Amsterdam UMC to use e-health tool to remotely monitor heart patients at home From today, patients and doctors at Amsterdam UMC's Heart Centre can make use of the app HartWacht (HeartGuard, in English) to supplement their care. Through the use of a small measurement instrument, around the size of a cereal bar, and a mobile app, patients can now have their blood pressure and arrythmias monitored at home. This means that patients need to visit their cardiologist less frequently. For doctors, this means they have more precise measurements and can act quicker where necessary. A ''win-win'' in the eyes of Michiel Winter, cardiologist at Amsterdam UMC and leader of this project.
Using AI to reduce the number of blood cultures in A&E by 30% As soon as a patient arrives at the Emergency Department (ED), it is essential to speedily assess what is wrong with the patient and how they can be helped. In patients with suspected systemic infection at the ED, blood cultures are used frequently to demonstrate whether there is blood stream infection). Amsterdam UMC's acute AI-team's research has shown that performing routine blood cultures in patients with suspected sepsis is not always necessary. With the use of their own algorithm, the team wants to reduce the number of blood cultures in EDs across the world by 30%.
Artificial intelligence helps predict whether antidepressants will work in patients In patients with major depression disorder it is, thanks to use of artificial intelligence, now possible to predict within a week whether an antidepressant will work. By inputting a brain scan and an individual's clinical information into an AI algorithm, researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Radboudumc could see up to 8 weeks faster whether or not the medication would work. The results of this study are published today in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Ultrasound can be used to detect placenta problems in small babies A Doppler ultrasound that measures the blood flow of small unborn babies can reveal whether or not the placenta is working properly. In case of repeated deviations from these Doppler measurements, additional monitoring of the unborn baby is necessary. These deviations indicate a higher risk of oxygen deficiency and other health problems for the baby. This study by Amsterdam UMC in collaboration with UMC Groningen and 17 other Dutch hospitals is published today in the British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology.
Top doctors supporting top Dutch athletes The medical supervision of top-level athletes requires the know-how of top doctors. Known as High Performance Partners (HPP), eight doctors from Amsterdam UMC work together with TeamNL to support the country's best athletes. Orthopaedic surgeon Gino Kerkhoffs and paediatrician Annemarie van Bellegem are two of these High Performance Partners.
A computerised decision support system significantly reduces high-risk drug combinations in Intensive Care patients A recent multicentre study led by Amsterdam UMC and conducted in nine Dutch Intensive Care Units (ICUs) has shown that tailoring a computerised decision support system (CDSS) to the ICU environment significantly reduced the number of high-risk drug combinations administered to ICU patients. It also improved monitoring ICU patients when avoiding such combinations was not possible, and reduced the length of patients’ stay in the ICU. This study is published today in The Lancet.
Priming, Shaping and Polishing: In search of a HIV Vaccine Worldwide, an estimated, 40 million people live with HIV. Two-thirds of this group on the African continent. In 2022, more than 600,000 people died from HIV-related causes and more than 1.3 million were infected. There is no vaccine against the world's second most deadly infection, after TB. Thanks to a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Amsterdam UMC's Rogier Sanders leads a project that aims to develop the first effective HIV vaccine.
Tackling the effect of climate change on diarrheal diseases Diarrhoea is, globally, the second largest cause of death for children under 5. Contributing to more than 500,000 deaths, only pneumonia kills more children each year. Climate change, driving increased flooding and droughts, threatens the fragile progress made in reducing the burden of diarrheal disease over the past decades. Together with the Amsterdam Institute of Global Health and Development, Amsterdam UMC is set to lead a global consortium in the hunt for improved interventions.
Tiredness experienced by Long-COVID patients has a physical cause Researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) have discovered that the persistent fatigue in patients with long-COVID has a biological cause, namely mitochondria in muscle cells that produce less energy than in healthy patients. The results of the study were published today in Nature Communications.
