Fast Company reporter Adele Peters spotlights how, as part of an effort to reduce Covid-19 risk for health care workers, researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital developed a new system that enables remote vital sign monitoring. "We started to think about how we could protect healthcare providers and minimize contact with folks that might be infectious,” says Prof. Giovanni Traverso.
CNN reporter Allen Kim spotlights how researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have modified a robotic dog so that it can be used to help measure a patient’s vital signs. “The researchers expect to focus on triage applications in the short term, with the goal of ultimately deploying robots like this to patients' hospital rooms to continuously monitor them and let doctors to check in on them without ever having to step into the room,” writes Kim.
CBS Boston features how researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital equipped a robot from Boston Dynamics with technology to enable remote vital sign monitoring.
In this video, Bloomberg News spotlights how researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a new system that facilitates remote monitoring of a patient’s vital signs, as part of an effort to help reduce healthcare workers’ Covid-19 risk. Researchers have successfully measured temperature, breathing rate, pulse rate and blood oxygen saturation in healthy patients.”
Researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have repurposed a robotic dog from Boston Dynamics with technology that enables doctors to remotely measure a patient’s vital signs, reports Rick Sobey for The Boston Herald. “Using four cameras mounted on the dog-like robot, the researchers have shown that they can measure skin temperature, breathing rate, pulse rate and blood oxygen saturation in healthy patients,” writes Sobey.
On Sunday, August 30th, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard performed its one-millionth test for Covid-19, reports Jonathan Saltzman for The Boston Globe. “Six months after the nonprofit institute in Cambridge began testing for the coronavirus to help overwhelmed laboratories and hospitals, the Broad reached the landmark as technicians, many of them recently hired, work around the clock,” writes Saltzman.
New research from Prof. Lydia Bourouiba finds that guidelines for safe social distancing may need to be updated as researchers gain more information about how the virus spreads, reports Ben Guarino for The Washington Post. “It becomes very important to not think just about a fixed distance. It’s very important to think about the air flow,” says Bourouiba.
On this episode of Freakonomics, Prof. Andrew Lo discusses the economics of drug development. “It’s important that we get the pricing of these vaccines correct so that they provide both a reasonable rate of return to investors who have risked their capital to develop these vaccines, while at the same time making sure that there’s no price gouging going on and that ultimately we provide access to everybody,” says Lo.
Researchers from MIT and the University of Oxford have found that guidelines for social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic may need to be updated to account for factors such as ventilation, crowd size and exposure time, reports Akshay Syal for NBC News. "It's not just 6 feet and then everything else can be ignored or just mask and everything else can be ignored or just ventilation and everything else can be ignored,” says Prof. Lydia Bourouiba.
A new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that Covid-19 may shut down germinal centers, which help patients mount an antibody response. The findings “may help explain COVID-19 progression in the sickest cases and provide important insights to vaccine developers,” reports Jon Cohen for Science.
Gizmodo reporter Ed Cara writes that a study co-authored by Prof. Lydia Bourouiba argues that social distancing guidelines likely need to be updated in favor of a more nuanced approach. The researchers found that “rather than think exclusively about personal space,” writes Cara, “people should consider their circumstances.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Christopher Mims spotlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s research examining the impact of automation on employment and a new essay from Prof. David Autor and Dr. Elisabeth Reynolds that illustrates how the pandemic could exacerbate economic inequality.
Writing for Scientific American, Carolyn Barber spotlights how researchers from MIT are developing cheap, fast and easy to use diagnostics for Covid-19 that can deliver results in minutes. “They are called lateral flow assays, but manifestly they are paper-strip tests that have an antibody embedded on filter paper,” writes Barber. “If a saliva sample has coronavirus present, the antibody will bind that viral antigen, turning the test positive, much like a pregnancy test works.”
New York Times reporter Elaine Glusac spotlights a study by Prof. Arnold Barnett that examines the safety of flying during the Covid-19 pandemic. Barnett found that “on a fully loaded flight, the chance of contracting Covid-19 was one in 4,300. If the middle seat is empty, the risk falls to one in 7,700.”
MIT researchers outfitted a Boston Dynamics robotic dog with contactless vital sign monitoring equipment to help clinicians care for patients with Covid-19 without risking exposure, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. Etherington writes that the system “has the potential to not only reduce the risk of exposure for medical personnel, but also drastically reduce use of personal protective equipment.”