healthcare Archives

Fertility preservation options in gender reassignment

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39% of transgender men and 21.9% of transgender women express the desire to become parents. This is complicated by gender confirmation therapies usually occurring at a young age, before consolidation of parental desire. These therapies can involve hormone treatment and gender confirming surgery which can remove the possibility of reproduction. Fertility preservation knowledge and information is limited for transgender people. […]

The Benefits of Exercise on the Mind

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Music and performance arts are linked with increased cognitive function.

Exercise has long been advocated as a way to enhance physical health, but it has also been shown to have several benefits on the mind. More recently, research has focused on how exercise can improve cognitive function. Over the past three decades, Drs Phillip D. Tomporowski and Caterina Pesce from the University of Georgia and the University of Rome, respectively, […]

Frailty screening: Doing good and avoiding harm

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Worldwide, the number and proportion of older people in the population is increasing.

Ageing populations bring both opportunities and challenges for the economy, services and society. Screening for frailty aims to match the healthcare offered with a person’s needs, circumstances and capacity to benefit. Professors Mary McNally, Lynette Reid and William Lahey from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada, explore the legal and ethical implications of frailty screening to ensure concerns with both doing […]

Patients as partners in research – The challenges for researchers of patient involvement

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With the right support in place, researcher and patient will be able to work together in a constructive and mutually beneficial way.

Modern clinical research often includes Patient and Public Involvement (PPI), in which patients play an active role in the research process. While the benefits of PPI are well recognised, little attention has been given to the challenges researchers face in implementing it. Recently, Professors Mogens Hørder and Marie Konge Nielsen of the University of Southern Denmark set out to discover […]

Social Robots – a New Perspective in Healthcare

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The Affective & Cognitive Institute is researching intuitive interfaces and 'intelligent' context-aware robot assistants.

Some social robots are assistants helping with tasks such as lifting, while others take on companion roles and simulate emotions. Dr Oliver Korn, Professor for Human Computer Interaction and Director of the Affective & Cognitive Institute at Offenburg University in Germany, discusses whether social robots should be able to replicate human emotions and explores ethical challenges arising from it. He […]