Paperless prescriptions, online access to medical records and video chats with your doc are just a few features of the Danish healthcare system. Although not everyone has jumped on the digital bandwagon yet, about half of the country’s hospitals and nearly all primary care doctors have opted for electronic records.

An approach to medical treatment like this could drastically change the way doctors help their patients manage their health. Patients with heart conditions, for example, could log blood pressure readings to help doctors monitor response to new medications or simply to track progress.

Not only would this save the doctor and the patient time, but it could also cut costs. Since its switch to digital healthcare about ten years ago, Denmark has saved an estimated $120 million per year.

Although the system has come a long way, there are still a few kinks to work out. With the rapid change of technology, doctors and patients alike have had to adapt quickly to make the most use of these services. Budgeting, too, can be a challenge for the tax-funded program.

“We’re trying to streamline now,” Otto Larsen, director of the agency that regulates the system, said in a story by the New York Times. “There are too many systems out there.”

More and more technology is being developed to help doctors make diagnoses from afar Much of Europe has switched to electronic record-keeping, and many are embracing the switch to “telemedicine.”  U.S. legislators questioning whether a similar structure could work for the United States.

“It was a natural progression for us,” Larsen said. “We believe in taking care of our people, and we had believed this was the right way to go.”

Only time will tell whether or not the trend in digital healthcare will effectively spread.

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Communicating can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for someone left mute by paralysis. Although there are existing devices that help paralyzed individuals speak, they are often inefficient for communication and tiresome for the user. This is the first to translate brain waves at the rate of natural speech.

"The most significant thing is that this shows it would be possible for someone who is paralyzed to speak in real-time rather than going through a painful typing process," lead researcher Frank Guenther said in an interview with MSNBC. "This communication is very important because these people are completely locked out from the rest of the world."

Guenther and his team tested the electrode on a 26 year-old male volunteer with locked-in syndrome, the result of a brain stem stroke. Individuals with this disorder are aware of their surroundings and can understand and react mentally, but are physically unable to respond.

The device, designed for permanent implantation without the risk of infection, is a neurotrophic electrode. The electrode is implanted in the speech-related motor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for speech planning and synthesis. After 3—4 months neurites attach to a portion of the device, allowing signals to be transmitted from the brain into the electrode. These signals are then transmitted to a computer that translate brain waves into recognizable, audible speech.

Because it is extremely difficult to differentiate the neural fluff from intentional cognition, determining which frequencies represent which sounds is a very timely process. As of now, only vowel sounds have been quickly and accurately produced. The device used for the trial had just three wires, however, and researchers believe additional wires may result in greater speech recognition capabilities.

“Our results support the feasibility of neural prostheses that may have the potential to provide near-conversational synthetic speech output for individuals with severely impaired speech motor control. They also provide an initial glimpse into the functional properties of neurons in speech motor cortical areas.”

Visit Healia's Stroke Community, or read the full study online at PLoS ONE.

According to a recent report, millions of Americans are receiving high levels of radiation from the over-use of computed tomography (CT) scans, thus increasing one’s chance of getting cancer. The report also states that, in a few decades, as many as 2 percent of all cancers in the United States may be due to radiation from CT scans.

The National Cancer Institute defines a CT scan as a diagnostic procedure that uses special x-ray equipment to obtain cross-sectional pictures of the body. This type of procedure offers a quick, relatively cheap, and painless way to get 3-dimensional (3D) pictures of the body. Doctors use the images to evaluate problems such as trauma, belly pain, seizures, chronic headaches, and kidney stones. Unfortunately, CT machines put out a lot of radiation.

Although the health risk from one single CT scan is small, experts worry that repeated use would have long-term health effects. Due to the fragmented state of health care in the United States, healthcare professionals and their patients often do not know how many CT scans they have had in their lifetime. About 62 million scans were done last year in the U.S. In 1980, 3 million scans were done.

The report states that the average American's total radiation exposure has nearly doubled since 1980, largely because of CT scans, and that medical radiation now accounts for more than half of the U.S. population's total exposure. Prior to 1980, radiation exposure came from sources such as radon and cosmic energy from the sun.

Are we taking unnecessary risks with CT technology? The study authors do not want to discourage people from having CT scans. In most cases, the benefits of having a CT scan outweigh the risks as they are very effective in diagnosing various medical problems. However, it is advised that people keep track of medical radiation exposure, especially for children. Future generations of devices that emit less radiation should help alleviate current concerns. And imaging technologies such as ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans may be safer options and are said to not expose people to radiation.

For more information on CT scans and cancer risk, please visit healia.com.