A cholera outbreak has killed four children in northern Nigeria's Kaduna State, and 25 other people have been hospitalised in the past three days, a senior health official said.

Aminu Sabo, the health director in the Chikun region of the state, told Radio Nigeria on Saturday that the disease was caused by drinking contaminated and untreated water.

He said residents of the affected area had resorted to the open wells as a source of drinking water after their taps went dry for weeks.

The nation can’t begin to build a better emergency care system unless hospital leaders commit to making the changes they can, according to participants at an Institute of Medicine workshop in Chicago.

There also is a pressing need for more federal funding for hospital emergency rooms and other elements of the emergency care system, participants said. In June, the IOM issued three reports calling for the creation of a more accountable, coordinated and regionalized system.

Annual screening for lung cancer with CT scan can identify lung cancers at an early curable stage, resulting in high 10-year survival rates, according to results of the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP).

Previous trials have demonstrated the "spiral" CT results in the early diagnosis of lung cancer among subjects at increased risk, I-ELCAP investigators report in The New England Journal of Medicine. Until now, however, no one had investigated if early intervention affects the outcome of these patients.

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. is partnering with Birmingham, AL-based WELLSPOT Medical Clinics Inc. to open free-standing walk-in medical clinics in three Jacksonville, FL area Winn-Dixie stores in mid- November. Current plans call for additional Winn-Dixie/WELLSPOT walk-in clinics in the Jacksonville area early next year, with the partnership expanding into other Winn-Dixie stores with in-store pharmacies in FL, GA, AL, MS and LA through the end of 2007.

A coalition of groups representing prostate cancer patients issued a call this week for Medicare to drop its policy of least costly alternative (LCA) for prostate cancer patients.
The LCA policy encourages providers to give patients the treatment that costs the least where treatments are deemed by the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) as interchangeable.

BrainLAB AG signed a contract today with Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) to establish a fully digital neuroscience center at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), as part of SingHealth’s plan to provide a comprehensive range of healthcare’s latest technologies in one location.

At RSNA 2006, PACSGEAR will be introducing PACSGEAR MediaSuite and exhibiting new PacsSCAN features.
MediaSuite come equipped with import of external DICOM CDs. It allows hospital file rooms and diagnostic imaging centers to: use one application to access all functionality for a consistent user experience; digitize plain film; import external DICOM CDs; scan paper and include electronic forms; and send multimedia images. It also includes small-footprint CD/DVD burner with label writing as it spins.

Neurosurgeons and radiation oncologists at a leading cancer hospital in Taiwan are utilizing Varian’s linear accelerator to carry out precise intracranial stereotactic radiosurgery treatments. Patients at the Tzu Chi Buddhist Hospital in Taipei are benefiting from radiotherapy treatments delivered using Varian Medical Systems' Trilogy accelerator.
Dr. Jing-Min Hwang, the hospital's director of radiation oncology, said he expects the Trilogy machine will enable him to expand his stereotactic radiosurgery program from brain treatments to treatments throughout the whole body.

Amicas has announced that it will introduce the new RadStream solution, Amicas Insight Dashboards and Vision Series PACS Version 5.0 at RSNA 2006.
RadStream is designed for improved radiologist soft-copy reading productivity and communication of positive results studies. The solution, available in the first half of 2007, reportedly speeds report turnaround via workflow efficiencies gained through a multifactorial prioritization algorithm.

Guardian Healthcare Systems will introduce at RSNA 2006 it news web-based RIS/PACS, FlowPoint 6.2, a solution for merging patient medical data and radiology images into one digital record for reducing medical errors, enhancing patient care and reducing overhead.
The RIS component provides scanning capabilities, supports for HCPCS codes, label printing, scheduling and implementation of PACS compression all in a Microsoft Windows-based environment with Microsoft .Net architecture.

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