HeartIn, a company with offices in Silicon Valley and Kyiv, Ukraine, recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help bring to market a t-shirt with built-in electrocardiography (ECG) capabilities. The technology is aimed at helping athletes optimize their workout routines by having a better idea of how the heart is doing doing various exercis (Read more...)
Author: Medgadged
Video Demonstration and Update of Spectranetics’ Bridge Occlusion Balloon
More than 7 million patients worldwide live with pacemakers or implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). These devices are connected to the heart through leads. In some cases, such as lead infection, failure, or recall, it becomes necessary to extract the leads and replace them with new ones. At this time, 15,000 to 20,000 lead extractions ar (Read more...)
Intuitive’s New Budget Friendly da Vinci X Robotic Surgical System Cleared in U.S.
Intuitive Surgical is following up on the European clearance from a month ago for its da Vinci X robotic surgical system with a similar clearance from the FDA. The da Vinci X is a budget friendly cousin of existing offerings from Intuitive, yet offers many of the same capabilities and is upgradeable to include various others. All [&hellip (Read more...)
EYEMATE Implant That Measures Intraocular Pressure Now Cleared in Europe
Patients with certain eye conditions, particularly glaucoma, need regular testing of their intraocular pressure (IOP), which involves an in-office procedure during which a clinician uses a tonometer to take readings. The IOP can vary significantly throughout the day, and similar to blood pressure, events far outside the normal range can be frequent (Read more...)
Interview With Director of Biomaterials Research Innovation Center, Prof. Ali Kadhemhosseini
The fields of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and drug delivery are burgeoning due to the development of new technological advancements in engineering, material science, and chemistry. At the confluence of such diverse fields lies the Biomaterials Innovation Research Center. Located in the hub of Boston, in the Brigham and Women’s (Read more...)
3D Printed Pediatric Stents That Grow With Patient’s Vessels
Sadly, it is not only old people that receive cardiac stent implants. Often young children with certain cardiovascular conditions can benefit significantly from stent implantations and conduits, but because vasculature grows along with the rest of the body, the stents’ benefits can be short lived and not fully realized. Now researchers at&nbs (Read more...)
Grasp Feedback Technology to Help Prosthetic Users Feel What They’re Holding
Prosthetic devices of the future, in order to be highly functional and easy to use, will have to incorporate sensors that can relay to the user the pressure of a hand grasp and what the texture of a touched object is like. Researchers from Rice University in Texas and University of Pisa in Italy have […]
Videssa Breast Blood Diagnostic Test for Breast Cancer
Provista Diagnostics, a company based in New York City, has developed the Videssa Breast blood-based proteomic test to detect breast cancer. At present, after an abnormal mammogram doctors are faced with a difficult decision: whether to carry out an invasive biopsy or not. “When a mammogram yields an abnormal result, the challenge for ev (Read more...)
Parable Technology for Wound Care: Interview with Nathan Ie, Founder of Parable Health
Parable is a software platform that allows doctors and home health workers to collaboratively monitor wound healing and to flag any issues. The technology has been designed by Parable Health and allows doctors to assess wound parameters and healing progress from “smart” photos taken using a phone’s camera. The doctor can schedule (Read more...)
New Metamaterial Helps Improve High Field MRI Scans
Scientists from Leiden University in The Netherlands and ITMO University in Moscow, Russia have developed a new material that improves the image quality of high-field MRI scanners. The material can be used along with existing MRI coil arrays, as it’s flexible and is not very thick, and so can be integrated near the coils. The […]
Purdue Developing Self-Cleaning, Magnet Powered Implantable Catheters
Implantable drainage catheters, such as those used to drain cerebrospinal fluid in patients with hydrocephalus, tend to eventually get plugged up with fibrin, bacterial biofilms, blood, or as a result of the body’s immune system attacking them. New surgeries are often required to replace the devices, potentially causing serious complications (Read more...)
Review of WIWE, A Smartphone Powered, Handheld ECG Device Featuring a Pulse Oximeter
Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. One of the oldest, and still most commonly used, diagnostic tools in cardiology is electrocardiography (ECG). As today’s healthcare pushes for more mobile health solutions and optimal remote patient monitoring, a number of companies have introduced portable, handheld ECG devices for perso (Read more...)
New Higher Resolution Electrode Array for Intraoperative Brain Monitoring
Neurosurgeons operating on the brain often use electrode grids to monitor neural activity and to stay clear of healthy tissue. The technology hasn’t seen much progress over the past couple of decades, but now a team from University of California San Diego and Massachusetts General Hospital has developed a new electrode array that provide (Read more...)
PREVENA DUO Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Treats Two Incisions at Same Time
Acelity, based in San Antonio, Texas, is releasing the PREVENA DUO Incision Management System, a disposable negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) system that can be used to manage two surgical incisions at the same time. The company expects the PREVENA DUO to be used post vascular harvesting, breast reconstruction, and ortho trauma procedures (Read more...)
Interview with Rupa Basu, BIOTRONIK’s Senior VP of Marketing, Corporate Accounts and Strategy
Millions of people experience heart rhythm disturbances in their lifetime. This has propelled cardiac electrophysiology to become one of the most innovative fields in medicine today. BIOTRONIK, a privately owned, global company with headquarters in Germany, is one of the leaders in the cardiac rhythm management space. Aside from its European r (Read more...)
Manual Standing Wheelchair Lets Users Control It Whether Sitting or Upright
The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, recently renamed to Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, has developed a new wheelchair that allows its users to switch between a sitting and standing positions while retaining the ability to move and steer the chair in any direction. The fully mechanical device uses bicycle chains to transfer power from a tank tread-li (Read more...)
EduExo Educational Exoskeleton Robotics Kit Now on Kickstarter
Exoskeletons are an emerging field of engineering that is already allowing thousands of disabled people to regain arm movement and even paralyzed people to walk upright. To help promote the development of new devices and get people excited about exoskeletons, an educational kit is being promoted through a Kickstart funding campaign. The EduExo kit (Read more...)
Laser-Induced Graphene Showing Promise as Implant Material
Scientists from Rice University and Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have identified that laser-induced graphene, a material designed on purpose to have imperfections, both prevents the buildup of organic materials on its surface and can be used to electrically kill bacteria that comes in contact with it. While typical graphen (Read more...)
IontoDC Uses DC Electricity to Deliver Drugs Through Skin
Soterix Medical, a company based in New York City, won clearance from the FDA to introduce its IontoDC iontophoresis medication delivery system. Mostly meant for introducing soluble salt ions, but also fentanyl for pain control, into the body, the device relies on battery power to generate low current (up to 2 milliamperes) electricity that with [& (Read more...)
MIT Scientists Develop Microfluidic Device to Screen Biologics for Quality During Production
Biologics, which are drugs made of biochemical compounds produced by living organisms, are becoming more common to treat a variety of conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, chronic plaque psoriasis, and breast cancer. They’re usually proteins that are immensely easier to produce by plant or animal cells than synthesizing them from s (Read more...)