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Cached From Yahoo Business Wire
Eastman Kodak Company Donates Technology Assets to Aid Diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity DisorderHarvard's McLean Hospital to lead development of ADHD screening technology Eastman Kodak Company today announced the donation of a family of patents to McLean Hospital for the development of new diagnostic technology for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). McLean Hospital is the largest psychiatric research, clinical care and teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Kodak's System Concepts Center developed several innovations, collectively referred to as the ADHD Rapid Check technology, that have the potential to lead to a new process for the objective screening of ADHD, one of the most commonly diagnosed--and misdiagnosed--psychiatric disorders in children. Medical professionals and families of patients who suffer from ADHD consider current testing procedures for ADHD complex and highly subjective, and have long sought a more cost-effective, physiologically based screening tool. Kodak researchers Richard Blazey, David Patton and Paige Miller, along with Dr. Peter Parks, an outside expert in the field, developed the technology in 2001 while researching the therapeutic effect of images. To better understand how images could be used to reduce stress levels, adult subjects were deprived of visual and auditory stimuli for 10 minutes during which time their stress level was monitored by measuring the temperature of their fingers. In analyzing this data, the team discovered several subjects' temperature measurements were very different from the other subjects. Upon further analysis, the research team discovered a significant difference in these measurements between ADHD subjects and the remainder of the subjects tested. After further testing was conducted on school-aged children by Kodak and third parties, it was determined that the technology could be useful in testing for ADHD. "In our pursuit of infoimaging, we often discover technologies outside Kodak's core businesses. The ADHD Rapid Check technology is a great example how our research sometimes leads in unexpected directions. While Kodak focuses on technological innovation in the consumer and commercial imaging markets, the researchers at McLean Hospital are ideally suited to move this important technology forward and determine the best path to successfully apply the inventions to ADHD testing," said Dr. James C. Stoffel, Chief Technical Officer, Director, Research and Development and Senior Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company. "In future years, this donation may have a positive impact on patients and families affected by ADHD." Dr. Martin H. Teicher M.D., Ph.D, a world-renowned physician and a leading researcher known for developing and commercializing objective testing for physiological and psychological disorders, will head the research at McLean Hospital. "Kodak is a recognized leader in the science and technology of images. The time and effort the Kodak research team applied to the ADHD Rapid Check technology may accelerate our ability to diagnose and treat ADHD," said Dr. Teicher, director of McLean Hospital's Development Biopsychiatry Research Program. "These inventions could help lay the foundation for improving the speed and accuracy of ADHD tests, which would be a tremendous comfort to families impacted by ADHD." Once at McLean Hospital, the ADHD Rapid Check technology will require further research and testing before it can reach its full market potential. In addition to the technology, Kodak has also donated a grant to McLean to facilitate additional research. As recipient of the technology, McLean Hospital will benefit from all future worldwide revenues if ADHD Rapid Check is successfully commercialized. Kodak worked with donology LLC, a company that specializes in the process of technology donations, to ensure that a thorough and objective process was used in valuing the ADHD Rapid Check technology and selecting the best organization to lead the research and commercialization efforts of the donated assets. The System Concepts Center is part of Kodak Research and Development, an organization that employs more than 5,000 engineers and scientists including more than 600 Ph.D.s. Since the company was founded, Kodak has been issued more than 30,000 U.S. patents. Kodak has R&D laboratories in the United States, England, France, Japan, China and Australia. About Attention Deficit Hyperactivity DisorderThe National Institute of Mental Health reports that while millions of American children and adults meet ADHD diagnostic criteria, there is a tendency among some health care professionals to either over diagnose or under diagnose the disorder . These errors in diagnosis occur in part because the screening and diagnostic processes for ADHD are time-consuming, complicated and dependent on the subjective judgment of parents, educators and diagnosticians. Since the failure to diagnose and treat those with ADHD has been linked to adverse long-term effects on socialization skills and school- and work-based performance, the benefit of a reliable, cost effective, physiologically based screening instrument has been clear for some time. Additional information about ADHD is available from the National Institute of Mental Health web site at http://www.nimh.nih.gov. About Eastman Kodak CompanyKodak is the leader in helping people take, share, enhance, preserve, print and enjoy pictures - for memories, for information, for entertainment. The company is a major participant in infoimaging - a $385 billion industry composed of devices (digital cameras and OLED display screens), infrastructure (online networks and delivery systems for images), and services and media (film and paper). Kodak harnesses its technology, market reach and a host of industry partnerships to provide innovative products and services for customers who need the information-rich content that images contain. The company, with sales last year of $12.8 billion, is organized into four major businesses: Photography, providing consumers, professionals and cinematographers with digital and traditional products and services; Commercial Imaging, offering image capture, output and storage products and services to businesses and government; Components, delivering flat-panel displays, optics and sensors to original equipment manufacturers; and Health, supplying the healthcare industry with traditional and digital image capture and output products and services. About McLean HospitalFounded in 1811, McLean Hospital, located just outside Boston, serves as the largest psychiatric clinical care, teaching and research facility of Harvard Medical School. It offers a full spectrum of care for all psychiatric disorders for people of all ages. McLean's research program is supported by $45 million per year of competitively won grants, supporting everything from basic neuroscience to clinical trials. McLean maintains Harvard's largest psychiatric neuroscience program and the nation's largest research program of any private psychiatric hospital, housing the world's largest brain bank and the only brain imaging center dedicated entirely to psychiatry and substance abuse. McLean and its extensive research efforts permit patients to be the first to benefit from new and experimental approaches and medications.
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