In the United States, Smith & Nephew is releasing its PICO 7Y negative pressure therapy system that can treat two wounds at the same time. The device uses a single pump to support two dressings thanks to a special Y extension. The capability helps to reduce costs and makes it easier on patients. Women undergoing […]
Author: Medgadged
Measuring Pain Levels Using Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy
Knowing how much pain a patient is in can help clinicians to diagnose a condition, understand the course of a disease, and set a course for treatment. While simply hearing patients out works pretty well for the general population, unconscious and non-communicative people are not properly assessed all too often. Now, researchers from MIT, Harvard, […]
Bacterial Swarmbots to Produce Biologic Drugs
Biologics, being a group of drugs synthesized from biological sources, are often produced using bacteria. The manufacturing processes are usually slow and laborious, though they do benefit from economies of scale. Producing small quantities of biologics is typically limited to research labs, and even there it is limited in scope. Researchers at Duke University have […]
Material to Repair Cardiac Tissue Damaged by Heart Attacks Passes First Clinical Trial
Ventrix, a spin-off company of the University of California San Diego, has developed a special hydrogel that can be injected into the heart to provide a platform for cardiac repair following a heart attack. The technology was just tested in humans for the first time as part of an FDA-approved Phase 1 clinical trial. Though […]
FDA Clears Siemens Artis icono Angiography Systems
Siemens Healthineers won FDA clearance for the ARTIS icono angiography systems that are designed for use in a variety of procedure types. The ARTIS icono 2D/3D biplane system is intended for neuroradiology and abdominal imaging while the ARTIS icono floor has a single fluoroscope and is designed for vascular, interventional cardiology, surgical, and oncology procedures. […]
Plasmapp Making Cool Gas Plasma Sterilization Available to Small Clinics
Many of today’s smaller surgical clinics have to sterilize equipment in-house, and autoclave sensitive instruments are processed using ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic, explosive, and irritating gas. Gas plasma is another low temperature option, but it requires large and expensive equipment that doesn’t make sense for small practices. A new company called Plasmapp has developed small […]
Siemens Healthineers Unveils Two New Radiotherapy Planning CT Scanners
Siemens Healthineers unveiled two new CT scanners specifically designed for radiation therapy planning. The SOMATOM go.Sim and SOMATOM go.Open Pro are 64-slice and 128-slice devices, respectively, and feature an 85 cm opening suitable for larger patients. To make patient prep easier and faster, the scanners come with an optional DirectLasers system mounted on top of […]
Light Powered Robot Made from Hydrogel to Operate Inside Body
Engineers at University of California, Los Angeles have come up with a tiny new robot that can be controlled and powered using a beam of light. Called OsciBot, because of its oscillating motion, the robot is made entirely out of a light-responsive hydrogel and doesn’t carry its own power source, relying on an external constant […]
Flexible Vitals Sensors Made from Graphene Sensitized with Quantum Dots
At the ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences, in Catalonia, Spain, researchers have come up with a way to use graphene to make flexible photodetectors to measure heart rate, blood oxygen concentration, and breathing rate. Additionally, the technology can also be used to measure UV levels coming from the Sun and to communicate the […]
Smart Phyjamas for Monitoring Physiological Signals at Night
Researchers from University of Massachusetts at Amherst have developed a new smart pajama, dubbed Phyjama, that can track physiological signals during sleep. Their work demonstrates that the technology can reliably measure heart rate, breathing rate, and sleep position during the course of the night. One day, advances like this can be incorporated into regular sleepwear, […]
GymCam Automatically Classifies, Counts Exercise Reps
Smartwatches and dedicated wrist-based activity trackers have become popular over the past few years. They’re decent at counting steps during walking and running, but they’re not very good at tracking most athletic activities. At Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a camera-based system that simply watches people at the gym doing exercises and automatically classifies […]
Incredible Health – a Career Marketplace Helping Health Care Professionals Find and Do Their Best Work – Announces Nationwide Expansion
Already trusted by 150+ major California hospitals, the company announces a $15M Series A today led by Andreessen Horowitz to build a community for health care professionals across the US. SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Sept 12, 2019) Incredible Health – the company powering one of the country’s fastest-growing health care hiring platforms – today announced $15 […]
GE Healthcare’s Artificial Intelligence FDA Cleared to Help Spot Collapsed Lung
Admitted patients often have to wait a number of hours for a radiologist to review their chest X-ray, even though it may be marked as urgent or STAT. That’s because way too many are marked as such in most clinics. Pneumothorax, or collapsed lung, can go unnoticed in the meantime, leading to a dangerous amount […]
Multicolor Activated Fluorescent Dyes Thanks to Single Atom Replacement
Fluorescent dyes have transformed biomedical science. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2008, for example, was given for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, GFP. Ever since GFP became available, scientists have been working on improving fluorescent dyes to better study dynamic processes within biological tissues. Typically, ultraviolet light is used to activate […]
Robotic Hand Combines Amputee and Robotic Control for Assistive Solution
Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have developed an intelligent robotic hand to assist amputees in daily tasks. The research team used existing robotic hardware, but developed a machine learning approach to provide better control for amputees, whereby the robotic arms can better anticipate user intentions, even down to individual finger movements. […]
Prosthetic Leg with Neurofeedback Makes Walking Easier, Treats Phantom Pain
Today’s prosthetic legs come in a variety of designs, but they lack the ability to give users a natural sense of themselves. They feel simply like man-made devices strapped to the stump, as tools and not as part of the body of whoever wears them. Researchers from ETH Zurich, University of Freiburg, University of Belgrade, […]
MRI Can Now See Molecular Content of Our Brains
As we age, the molecular composition of our brain changes. This is a natural process, but it can also be associated with the presence of disease. Currently, there’s no practical way to study the molecular changes within living humans, and post-mortem studies are limited in the scientific information they can provide. Now, scientists at the […]
Ultrasound Otoscope to Help Diagnose Middle Ear Infections
Diagnosing infections of the middle ear is prone to a great deal of subjectivity. Antibiotics being the typical treatment option, way too many patients are treated who are actually not infected. This can result in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and a host of other problems. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS […]
New Way of Making Superhydrophobic Microchannels for Medical Devices
At Purdue University, engineers have created a practical way of giving tubes, microchannels, and other hollow components superhydrophobic properties. The technique will improve existing medical devices and make new ones, particularly originating from the field of microfluidics, possible. Currently, there are a number of techniques to make a surface repel water so much that a […]
Optogenetic Brain System to Give Blind People Sight
While there has been a good deal of progress in designing ever more advanced visual prostheses, some of the more impressive existing devices try to take over the functionality of the eye by directly stimulating the optic nerve or even the visual cortex of the brain. While this is impressive in itself, researchers at SUNY […]