Nobody likes scars on their body. Whenever our skin is injured, be it by accident or from any surgery, our body works to repair the wound. As our skin heals, a scar may form, as this is a natural part of the healing process. But the appearance of a scar often depends on how well the wound heals. With the advent of new innovations in hydrogel technology, wound care can be transformed.

Using revolutionary technology, hydrogel wound care can help prevent unnecessary infection and heal wounds before they become chronic. The benefits of employing antimicrobial peptides in wound care have been researched for years, but unfortunately as the peptide degrades quickly upon contact with bodily fluids it was impossible to actually employ as it would simply break down before it could have a positive impact. However, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new material, a hydrogel, that suspends and protects the peptides, meaning they do not break down as readily. This innovative new technology will allow peptides to be used in dressings, as wound care, for the very first time and due to the unique nature of the peptides this technology can even be used to treat wounds that have antibiotic resistant bacteria. 

The big challenge when managing and treating wounds is infection. If the wounds get infected, it can greatly hamper the healing process and sometimes you can have such a severe infection that it could become fatal. Another challenge is that of chronic wounds, these are wounds that never heal, sometimes growing, causing extended discomfort to the patient and often requiring surgical intervention. Chronic wounds are especially difficult when dealing with patients who have other diseases, such as diabetes, that affect their ability to heal. Also, if patients are on certain drug treatments that limit their immune system their wounds become more difficult to treat. When combined, chronic wounds and the risk of infection are the biggest challenges we face within wound care.

The hydrogel focuses on eradicating bacteria that is present in the wound and in the surrounding skin and it is very effective as it has a rapid, almost immediate, killing effect. It is what is known as a contact killing device, so as soon as the bacteria gets in contact with the device, it is killed. It also attaches to the surface, therefore as you remove the wound patch you also remove the bacteria. One of the key benefits here is that it is very selective towards bacteria, but at the same time, it has a broad efficiency when it comes to different types of bacteria including gram-negative, gram-positive or resistant strains. It has also been proven that it has very low toxicity, so it does not cause irritation or pain when applied to the skin. Low toxicity is highly beneficial when healing wounds because if a treatment has any toxicity present, it can affect the tissue-forming cells and hamper the healing process. Furthermore, because it is a hydrogel that contains a lot of water, it creates a moist environment for the wound, which is ideal for promoting healing.

It is a quicker process. As a device it does not leach out any substance into the wound, ensuring that it stays as a local effect and does not need to be taken up by the body in any way. And because of that it is not dependent on the release, you do not need to build up a certain dosage or certain concentration, which is a common thing with many other devices that do release substances, in which you must reach a specific therapeutic dosage before the product will work effectively.

Source: https://www.healtheuropa.eu/

With the COVID-19 self-testing landscape maturing in India, US-based pharma and diagnostics giant Abbott launched Panbio, a rapid antigen self-test kit in India for Rs 325 a test. This is the second such test kit available in the country after Pune-based Mylab Discovery Solutions launched CoviSelf (priced at Rs 250 per test) in May.

Abbott’s Panbio, which will be imported from its Korean plant, will be available at retail outlets by the end of this month. Ambati Venu, Vice President, Pharmaceuticals, Abbott India said that compared to an RT-PCR test, this is much more economical, and therefore, access to a self-test will be much higher.

Venu added that PanBio would be distributed through collaboration between Abbott’s diagnostics and pharmaceutical divisions. “We will make the product available across half a million stores, which will not only cover semi-urban but also tier-2 and 3 cities where the access to RT-PCR was always a challenge,” he said. PanBio Self-Tests will be available via retail pharmacies and through e-commerce platforms, as well as through organizations and institutions. The PanBio professional test demonstrated 95.7 per cent sensitivity and 97.6 percent specificity when benchmarked against RT-PCR tests.

“Abbott is the only diagnostics manufacturer to provide performance data on a rapid antigen test specific for use on children 15 years and younger, including infants,” the company claimed. PanBio is on the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Use Listing. Abbott expects to import a few million kits, but did not give a specific number. Venu said, “We are targeting three segments–home testing (self testing); assisted testing in clinics, labs etc; and third is ‘return to work’ segment. As corporates start opening up, airline travel picks up, educational institutions re-open, and hotels resume hosting clients, there is huge potential for such point of care COVID-19 testing.”

In India, Abbott will offer self-tests for use at home, assisted professional testing at point of care and laboratories, as well as workplace testing to help enable a sense of normalcy in returning to places of employment.

“Rapid antigen testing is critical in the fight against COVID-19 and Abbott is delivering a variety of diagnostics options at a critical juncture in the pandemic,” said Sanjeev Johar, divisional vice president of Abbott’s rapid diagnostics business in Asia Pacific. “Self-testing is a proven tool that provides an added layer of defense along with public health protocols and the vaccine roll out.”

The company has also priced the kit competitively. Johar elaborated: “The test is available in four pack sizes – one test pack is available for Rs 325 at the retail outlet to the consumer. As one moves to larger packs, the price per test becomes economical–for 20 test packs, it is Rs 280 per test.”

The PanBio COVID-19 Antigen Self-Test is easy-to-use, Abbott said. “People can take the test by using a simple nasal swab (not the deep nasopharyngeal swab) while following the Instructions for Use steps on pack. For children younger than 14 years, an adult caretaker should help collect the nasal samples and conduct the test procedures. The kit contains all the materials required including nasal swabs, test devices and reagent ampules. No additional instrumentation is required to conduct the test,” it explained.

The results come in 15 minutes, and the test is to be used along with Abbott’s NAVICA mobile app. The app offers a process of self-registration, automatic reading of results and reporting as per ICMR guidelines. Since last August to date, Abbott has shipped 300 million PanBio COVID-19 Antigen Rapid tests for professional use in more than 100 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa.

Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article

With the increase in cyber risks/ threats and healthcare digitalisation, have you ever wondered how ethical is the algorithm that you use to improve your healthcare delivery? Now with the release of WHO guidelines, one can evaluate them and make sure that it works for the public interest in all countries.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds great promise for improving the delivery of healthcare and medicine worldwide, but only if ethics and human rights are put at the heart of its design, deployment, and use, according to new WHO guidance published today. The report, Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health, is the result of 2 years of consultations held by a panel of international experts appointed by WHO.

“Like all new technology, artificial intelligence holds enormous potential for improving the health of millions of people around the world, but like all technology, it can also be misused and cause harm,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This important new report provides a valuable guide for countries on how to maximize the benefits of AI while minimizing its risks and avoiding its pitfalls.”

Artificial intelligence can be, and in some wealthy countries is already being used to improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and screening for diseases; to assist with clinical care; strengthen health research and drug development, and support diverse public health interventions, such as disease surveillance, outbreak response, and health systems management.

AI could also empower patients to take greater control of their own health care and better understand their evolving needs. It could also enable resource-poor countries and rural communities, where patients often have restricted access to healthcare workers or medical professionals, to bridge gaps in access to health services. However, WHO’s new report cautions against overestimating the benefits of AI for health, especially when this occurs at the expense of core investments and strategies required to achieve universal health coverage.

It also points out that opportunities are linked to challenges and risks, including unethical collection and use of health data; biases encoded in algorithms, and risks of AI to patient safety, cybersecurity, and the environment.      

For example, while private and public sector investment in the development and deployment of AI is critical, the unregulated use of AI could subordinate the rights and interests of patients and communities to the powerful commercial interests of technology companies or the interests of governments in surveillance and social control.

The report also emphasizes that systems trained primarily on data collected from individuals in high-income countries may not perform well for individuals in low- and middle-income settings. AI systems should therefore be carefully designed to reflect the diversity of socio-economic and health-care settings. They should be accompanied by training in digital skills, community engagement and awareness-raising, especially for millions of healthcare workers who will require digital literacy or retraining if their roles and functions are automated, and who must contend with machines that could challenge the decision-making and autonomy of providers and patients.

Ultimately, guided by existing laws and human rights obligations, and new laws and policies that enshrine ethical principles, governments, providers, and designers must work together to address ethics and human rights concerns at every stage of an AI technology’s design, development, and deployment.

Six principles to ensure AI works for the public interest in all countries

To limit the risks and maximize the opportunities intrinsic to the use of AI for health, WHO provides the following principles as the basis for AI regulation and governance:

1. Protecting human autonomy: In the context of health care, this means that humans should remain in control of health-care systems and medical decisions; privacy and confidentiality should be protected, and patients must give valid informed consent through appropriate legal frameworks for data protection.
2. Promoting human well-being and safety and the public interest. The designers of AI technologies should satisfy regulatory requirements for safety, accuracy and efficacy for well-defined use cases or indications. Measures of quality control in practice and quality improvement in the use of AI must be available.
3. Ensuring transparency, explainability and intelligibility. Transparency requires that sufficient information be published or documented before the design or deployment of an AI technology. Such information must be easily accessible and facilitate meaningful public consultation and debate on how the technology is designed and how it should or should not be used.
4. Fostering responsibility and accountability. Although AI technologies perform specific tasks, it is the responsibility of stakeholders to ensure that they are used under appropriate conditions and by appropriately trained people. Effective mechanisms should be available for questioning and for redress for individuals and groups that are adversely affected by decisions based on algorithms.
5. Ensuring inclusiveness and equity. Inclusiveness requires that AI for health be designed to encourage the widest possible equitable use and access, irrespective of age, sex, gender, income, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability or other characteristics protected under human rights codes.
6. Promoting AI that is responsive and sustainable. Designers, developers and users should continuously and transparently assess AI applications during actual use to determine whether AI responds adequately and appropriately to expectations and requirements. AI systems should also be designed to minimize their environmental consequences and increase energy efficiency. Governments and companies should address anticipated disruptions in the workplace, including training for health-care workers to adapt to the use of AI systems, and potential job losses due to use of automated systems.

These principles will guide future WHO work to support efforts to ensure that the full potential of AI for healthcare and public health will be used for the benefits of all.

Source: https://www.who.int/news/

This pandemic has taken the entire healthcare industry by swing and now we all are making efforts to build a resilient ecosystem around it to mitigate any similar situation in the future. State Bank of India NSE 2.27 % (SBI) has launched a business loan for the entire healthcare ecosystem. This could be really helpful to strengthen the healthcare infrastructure across the entire country.

The SBI has launched ‘Aarogyam Healthcare Business Loan’. Under this new product, the entire healthcare ecosystem such as hospitals, nursing homes, diagnostic centres, pathology labs, manufacturers, suppliers, importers, logistics firms engaged in critical healthcare supply can avail of loans up to Rs 100 crore (as per the geographic location) repayable in 10 years.

To provide enhanced support to the healthcare sector amid the pandemic, State Bank of India NSE 2.27 % (SBI) has launched the Aarogyam healthcare business loan. Under this new product, entire healthcare ecosystem such as hospitals, nursing homes, diagnostic centres, pathology labs, manufacturers, suppliers, importers, logistic firms engaged in critical healthcare supply can avail of loans up to Rs 100 crore (as per the geographic location) repayable in 10 years, SBI said in a statement. The Aarogyam loan can be availed either as term loan to support expansion/modernisation or as working capital facilities such as cash credit, bank guarantee/letter of credit, it said.

In metro centres loans under Aarogyam can be availed up to Rs 100 crore, Tier I & Urban centres up to Rs 20 crore and in Tier II to Tier VI centres upto Rs 10 crore, it said. The beneficiary units/borrowing Companies availing loan of up to Rs 2 crore will not be required to offer any collateral or security to the bank as this will be covered under the guarantee scheme of Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE), it said.

SBI Chairman Dinesh Khara said, “We believe this special loan product will provide the much needed financial support to enable expansion/modernisation of existing facilities and also creation of new facilities.With Aarogyam Healthcare Business Loan, our endeavour is towards strengthening the healthcare infrastructure across the entire country.”

Aarogyam Healthcare business loan will be eligible under the COVID loan book being created by banks announced by RBI as part of COVID relief measures.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry

Protein structure is the core of biochemistry and has profound implications for medicine and technology. With thousands of protein structures being established, there will be improvement in the productivity of pharmaceutical research pipelines. Google‘s AlphaFold 2 indisputably won the 14th Critical Assessment of Structural Prediction competition, a biannual blind test where computational biologists try to predict the structure of several proteins whose structure has been determined experimentally — yet not publicly released. Their results are so incredibly accurate that many have hailed this code as the solution to the long-standing protein structure prediction problems.

DeepMind—a British subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.(a.k.a. Google)—announced it’d solved a “grand challenge” in biology. The challenge is known as “the protein folding problem.” It required the AI company to develop a way to predict proteins’ structures based solely on their amino acid sequences. Using the cutting-edge method, AlphaFold, the company says it will sequence every protein scientists know. And it’s already released structures for 350,000 of them on a searchable database.

MIT Technology Review reported on DeepMind’s newest application of AlphaFold. Notably, in a very Google-ish fashion, the company has set up a searchable database that anyone can use online. AlphaFold DB’s tool is already up and running, and people can search the entire human proteome. As well as the proteomes of 20 other scientifically relevant organisms such as yeast, fruit flies, and mice.

AlphaFold can structure the various proteins that make up an organism’s proteome. Using machine learning, the organism’s entire set of constituent proteins. DeepMind trained the AI on roughly 170,000 protein structures from a large database. The training allowed the AI to “learn” which amino acid sequences lead to which types of proteins. Thanks to its gleaning patterns from the data, AlphaFold can now identify novel protein structures after only seeing their amino acid sequences.

Source: https://nerdist.com/article/

In order to break the chain of transmission of the virus, several measures are being taken by governments around the globe. As most of the western countries have already allowed self-test for their citizens, India has also developed it’s first home COVID-19 test kit. This really looks promising step towards the efforts to break the chain and our fight against COVID-19.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Wednesday approved the country’s first COVID-19 self-testing kit for home use. That essentially means anyone can collect their own nasal sample and test it for SARS-CoV-2. The self-use test kit can be used by symptomatic individuals and immediate contacts of confirmed cases as per the ICMR’s guidelines. The test kit, named CoviSelf, will cost Rs 250, and can be bought without a prescription from pharmacies and online, the company said. The test requires the user to download an app on their mobile phone, but will not need a healthcare professional to collect a swab sample.

How does a self-test kit help?

Many states are going through a second wave of infections, putting pressure on diagnostics laboratories. The RT-PCR test, considered the gold standard for COVID-19 testing, takes 3-4 days to give results, delaying hospitalisation and treatment. Self-test kits can potentially be a game-changer in COVID-19 management in India. These can cut queues in laboratories, reduce costs, dissipate the burden on existing manpower for sample collection from homes, and provide quick results (within 15 minutes), leading to prompt treatment and isolation.

Such a self-test kit was first approved in the US last November. A rapid-result all-in-one test kit produced by Lucira Health was given emergency use authorization. Similar kits have been approved in Europe and South Korea too.

What is the kit approved by ICMR?

CoviSelf has been developed by MyLab Discovery Solutions, a Pune-based molecular company. It uses a rapid antigen test, in which a nasal swab sample is tested for the virus and gives results within 15 minutes. Taking the test takes hardly two minutes. This testing kit cost Rs 250, while RT-PCR test costs between Rs 400 to Rs 1,500 and a rapid antigen test in laboratory costs Rs 300-900 in different states.

“For India, we will make millions of kits available at a fraction of the cost of such kits in the US,” said Dr Hasmukh Rawal, managing director in MyLab. MyLab’s current production capacity is 70 lakh kits per week, and it plans to scale up to one crore kits per week in the next fortnight. The kits will be available across at least seven lakh chemists and e-pharmacy portals in India, the company said.

“This easy-to-use test combines with MyLab’s AI-powered mobile app so that a user can know his/her positive status, submit the result to ICMR directly for traceability, and know what to do next in either result. We are sure this small step will be a big leap in mitigating the second and subsequent waves,” said Sujit Jain, director, MyLab Discovery Solutions.