Medicine / Pediatrics

Hygieia’s DIGS Automatic Insulin Titration Device Shows Promise; Company Talks to Medgadget

by Gene Ostrovsky on May 18, 2012
Hygieia's DIGS Automatic Insulin Titration Device Shows Promise; Company Talks to Medgadget

An experimental new device called Diabetes Insulin Guidance System (DIGS) from Hygieia, Inc. (Ann Arbor, MI) is being developed to automate insulin dosage titration in patients with type I and type II diabetes, based on measurements of blood glucose and analysis of patterns in the obtained data. The company hopes one day to provide patients with an automatically calculated insulin dosage adjustments between doctor visits, in hopes of improving their glycemic control.

The company’s clinical advisory board is packed with diabetes experts such as Martin Abrahamson, MD from Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, so they obviously know what they are doing. And the latest data seems to confirm that. A recent publication in Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics is quite positive for the technology, as it demonstrated DIGS’ potential to improve blood glucose control for insulin-using patients with type 2 or type 1 diabetes. Over the 12-week intervention period of the study, investigators observed:

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Diagnostics / Net News / Ob/Gyn

UCSD Electronic Wireless Tattoo Receives Grant from the Gates Foundation

by Scott Jung on May 18, 2012
UCSD Electronic Wireless Tattoo Receives Grant from the Gates Foundation

Last week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced its latest round of grant winners for its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative. Among the recipients is a team from the University of California, San Diego and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that is developing a tiny, flexible fetal monitor. We wrote about the technology behind the device back in August and were able to hear from David Icke, CEO of MC10, the company helping to commercialize it, at both FutureMed in February and at last month’s TEDMED conference.

Described as an electronic “tattoo”, the device is a wearable patch of circuits, sensors, and wireless transmitters that sticks to the skin like a temporary tattoo and is able to stretch and flex with the skin. The researchers hope that the final product will continuously measure and monitor uterine contractions, fetal heart rate and oxygen, and maternal heart rate and body temperature.

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in the news...

NIH Director Francis Collins on Speeding Up Arrival of New Disease Treatments

by Gene Ostrovsky on May 18, 2012 •

Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, spoke at the last TEDMED about the challenges of converting fundamental research into practical therapeutics. In addition to proposing new approaches like repurposing of drugs and using manufactured human tissue for testing new compounds, he spoke on stage with a 15-year-old boy with Hutchinson–Gilford Progeria, a rare condition that accelerates aging, who had some words for medical researchers everywhere.

Turns out that Dr. Collins is more than just a physician and famous geneticist.  He also can play a bit of a mean guitar.  Here he is with Jill Sobule performing their debut hit “Disease Don’t Care”.

More TEDMED videos…

Medgadget Exclusive / Rehab

Medgadget Interviews Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, Creators of the Kinecthesia Haptic Belt for Blind People

by Gavin Corley on May 18, 2012
Medgadget Interviews Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, Creators of the Kinecthesia Haptic Belt for Blind People

Over the years we have been fortunate to cover numerous student designed medical devices and we are always amazed by the innovation and creativity demonstrated by these teams. In November of last year we covered one such project, the Kinecthesia, a haptic belt which allows the wearer to virtually sense objects ahead, and to the left and right thanks to three motors which vibrate in response to objects in their immediate vicinity. As the name would imply, at the heart of the Kinecthesia is an XBox Kinect 3D camera which is connected to a Beagle Board computing platform that processes the depth data from the device and drives the motors.

Its two student creators, Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kisk, developed the Kinecthesia at Weiss Tech House, a student-run hub of technological innovation at the University of Pennsylvania that supports students in the creation, development and commercialization of innovative technologies. The project is very innovative and reflects a growing trend in hardware hacking and customization which is creeping into a number of fields including health technology.

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Cardiac Surgery / Cardiology / Critical Care / Medgadget Exclusive / Surgery / Vascular Surgery

Five Questions for Dr. Paul Walker of Spectral Diagnostics

by Jan Sinnige on May 17, 2012
Five Questions for Dr. Paul Walker of Spectral Diagnostics

Sepsis is a huge problem, costing billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives a year in the US alone. A Toronto, Canada-based startup Spectral Diagnostics Inc. is developing a promising technology to decrease morbidity and mortality of patients with sepsis. The company’s proprietary technology is integrated into Toraymyxin, a hemoperfusion adsorption column which is highly effective in removing circulating endotoxin from the bloodstream. Furthermore, Spectral Diagnostics has also developed the Endotoxin Activity Assay (EAA) – the only FDA cleared, CE marked rapid diagnostic for endotoxemia. According to a company representative, in 2009 interim results of a Phase II study were published in JAMA demonstrating that “Toraymyxin, when added to conventional therapy, significantly reduced 28-day mortality in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock, compared to patients only receiving conventional therapy. Due to these positive results, that trial was terminated early and a Phase III pivotal multicenter study has been launched in the U.S. and Canada.” To find out more about this technology and its future, we had a chance to conduct an interview with Dr. Paul Walker, President and CEO of Spectral Diagnostics.

Dr. Jan Sinnige, Medgadget: Spectral Diagnostics recently started a phase three randomized controlled trial on Polymyxin B Hemoperfusion. What are the expectations according to the phase two results?

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Orthopedic Surgery / Rehab / Sports Medicine

FlexLeg Gives Users With Lower-Leg Injuries Increased Mobility (videos)

by Scott Jung on May 17, 2012
FlexLeg Gives Users With Lower-Leg Injuries Increased Mobility (videos)

Ask anyone who’s ever had to spend part of their life hobbling around on crutches, and they’ll probably agree that it’s a chore. Running, let alone anything faster than a brisk walk, is out of the picture, and ascending or descending stairs becomes an adventure.

A new product, called FlexLeg, from a couple of mechanical engineers from Brigham Young University in Utah, seeks to make life with an injured lower leg a little less burdensome. Looking somewhat like the Cheetah Flex-Foot prostheses that Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius uses, FlexLeg is a hands-free alternative for people with temporary lower-leg injuries to help them walk with a more natural rhythm than using crutches, and for those always on the go, the ability to even run.

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Medgadget Exclusive / Pathology / Public Health

F Cubed’s Pathogen Detector Will Make Swimming Holes Safer This Summer

by Scott Jung on May 17, 2012
F Cubed's Pathogen Detector Will Make Swimming Holes Safer This Summer

During our recent tour of Northeast Indiana, we had the opportunity to visit F Cubed (F3), a startup supported by the Innovation Park at Notre Dame. F3 is developing a portable device that allows for rapid detection of DNA of harmful pathogens in under 30 minutes.

We’ve written about a number of similar lab-on-chip detectors, but what sets the F3 system apart is its biochip technology. F3′s biochip, which is smaller than the size of a thumbnail, allows for the detection of multiple pathogens without the use of expensive and complicated optical devices. According to F3,

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in the news...

Using Colonoscopy to Predict Parkinson’s Disease?

by Brian Klein on May 17, 2012
Using Colonoscopy to Predict Parkinson’s Disease?

Roughly 60,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease each year, according to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation. In all, more than 1.5 million people in the United States suffer from the condition. Yet thousands of cases go undetected and diagnosing the disease in the early stages remains challenging.

Early diagnosis of Parkinson’s enables the disease to be treated with drugs such as dopamine agonists and monoamine oxidase type-B inhibitors, which can alleviate the condition’s symptoms and postpone the need to begin levodopa therapy. Nevertheless, early diagnosis of Parkinson’s has remained challenging and misdiagnoses are common.

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Neurological Surgery / Neurology / Rehab

Severely Disabled People Control Robotic Arm Through Thought (video)

by Gene Ostrovsky on May 17, 2012
Severely Disabled People Control Robotic Arm Through Thought (video)

We’ve been covering the development of the BrainGate brain-computer interface system for the last seven years, and we’re glad to see that it’s now at a point where severely disabled tetraplegics are able to control a robotic arm in three dimensional space purely by thinking about it.

The system relies on an implanted 96-channel microelectrode array attached to the brain that records the motor cortex neurons responsible for arm movement. Because the implant reads the very neurons that are normally activated during arm movement, the people in the study didn’t require any explicit training or instruction in operating the roboarm. One of the two people in the study, who last moved her arms effectively before a severe stroke 14 years prior, was able to control the robotic hand to pick up a cup and take a drink from it. See for yourself in this Nature video:

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