Another MGH Gordon Center Research Assistant, Emma Thibault, was redeployed to the Neurology ICU as patient observer. She will assist in monitoring ventilator activities under the supervision of the registered nurse.
The HR department has created a portal for people wishing to help with the Covid-19 fight at the hospital. To go to the portal, click here.
HR will contact people who sign up to fill redeployment assignments where needed.
If you are requested to come to campus for your assignment, you will be required to show your employee badge, wear a surgical mask, which will be provided, and complete an attestation of symptoms.
Research assistant, Emmaline Brown was redeployed from the MGH Gordon Center to the Neurology ICU as a patient observer. She will assist in monitoring ventilator activities under the supervision of the registered nurse.
The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the induction of Georges El Fakhri, Ph.D., DABR, Director of the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging, to its College of Fellows
In response to a shortage of hand sanitizer, pharmacists and chemists from the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital have converted our PET production lab into a facility to produce pump bottles of hand sanitizer.
The group delivered its first batch, 19 bottles, of the ethanol-based product to Mass General’s Environmental Services Department last week. With a projected total production of 4,000 bottles, they hope to create enough sanitizer to meet the hospital’s demand for the next two weeks, says Daniel Yokell, PharmD, associate director of Radiopharmacy and Regulatory Affairs in the Gordon Center in the Department of Radiology.
“I heard about the shortage, and I thought, we have all the infrastructure, the people and the bandwidth to produce this product,” says Yokell.
The 10-member team—which worked closely with staff in materials management, nursing and environmental services—followed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy for “Temporary Compounding of Certain Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer Products During the Public Health Emergency,” using 80% ethanol, glycerin, hydrogen peroxide and sterile water, to produce their first batch. “It was like we were back in pharmacy school, compounding creams and lotions. It’s just a different use of the materials we have on hand—and our skill sets,” says Yokell.
After clearance by Mass General safety and hospital compliance, the next step was bottling the solution using sterile and safe methods, then bottling the product into hand pump containers.
“This is a great conversion success story, where Dan and his staff used their know-how to make something essential in the fight against COVID-19,” says Georges El Fakhri, PhD, DABR, director of the Gordon Center.
The group is now working on its next production run. With 3,000 bottles and hand pumps scheduled to be delivered this week, Yokell is confident the group can meet Mass General’s demand for hand sanitizer in the short term. “Two weeks ago, demand was 45 bottles a day,” he says. “Our goal is to double that amount and backfill what is needed. We want to produce enough to be sufficient for hand hygiene for the whole hospital.”
James Brink, MD, radiologist-in-chief, says, “I’m so pleased and proud that our radiochemistry team was able to apply their talents so effectively to produce a product that is vital in our fight against COVID-19. They needed to think creatively and retool their operation completely, and they did so in a very thoughtful and efficient way.”
This story was originally published on 03/30/2020 on the Mass General Hospital website. Link to article
Dr. Xiaofeng Liu is a research fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and a visiting researcher at the Montréal Institute of Learning Algorithm. He works on general deep learning theory in the computer vision domain and their application to robust inference system and medical diagnosis. He was a joint supervision […]
Dr. Chi Liu is an Associate Professor at Yale University Department of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University with emphasis on quantitative SPECT/CT imaging. Following his graduate work, he was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Washington, specializing in oncological PET/CT studies with emphasis on compensation algorithms for respiratory […]
Dr. Chen is a Professor of Medical Physics and Radiology at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his BS degree in physics from Beijing Normal Univ. in 1991, a Master’s Degree in mathematics from Nankai Univ. in 1995, and a PhD in semiconductor physics from the Univ. of Utah in 2000. He published extensively in […]