The production of emerging virus-based gene therapies, cell therapies, vaccines, and cancer treatments requires new types of facilities for manufacturers to build. GE Healthcare promises to help make it easy by unveiling their KUBio “factory-in-a-box” offering. The company in particular hopes to fill a need for facilities that can produce vaccines quickly and as the need […]
Author: Medgadged
ADVANTAGE PLUS Pass-Thru Automated Endoscope Reprocessor Cleared in U.S.
MEDIVATORS, a Cantel Medical company, won clearance from the FDA for its ADVANTAGE PLUS Pass-Thru Automated Endoscope Reprocessor. It works with all kinds of clinical scopes, including duodenoscopes, but what’s cool is that it is supposed to be fit into a wall so that anything passing from a “dirty” room to a “clean” room goes […]
Spying on Your Social Media and Searches to Fight STDs
Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied whether certain search terms that are used on Google and topics covered on Twitter can point to a outbreak of a contagious disease. They focused on syphilis and found that by monitoring the incidence of certain terms, such as “STD” […]
Transgenic Silkworms Produce Fluorescent, Bacteria Killing Silk
Fluorescent proteins tend to be toxic, so their clinical applications are sometimes limited and suspect. Researchers from Purdue University and the Korean National Institute of Agricultural Research engineered a new material, made of silk and some genetic engineering, that fluoresces well under green light without causing too much toxicity. The technology works thanks to a protein, which […]
4Dx Uses Algorithms to Better Visualize Lung Function
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease affects millions of people in the United States. The main method of diagnosis is the pulmonary function tests (PFTs), in which a patient breathes into a machine that measures pulmonary parameters. The disadvantage, however, is that pulmonary function tests take an “average” of a patient’s lung without being able to detect […]
LivaNova’s SenTiva Vagus Nerve Stimulation for Epilepsy Cleared in Europe
LivaNova won European CE Mark clearance for its SenTiva generator and accompanying Programming System for treatment of epilepsy in patients that don’t respond well to drugs. It is able to detect the onset of certain seizures and deliver extra stimulation to help to avoid or lessen the impact of the seizure. The same system received FDA approval last […]
J&J Cleared for World’s First Transition Contacts
Johnson & Johnson Vision received FDA clearance for the first contact lens that gets darker in response to bright light. This kind of technology has existed for decades in glasses, called transition lenses, but the Acuvue Oasys Contact Lenses with Transitions Light Intelligent Technology are the first contacts to do so. The soft contact lenses are […]
Siemens Gets FDA Cleared for Two New Budget Friendly Yet Powerful CTs
Siemens Healthineers is on an FDA clearing streak of its newest CT scanners. The latest news, following up clearances of the SOMATOM Force and SOMATOM Edge Plus, is that SOMATOM go.All and SOMATOM go.Top can also now be marketed in America. The SOMATOM go.All and SOMATOM go.Top are more budget friendly scanners, yet offer tablet control, a remote, and imaging capabilities that are […]
“Doctors to You” Rely on High Tech Gadgetry to Revive House Calls
House calls by family physicians was the way entire generations expected primary healthcare to be delivered. Things have changed over the decades, much of it due to the fact that many of the tools a modern doctor would use are too big for travel. But, while technology got rid of the house call, it is […]
3D Printed Model of Cervix to Train Doctors to Spot Cervical Cancer, Deliver Treatment
In many resource poor areas of the world cervical cancer screenings and related therapeutic procedures are rare due to a lack of training. Students at Rice University, with help from Rice 360° Institute for Global Health and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, have developed an affordable model of the female pelvic region that […]
Digital Voice Assistants Changing Lives of Blind People
Many of the technologies that have changed the lives of healthy consumers over the past couple of decades have done little to improve the lives of those with disabilities. Yet, a number of developments, such as smartphones and GPS devices, have truly helped out those who are blind, for example. A new article in The […]
Google Augmented Reality Microscope to Help Automate Pathology
Google has developed an “Augmented Reality Microscope” that allows various deep learning algorithms to be tried on the images that it captures and for the results to be immediately seen in the microscope’s field of view. Moreover, the same technology can be integrated into existing clinical microscopes. This can really help the people working on […]
Researchers Develop Smartphone App to Measure Arterial Stiffness
The stiffness of arteries is an important indicator of cardiovascular health, but this parameter is somewhat difficult to evaluate and requires a specialist to do it. And yet regular monitoring of arterial stiffness can help to monitor a variety of diseases or help in their diagnoses. Now researchers at University of Southern California (USC) have […]
Complex Brain Organoids to Help Study Neuro Diseases and Cures
At the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, researchers have been building 3D models of bits of living brain. In a new study appearing in Nature Biotechnology, the investigators have now come up with a technique for delivering oxygen to these organoids, growing them into more complex units, and transplanting them into living rodents. The […]
Fischer Releases an Update on a Classic Cardiac Electrophysiology Stimulator
Fischer Medical, a company based outside of Denver, Colorado, won FDA clearance for its BLOOM2 cardiac electrophysiology stimulator. The all-digital device provides a fresh interface over the original Bloom, the design of which has withstood over 40 years. The new BLOOM2 takes design cues from the classic machine, helping EP docs and staff to easily transition […]
A Closer Look at Portal Instruments’ Needle-Free Injector
At SXSW last month, we had the opportunity to take a closer look at Portal Instruments‘ upcoming needle-free drug delivery device. As we wrote previously, Portal Instruments has developed a injection system that involves delivering a tiny jet of liquid through the skin at a high speed. We naturally had to ask how similar an […]
asEars Assists People With Single-Sided Deafness – With Style!
Last month at South by Southwest (SXSW), we came across a team of students from the University of Tokyo who were in Austin, Texas to demo their prototype glasses for people with unilateral hearing loss. Called “asEars”, these high-tech and stylish glasses consist of a tiny microphone in the upper rim on the side of […]
Researchers Release Instructions to Convert 3D Printers Into Bioprinters
If you want to try doing 3D bioprinting at home or at a budget-strapped lab, commercial devices that only start at $10,000 may be out of reach. But researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have now published a series of instructions, as part of a study in Elsevier’s journal HardwareX, that let you turn a cheap […]
Flexitouch Plus Released for Treating Lymphedema Symptoms
Lymphedema is a disease in which fluid is retained in the legs, arms, and other parts of the body, resulting in pain, discomfort, and even disability. A new device from Tactile Medical, a company out of Minneapolis, Minnesotta, is designed to activate the lymphatic system so as to help move fluids away from where they’ve gotten […]
FujiFilm Releases New Minimally Invasive Imaging Systems in U.S.
FUJIFILM is releasing a couple surgical visualization systems that were designed to improve minimally invasive procedures. The FUJIFILM EL-580FN Ultra-Slim Video Laparoscope System uses the firm’s own Super-Honeycomb CCD sensor to produce high quality images that are sharp and reproduce colors accurately. So-called “Chip on the Tip” high definition digital image processing helps improve quality and […]