Dutch health tech startup Lapsi Health, a company that creates sound (auscultation) tech (and software tools) for the development of clinical and digital medicine, recently announced that it raised US$ 3.7 million as part of its Seed Series.

The company’s technology aims to empower clinicians at the point of care and improve remote consultations. It will use the US$3.7 million to continue research and development, acquire FDA certification, and start commercialisation activities in the United States.

Lapsi Health was previously awarded a €1M Eurostars grant and raised their latest round of funding in March 2022 (€700K in a Pre-Seed Round).

A group of old and new investors have joined the Seed round. Sahir Ali of Modi Ventures, a family office in Texas that has lately entered the Venture Capital sector through investments in the areas of Artificial intelligence and Tech Bio, is leading the Seed Series. Some of the company's Pre-Seed investors (Vendash, Bolwork), as well as some new investors (Israeli-Ukrainian software development company BeKey) have joined Modi Ventures.

"During the year, we released four generations of prototypes and two native applications. We have been able to validate our technology and showcase it in several venues worldwide and to several medical leaders. This helped us to secure the next step in the funding for our company, now with the goal of bringing our technology to the market during 2023," explained Lapsi Health CEO Jhonatan Bringas Dimitriades.

Lapsi Health Founders (from left to right): Seamus Holohan (COO), Jhonatan Bringas Dimitriades (CEO), Diana van Stijn (Chief Medical Officer) and Rodrigo Alvez (CTO)

Several prominent figures from the healthcare industry, including Craig Lipset, Rafael Grossman, Aline Noizet, Suzanne Terheggen, Carlos Sendon, and Amir Lahav, have joined the company's Advisory Board since the beginning of the year. Additionally, Microsoft's Chief Medical Scientist, Dr. Junaid Bajwa, joined the company's Advisory Board in the third quarter of 2022.

"As a patient, all of my encounters with my primary care provider and my pulmonologist involve listening to my lungs. Lapsi Health brings that capability with confidence for remote care as well as remote clinical trials. The technology will improve patient experience and outcomes while supporting the new normal for healthcare and clinical research," said Craig Lipset, DTRA co-chair and member of the Advisory Board.

The COVID-19 crisis has been felt more acutely in healthcare than perhaps any other industry. The pressure to address the immediate threat to people’s lives led to the redeployment of doctors and nurses, reducing capacity elsewhere in the system. Meanwhile lockdowns led to a vast increase in remote diagnostics and the closure of outpatient clinics.

A more positive outcome, however, has been the increase in the speed at which innovation has been adopted. It is no exaggeration to say that innovation which, before the pandemic, would have taken a decade to adopt, is now being fast tracked into healthcare systems – particularly if it achieves the dual goal of better clinical outcomes and reduced cost.

Related: MedTech devices are facilitating cost-effective care

Predicting the future is a risky business at the best of times but there are some clear trends emerging in healthcare that pose important considerations for the medical technology (MedTech) industry in 2023 and beyond.

Balancing telemedicine solutions

Related: The Future of Healthcare: Five Trends in HealthTech Services

The pandemic triggered an increase in telemedicine solutions, with consultations largely moved to virtual platforms. This helped healthcare professionals (HCPs) remain safe but impacted healthcare delivery as many conditions simply cannot be identified via video or phone calls.

Bernard Ross, CEO and founder, Sky Medical Technology

Many healthcare systems have since realised that some patients struggle to get appointments or become frustrated with remote diagnostics. 2023 will see this trend begin to reverse in favour of a hybrid model. Telemedicine and remote diagnostics will continue, but the future will focus on balancing convenience with patients’ needs for face-to-face appointments.

Hospital-to-home care

There will be an increased use of remote monitoring devices and MedTech that can be self-applied and managed at home. MedTech that allows patients to manage their conditions remotely reduces the need for frequent check-ups. The deployment of clinical grade monitoring equipment has the power to make care more efficient, providing treatment to patients only when they need it. 

Remote treatment will also increase, enabling hospital-to-home care to support overwhelmed front-line staff. Patients can address issues in the home that previously would have required a hospital visit, helping keep patients experiencing delays for surgery comfortable while they await treatment.

Accelerated adoption

The necessity driven by the pandemic has encouraged faster and more frictionless adoption of MedTech. This move has been supported by HCPs who recognise that only technology can effectively bridge the gap between increased medical demand and limited budgets.

There is a good reason why healthcare services have traditionally been slow to adopt new treatments and standards of care: changes need to demonstrably deliver better clinical outcomes to be adopted.  This can be hard to prove and takes time to demonstrate.  When most new treatments were pharmaceutical, there was always a concern around potential long term side effects, particularly if a new treatment was only marginally better than the previous standard of care.

But as the pace of evolution within the MedTech industry quickens, treatments can demonstrate real patient benefit far more quickly.  MedTech solutions can speed up healing by double or more, and several have adapted or modified medical techniques in new formats or applications. This will only increase in 2023 and beyond.

Driving sustainability

Healthcare will not be immune to the growing global climate crisis, and 2023 will see more emphasis on sustainable solutions that drive a more circular healthcare system. MedTech companies will increasingly be challenged to demonstrate compliance with high levels of sustainability as part of them becoming a preferred supplier. Clinicians will also look to MedTech innovation which provide solutions that are good for the planet – not just those that do less harm.

Less supply chain vulnerability

Whether it was the shortage of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) medicine for menopausal women or the fall-out from the lack of suitable personal protective equipment (PPE) for front-line staff, this year demonstrated the critical importance of a robust and effective supply chain in healthcare. Systems need to deliver continuity of care in an unpredictable world, particularly ensuring drugs and MedTech solutions that help people heal are always available. 

A final key trend of 2023 will be that MedTech companies are required to prove that they can ensure continuity of supply in all circumstances, especially as healthcare systems take less of a ‘just-in-time’ approach to the delivery of critical products.

A world of opportunity

As MedTech further matures in 2023 and beyond, there will be challenges and opportunities for the industry.  Better solutions for patient care that can demonstrably tick the dual boxes of improved outcomes and reduced cost will enjoy less barriers to adoption. This adoption, in turn, will provide additional opportunities to deliver value to healthcare systems and challenge the standard of care status quo across both inpatient and outpatient treatments. 

At the same time the industry needs to consider important new challenges such as a robust and reliable supply chain as well as demonstrating improved sustainability over time.  If the industry continues to showcase its potential to deliver better clinical and financial outcomes, 2023 and beyond will remain the age of MedTech.

 

Bernard Ross is CEO and founder of Sky Medical Technology (Sky). A serial entrepreneur, Ross has more than 20 years’ senior experience at private and public board level across multiple industries including pharmaceutical, technology development and FMCG. Ross was former Head of International Development at CMI plc, Senior Vice President, Cardiovascular of Bioaccelerate Inc. (BACL) and former CEO of Innacardio Inc.

 

Decentralised clinical trials (DCTs) have existed for a reasonably long time. However, the pandemic accelerated their mainstream adoption with sudden restrictions concerning travel and physical contact.

As we are past the worst of the crisis, the momentum created is here to stay. After all, increased DCT adoption has unfolded a path of several efficiency and patient benefits, a significant one being the amplification of health equity.

What are decentralised clinical trials?

Decentralised clinical trials, virtual clinical trials, or siteless clinical trials basically refer to contactless and digital trials. In decentralised modes of clinical studies, the subject recruiting, medicine delivery and administration, and data gathering on the trial's outcomes occur without face-to-face contact between the trial participants and the research investigator.

How did COVID-19 introduce momentum for decentralised trial adoption?

Between January to April 2020, there was a 50 per cent drop in the number of monthly trials in response to the dangers of the public health emergency. Consequently, trial sponsors responded with a technological push to ensure the continuity of clinical studies.

Virtual trials were immediately optimised to ensure compliance, including remote consent and videoconferencing for assessments, phlebotomy at home, etc. With that, DCT adoption multiplied immediately, unfolding varied benefits.

How does it enhance equity and equality in healthcare?

In traditional clinical trials, the cohort under study is usually linked geographically to the central point for practical reasons. After all, investigators must calibrate the study group across several parameters to ensure accurate results. Ensuring this consistency across a spread-out cohort costs extensive resources, which are finite.

Data confirms this reasoning. A McKinsey study found that over 70 per cent of people lived more than two hours away from a trial site. As a result, this limited choosing a widely spaced-out cohort for conducting clinical studies. The outcome was that members of minority communities, people of colour, different ethnicities, and diverse socioeconomic groups were commonly left underrepresented as participants and clinical trial investigators. Consequently, studies could gather only limited clinical evidence on how drugs are assimilated by various bodies, depending on their physiological, gender, or ethnicity-related differences. Thus, analyses were inevitably biased by setting.

With decentralisation, many of these traditional challenges are left behind. This is introducing more significant equity in healthcare research:

• Doors have opened to include more volunteers and investigators for studies with no travel requirements.
• As diversity in trial investigators is now possible, there is a natural spillover toward improving the diversity of clinical trial participants who feel more comfortable participating. This includes people of all genders, ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic background.
• Moreover, as decentralisation leverages digital media for targeting volunteers, there's also enhanced cohort diversity as more people are willing to participate and follow through due to ease.
• Academic researchers can also now become principal investigators without additional administrative burden or cost.

All these are improving outcomes in equity and inclusivity and will advance healthcare further in the coming years.

The near future looks hybrid

As of now, decentralised trials cannot eliminate traditional site visits despite all their benefits towards equity and research outcomes. Studies sometimes require physical visits regarding specific complex procedures and specialised assessments, such as screenings and magnetic resonance imaging. However, hybrid trial designs are certainly a potent way to boost equity to a large extent with decentralisation.

 

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Kinzal Jalan is an experienced B2B content marketer with demonstrated expertise in Health, SaaS and Technology.

Recent scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements have resulted in a huge number of new or updated medical devices, many of which include highly developed embedded-control functions and interactivity. In the last decade, medical beds have been significantly impacted by this increase, taking on unique forms and functions, according to a report by BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, titled ‘Smart medical beds in patient-care environments of the 21st century: a state-of-art survey.’ 

The increased demand for well-equipped hospital beds with innovative features is propelling market growth with smart hospital beds becoming increasingly popular, forecasted in the ‘Hospital bed market forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 impact and global analysis by type, usage, application, and end user’ report published by the National Institute of Health. 

Related: How can hospital beds support nursing staff in the ICU?

For example, from the aspect of information technology (IT), smart hospital beds that use wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have led to a seamless and efficient solution to avoid bedsores in motion-impaired patients. Hospital beds have been transformed into highly networked appliances that use simple software (apps) and are categorised as Class 2 medical devices that seek electronic intelligence. 

Smart beds are expected to benefit patients and improve health systems by delivering research information on medical and health status, statistical analysis, and data collection. This welcomes efficiency and accurate diagnostics for healthcare providers and medical professionals, while paving the way to reduce the number of hospital readmissions. Smart beds can further create a network of connected devices, mechanical and digital gear, or people with unique identifiers and the ability to send data at rapid speeds. 

Related: Innovative emergency hospital bed for COVID-19 quarantine centers comes to GCC

"Smart beds are becoming a gold standard of treatment," says Dr. Donna Macricci of New York General Hospital's intensive care unit in the report ‘Smart Beds for Hospitals with Internet of Things Solutions’, which features the most advanced hospital beds in the city. Around 10 of the 24 beds at this facility are considered ‘smart beds’ that can track anything from patient weight to pneumonia and bed ulcer prevention.  

According to estimates, 6.5 per cent of Americans struggle with independent living, while 3.6 per cent struggle with self-care. Persons with such limits may face difficulties ranging from being unable to dress themselves to being unable to buy food, run errands, or visit the doctor. In these cases, smart beds provide patients with independence. 

<< Back to Technology 

The World Health Organization projects a shortfall of 10 million health professionals by 2030, mainly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the industry will face a shortage of 18K – 48K primary care physicians in 2019 – 2034. But why does this happen? 

The supply of medical professionals cannot keep up with the demand due to several reasons: underinvestment in education and training in some countries, a large portion of doctors approaching retirement age, and the COVID-induced exodus, forcing clinicians to leave the field temporarily or permanently due to stress, risk, and frustrations. 

Related: Medical apps record a rise in investments

Besides, clinicians quit jobs due to burnout and the issues connected with the EHR systems. According to KLAS research, around a third of doctors strongly disagree that initial EHR training prepared them well. Is it possible to improve custom EHR software to fight the scarcity? Various technologies can improve the EHR system’s performance and mitigate the painful moments of working with it.

The top technologies for this matter are AI, big data, and predictive modelling. So how can they help? 

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Related: DHA becomes first healthcare authority in the UAE to integrate UpToDate within an electronic medical record

An AI-enhanced EHR system can facilitate the work with the tool in two directions: 

• Speeding up data extraction

With AI functionality, clinicians can reduce the time needed for the relevant data search and its extraction. The research published in JAMA in July 2021 featured the efforts of gastroenterologists from Stanford University Hospital (Stanford, California). The doctors and the AI-driven system had to analyse the electronic health records of random patients and deliver conclusions. Eventually, the AI-driven system saved 18 per cent of the time, while the quality of human vs AI-driven analysis was comparable. As for the participants’ feedback regarding the new feature, the overall majority (92 per cent) considered it positive and efficient. 

• Facilitating document management 

Clinical documentation comprises various data – clinical notes, medical images, and sensor data. Electronic health records hold it all. However, about 80 per cent of clinical data is unstructured and unsuitable for medical analysis. Enabling natural language processing can help with making use of this data. 

Integrating NLP algorithms into the EHR system spares clinicians the need to fill in the EHR data manually. They can simply dictate the information, thus improving efficiency and reducing time and effort spent.

Besides, NLP can assist doctors in providing quality care. For instance, it can help to determine whether a follow-up is needed. NLP technologies help to recognise and classify various documents and the patient's medical track records. With a predefined checklist for assigning follow-ups, NLP technologies save doctors time, eliminating the need to manually go through multiple patient histories to ensure they do not miss their visits.

Big data analytics

Some social determinants, such as income, education level, employment status, and the need for social support can affect patients’ health immensely. Usually, this data comes from various government-supported and private sources (insurance companies, charities, and educational facilities). That data is raw and unstructured. This is where big data analytics can assist. Those solutions can extract unstructured data from many non-clinical sources, normalise it, and add it to patient profiles.

Uniting big data and electronic health records can help you improve various aspects of your clinic operation, namely:

• Fraud prevention. Enabling big data functionality within the EHR system allows users to identify patterns that may indicate fraudulent activity. This information can then be used to improve your clinic’s financial security.
• New therapy development. By analysing historical data with big data functionality, experts can identify patterns that highlight potential problems or areas for improvement. In addition, you can activate real-time alerts that help clinicians spot potential issues early.
• Developing efficient population health initiatives. By applying big data add-ons to EHR data sets, providers can perform efficient risk stratification. This effort allows clinicians to identify trends and patterns in patient populations.

For example, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, employed big data analytics to detect seven subtypes in chronic kidney disease (CKD, patients. Moreover, the data gathered can help clinicians assess the relevant treatment decisions in terms of effectiveness and suitability.

Moreover, the amalgamation of big data analytics and health records data gave rise to the All of US project. This large-scale research program aims to promote precision medicine and accelerate research relying on EHR data.

The program welcomes representatives of all ethnic groups and sets up a connection between patient genomes and their phenotypes. Individuals share their health information and the relevant social determinants over time. After the submission, researchers study the data and deliver the insights to the participants. This research can help improve healthcare with better diagnostic tests or personalised treatments for different people.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics in healthcare is rapidly developing and helps providers increase cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency. The use of predictive analytics tools with EHR solutions can grant several benefits:

- More accurate diagnostics. With a predictive analytics tool on stage, doctors can upload a patient’s medical history into the tool, which then combs through the data and delivers the most likely diagnosis. 

- Enabling preventive medicine. Clinicians can assess the risks of certain diseases in their patients and offer timely measures for prevention or severity reduction measures.

- Detecting at-risk patients on time. The tool can work on a larger scale – your patient populations. The add-on can dive into your EHR data to assess population health and identify at-risk patients. Such patient groups often need specific health plans and lifestyle recommendations.

 

Understanding and improving interoperability

EHR interoperability has long been a challenge in the industry. Today, several solutions can help solve this challenge:

- EHR data standardisation: The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is to become a standard for EHR data worldwide. Observing FHIR allows different medical systems to share data seamlessly. However, the correct standard implementation is a challenge even for EHR developers. The thing is that implementations among partners should be compatible. This can be difficult to achieve if partners employ different vendors.

- Health information exchange (HEI). An HEI is a programmatic tool that lets providers, patients, and other partners exchange healthcare data securely. The HEI scale may differ. They can operate at the level of a city, a state, across neighboring states, or nationally.

Conclusion

Though most US healthcare providers employ EHR systems, their appeal to users still leaves much to be desired. About 30 per cent of clinicians even quit their jobs due to EHR-related issues. Is it possible to change the situation? We believe enhancing custom EHR software with some advanced functionalities can help. 

Thus, enhancing the system with AI can accelerate the relevant data search, and the NLP module can spare clinicians the tedious manual work of filling in the slots altogether. With the big data analytics module in the system, providers can improve fraud prevention, streamline new therapy development, and enable risk stratification for efficient population health management. The predictive analytics module can help ensure swifter and more accurate diagnostics and timely prevention measures for individuals and patient populations. 

It also makes sense to discuss the existing interoperability solutions with the vendor, select the one that suits you best, and have the vendor’s assistance in implementing it.

These measures for improving the EHR system performance can help refine doctors’ experience and reduce staff outflow in healthcare.

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Inga Shugalo is a US-based Healthcare Industry Analyst at iTransition: Software Development Company.

Paediatrics is one of the most rapidly changing fields in medicine, and paediatricians are continually innovating and adapting to the latest trends in order to provide the best possible care for children. This involves using new technology, adapting to changing lifestyles, biomedical equipment, and exploring new treatment methods.  

The use of technology based equipment to diagnose and treat children such as Artificial Intelligence research in genomics, innovations in ultrasound and echocardiography, electronic health records (EHR), and mobile-based apps for diagnosis are on the rise. Likewise, telemedicine has proven to be one of the fastest solutions during pandemic due to swift communication between patients and doctors.  

Related: Thinking Innovatively in Paediatrics

Ongoing technological advances in paediatrics are improving survival outcomes among babies born with life-threatening conditions. Also, there is increasing use of minimally invasive surgery to treat health conditions in children. Surgical procedures like brain shunts, trachea, gut, heart reconstructions, and organ transplants are changing palliative care in neonates.  

Let us have a look at some of the recent developments brought in by technology in paediatrics:  

Smart pill  

Related: Utilisation of 3D-printing and 3D-modelling techniques in paediatric cardiac surgery

A new generation of tech-enabled pills involves a prescription medication that’s embedded with a minute sensor that sends a signal to a wearable patch. The patch then forwards the information, for example, to the patient’s computer, allowing them to monitor prescription compliance. The technology also allows paediatricians to monitor patients’ heart rates, sleep levels, and physical activity.  

3D Printed hearts  

3D printing is becoming the next frontier of organ-transplant medicine. Although 3D printing is still far from creating a full replacement for a human heart, this technology has significantly improved the outcomes of heart surgeries for children. Using MRI and CT scan images, child physicians create models and enlarge them to study a patient’s heart defects more closely.  

Surgeons then have the opportunity to practice on these printed models, which leads to more precision during surgery and fewer complications for children afterward.  

Gene therapy for leukemia  

Even though leukemia is the most common type of cancer in children and teens, its exact causes still remain unresolved by researchers. However, at least some types have been linked to gene mutations.  

In gene therapy, patients would have their body’s own disease-fighting T cells fortified and multiplied in a lab, then get the cells transferred back to their bodies to help them fight the cancer. Physicians and researchers deem this advance as a new class of cancer therapy that might eventually be adapted to treat all types of cancers.  

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO)  

ECMO is a technique which helps the child to get extended cardiac and respiratory support when their body is naturally unable to do so under any circumstances, be it due to an illness or during surgery. To simplify, ECMO machines are similar to heart-lung bypass machines used during open-heart surgery.  

Stem cell transplant  

A stem cell transplant (also called bone marrow transplant) is the infusion of healthy stem cells into the body to stimulate new bone marrow growth. Stem cells are vital to a person’s ability to fight infection. Stem cell transplants are performed on children whose stem cells have been damaged by disease or invasive treatments for cancer such as chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.  

Epilepsy treatment  

The concept of epilepsy surgery dates back to the olden times, though our understanding of epilepsy and surgical techniques have evolved significantly since then. While most patients with epilepsy achieve good seizure control with medication, some do not.  

Traditionally, in the past, surgeons temporarily removed a large part of the skull bone to locate the seizure onset zone, placed grid and strip electrodes on the surface of the brain and placed depth electrodes into the brain. Whereas, with shift in paediatric care, stereoelectroencephalography (sEEG) records electrical signals within the brain by using electrodes that are implanted using a minimally invasive procedure. These electrodes help locate the seizure source. Once these sources are detected, a newer less invasive surgery is carried out called Ablation where brain tissue is removed by either heat (thermal ablation) or soundwaves (radiofrequency).  

 

These recent developments and technological evolution are en route to change the face of paediatric care. The advances will help paediatricians in efficient diagnosis or the root cause analysis of a disease while improving the care of children and their families. Undoubtedly, it is crucial for the doctors to keep themselves updated on the latest innovations and trends to ensure that they are providing the most efficacious as well as high-quality treatment to the child patients.  

To help medical specialists working with children stay in sync with the latest buzz in the paediatric world, a two-day long Paediatrics Conference will take place at Arab Health on February 1 to 2, 2023 at Dubai World Trade Centre. The theme of this year’s edition ‘Paediatrics in contemporary times: Addressing emerging epidemics of mental health and obesity’, will provide health practitioners an excellent opportunity to explore and seek solutions to address issues on paediatric allergies, gastroenterology, genetic disease and obesity.  

Notable experts from around the world will share their expertise and present the most up-to-date information and diagnosis and treatment of these issues, giving delegates access to the best scientific content and an opportunity to network with the leaders in paediatrics. 

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Libza Mannan is an independent writer, development communications professional, and columnist at Omnia Health.

The discovery of a molecule in urine that can identify early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and a simultaneous approval of a drug that can slow down its progression are tipped off to be the much-awaited breakthroughs in the treatment of the disease. 

Researchers suggest that hopes for an inexpensive and convenient urine test, which reveals signs of early-stage Alzheimer’s, have been raised after a first-ever study found a molecule in urine could be a signal for the disease. 

Related: Biomarkers for neurodegeneration – diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and more

They said that a simple urine test to analyse formic acid — a sensitive urinary biomarker — could show if someone is in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease. A separate study, hailed as a landmark breakthrough in Alzheimer's research, found that the drug lecanemab reduced memory decline among patients with early stages of the disease. Lecanemab targets and clears amyloid — one of the proteins that build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's — was found to slow memory decline. 

Dr. Ahmed Ebied, Specialist Neurologist at Medcare Hospital, Sharjah said, “Alzheimer’s disease is an age-related brain disorder that develops over many years. Toxic changes in the brain slowly destroy memory and thinking skills. Symptoms most often first appear when people are in their mid-60s and get worse over time, eventually leading to a severe loss of mental function.” 

Related: Alzheimer's disease: Where are we today?

According to the World Health Organisation, more than 55 million people live with dementia worldwide, and there are nearly 10 million new cases every year. In the Middle East, however, there is no accurate estimation of patients with Alzheimer’s disease due to the lack of a registry. But, in the UAE, an increase in life expectancy is leading to a rise in the number of Alzheimer’s-related dementia cases that are predicted to go up sixfold by 2030. 

To identify differences in urinary biomarkers, researchers tested 574 people in the urine study, some who were healthy and others who had varying levels of Alzheimer’s, and found that urinary formic acid is an indicator of subjective cognitive decline. Current methods of diagnosing the condition are expensive, inconvenient, and unsuitable for routine screening and this means that many patients only receive a diagnosis when it is too late for effective treatment. 

In the study published in the Frontiers in Ageing Neuroscience, authors from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: “Alzheimer’s disease is a continuous and concealed chronic disease, meaning that it can develop and last for many years before obvious cognitive impairment emerges. The early stages of the disease occur before the irreversible dementia stage, and this is the golden window for intervention and treatment. Therefore, large-scale screening for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease is necessary for the elderly.” 

Samples of urine and blood were analysed and psychological evaluations were performed for the study. It was found that urinary formic acid levels were significantly increased in all the Alzheimer’s groups compared with the healthy people, including the early-stage cognitive decline group. This suggests formic acid could act as a sensitive biomarker for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers said. 

“The detection of urine biomarkers of Alzheimer’s is convenient and cost-effective, and it should be performed during routine physical examinations of the elderly,” said the researchers. 

According to Dr. Ebied, currently, there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease. “But there are treatments that may change disease progression, and drug and non-drug options that may help treat symptoms.” 

He said that in 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Aduhelm (aducanumab) for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease to slow disease progression, and in September 2022, the drug lecanemab was announced as a top-line result of a major trial in slowing down the progress of Alzheimer's disease. 

“The results showed that the drug successfully removed amyloid and tau proteins from the brains of people living with early Alzheimer's disease. It is awaiting official FDA approval,” added Dr. Ebeid. 

The metaverse, the virtual shared space in which people can interact and communicate with each other and with virtual objects and experiences, has attracted attention and scepticism in equal measure. 

Promoted by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg as a way to facilitate socialisation, entertainment and business, the metaverse has also been increasingly identified as a revolutionary tool for the healthcare industry. 

Remote services 

Related: How virtual reality and the metaverse can improve patient safety

One key area in which the potential of the metaverse is in no doubt is telemedicine. 

Telemedicine involves the use of electronic communication technologies to provide clinical healthcare services remotely, and it has become increasingly popular to access medical care during and since the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Related: The dawn of the metaverse in healthcare

Indeed, before the pandemic, just 43 per cent of healthcare facilities in the US had the ability to provide remote treatment to patients. With the figure today at around 95 per cent, the demand for tools that facilitate remote services is clear. 

The metaverse could provide a unique platform for virtual consultations with healthcare providers, allowing patients to receive care from anywhere in the world. This will help healthcare professionals diagnose minor conditions in a more personal setting than over the phone. 

Education, education, education 

Another potential application of the metaverse in healthcare is in medical education and training. Medical professionals could use the metaverse to participate in simulations and virtual reality training exercises, allowing them to practice their skills without the need for physical resources such as cadavers or specialised equipment. 

The metaverse could also be used to create ‘digital twins’ – virtual models of physical objects generated using real-world data. These are typically used to simulate various real-world processes and scenarios to better understand how they would interact in reality. In the metaverse, these digital twins could allow healthcare professionals to practice on digital copies of patients to help them understand how specific treatments would affect them. 

Therapy and rehabilitation 

Remote rehabilitation and physical therapy are other areas that could be facilitated by the metaverse. Patients could use virtual reality exercises to improve their mobility and coordination from the comfort of their own home. This could be particularly useful for individuals living in rural or remote communities, or for those with mobility issues that make it difficult for them to travel to a healthcare facility. 

In addition, the metaverse could be used to host virtual support groups and therapy sessions for patients with chronic conditions or mental health issues. These virtual support groups could provide a sense of community and connection for individuals who may not have access to in-person support. 

Ultimately, the metaverse could be used to create a kind of virtual hospital in which medical professionals can undertake all manner of services, from diagnosis to therapy.  

Although Mark Zuckerberg won’t be eliminating physical medicine any time soon, his tool could significantly reduce the burden on doctors and nurses by providing an outlet for swift, efficient remote diagnosis and treatment.