Group: Yina and Natalie

  1.   Fesenmaier, Kimm. “Counting White Blood Cells at Home | Caltech.” The California Institute of Technology. March 26, 2017. Accessed October 9, 2018. http://www.caltech.edu/news/counting-white-blood-cells-home-38975.

This article describes a possible future innovation in the testing of white blood cell count. The idea is to no longer require white blood tests to be conducted at large centralized facilities, but at home and in a shortened span of time. The device that will test white blood cell counts will be cheap, accessible, and small enough to hold. We will use this source in our project to help us understand what the final product will look like and the components necessary to make it workable. For example, the device that the University of Southern California is making in collaboration with scientists in Jerusalem can account for four of the five existing types of white blood cells. The authors are researchers at the University of Southern California

2)     Kabat, Geoffrey C., Mimi Y. Kim, JoAnn E. Manson, Lawrence Lessin, Juan Lin, Thomas E. Rohan, and Sylvia Wassertheil Smoller. “White Blood Cell Count and Total and Cause-Specific Mortality in the Women’s Health Initiative.” American Journal of Epidemiology 186, no. 1 (March 22, 2017): 63-72. doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f.

 

This study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology discusses the implication of white blood cell counts on future health and chances of mortality. The findings do not show a causality but there is a correlation between high blood cell count and higher chances of mortality in the future. Such a study is relevant to our group’s healthcare innovation as it hints the importance of tracking white blood cell count to ensuring future health and longevity. The authors are scientists with articles already published in this reputable journal. 

 

3) Girardin, Francois, Dr., Antoine Poncet, Marc Blondon, MD, Victoria Rollason, PhD, and Nathalie Vernaz, PhD. “Monitoring White Blood Cell Count in Adult Patients with Schizophrenia Who Are Taking Clozapine: A Cost-effectiveness Analysis.” The Lancet Psychiatry 1, no. 1 (June 2016): 8-9. doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f.

 

This is a study in the journal of Lancet Psychiatry on how cost-effective or not the monitoring of white blood cell count is. For particular subset of psychiatric patients taking a certain medication, white blood cell testing is mandated. However, the US government wanted to find out whether the costly testing was worth the trouble at all and to what extent it has helped improve survival. Society would be better off if such a question didn’t even have to be ask with a low cost method for testing white blood cell count. This study will help our group gain some perspective on the problems with current testing methods and why our innovation is necessary. The authors are Swiss doctors.