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On this planet of prescribed drugs, the time period off-label applies to sufferers taking treatment to deal with situations not specified within the drug’s approval by the nationwide regulator.
In line with WebMD, it is authorized and fairly frequent, with one in 5 prescriptions being achieved in that manner.
Now, a Burnaby-based tech firm’s medical machine is abruptly being utilized in to fight COVID-19, regardless that this illness was not on anybody’s radar when the product was being developed.
In 2016, Clarius Cell Well being’s ultrasound scanners had been authorized by Well being Canada to allow clinicians to collect photos shortly on the bedside.
“The Clarius C3 multipurpose ultrasound scanner is designed to picture the stomach and lungs; it additionally incorporates a digital phased array for fast scans of the guts,” the corporate states on its web site. “The Clarius L7 is good for guiding procedures and imaging superficial constructions.”
This yr, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Clarius discovered that its machine is now steadily getting used to test sufferers’ lungs for acute pneumonia, which is a symptom of extreme instances of the illness.
That is led to surging demand for these cell instruments. Photographs of those lung scans can be found on the Clarius web site.
The vp of analysis and improvement at Clarius Cell Well being is Kris Dickie, a BCIT grad in biomedical engineering know-how.
“With so many industries all over the world dealing with challenges, our crew feels extraordinarily grateful to be a part of an answer that’s serving to to avoid wasting lives,” Dickie mentioned in a BCIT information launch. “By no means in my 20 years growing ultrasound know-how have I seen such a sudden upsurge within the want for transportable diagnostic gear.”
The know-how was developed in Metro Vancouver and the beginning value of those gadgets is $6.500 per unit.
That makes them much more reasonably priced than massive ultrasound machines, which might go for $100,000, making them an interesting selection not solely in western industrialized international locations but in addition within the growing world.
Dickie is a member of BCIT’s biomedical engineering advisory committee. And now, the cell ultrasound instrument that he helped develop will help future college students of their studying, in keeping with Anthony Chan, the college’s biomedical engineering know-how program head.
“Kris’s firm is house grown, and there’s now a giant demand for easy, easy-to-use handheld gadgets like his,” Chan says. “We’re wanting ahead to utilizing these gadgets in our medical imaging programs.”
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