Medical Technology News From Around The World
Medgadget is an independent journal of the latest medical gadgets, technologies and discoveries.
Our website is written and published by a group of medical doctors and biomed engineers.
Chris Toumazou is an electrical engineer who has unexpectedly found himself helping to design medical devices. In the process he has realized that because biology is analog, our current digital approach to medical technology can be improved when interfacing devices with the human body. Here’s his talk from last year’s TEDMED where he explores this further:
Here’s a short Q&A between Jay Walker and Chris Toumazou that followed the talk:
Researchers from North Carolina State University’s Gains Through Gaming laboratory have found that playing the massive multiplayer online video game World of Warcraft (WoW) appeared to boost cognitive functioning in older adults. The researchers hypothesized that playing a cognitively complex game such as WoW, which requires multitasking and extensive use of a number of cognitive skills such as map reading, planning and tracking of multiple status indicators, could boost the cognitive performance of the elderly.
The study, which is available on-line as a corrected proof at the journal Computers in Human Behaviour, initially examined the spatial ability, memory and focus of adults aged 60 to 77, to set a baseline. An intervention group of 20 adults then played WoW for roughly 14 hours over the course of two weeks, while a control group of 19 adults played no WoW over the two weeks. At the end of the 2 weeks both groups were re-tested for cognitive functioning. Ultimately the researchers observed a greater cognitive improvement in intervention group when compared with controls.
Spider webs are commonly known as a frustration when cleaning the house, or as a source of anger when walking into one while hiking or camping. However, thanks to researchers at University of Akron they may now be associated with a more positive, biomedical application: sutures with embeddable drugs for wound healing.
Writing in a recent issue of Langmuir, the researchers describe employing…
In this short talk from TEDxMaastricht, Singularity University faculty member Lucien Engelen discusses how technologies are enabling us to crowdsource our health. He begins by describing the Withings blood pressure monitor and scale, which he uses to record his weight and then publicly share it via Twitter to get positive reinforcement for healthy lifestyle behaviors. He then describes his team’s work on AED4.us, a tool that crowdsources the mapping of all AEDs in a city (a similar app, MyHeartMap, was developed by a team of UPenn computer scientists and emergency physicians).
Check it out for yourself below:
Not all cancers are created equal. While some are easy to study in the Petri dish, others don’t do well in vitro. They often will not grow without a supporting framework of angiogenic blood vessels that supply their high metabolism with nutrients and oxygen. Performing experiments on tumors such as glioma is a difficult proposition because they only wish to reside in the body and normally don’t survive when grown outside in a laboratory environment.
Researchers at Brown University have now managed to grow a three-dimensional glioma tumor, including the supporting proximal blood vessels, and are already using it to perform experiments testing a nanomedicine approach to tumor destruction.
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Scientists at the research arm of General Electric have developed a heat sensor that consists of wings of the Morpho butterfly coated with single-walled carbon nanotubes. The device detects mid-wave infrared light with a precision of less than 0.06° C at a rate of about 40 Hz. GE believes the technology can be used in future medical imaging devices for visualizing inflammation and for thermal characterization of wounds.
Here’s more from Radislav Potyrailo, the lead scientist of the study:
If, like a certain Medgadget editor, you culture your own kefir at home, the colony surely starts to feel a bit mundane doing the same thing from day to day. If you want to teach your old bacteria new tricks, you’ll have to do it directly by changing its DNA.
Here’s Tuur van Balen at the Next Nature Power Show 2011 in Amsterdam showing off how to bioengineer yogurt bacteria at home to manufacture Prozac:
Medtronic has announced that it will start a trial with its Symplicity renal denervation system in patients with chronic heart failure. The Symplicity system, one of the most innovative approaches to treating hypertension in recent years, consists of a flexible catheter and proprietary generator, which are used during an endovascular procedure to denervate the renal arteries using low-power radio-frequency energy. This results in a reduction of hyper-activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
The main indication for the Symplicity is therapy-resistant hypertension, however Medtronic is looking into expanding indications for the device and the new trial (SYMPLICITY-HF) is designed to evaluate the safety and physiologic response to renal denervation in patients with chronic heart failure and renal impairment. It will include 40 adult subjects with chronic heart failure and renal impairment in Europe and Australia.
What do you get when two behemoth technology companies with interests in healthcare join forces? Apparently a 750-person healthcare IT company based in Seattle, WAÂ that, according to the press release, aims to drive “a paradigm shift in the delivery of care by enabling health systems and professionals to use real-time, systemwide intelligence to improve healthcare quality and the patient experience.”
The partnership between Microsoft and GE is called Caradigm and has the healthcare IT industry buzzing. Both companies will be contributing intellectual property to the 50-50 venture, including:
The Medical Revolution Will Be Blogged.
Medgadget is an independent journal of the latest medical gadgets, technologies and discoveries.
Our website is written, edited and published by a group of MDs and biomed engineers.
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