Tech & Innovation in Healthcare

Learn how medical professionals can detect many cancers at once.

What if providers could detect cancers before symptoms have a chance to develop in the patient’s body? What if a young athlete could rebound from a knee injury quicker to save his scholarship chances? What if you could feel fresh on your feet throughout your shift — regardless of how long that shift lasts?

Technological advances in cancer detection tests, ACL repairs, and footwear aim to solve challenges for both patients and healthcare workers. If you work in oncology, orthopedics, or any other healthcare field, check out three innovations that are transforming treatment and comfort.

Identify Hidden Cancers with a Blood Test

If you regularly attend to oncology patients, you have reason to rejoice. Oncology took a major step forward with multi-cancer early detection tests (MCED), according to promising results in trials and studies. MCED are blood-based screening tests that identify the presence of more than one type of cancer at a time. The tests are designed to catch cancers as early as possible, so healthcare providers can begin treatment in the early stages of the disease before symptoms start to manifest.

According to a study performed by the British Journal of Cancer, MCED tests with a 25 to 100 percent uptake detected between 105,526 and 422,105 additional cancers. This study showed that adding an MCED blood test to recommended screenings could prove to be more efficient at discovering cancers before they’re traditionally found (URL: www.nature.com/articles/s41416-021-01498-4).

Example: One example of an MCED is the Galleri test, which demonstrates the ability to detect more than 50 types of cancers with a simple blood test. Currently, cancer screenings are recommended for only five types of cancers in the United States — lung, breast, cervical, colorectal, and prostate — the Galleri test enables providers to find other cancers in the body before they reach the advanced stages where the survival outcomes are lower. Additionally, the Galleri test boasts a low false-positive rate of less than 1 percent.

An MCED carries exceptional human and economic benefits as well. Early detection would save lives, as cancers diagnosed in the early stages of the disease have greater five-year survival rates than those diagnosed after the disease has a chance to metastasize.

Learn About a Less Invasive Way to Repair ACL Tears

Reconstructing a patient’s anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is an invasive procedure that can result in a lengthy recovery period. Martha M. Murray, MD, of Boston Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts developed a new, less invasive method for repairing for ACL tears. The technique, called Bridge-Enhanced ACL Restoration (BEAR), uses a bio-engineered sponge implant to help foster a healthy environment for repair. Once the sponge is in place, doctors saturate it with the patient’s own blood and pull the ACL’s torn ends into the sponge. The saturation helps aid in clotting, which encourages the torn ends of the ACL grow back together, while the body absorbs the sponge over time.

Whereas a standard ACL reconstruction requires two surgeries — one to harvest a tendon or ligament to use as a graft and another to replace the torn ACL with the graft — the BEAR procedure requires much less effort on the surgeon’s part. The surgeon makes an incision near the patient’s knee to implant the sponge between the torn ends of the ACL, and then the rest of the technique is performed arthroscopically.

During the recovery phase, the BEAR implant helps restore the torn ACL to quality and size that are similar to the non-injured ligament. Additionally, results of the outpatient procedure show a faster recovery of muscle strength. This allows the patient to return to their favorite activities, sports, or daily life sooner.

Give Patients with Limited Mobility More Independence