If you were obliged to receive healthcare instructions from a machine rather than a human, which would you prefer, a robot or a tablet? ‘People respond better to robots than computer tablets delivering healthcare instructions’ say a team from the Department of Psychological Medicine, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at The University […]
Tag: hospitals
Nosocomical [sic] infections from Holy Water?
From a medical point of view, not all religious practices are always 100% risk free. See, for example, a recent Improbable article : ‘Official word: The body of Christ is not and cannot be gluten-free.’ But gluten intolerance is not the only area for concern – what about Holy Water in hospital chapels for example […]
Handy microbe-hunters on the other side of the world
Anemona Hartocollis reports in the The New York Times: “At North Shore University Hospital [pictured below] on Long Island, motion sensors, like those used for burglar alarms, go off every time someone enters an intensive care room. The sensor triggers a video camera, which transmits its images halfway around the world to India, where workers are […]
White coats good – sandals bad
What should Italian hospital doctors wear (if they want to maintain patients’ confidence)? In the first study of its kind (in Italy) researchers Sotgiu G, Nieddu P, Mameli L, Sorrentino E, Pirina P, Porcu A, Madeddu S, Idini M, Di Martino M, Delitala G, Mura I, and Dore MP, at the Epidemiology and Medical Statistics […]