plug And Play" Environment For Patient Safety System
LiveData, Inc., a leader in real-time data integration and display, has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC). LiveData will use the $730,000 grant to develop an integrated clinical environment with CIMIT's Medical Device Plug-and-Play (MD PnP) team. Together with its CIMIT/MGH partners, LiveData is developing MD-ICEMAN, an architecture for integrating medical technologies.

10.6.09
Healthcare IT News: The ICEMAN cometh, and it's plug-and-play
LiveData, Inc., a real-time data integration technology company, has been awarded a $730,000 grant from the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center to pursue standardization of information integration technologies. LiveData will use the money to develop an integrated clinical environment with the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology's Medical Device Plug-and-Play (MD PnP) team.

10.1.09
Lexington Minuteman: Lexington doctor leads cancer fight
Even with survival rates of nearly 85 percent, the fight against breast cancer constantly engages medical researchers. Claire Cronin hopes she may have found a way to increase that survival rate.

10.1.09
Newsweek: PTSD - New War on An Old Foe
Big changes underway at the VA could mean better treatment for thousands of vets. A bureaucracy in transition.
They are the invisible wounds of war, the battered minds and bruised spirits we have come to recognize as posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. By one estimate, more than 300,000 of the nearly 2 million U.S. servicemen and -women deployed since 9/11 suffer from the often-debilitating condition, with symptoms that include flashbacks and nightmares, emotional numbness, relationship problems, trouble sleeping, sudden anger, and drug and alcohol abuse.

9.17.09
The Boston Globe: Safe at home. After Red Sox visits to Walter Reed, team foundation
and MGH launch effort to help struggling war veterans
It was supposed to be a brief stop for the Red Sox to share the World Series trophy with wounded soldiers. But the team lingered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for much of the afternoon, deeply moved by their conversations with amputees and veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

 

8.26.09
Princeton University: Undergrad wins $100,000 to expand iPhone app for diabetics
After watching diabetic friends and family members struggle to keep track of their food consumption, blood sugar and insulin intake, Matthew Connor knew there had to be a better way. Then it dawned on him: Most people nowadays carry mobile phones.

8.25.09
mobihealthnews: CIMIT awards diabetes iPhone app $100,000 grant
Matthew Connor, a rising junior at Princeton University received a $100,000 grant from Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) to build a more in-depth online portal for his diabetes management iPhone app.

8.14.09
MassHighTech: Draper device detects tuberculosis via breathalyzer
Cases of tuberculosis in the United States are still rare enough to make news. This week, 42 inmates at the Brunswick County jail in North Carolina tested positive for the bacteria, and two years ago the country was captivated by the case of an Atlanta man with a rare form of the disease who had fled authorities and was eventually jailed.

8.7.09
Boston Business Journal: Doctor's success stems from passion for self-improvement
Dr. Ross Zafonte quickly made a big impact at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in 2007 as the new chairman of Harvard Medical School’s department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, and vice president of medical affairs.

7.31.09
Mass High Tech: Five emerging sectors offer promise with new technologies
The robotics industry in Massachusetts is nearly a $1 billion business, encompassing software, hardware, component-makers and other related companies, according to a report on the state’s robotics industry by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council released earlier this year.

7.16.09
BigThink.com: Dr. Ronald Dixon Featured 'Healthcare Revolution' Expert
VIDEO: Making Primary Care The Primary Focus
VIDEO: Fulfilling Healthcare’s Digital Promise
VIDEO: Downloading Health: Why Don’t Doctors Use Text Messaging and Email?
VIDEO: Tough Medicine: A Big Think Interview With Ron Dixon About Reinventing Healthcare

7.14.09
Columbia University's School of Engineering & Applied Science: Students Win CIMIT Prize
team of graduate students led by Ming Jack Po PhD’11 Biomedical Engineering has won a $25,000 engineering prize for developing a therapeutic computer game for children with autism.

7.12.09
Federal Telemedicine News: CIMIT Demonstrates New Tech
The Center for Integration of Medicine & Innovative Technology (CIMIT) showcased several novel medical device innovative technologies at the Army’s Advance Medical Technology Exposition held in June.

6.26.09
MIT News: PhD candidate wins $150K CIMIT prize
John Moore, a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Lab, recently took top honors in the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) Prize for Primary Healthcare, a new nationwide annual competition.

6.22.09
wbur.org: You Want To Take My What Out Of My Where? Hospitals Experiment With Orifice Surgery
Imagine a major surgery that leaves no scar, causes little pain, heals quickly and lets you get back to regular activities in just a few days. Research into exactly that is being funded by a Boston health care nonprofit called CIMIT that is headed by Dr. John Parrish. He said the goal is to give doctors access to what’s inside your body, without cutting the outside of the body.

6.1.09
The Boston Globe: The doctor will see you now online - Why your next physician's visit may be just a click away
You know the drill. You schlep to the doctor's office and wait for what seems like hours - despite having an appointment. As the time ticks away, your frustration level rises, along with the number of other commitments you are missing. That's today. But tomorrow holds promise for virtual improvement - literally.

6.1.09
MIT News: New system allows earlier monitoring of fetal heartbeat - Noninvasive technique could prevent complications
Tiny fluctuations in a fetus's heartbeat can indicate distress, but currently there is no way to detect such subtle variations except during labor, when it could be too late to prevent serious or even fatal complications. Now, a new system developed by an MIT scientist and colleagues including an obstetrician could allow much earlier monitoring of the fetal heartbeat.

5.19.09
Scientific American: Scientific American 10 - Guiding Science for Humanity
Ten researchers, politicians, business executives and philanthropists who have recently demonstrated outstanding commitment to assuring that the benefits of new technologies and knowledge will accrue to humanity.

5.19.09
BioOptics World: New CIMIT grants fund optics and photonics innovations among high-potential medical research projects Among the funded technologies are an optical sensor for colon cancer screening, an image-guided laser therapy catheter for Barrett's esophagus, a hybrid optic-electromagnetic surgical tool tip tracking system for neurosurgery, and a photo-activated nanofiber graft material for tendon repair.

5.1.09
Mass High Tech: Disposable robot aims to guide way to biopsies
After several years of development, Cambridge-based startup Robopsy is entering the home stretch in its quest to get to market with its disposable robotic diagnosis devices.

5.1.09
Mass High Tech: Handheld device painlessly tests muscle for ALS
Researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School are literally trying to take the sting out of monitoring muscle deterioration for sufferers of neuromuscular diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

4.12.09
The Providence Journal: RISD people demonstrate what they do, including developing a life-like medical training mannequin. In the Army, if you sign up to be a combat medic, you get 12 weeks of classroom training before you’re taken out for two weeks of ultra-realistic field training.

3.16.09
Medical News Today: World Health Care Congress Focuses On Extremely Affordable Health Innovations
The "Extremely Affordable Health Innovations" Poster Session, organized and sponsored by the 6th Annual World Health Care Congress with support from Grameen Health, will serve as a platform for innovative organizations involved in developing or implementing extremely affordable solutions in health care delivery.

2.25.09
Technology Review: The Doctor Kiosk. An automated health-care interface aims to streamline preventative screening
A computerized kiosk under development at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) can take a patient's medical history, weight, pulse, blood pressure, and other vital signs, and even perform simple blood tests for glucose and cholesterol.

2.24.09
Telemedicine and e-Health: Innovative Programs in Telemedicine - CIMIT
Boston is a mega-center of healthcare knowledge and cutting-edge clinical advancement. Capitalizing on this tremendous wealth is the Center for Integration of Medicine & Innovative Technology (CIMIT), a consortium of hospitals
and engineering schools supporting translational research for medical device and clinical technology system applications.

2.6.09
Mass High Tech: Health data kiosk replaces in-person doctor visits
A local physician is building a tabletop “medical data collection device” that he hopes will do for patient management what ATMs did for finance. The medical kiosk, dubbed the Health Care 360, is meant to reduce the time and cost of health screenings or routine doctor visits — especially for patients with chronic health conditions.

1.05.09
BBC Podcast: International on Car Part Incubators with Dr. Kris Olson - The Silent Tsunami

12.29.08
The Boston Globe: Medical devices lag in iPod age. Patients' safety is at risk, experts say
A 32-year-old woman was on the operating table for routine gall bladder surgery, and doctors needed a quick X-ray. To keep her chest still while the image was shot, her ventilator was switched off. But the anesthesiologist, distracted by another problem, forgot to turn the breathing machine back on. The woman died.

BOSTON.COM INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: Connected Care

12.08
Anesthesiology News: Model Contract Gives Momentum To Interoperability Movement
The movement to create “plug-and-play” interoperability between medical devices is edging toward the longsought goal of linking the plethora of proprietary equipment, sensors and other electronic technologies to increase patient safety, reduce costs and improve efficiencies in the operating room.

12.17.08
NECN SCI-TECH: Incubator designed to get better mileage in developing countries
Video: Every year millions of babies die in the developing world. Many of them from treatable ailments. This happens even though organizations routinely donate high tech incubators that cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece. So how do you improve infant care? A group of doctors and engineers in Boston are turning to car parts.

12.16.08
New York Times: Looking Under the Hood and Seeing an Incubator
The heat source is a pair of headlights. A car door alarm signals emergencies. An auto air filter and fan provide climate control. But this contraption has nothing to do with transportation. It is a sturdy, low-cost incubator, designed to keep vulnerable newborns warm during the first fragile days of life.

12.15.08
Boston Globe: He is 'The Man' of life-saving devices
When Kris Olson was an undergrad, he took a year off from school to see the world. He wanted to let chance decide his fate, so he wrote Asia on one slip of paper, South American on another, and Africa on the third, crumpled them up in a hat, and picked one. Fate chose Asia.

12.08.08
Design News: Practice Makes Perfect
From life-sized, interactive mannequins to virtual reality systems, simulators are transforming medical training.

11.26.08
NECN.com: Cancer fighting innovation wins Kennedy Award
Video: Researchers are working toward cancer treatments that are tailored to target areas where tumor cells cluster. Dr. Yolonda Colson describes the treatments. She is the lead researcher in an advanced cancer-fighting team that recently won the "Kennedy award for healthcare innovation" from CIMT, the Center for the Integration of Medicine, and Innovative Technology. Dr. Colson is the only female Thoracic surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

11.17.08
Technology Review: The Future of Healthcare
Video: The technologies that are sure to better the industry.

10.29.08
Boston.com White Coat Notes: CIMIT conference displays reach of healthcare technology
Old and new converged at the CIMIT Innovation Congress Exploratorium yesterday, where medical devices were pitched for use from the battlefield to the hospital to the retirement home.

10.29.08
The Wall Street Journal: Medtronic Exec: Medical Devices ‘Finished’
Would-be medical-device entrepreneurs got a sobering message Wednesday at a Boston conference of academic researchers and medical-device companies. “You can’t keep stuffing gizmos into people to treat end-stage disease,” the keynote speaker said. “When biotechnology gets right, we’re finished. Because it’s restorative, not palliative as devices are”.

10.29.08
Live Science: Brain Zap Improves Dexterity
A slight zap of electricity to the brain could make righties better at using their left hands, a new study shows. Researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School used a non-invasive electrical stimulation technique to see if it made 16 healthy, right-handed volunteers better at using their left hand.

9.30.08
Digital HealthCare & Productivity.com: Open Source Research Tool
The virtual operating room may be a step closer to reality, thanks to the latest version of 3D Slicer, a new generation of freeware that has already been used for brain mapping, image guided surgery, virtual colonoscopy, and other biomedical research. The aptly named “Slicer” provides different views of the same subject on demand, such as vivid 3-D images of the brain, created from the raw data of two-dimension magnetic resonance (MR) images.

9.23.08
MassHighTech: Gel matrix mends damaged ACLs without surgery
Tom Brady may not need knee surgery after all. That is, if Martha Murray, an assistant professor and researcher in orthopedic surgery at Children’s Hospital in Boston, has anything to do with it. Murray has developed a promising new gel matrix that acts as a scaffold for the ACL healing process.

9.23.08
Boston Globe: Wounded Knees
Tom Brady's misery has plenty of company as millions of Americans every year endure torn ligaments and
shredded cartilage

9.23.08
Washington Post: Scarless Surgery Uses Body's Own Openings
When Albert Pagliuca got gallstones, his surgeon offered to remove his gallbladder with a new operation designed to hurt less, get him back to work more quickly and leave no visible scars. But there was one catch: Doctors would pull the organ out through his mouth.

8.27.08
Medical News Today: CIMIT Names Recipients Of Young Clinician Research Grants Worth $50,000 Each
CIMIT announces that six bright and promising medical professionals have been named recipients of the Young Clinician Award for 2008. The program is being supported by Johnson & Johnson's Corporate Office of Science and Technology, and each award is worth $50,000.

8.21.08
Boston.com White Coat Notes: Doctor's visits via Web cam get thumbs up
Patients like face-to-face doctors' appointments, but videoconference visits were almost as popular
in a small trial in Boston.

7.15.08
KTVU Channel 2: "A New Way to Perform Surgery"

7.9.08
MIT Tech Review: "Plug and Play" Hospitals, Medical devices that exchange data could make hospitals safer.
The bewildering variety of new medical devices in U.S. hospitals promises higher standards of care. But it also poses new opportunities for error. A growing number of physicians believe that the interoperability of medical devices--their ability to communicate with each other--could make hospitals safer and more efficient.

7.8.08
Advanced Imaging: Endoscopes Push Imaging Boundaries
Dating Back Centuries, Endoscopy Takes Advantage of Today's Cutting Edge Technologies

7.1.08
US Department of Defense: Center Develops Partnerships to Create Cutting-Edge Medical Technologies
The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center is dedicated to advancing the discovery of new and novel medical technologies and research and following them through to implementation, said the center’s director.

6.24.08
Channel 7 News Healthcast: Endoscopic imaging
A new high tech tool is giving doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital a jump on preventing cancer.
Bill Temm, 61, of Scarborough, Maine is undergoing a new and innovative treatment for catching cancer before it develops. It's called optical imaging. Doctors use fiber optic technology to detect pre cancerous cells.

5.15.08
Philadelphia Bulletin: Surgery Revolution
In 1985, when Sam Kravitz had his appendix out, his surgeon opened his belly with a scalpel and removed the offending organ, leaving him with a seven-inch scar after a four-day hospital stay.

5.5.08
Mass High Tech: Return to Vietnam renews CIMIT founder Parrish's vision
John Parrish returned from his year of duty as a battlefield doctor in Vietnam 40 years ago, but the Boston physician's mission to improve treatments for soldiers has endured.

5.2.08
Boston Business Journal: Boston group to deliver $5M in research grants
Early-stage projects target blood infections, HIV and breast cancer
A group of Boston teaching hospitals and engineering schools will commit more than $5 million in grants to 26 medical-research teams in Massachusetts beginning this October.

5.2.08
Boston.com White Coat Notes: CIMIT awards $5m in grants for medical technology
A Boston consortium that brings together medicine and engineering has awarded $5 million to 28 research teams, including major grants to combat life-threatening blood infections, to detect viral illnesses, and to use nanoparticles to halt the spread of cancer.

5.1.08
Boston.com White Coat Notes: CIMIT clone: MIMIT
A Boston consortium of hospitals and engineering institutions that spurs innovation in medical technology has formed an affiliate in northwest England.

4.14.08
Newsweek: Open Wide. No, Wider. Are we ready for an era of 'natural-orifice surgery'?
Twenty-five years ago, typical appendectomy patients could expect to spend as many as seven days in the hospital and the rest of their lives with a two-inch scar on their bellies.

3.14.08
Boston.com: Dr. John A. Parrish Mentioned in White Coat Notes Notables

3.7.08
Mass High Tech: MIMIT mimics CIMIT. Techie docs hop the pond
After 10 years of spurring development of new medical devices, a Boston nonprofit consortium of clinicians and engineers is exporting its business model to the United Kingdom.

3.6.08
National Defense Magazine: Creating the Body's Microenvironment to Grow Artificial Organs
Whether due to disease, injury or other causes, millions of Americans suffer tissue loss or organ failure every year. Those who need replacements are put on organ donor lists. But the supply falls far short of demand.

2.25.08
Boston.com: CIMIT makes largest-ever grant for scar-free surgery
CIMIT has awarded a three-year, $2.1 million grant to a group of area doctors working on a new kind of minimally invasive surgery.

1.24.08
The Engineer Online: Medical research centre launched
A research centre known as MIMIT (Manchester: Integrating Medicine and Innovative Technology) has been launched to combine the talents of medics and engineers to solve clinical problems.

1.23.08
England's Northwest: Manchester aims to replicate Boston's medical success
Manchester has said that it hopes to recreate the success enjoyed by the Boston-based Centre for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), following the launch of a new medical research centre in the city.

1.21.08
Science l Business: Manchester launches new medicine research collaboration
A new research centre bringing medics and engineers together to solve clinical problems is set to make Manchester a world leader in patient care.

1.18.08
Mass High Tech: Dr. Julian Goldman - Plug-and-play med devices could save lives
Physician Julian Goldman says patients are dying because of a lack of a widely adopted standard for the interoperability of medical devices -- a long-sought fix to link disjointed technologies in clinical settings.

1.8.08
American Society of Anesthesiologists: Scientific and Educational Exhibit Winners
First-place tie winners from Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School
The Committee on Scientific and Educational Exhibits has announced the winners for the ASA 2007 Annual Meeting held October 13-17, in San Francisco.

1.7.08
Boston Globe: Scar-free surgery. In new operation, doctors insert tools through natural orifices, keeping skin intact
It's mid-morning at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the patient is lying flat on her back in the operating room, sedated. Her belly gently swells and falls as she breathes.

12.26.07
Boston Globe: Make a mistake, and this mannequin dies in battle. Dr. Steve Dawson and his team are creating a dummy that will die if you don't treat it right.
Dr. Steve Dawson and his team are creating a dummy that will die if you don't treat it right. Intended for training combat medics, the smart mannequin being built from scratch in his Massachusetts General Hospital lab.

12.1.07
IndUS Business Journal: Medical tech event reveals hot devices. Conference aims to pair doctors with technologists
The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology’s ninth annual Innovation Congress took place in Boston and featured some of the latest emerging medical technology and brought together some of the most cutting edge researchers in the field.

11.29.07
NECN Video: Dr. Steve Dawson, Simulation Program create simulated patients for Army trauma medical training

11.14.07
Boston.com: CIMIT shows the future
Last night was a technophile’s dream at the Exploratorium, the CIMIT name for a room full of displays hinting at the future of medicine as envisioned by its member hospitals and universities.

10.05.07
Boston Business Journal: Transformed Toyotas can save lives -- as incubators
The "Transformers" science fiction movie that came out during the summer -- based on a 1980s-era toy line and cartoon -- made a big splash with its story about other-worldly robots that can morph and mold themselves into different objects.

9.20.07
Science Daily: A Step Toward Tissue-Engineered Heart Structures for Children
Infants and children receiving artificial heart-valve replacements face several repeat operations as they grow, since the replacements become too small and must be traded for bigger ones. Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have now developed a solution: living, growing valves created in the lab from a patient's own cells.

9.20.07
XConomy: BioEngine - One Step Closer to Artificial Liver Device
For almost as long as surgeons have been transplanting organs such as hearts, livers, and lungs, they’ve been frustrated by the scarcity of available organs, and have imagined a future where artificial organs might ease the shortage. One local transplant surgeon, Massachusetts General Hospital’s Joseph Vacanti.

8.28.07
Technology Review: Dr. Khademhosseini named among nation’s top young innovators
His research is focused on improving engineered tissue in a process called “living Legos.”

7.13.07
Boston Business Journal: Novel NOTES causes docs to rethink incision decision
Dr. David Rattner witnessed something on video a few years ago that blew his mind: a surgery performed in India in which a man's appendix was taken out through his mouth.

7.07
Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News: Hype, Theories on NOTES Abound, But Where It Is All Headed Is Anyone’s Bet (PDF)            

5.8.07
Boston Globe: He develops robotics to assist surgery
Nobuhiko Hata, a radiologist who invents new technologies for use in surgery, is currently developing a swimming robot that will wriggle through the gastrointestinal tract.

4.29.07
CNN.com: Surgeons go to new lengths to prevent scarring
Page no longer available.

3.27.07
Boston.com: Contrast agent may shed light on breast cancer diagnosis
Dr. John Frangioni, CIMIT Investigator and researcher at BIDMC, has developed a way to make a contrast agent that binds to malignant micro-calfications in the breast .

3.26.07
The New York Times: How to improve it? Ask those who use it.
Dr. Nathaniel Sims, an anesthesiologist, has figured out a few ways to help save patients' lives. In doing so, he also represents a significant untapped vein of innovation for companies .

3.21.07
Boston.com: CIMIT gets grant to bring managers and scientists together
CIMIT collaboration facilitated by gift from John Abele and the Argosy Foundation

3.19.07
CNN: Made-for-the-military products put brakes on bleeding
The solution to curb severe bleeding was the same three years ago as 3,000 years ago -- gauze, applied with pressure. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have added groundbreaking and fast-working wound dressings to the medic's bag.

3.15.07
MIT Technology Review: 10 emerging technologies of 2007
John Guttag says using computers to automate some diagnostics could make medicine more personal

3.8.07
USA Today: Military prodded on brain injuries
The Pentagon needs a comprehensive plan to identify and treat tens of thousands of troops who may suffere from traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the Iraq war .

3.7.07
Boston Magazine: Whole New Game Plan:
An ingenious injectible gel reinvents surgery for an injury that vexes young athletes
Each year more than 175,000 Americans tear their anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, the major stabilizing tissue in the knee. About 38 percent of those are high schoolers, a number that keeps rising as more kids get involved in sports; the injury is especially prevalent in girls, who are five times more likely to suffer a knee rupture.

2.9.07
Mass High Tech: Surgeon makes 'gel gun' to heal female athletes' injuries
Dr. Martha Meaney Murray, through initial funding by CIMIT, has developed a new way to treat ACL injuries .

2.1.07
Anesthesiology News: ASA Panel on Medical Device Interoperability

1.21.07
Mass High Tech: Advice for health-care IT entrepreneurs
Health-care IT is a complex, dynamic business. A 200-bed hospital can have up to 100 software applications, each supplied by a different vendor. It takes up to five systems exchanging data to dispense a drug.