The FCC has kindly allocated a chunk of radio spectrum in the 413-457 megahertz range specifically for use by wireless devices that would relay nervous signals to paralyzed limbs.
According to Bloomberg, The Alfred Mann Foundation is planning on beginning trials of technology utilizing this band to help people with head and neck cancer who have difficulty swallowing and brain injury patients with arm paralysis.
From FCC’s press statement:
Medical Micropower Networks (MMNs) are ultra-low power wideband networks consisting of multiple transmitters implanted in the body that use electric currents to activate and monitor nerves and muscles.
As the FCC also recognized in the 2010 National Broadband Plan, wireless technology can improve the quality of life for individuals and lower the cost of health care. Today’s action advances this broadband health care agenda.
The FCC initiated this proceeding in response to a petition from the Alfred Mann Foundation, which has built prototype MMN systems and conducted extensive testing that demonstrates that this new medical technology can reliably operate in shared spectrum to deliver vital therapies. The action the FCC takes today will allow devices such as those being tested by Alfred Mann to proceed on the path to patient use as well as inspire researchers to begin work on the next generation of implanted medical radio networks.
More at Bloomberg: Medical Devices That Help Paralyzed Move Will Get Radio Spectrum
In a hilarious and aptly timed demonstration, Gabor Forgacs from Organovo got on stage next to talk about printing meat with his tissue printers. He had talked previously about using them to regenerate tissue for human health, but it is equally possible to take muscle cells and print them for human consumption. He brought up a little frying pan, opened up a vial, and pulled out a strip of “printed” pork that he made using his technology, heated it, and ate it right in front of us. The whole spectacle was hilarious and the audience was loving every moment. He’s not sure what to call his new type of meat but is leaning toward “lab meat” or “in vitro meat.”
The MyLab Seven is a traditional wheeled device in a small footprint with new productivity features and the MyLab Alpha is a miniaturized laptop-like ultrasound that brings the same high quality imaging of the company’s high end systems into a small package.
office visits for regular saline injections that pump up the implanted expander. AirXpanders out of Palo Alto, CA has announced that the first patient has been enrolled in an IDE trial of its AeroForm technology that allows women to control the expansion of the implant on their own using a remote control.
We at Medgadget have been covering an increasing number of lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technologies over the last number of years. Many of these existing LOC devices consist of a microfluidic cartridge containing reagents which typically needs to be analyzed by larger bench top devices. Recently, researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have come up with an interesting low-cost concept for performing these analyses using the touchscreen of a smartphone.
Wired is featuring a lengthy write-up about the use of iPads by doctors and other clinical staff in hospitals. It starts by introducing Afshad Mistri, Apple’s medical market manager, then moves on to discuss the different uses of iPads by doctors and finishes by explaining why Apple is specifically targeting doctors. A recommended read for anybody interested in the use of iDevices in medicine.
Researchers at Purdue have developed a method of monitoring both metallic and semiconducting nanotubes within cells and blood plasma without using any kind of marking or dying labels. The method, called transient absorption, uses two near-infrared lasers to energize and detect the shining nanotubes.
