Tag: in the news…

Veta Smart EpiPen Case Helps Keep Patients Safe from Anaphylaxis (VIDEO)

by Medgadged • 2015/01/07 • 0 Comments

Forgetting your wallet or purse at home is one thing, but if you’re severely allergic to a food, forgetting your EpiPen (epinephrine injection) can be life threatening. A new device will soon be available to help keep the EpiPen near and to automatically notify loved ones whenever it’s used.

The Veta smart case has sensors built-in and communicates to a paired smartphone (iOS and Android) to make sure it’s not left behind. Whenever the phone stops receiving a proximity signal, it sounds an alarm and lets you know the GPS location of the spot where it was last heard from. If a child is using it, it can also be made to let parents know that Tommy forgot to bring the EpiPen. To help find the exact spot of the Veta, you can activate its find-me feature whereby it will flash and sound a ringer. There’s a temperature sensor built-in to make sure the epinephrine stays fresh. If you do end up using the EpiPen, the Veta case recognizes that it’s been opened and immediately sends alerts, which include the GPS location of the user, to pre-selected people, like parents and school nurses. The device also goes through a safety confirmation routine, starting a countdown after the pen is activated. If the user doesn’t respond to prompts from the app, it will eventually issue a loud notice to anyone around explaining the situation and calling for help. Interestingly, if you plan to be traveling aboard, the app can be setup to issue the warning in other languages.

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Noninvasive Neural Stimulation Projects at Stanford

by Medgadged • 2015/01/06 • 0 Comments

A wide variety of medical conditions arise from either inactive or overactive neurons in the brain and other parts of the body. Being able to control neurons to fire correctly may help treat many diseases and researchers at Stanford University are hard at work studying how transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and ultrasound can make that happen.

TMS uses strong magnetic fields to stimulate regions of the brain, a technology that can use a good deal of research to narrow and focus the fields and to be able to activate regions deep within the brain. Ultrasound has relatively recently been shown to be able to perform similar tricks, the researchers using it to activate retinal nerve cells in an attempt to help correct vision problems. Here’s a Stanford video presenting some of the projects that are underway to help introduce noninvasive neural stimulation for new medical applications:

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Stem Cell BioGenerator to Help Repair Broken Hearts

by Medgadged • 2015/01/06 • 0 Comments

NuVascular Technologies (Ashland, MA) has partnered with Worcester Polytechnic Institute and BioSurfaces, Inc. (Ashland, MA) to introduce the BioGenerator stem cell device for clinical applications. The device holds stem cells produced at Worcester from adult bone marrow cells. It can either be attached to the heart wall or injected into cardiac tissue via a catheter.

The electrospun vesicle allows stem cells within to release proteins and growth factors directly into the heart to motivate production of new myocytes. The stem cells themselves stay put and can be removed at any time by explanting the BioGenerator. The hope is that the system will serve as a functional treatment option for hearts damaged by infarcts, eclipsing many current therapies that only marginally and temporarily address the problem.

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Bellafill FDA Approved to Treat Acne Scars

by Medgadged • 2015/01/06 • 0 Comments

Acne scars from teenage years stay with some throughout their lives, affecting a good chunk of the population and making millions of women apply dense layers of makeup to their face. It’s a constant reminder of one’s age and a source of regret for not taking care of acne when it was active. Now there’s a solution, thanks to an FDA approval, that can purportedly fill in those scars and smooth out the skin to look young and fresh.

The Bellafill product is a mixture of purified bovine collagen and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) microspheres. The collagen puffs up the area where it’s injected, while the microspheres provide a structure within which naturally produced collagen can gather. In time, the injected collagen is replaced by the patient’s own, providing natural long-term results. The product has a proven safety record, having been approved for treating nasolabial folds, or smile lines, since 2006.

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Graphene Delivers Two Cancer Drugs to Surface and Interior of Tumor Cells

by Medgadged • 2015/01/06 • 0 Comments

Graphene, a single atom thick material for which a Nobel Prize was awarded, has been hailed as a substance that will change our future. Yet, practical applications for its use in electronics, sensing, and other industries have been slow to materialize. Instead, we may see its most beneficial uses first come to medicine as a team from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and China Pharmaceutical University have demonstrated graphene’s ability to ferry drugs to cancer sites.

The team bound doxorubicin and a membrane-associated cytokine (tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand, TRAIL) to tiny sheets of graphene, either directly or by using chains of peptides. When injected into laboratory mice with human lung cancer tumors, the graphene compound sticks to cancer cells thanks to the newly discovered attractive properties of the TRAIL protein. The cancer cells in turn snap off TRAIL proteins from the graphene and swallow up the graphene sheets with the doxorubicin still attached. This way the doxorubicin can attack the nucleus of the diseased cells, where it is most effective, while TRAIL works on the membrane, its preferred target.

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Valedo Turns Video Games Into Smart Back Training Exercises (VIDEO)

by Medgadged • 2015/01/05 • 0 Comments

At CES this week, Hocoma, a Swiss firm, is showing off its Valedo lower back exercise and therapy device. It sticks to the back of the spine and continuously detects the posture of its user. While other similar devices are already in existence, the Valedo can be used as a fun training system when paired with compatible tablets.

It’s used as a sort of joystick to control video games on a tablet or TV screen, fooling the user into performing specific exercises while he’s thinking it’s all fun and games.

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Retinal Implant Alpha IMS Brings Sight to Blind in New Study (w/video)

by Medgadged • 2013/02/21 • 0 Comments

Retinal-Implant-AG-implant

Retina Implant AG, a German developer of subretinal implants to help restore sight of people with retinitis pigmentosa, has announced publication of results of a new clinical trial of its Alpha IMS system. Nine blind people received the 3×3 mm wireless microchip implants that feature a 1500 pixel resolution. The implants capture light and in turn stimulate the optic nerve, which delivers visual signal data to the brain.

A distinct advantage of the Alpha IMS is that, unlike other similar devices such as the recently released Argus II, it does not rely on an external camera. Instead, light is detected inside the eye, enabling the patient to look around by moving his eyes rather than the head. It also has a much higher resolution grid and is implanted under the retina, allowing the middle layer of the retina to process the input before it is sent to the visual cortex.