Portable electroanalytical nucleic acid amplification tests using printed circuit boards and open-source electronics.

The realization of electrochemical nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) at the point of care (POC) is highly desirable, but it remains a challenge given their high cost and lack of true portability/miniaturization. Here we show that mass-produced, industrial standardized, printed circuit boards (PCBs) can be repurposed to act as near-zero cost electrodes for self-assembled monolayer-based DNA biosensing, and further integration with a custom-designed and low-cost portable potentiostat. To show the analytical capability of this system, we developed a NAAT using isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification, bypassing the need of thermal cyclers, followed by an electrochemical readout relying on a sandwich hybridization assay.

A disposable, wearable, flexible, stitched textile electrochemical biosensing platform.

Wearable sensors are a fast growing and exciting research area, the success of smart watches are a great example of the utility and demand for wearable sensing systems. The current state of the art routinely uses expensive and bulky equipment designed for long term use. There is a need for cheap and disposable wearable sensors to make single use measurements, primarily in the area of biomarker detection.

Statistical challenges posed by uncontrolled master protocols: sensitivity analysis of the vemurafenib study.

Within the evidentiary hierarchy of experimental inquiry, randomized trials are the gold standard. Oncology patients enter clinical studies with diverse lifestyles, treatment pathways, host tissue environments, and competing comorbidities. Randomization attempts to balance prognostic characteristics among study arms, thereby enabling statistical inference of 'average benefit' and attribution to the studied therapies.

Bayesian basket trial design with exchangeability monitoring.

Precision medicine endeavors to conform therapeutic interventions to the individuals being treated. Implicit to the concept of precision medicine is heterogeneity of treatment benefit among patients and patient subpopulations. Thus, precision medicine challenges conventional paradigms of clinical translational which have relied on estimates of population-averaged effects to guide clinical practice.

[The climate change policy of the city of São Paulo, Brazil: reflexivity and permeability of the health sector].

São Paulo is today an unsustainable city in which social and environmental vulnerabilities are obliged to tackle the uncertainties of climate change. To face up to this situation, in 2009 the city unveiled its Climate Change Policy. The scope of this paper is to analyze how the health sector is preparing to contribute to the implementation of this policy by 2012.