The average cell phone is dirtier than you might think. It has been estimated that a typical mobile phone could be up to six times dirtier than a public toilet and as many as one in four handsets could carry pathogenic bacteria. While we wash our hands, our phones rarely, if ever, get cleaned, and […]
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ViewRay out of Oakwood Village, Ohio, received FDA clearance for its MRIdian Linac radiotherapy system, the first that combines a linear accelerator with an MRI to provide combined image guidance and therapy. It can allow physicians to see whether the radiation beam is properly hitting the tumor and what effect it may be having. The […]
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Cagent Vascular, a company based in Wayne, Pennsylvania, won FDA clearance for its Serranator Alto PTA Serration Balloon Catheter. Unlike other balloon catheters designed to dilate blood vessels, the Serranator Alto PTA has a series of teeth-like ridges on four sides of the balloon. As the balloon is pumped to push open a constricted vessel, [&hell (Read more...)
Routine lab work to examine a host of biological parameters often depends on destructively lysing, or bursting, cells to release their contents for measurement. While this simple technique has been used for decades, it creates a constraint on protocol design because a given cell can only be analyzed once (when lysed) in a snapshot-like manner. [&he (Read more...)
Successful patient engagement is a hallmark of success in the world of digital health. Thinking beyond the mobile app or wearable technology itself, Neura, a Silicon Valley-based company that was founded in 2013, has created a software platform that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to improve patient engagement for better health outcomes. By (Read more...)
At Stanford University, researchers have given severely paralyzed people the fastest brain-computer interface yet. This is measured in terms of how fast they were able to type using an on-screen matrix of letters. Two patients with ALS and one with a spinal cord injury simply imagined moving a physical computer mouse, though their hands were [&hell (Read more...)
Stryker, the company best known for orthopedic implants and devices, is also in the business of designing operating rooms. Planning an efficient surgical environment that can serve various needs has meant trying different configurations in real life, or on a small, flat computer screen. Since it seems like we’re living in the future, Stryker (Read more...)
At the Waseda University in Japan, researchers have come up with a new, cheaper way of producing electronic devices that are flexible, elastic, and adhere to the skin. This development may help body monitoring electronic skin patches that interface with smartphone apps to become commonly used in medicine and by consumers. The technology relies on&n (Read more...)
Scientists at Stanford University have developed a deep convolutional neural network that can diagnose skin cancer by examining images of skin lesions. Skin cancer is the most common human cancer, and one in five Americans will be diagnosed with it at some point in their lives. At present, skin cancer is primarily diagnosed through an […]
Intersect ENT of Menlo Park, California has received FDA approval for its PROPEL Contour steroid releasing sinus implant, which is indicated for treatment of chronic sinusitis in the frontal and maxillary sinuses. Besides providing structural integrity, it reduces the need for orally administered steroids and only supplies them where needed. T (Read more...)
Bone infections are often very difficult to treat, and with the rise of MRSA this issue has become only more challenging. A team of researchers from University of Missouri, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, and Silpakorn University in Thailand has developed a way of making tissue scaffol (Read more...)
Doctors are some of the biggest consumers of 3D visualization because every CT and MRI scan is a volumetric data set. So far, viewing the data in 3D has typically required a special set of glasses or meant that the person had to keep the eyes within a small space within which the 3D effect […]
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The Amazon Alexa and Google Home virtual voice assistants have become suddenly popular among consumers wishing to know the weather, to set cooking timers, and to ask facts about the world. In medicine this capability may be more than a simple convenience, potentially helping to conduct physical exams, helping with documentation and looking up medic (Read more...)
The Azurion system builds on Philips’ many decades of imaging expertise combined with a growing integrated therapy portfolio, enhanced by the 2015 acquisition of Volcano. It is is expected to form the core of Philips’ integrated image-guided systems including vascular surgery, cardiology, oncology, and neuroradiology. The new imagi (Read more...)
Vortex Biosciences of Menlo Park, California just launched its VTX-1 Liquid Biopsy System, a device that automates the extraction of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole blood. The filter-free technology is based on microfluidic chips with a series of connected boxes linked by narrow channels. As blood is carefully pushed through the system, l (Read more...)
Single-cell sequencing has shown a lot of promise in identifying genetic differences between cells in a given tissue sample. It is particularly useful for understanding heterogeneity and evolution in resected tumors, and is increasingly used for improving precision medicine approaches. Unfortunately, conventional methods are cost-prohibitive, thus (Read more...)
Researcher Dr. Luan and his interdisciplinary team from the University of Texas at Austin have developed an ultra flexible nanoelectronic thread (NET) that has the potential to offer a new type of the long-term neural implants. Neural probes are used to directly measure or even stimulate electrical activity in specific regions of the brain. However (Read more...)
FlexDex, a new minimally invasive surgical tool system that we’ve grown quite fond of, has now been used for the first time in a number of operations at Michigan Medicine. We tried the FlexDex ourselves during a visit to the company’s offices last year and, hoping not to exaggerate, we felt that the system really is […]
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FlowAid Medical Technologies, a company based in New York City, won FDA clearance for its FA100 Sequential Continuous Contraction Device (SCCD). It’s designed to help promote blood circulation, reduce swelling, prevent atrophy, and lower the chances of venous thrombosis in post-surgical patients by electrically stimulating the calf muscl (Read more...)
Liberating. Jabra’s Elite Sport true wireless earbuds are truly liberating. I no longer have to worry about a tangle of wires in my workouts. Nor do I have to worry about sweat contaminating and damaging my gear – they’re waterproof and are backed by a three-year “sweat proof” warranty. Nor do I have to worry [… (Read more...)