The use of point-of-care testing to establish cause of death in the autopsy setting.

This review assesses the use of point-of-care testing (POCT) in establishing a cause of death in the autopsy setting. A search was performed of the PubMed, Medline, Embase, ScienceDirect and Scopus databases using the terms point-of-care, autopsy, post-mortem, cause of death and forensics. This search revealed some evidence for the efficacy of POCT for autopsy derived samples in the detection of viruses, sepsis and abnormal glucose levels.

Existing and emerging applications for the neuromodulation of nerve activity through targeted delivery of electric stimuli.

The effective treatment of many diseases requires the use of multiple treatment strategies among which neuromodulation is playing an increasingly important role. Neuromodulation devices that act to normalize or modulate nerve activity through the targeted delivery of electrical stimuli will be the focus of this review. These devices encompass deep brain stimulators, vagus nerve stimulators, spinal cord simulators and sacral nerve stimulators.

From embracing to managing risks.

Objective: To assess developments over time in the capture, curation and use of quality and safety information in managing hospital services.

Setting: Four acute National Health Service hospitals in England.

Participants: 111.

Managing Quality and Safety in Real Time? Evidence from an Interview Study.

Health systems around the world are investing increasing effort in monitoring care quality and safety. Dashboards can support this process, providing summary data on processes and outcomes of care, making use of data visualization techniques such as graphs. As part of a study exploring development and use of dashboards in English hospitals, we interviewed senior managers across 15 healthcare providers.

Disulfide-bridging PEGylation during refolding for the more efficient production of modified proteins.

Proteins that are modified by chemical conjugation require at least two separate purification processes. First the bulk protein is purified, and then after chemical conjugation, a second purification process is required to obtain the modified protein. In an effort to develop new enabling technologies to integrate bioprocessing and protein modification, we describe the use of disulfide-bridging conjugation to conduct PEGylation during protein refolding.

PEGylation and its impact on the design of new protein-based medicines.

PEGylation is the covalent conjugation of PEG to therapeutic molecules. Protein PEGylation is a clinically proven approach for extending the circulation half-life and reducing the immunogenicity of protein therapeutics. Most clinically used PEGylated proteins are heterogeneous mixtures of PEG positional isomers conjugated to different residues on the protein main chain.