Concordance Healthcare Solutions, a company affiliated with Purdue University, has developed a medication compliance product that reminds users to take their pills and monitors how they are doing. The Smart Med Reminder system includes electronic caps that fit standard prescription drug bottles, a smartphone app that communicates with the caps, and an online cloud platform […]
Tag: Medicine
Apple’s Next Move in Healthcare is Breaking Down Health Record Silos
In an important step forward in the consumerization of healthcare, this week Apple introduced an update to its Health app (iOS 11.3 beta) which allows individuals to access medical records on their iPhone. Based on the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard, the company’s new Health Records API allows patient data from over 500 hospitals and clinics, […]
Chip Pairs Bacteria with Antibiotics to Spot Drug Resistance, Points to Best Therapy
Patients presenting with a bacterial infection can be surprisingly challenging to treat if drug resistance is present and/or if sepsis develops. Using the right antibiotic as early as possible, and identifying if the infection is resistant to the drugs, can often make the difference between life and death. Yet, the time it takes currently to […]
Litesprite Helps Patients Manage Illnesses Through Gamification
Gamification is gaining recognition as a powerful tool for contexts far removed from gaming itself, and the approach has been used for applications as varied as advertising, to recruiting, to rewards programs. Litesprite hopes to expand gamification in a rather important sector: health. Litesprite’s mobile application, Sinasprite, helps patients proactively manage their chronic illnesses, including […]
Health Technology Briefs from the ITF Demo Floor
Medgadget was recently invited to attend the imec Technology Forum (ITF) conference in Antwerp, Belgium. One of the highlights of the conference was the demo floor where imec, which is a non-profit R&D innovation organization, had the opportunity to show off some cool technologies from their research teams, spinoff companies, and partner organization. While the […]
Tiny Battery-Free Implantable Devices Powered Wirelessly Using Radio Frequency Waves
Scientists at MIT have developed a wireless system that can power tiny implantable devices in the body, without the need for batteries. The system relies on radiofrequency waves emitted by an antenna outside the body, which can then power the implants from as far away as one meter and as deep as 10 cm below […]
Imec Develops Organ-On-Chip Device to Improve Drug Candidate Screening
The drug development process is a long road that involves not only many years of research and large piles of money, but also a great deal of pre-clinical and clinical testing. Animals used during in vivo testing are not always good human analogues, and humans of course are always at risk for potentially serious side […]
Ultrasound-Powered Nanorobots to Remove Bacteria and Toxins from Blood
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed cell-like nanorobots that can clear bacteria and bacterial toxins from blood. The tiny bots are powered by ultrasound and they could pave the way for nanorobotic systems that can decontaminate biological fluids or even clear infections in the body. Despite being 25 times smaller than […]
Wearables for a World Without Disease: Interview with imec’s Chris Van Hoof
Medgadget was recently invited to attend the imec Technology Forum conference in Antwerp, Belgium. Imec is a non-profit R&D innovation organization specializing in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Like many digital hardware companies, imec saw a lot of potential in healthcare technologies and started researching them about 12 years ago. Chris Van Hoof has been there […]
Klue Hand Tracking Tech for Behavior Change to be Tried at Stanford, Crossover Health
Klue, a Silicon Valley company that’s working to better utilize data gathered from wearable body trackers, is now working with Stanford University and Crossover Health, a primary care medical group, to study the effectiveness of Klue’s modules to affect change. The partnership with Stanford involves conducting a scientific study of Klue’s Mindful Eating Messenger and […]
IQcool Warm System FDA Cleared to Cool and Rewarm Patients
BrainCool, a Swedish company, obtained FDA clearance for its IQool Warm System. The device, the name of which seems to be intended to be an oxymoron, can be used to both cool and reheat patients. The company’s first FDA cleared product, the IQool, which looks identical to the newly approved one, is indicated for rapidly […]
Britain to Invest Heavily in AI for Medicine
British Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that the United Kingdom will invest heavily into artificial intelligence technology to improve healthcare. The details are not clear, but UK’s National Health Service has been compiling data on millions of patients for many years and it may prove to be a great resource to train artificial intelligence […]
Britain to Invest Heavily in AI for Medicine
British Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that the United Kingdom will invest heavily into artificial intelligence technology to improve healthcare. The details are not clear, but UK’s National Health Service has been compiling data on millions of patients for many years and it may prove to be a great resource to train artificial intelligence […]
MC10’s BioStamp nPoint Biometric Recording System Cleared by FDA
MC10, out of Lexington, Massachusetts, landed FDA clearance for its new BioStamp nPoint biometric data acquisition system. Based on the BioStampRC, it is stuck to the patient’s body and can then continuously record parameters such as the heart rate, step count, and movements during sleep. It’s intended for monitoring of patients, but also for clinical […]
Enable Injections enFuse Makes Self-Administered Vaccines Less Intimidating
While most of us would prefer to take our medications orally, many kinds of drugs, such as biologics, must be injected. Biologics themselves, however, are often difficult to inject, as the effective dose is often large and the biologic is often viscous, requiring significant force and injection time to administer, meaning more discomfort. Patients needing […]
Monitoring Your Health is No Sweat with Eccrine Systems’ Sweatronics Wearable
Biofluids can be a goldmine of valuable information about our health. However, most of them require sharp needles, diuretics, or sappy romance dramas (blood, urine, and tears) to produce in useful quantities. One Cincinnati area startup has developed a device that samples a biofluid that everyone produces continuously while sleeping or awake – sweat! During […]
Baxter’s Spectrum IQ Drug Infusion System with Clever Safety Features Cleared in U.S.
Baxter won FDA clearance for its Spectrum IQ infusion system, which has some interesting features designed to prevent the wrong drugs and wrong dosages from being administered. The device connects to the hospital’s electronic medical record system, receiving information from it and sending its own data there for permanent storage. Baxter’s Dose IQ software within […]
Scientists Create Maps of Gonorrhea’s Resistance to Antibiotics
A team of European researchers has mapped the genome of various strains of gonorrhea, creating a way to identify antibiotic resistance before trying different regimens of antibiotics. By sequencing DNA gathered from patient samples, the researchers were able to spot individual cases of resistance and to correct faulty lab test results. While important in itself, […]
Admetsys Develops Artificial Pancreas for Critical Care
Admetsys, a company headquartered in Boston, has developed a system for controlling blood glucose levels in critical care patients. Essentially an artificial pancreas, the system relies on a lab-on-a-chip that’s embedded within an intravenous catheter to measure glucose and lactic acid, automatically supplying insulin or glucose to keep the patient within normal range. Measurements are […]
Beating the Travel Bug & Innovation in Hand Sanitation: Interview with Zoono CSO Dr. Andrew Alexander
While flu season is drawing to a close, transmission of germs can still lead to colds and serious respiratory diseases. In few places are individuals more exposed to a multitude of unique germs and germ carriers than during travel. Unlike some forms of travel, such as buses, where an individual can choose to get off […]