Protecting Against Medical Identity Theft

January 28, 2020

Since the implementation of National Provider Identifiers (NPIs) by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), billing processes have been simplified and streamlined. The unique ten-digit identifier codes assigned to physicians and other healthcare providers by the US Department of Health and Human Services have now become a part of the majority of electronic health information being transmitted and are used in a variety of circumstances, including authentication, process control, individual claims, contracts, agreements, and more. Although the use of NPIs has improved efficiency and eased burdensome processes, their existence poses a potential threat of identity theft and medical fraud.

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Thyroid Awareness Month: AI-Assisted Thyroid Nodule Classification

January 24, 2020

January marks the beginning of Thyroid Awareness Month , which aims to spread awareness of thyroid conditions affecting over 20 million individuals living within the United States. Up to 60% of those with thyroid disease are unaware of their condition, while women are significantly more likely to experience thyroid issues than men. Although the underlying causes of thyroid disease are largely unknown, it is important to routinely evaluate the thyroid as undiagnosed thyroid disease can put patients at risk for severe health complications – including cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and infertility.

Alongside conditions such as hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, the thyroid may also frequently develop nodules. Most don’t cause any symptoms and are benign in the majority of cases, however, a small percentage of thyroid nodules are cancerous. To improve early detection techniques, research efforts have begun investigating the potential benefit of employing artificial intelligence (AI) in classifying thyroid nodules.

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Optoceutics: A New Regenerative Medicine Technique

January 16, 2020

Currently, gene therapy, biomedical engineering, and stem cell therapies are among some of the most common and widely studied regenerative medicine techniques. Unfortunately, most of the strategies available today lack key characteristics – such as selectivity and reversibility – and researchers continue to investigate a range of promising alternatives in their quest to delay the aging process and mitigate the body’s susceptibility to disease. A new discovery in the field of regenerative medicine exhibits potential to spark advances in the field of tissue engineering; novel research from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Milan has revealed the benefit of using light to facilitate the formation of new blood vessels in a new technique called “optoceutics.”

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