Tuesday 31 May 2011

BAUS 2011

I'll be updating this blog in a few days time and this is just to remind me that Mediwatch will be attending/exhibiting at the BAUS 2011 event.

Monday 20 June 2011 until Thursday 23 June 2011

BT Convention Centre at the ACC Liverpool


Wednesday 25 May 2011

May-Music,Film and the odd joke spot



















Mediwatch-Trading Update

RNS Number : 2275H
Mediwatch PLC
25 May 2011

25 May 2011



Mediwatch plc



Trading Update for the six months to 30 April 2011



Mediwatch plc ("Mediwatch" or "the Company") (AIM: MDW), the innovative urological diagnostic manufacturing company, announces an update on the trading results for the six months to 30 April 2011.



The Directors of Mediwatch are pleased to report that in a more challenging marketplace turnover for the first six months of the 2011 financial year was marginally ahead of the same period last year. However, gross margins have come under pressure due to increases in component and manufacturing costs and increased industry competition. This has led to a reduction of gross profits by approximately 1% when compared to the second half of 2010.



In a concerted effort to improve margins, management is implementing a number of programmes aimed at reducing manufacturing costs. In addition, the Company has been actively pursuing a strategy of reducing overhead expenses over the last six months and the current level of overheads is 11% below that for the second half of 2010. Management expects these savings to continue throughout the rest of the financial year. Furthermore, research and development costs have also been reduced by 19% in the first half of the financial year as compared to those costs for the same period the previous year.



Mediwatch is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, Mediwatch USA Inc. has executed a three year contract with Amerinet, Inc. to supply the Portascan+ unit to the Amerinet hospital network. The Amerinet network consists of over 41,000 hospitals, institutions and healthcare providers. The Mediwatch Portascan+ unit will be made available to this network through this agreement.



New product introductions which are expected to contribute to sales in the second half include Urinewatch, a comprehensive urinalysis system which is currently available and a new bladder ultrasound platform which is expected to be available from July 2011.



MobileWatch is continuing its progress in Florida and the Board is looking at various growth strategies to extend the programme into other states in the US.



In house manufacturing of PSAwatch is now well underway and a constructive marketing programme has been initiated.



The US division continues to secure group purchasing agreements for the Company's products with the most recent agreement with Amerinet and an arrangement with PSS World Medical, Inc. to market its products and services.



Overall, the Company's performance for the first half of the 2011 financial year is in line with management's expectations and the reduction in costs has enabled the Company to continue to be profitable in difficult markets. With the introduction of new products the Board is optimistic for the second half of the 2011 financial year.



Enquiries:

Mediwatch +44 (0)1788 547888
Philip Stimpson, Chief Executive

Fairfax I.S. PLC +44 (0)20 7598 5368
Nominated Adviser / Broker
Ewan Leggat / Laura Littley

Editor's Notes

Mediwatch plc: Innovative Diagnostic Solutions

Mediwatch is a leader in its field. The Company is continually striving to develop and market faster, simpler and less invasive diagnostic products to save lives and restore quality of life for people with a variety of urological conditions. Founded in 1995, Mediwatch (www.mediwatch.com) has developed a range of point-of-care medical equipment for the diagnosis of urological disorders.

The business focuses its design skills towards diagnostic products that can be used across the medical profession.

Mediwatch has established excellent foundations for continued growth building on the acquisition and integration of a division of Medtronic Inc in 2007, an international distribution network and its research and development programmes.

Mediwatch has a global presence with offices in both the UK and US. The UK office is the base for manufacturing, research and development, sales and marketing to the rest of the world outside of the US and Canada with a direct sales force for the UK markets. The US office manages a direct sales and marketing infrastructure to cover the US and Canada along with some research and development activities.


This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

Trading Update for the six months to 30 April 2011

Tuesday 17 May 2011

One in Three Women Stress Urinary Incontinence

Staggering One in Three Women Live with Stress Urinary Incontinence, Fear of Stigma Limits Discussion with Doctor

New Monograph Unveiled at American Urological Association 2011 Annual Meeting Underscores Prevalence of Condition, Encourages Open Dialogue


WASHINGTON, May 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- An estimated one in three women experience stress urinary incontinence (SUI), a condition characterized by involuntary loss of urine due to forces on the bladder caused by physical movement of the body. Although SUI can interfere with quality of life, it is often left untreated due to the personal nature of its symptoms which leave women feeling embarrassed about their bodies and hesitant to discuss or report their urinary leakage. To bridge this communication gap, the American Urological Association (AUA) Foundation issued a new Monograph today to encourage women and their healthcare providers to have open discussions about SUI, and to empower women to make lifestyle changes to decrease their risk of this condition and understand that they are not alone if they have SUI.

The Monograph, titled "Stress Urinary Incontinence: Monograph from the AUA Foundation," provides a breadth of information about SUI, including symptoms, risk factors, prevalence and common myths associated with the condition. By making this important information accessible to the public, the AUA Foundation is committed to advancing the understanding of SUI, reducing the stigma associated with its symptoms and stimulating women to seek treatment.

"The prevalence of SUI is jaw-dropping and costs society an estimated $8 billion annually,(1) yet similar to the subject of erectile dysfunction, it is still not openly discussed in public and even among some healthcare providers," stated AUA Foundation Executive Director Sandra Vassos, MPH. "The information presented in the Monograph is intended to help women recognize that SUI is more common than they may think, and to encourage them to open up about their experiences with SUI as a means to better understand the condition."

Symptoms of SUI vary widely from light to heavy leakage which may occur during rigorous activity or natural reflexes, such as playing sports or coughing; but in more severe cases, leakage may occur due to low impact movements, such as standing up, walking or bending over. Because these symptoms often lead to feelings of isolation, they may interfere with women's day-to-day activities, impact their relationships, and prevent them from opening up about their condition. As a result, many women with SUI may miss important opportunities to learn more about SUI and manage its symptoms.

The new Monograph highlights ways to prevent or manage the symptoms of SUI, including lifestyle changes, urinary control devices or surgery. Some women are only bothered by heavy or large amounts of leakage, whereas others are bothered by any leakage. Women often manage SUI by using mini pads, sanitary pads or incontinence pads.

Also outlined in the Monograph is information about certain risk factors associated with SUI that, once understood, may help to prevent the incidence of SUI in some women. For instance, overweight and obese women are more prone to SUI, and evidence shows that weight loss may improve urinary incontinence in obese women. Therefore, it is important for women with SUI to maintain a healthy weight.

The full Monograph can be accessed at www.UrologyHealth.org/SUI/find-healthcare-provider-resources.html. Additionally, the "It's Time to Talk about SUI" campaign includes informative resources about SUI, patient and physician materials and an online interactive assessment tool specifically for SUI, which can be found at www.UrologyHealth.org. The campaign's resources are made possible by a grant from the Poise® and Depend® brands.

About "It's Time to Talk About SUI" Campaign and "Stress Urinary Incontinence: Monograph From The AUA Foundation"

In an effort to eliminate the stigma associated with SUI and provide facts about the condition, the AUA Foundation assembled an independent panel of female urologists and healthcare professionals in the spring of 2011. These individuals volunteered to review scientific information and clinical guidelines and share their professional experiences concerning SUI as the basis for the AUA Foundation's "It's Time to Talk About SUI" campaign.

About "Urology for Women Initiative"

The AUA Foundation recently launched the "Urology for Women Initiative" to bring greater focus to the urology needs of women and help provide them with the vital information about what urological conditions affect women – from urinary tract infections, overactive bladder, yeast infections and stress urinary incontinence to various forms of cancer – as well as how they affect women and what are the most current treatments for the conditions.

About the American Urological Association (AUA) Foundation

The AUA Foundation is the world's leading non-profit urological health organization and the official foundation of the American Urological Association. Their goal is to promote health, provide hope and promise a future free of urological disease.




Click for "It's Time to Talk about SUI" campaign

Stress Urinary Incontinence-A MONOGRAPH FROM THE AUA FOUNDATION (pdf)

AUA-Single PSA Before Age 50 Stratifies Men at Risk

May 17, 2011 (Washington, DC) — The long-term risk for prostate cancer can be predicted from a 1-time prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test before 50 years of age, according to a study presented here at the American Urological Association (AUA) 2011 Annual Scientific Meeting.

The study, which comes from a population of more than 20,000 Swedish men, indicates that men with a PSA value above 1.5 ng/mL between the ages of 45 and 49 years account for nearly half of the prostate cancer deaths over the next 30 years or so.

Only 10% of the men in the study had such high PSA values at this relatively young age, noted lead author Andrew Vickers, PhD, from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

The "take-home message" from the study is that, on the basis of a PSA value obtained in a man's 40s, "you can stratify risk," Dr. Vickers reported at an AUA press briefing.

"This study shows whom we really need to focus on," he added. The young men in this "top 10%" need "aggressive follow-up," such as reminder phone calls for doctors' appointments, and should have either annual or biennial PSA tests, he said.

"We need to make sure that these men really understand that they need to come back," he added.

"Currently, a lot of these men would be told: 'You're fine'," he said.

And they are fine, to a large extent. Their absolute risk of dying from prostate cancer is low, said Dr. Vickers.

However, in the study, which had a median follow-up of 27 years, 44% of all of the prostate cancer deaths occurred in this top 10% of men.

In other words, a small proportion of the men accounted for a lot of the prostate cancer deaths.

A bigger challenge than getting high-risk young men to return to the clinic for close monitoring might be getting such young men to have a PSA test in the first place, suggested Stacy Loeb, MD, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not involved in the study but who attended the press briefing.

Young men might be fearful of PSA testing "because of all the negative media attention," she said. "It's important that young men are not fearful."

PSA testing has been in steady decline since 2003/04, when about 50% of all men older than 50 years reported being tested, said William J. Catalona, MD, medical director of the Urological Research Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. Since then, "in every category of men, it's dropping," he said at the press briefing. Dr. Catalona also blamed negative media coverage. "The media doesn't cover anything good about PSA testing," he said.

Less Bold This Time

This study is an outgrowth of ongoing research from the Malmö Preventive Project in Sweden, in which Dr. Vickers and his colleagues participated.

In the new study, the Sloan-Kettering researchers retrospectively analyzed the PSA levels in some of the plasma samples drawn between 1974 and 1986 from an unscreened population-based cohort of more than 20,000 Swedish men between the ages of 33 and 50 years.

Dr. Vickers and colleagues obtained PSA information for 1167 men.

They also reviewed the Swedish Cancer Registry, which allowed for "excellent follow-up" of the men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and identified 241 men who developed prostate cancer metastases and 163 who died from the disease. The latter were determined either by case note review or death certificate. "We know exactly what happened to these guys," said Dr. Vickers.

In 2010, the team conducted a similar study (BMJ. 2010;341:c4521), which indicated that a 1-time PSA test at 60 years can help identify men who are more likely to die from prostate cancer. The story was covered by Medscape Medical News at the time. and was awarded a journalism award from the AUA for outstanding news coverage.

In the 2010 study, Dr. Vickers and colleagues found that most of the deaths from prostate cancer were among the 25% or so of men who had, at age 60, PSA levels higher than 2 ng/mL. The study suggested that repeat screening could be confined to that 25% of men whose PSA level is above 2 ng/mL at 60 years of age.

At the time, Dr. Vickers told Medscape Medical News that the finding provided "a new way of thinking about the PSA test that offers clear recommendations for clinical practice."

This time around, the researchers have apparently backed off such bold talk.

The new study is "not a practice guideline solution," said senior author Hans Lilja, MD, PhD, also from Sloan Kettering.

Nevertheless, Dr. Vickers suggested that the new data call into question the "typical" recommendations from professional groups about PSA testing because the recommendations do not involve risk stratification.

"All men should consider biennial PSA tests starting at age 50 to age 70," is a typical recommendation, said Dr. Vickers, who then asked if, in light of this research: "Can this still be justified?"

When the 2010 study was published, Dr. Vickers said that risk-stratifying screening had 2 major benefits: it will reduce overdiagnosis in men at low risk for prostate cancer death and it will improve compliance with screening in men who will benefit the most.

The Sloan-Kettering researchers have yielded a lot of research from the Malmö cohort. At the 2007 AUA annual meeting, they reported that a single PSA measurement obtained when a man is in his 40s strongly predicts his risk for advanced-stage prostate cancer later in life, as reported by Medscape Medical News at the time.

The study was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the Swedish Cancer Society, the Swedish Research Council, and several other foundations. Dr. Lilja reports holding a patent for free PSA and hK2 assays.

American Urological Association (AUA) 2011 Annual Scientific Meeting. Abstract 986. Presented May 16, 2011.

Single PSA Before Age 50 Stratifies Men at Risk

AUA Annual Meeting

The "New" Prostate Cancer InfoLink provides some good coverage of the AUA Annual Meeting (14th-19th May) but obviously mainly relating to prostate cancer.

The following article covers the afternoon session on Monday of this week with the statement below quite interesting:

"In each case, it has become clear that consensus has shifted from the absolute “yes” or “no” positions of just a few years ago to “maybe,” with a great deal of emphasis on the when and how as opposed to the “just do it” (or don’t do it) perspective."


What’s hot at the AUA annual meeting (Monday afternoon)?
Posted on May 16, 2011 by Sitemaster

It is becoming increasingly clear that the prevention, treatment, and management of prostate cancer is at an intellectual as well as a practical, clinical crossroads.At a pro/con session earlier this afternoon, speakers discussed what have now become three of the most controversial issues in the management of prostate cancer:

•Can and should we use drugs like finasteride and dutasteride to prevent prostate cancer in appropriately selected patients?
•Can and should we use PSA to “screen” for prostate cancer?
•Can and should we use supplemental testosterone therapy to manage quality of life in men diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer?
In each case, it has become clear that consensus has shifted from the absolute “yes” or “no” positions of just a few years ago to “maybe,” with a great deal of emphasis on the when and how as opposed to the “just do it” (or don’t do it) perspective.

Finasteride and dutasteride will now never be approved for the prevention of prostate cancer. However, there is clearly a subset of men who, in careful discussion with their doctors, can reasonably come to the decision that the supposed risks associated with the use of such drugs may significantly be outweighed by the potential benefits of preventing — or at least delaying the onset — of prostate cancer. And since these drugs are easily prescribed, it is likely that they will be for such patients.

Similarly, although the idea of mass, annual, population-based screening of all men for prostate cancer cannot be justified on the basis of data from trials published to date, there is certainly a strong argument for some type of PSA monitoring — particularly in men with one or more well-defined risk factors. And the question is therefore more focused on how we use PSA testing appropriately to optimize the potential to identify men at the greatest levels of risk while simultaneously seeking new and better tests for prostate cancer risk.

In the third case, there appears to be a growing consensus that — with appropriate caution and careful monitoring — supplemental testosterone is a perfectly reasonable form of treatment for many (but probably not all) men with low serum T levels, regardless of whether they have no prostate cancer, untreated, low-risk prostate cancer, or prostate cancer that has been successfully treated.

In each case we are moving back toward a mindset in which decisions about such issues need to be taken on an individual basis after discussion between doctor and patients and with an appreciation of the risks involved for the specific, individual patient.

The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink sees this process as a “good thing.” The “one size fits all” approach is seldom a good idea in the management of healthcare. There is too much interpersonal variation between individuals to think that what is good for Simon must inevitably be good for Saul too.

Will this need to actually think through and discuss what is appropriate for individual patients put more pressure on physicians to make time to have these discussions? Yes, it will, and it may take a while for the urology community to adapt to a new reality.

What’s hot at the AUA annual meeting (Monday afternoon)?

Sunday 1 May 2011

LATEST NEWS AND FUTURE EVENTS(Updated 4th May)



Latest News/Website Updates

RENAL & UROLOGY NEWS-April edition

Urology Times-April 2011 Edition

Mediwatch Positions/Jobs
Mediwatch Training Courses
Mediwatch USA-Basic Urodynamics Clinicians’ Workshop USA-30th April to 1st May


Future Events Events where Mediwatch are attending/exhibiting will be marked as so or updated,hopefully before the event is finished.More Events to add later

31st Athenian Days of Urology Greece 6th-8th May

Inaugural Prostate Cancer Symposium USA 10th-12th May Mark Emberton (Mediwatch Non-Executive Medical Director) is there but under his own steam rather than representing Mediwatch
(Imaging As A Biomarker In Screening, Active Surveillance, And Early Risk Stratification Emberton)

106th Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association(AUA) USA 14th-19th May


4th International Symposium on Focal Therapy and Imaging in Prostate & Kidney Cancer Netherlands 25th-27th May Mark Emberton (Mediwatch Non-Executive Medical Director) is there but under his own steam rather than representing Mediwatch






STUFF THAT MAYBE DID BUT NOW DOESN'T FIT IN WITH THE TITLE...

Mediwatch-Annual Report-Issued 24th March 2011

Mediwatch-Final Results for year ended 31 October 2010-Issued 27th January 2011

Mediwatch USA Inc. Awarded US General Service Administration Federal Supply Schedule Contract 14th December

OEM Partnership with ACON Laboratories 1st November

Website Update (Aug)-Mobile Watch

Interim Results

Mediwatch Newsletter-July 2010 Edition

OEM Partnership with Thought Technology Ltd Mediwatch-14th June

Distribution Agreement with GE Healthcare Mediwatch-8th June