Health care

GE Healthcare on Monday announced the commercial release of a new, smartphone-size imaging tool that lets physicians carry ultrasound technology in their pockets.

The group says its Vscan imaging device is now commercially available after receiving clearance by the FDA in the U.S. and getting the CE Mark from the European Union and the Medical Device License from Health Canada.

Specifically, Vscan is cleared as a prescription device for ultrasound imaging, measurement, and analysis in the clinical applications of abdominal, cardiac (adult and pediatric), urological, fetal/OB, pediatric, and thoracic/pleural motion and fluid detection.

Early trial user Dr. Anthony N. DeMaria … Read more

Microsoft hopes to vamp up its HealthVault and other health services by making it easier for users to do everything from track their caloric intake to count their steps using their cell phones, according to researchers at a Microsoft forum on health care technology in Beijing.

Microsoft researchers are also busy investigating the potential of Xbox 360 units--which are cheaper than similar hospital equipment yet often just as powerful--to feed and filter information from electronic medical records onto in-room display screens for patients and caregivers, according to Desney Tan, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, who spoke during the … Read more

The artery walls of people living within 100 meters of a highway thicken more than twice as fast as the average person's, according to a report this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

Researchers from Spain, Switzerland, and the U.S. used ultrasound to measure the carotid artery wall thickness of 1,483 people living near freeways in the Los Angeles area. They took measurements once every six months for three years and correlated the numbers with estimates of outdoor particulate levels at each participant's home.

The artery wall thickness among those living within 100 meters (328 feet) … Read more

IBM said Wednesday that it has agreed to buy Initiate Systems, a privately held company that makes software designed to help health care companies manage and share information.

Initiate's software is geared toward customers in both the private sector and government, all of whom deal with a huge amount of health care information across different systems. Initiate's Interoperable Health software tries to help health care companies and government agencies more quickly find and share patient and clinical data, thereby saving them time and money.

The company's customers run the gamut from health care payers to providers to … Read more

Bill Gates returned to "The Daily Show" on Monday night, trading barbs with Jon Stewart while highlighting his philanthropic work.

Gates, who last appeared on the show three years ago to tout the launch of Windows Vista, showed up this time to coincide with the release of his annual foundation letter (also the subject of this CNET interview I did with Gates).

On the Daily Show, Gates caught Stewart up on recent history, pointing out that it has been 18 months since he left Microsoft's full-time employ.

Stewart quickly recovered. "Do you feel unburdened now not … Read more

SEATTLE--Bill Gates thought that coming up with vaccines would be the hard part and that delivering vaccines would be the easy part.

It turns out they are both hard.

That's one of the lessons that Gates tells CNET he has learned in his new role as full-time philanthropist. In travels to Africa, he saw firsthand the challenges of delivering vaccines, many of which have to be kept cold to be effective and are needed in places with no refrigeration.

"We were a bit naive about that, particularly getting new vaccines adopted by countries," Gates said in an interview with CNET's Ina Fried last week. "It had been so long since they had done it, I just assumed they would look at the numbers, it would be a very straightforward process. Well, the process doesn't even exist."

Plus, he said, "The cold chain is more messed up than I expected."

In the interview, which was done in conjunction with the release of the annual letter (PDF) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates talked about other surprises he encountered in his travels, including the fact that one of the ways to reduce the spread of AIDS in Africa is to promote adult circumcision--something that he wasn't sure would be feasible.

"Male circumcision--which I thought wouldn't be a big effect because I didn't think adults would be that interested in it--it looks like that's really going to help slow the disease," Gates said.

Gates also talked about his recent foray into Twitter and the launch of his Gates Notes Web site.

"The Internet is tailor-made for the kind of activities I'm involved in," Gates said. "When I take a trip, we have all these photos. And there were things that were fun and exciting, and people want to see that. It's very easy to put it up there...I think it's going to be a lot of fun to be sharing on an ongoing basis, and people who are interested in a particular topic can just find that piece and go after that." … Read more

January 14 could be the biggest day for mobile giving to date, as word that texting "Haiti" to number 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross went viral via Twitter, Facebook, and news reports. (Facebook reports that its users have been posting more than 1,500 status updates a minute containing the word Haiti.)

In $10 increments, more than $4 million has been raised via the MGive Foundation's Haiti campaign, according to a Verizon Wireless spokesman. The campaign was set up with with the U.S. State Department and Red Cross late Tuesday night. While … Read more

Philips' DirectLife fitness tracker, which monitors one's daily activity levels by tracking the duration and intensity of movements, has been doing so well since its release in October 2009, according to a company representative, that it is about to be released in Germany and the U.K. Moreover, Philips has just announced a companion gadget that might actually rival the iPod.

The "program" associated with DirectLife, which costs $99, plus a $12.50 monthly membership fee, is three-pronged: wear the small, waterproof monitor with 3D accelerometer technology (think Wii) to track your movements; go online to get … Read more

Researchers at the University of Florida are predicting the spread of malaria based on their analysis of more than 21 million cell phone calls that track where and how often Zanzibar residents travel.

Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous region and tourist hot spot comprising two islands off the coast of East Africa's Tanzania, has commissioned this study as part of its consideration to launch a "total elimination" campaign. In recent years, Zanzibar has been able to drastically reduce new malaria infections through the use of bed nets and insecticide. But to make further progress, authorities wanted to get a … Read more