Here at Medgaget we are fanatical about all kinds of hi-tech gadgetry as it applies to healthcare. However, some of the most interesting and thoughtful innovations we see can often be surprisingly low-tech. A  new prototype prescription-medicine pill bottle for blind and visually impaired people is a case in point. Two University of Cincinnati design students, Alex Broerman and Ashley Ma have designed their “Inclusive Bottles for the Blind” in order to make identification and use of pill bottles more straightforward and affordable than existing hi-tech solutions.

The bottles were designed after carrying out a survey of existing products and end-users identified a number of limitations with available pill bottles. According to the press release, the key features of the design comprise:

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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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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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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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Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine are developing a new type of retinal prosthesis which aims to simplify the complex surgery associated with existing, bulkier implants. The prosthetic comprises a pair of goggles and an implanted retinal sensor made up of an array of light-sensitive photodiodes.

The goggles incorporate a miniature camera, a pocket computer for processing the camera data, and an LCD screen embedded into the goggles for displaying the data. The LCD screen beams images using laser pulses of near-infrared light to a photovoltaic ultra thin silicon chip implanted beneath the retina. The chip, in turn, translates the infra-red pulses to neural pulses in the retina which can be processed as images in the brain. The key selling point for the new implant is the elimination of wires and cables and the relative simplicity of implantation.

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This past week, Medgadget was invited to take a tour of Northeast Indiana, a region of ten counties surrounding and encompassing the city of Fort Wayne. You might already know about Warsaw, about 30 miles from Fort Wayne, as the headquarters for DePuy, Biomet, Zimmer, and a number of other companies that make the city the leading orthopedic device leader in the world. However, the rest of Northeast Indiana has also been evolving into a thriving medical device manufacturing hub, as labor is available, land is plentiful, and the region is very open and friendly toward the medical device manufacturing industry. In fact, according to the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, our host for the two day tour, the region has consistently been a leader in terms of dollars invested and jobs created in the industry. Over two days, we toured a number of different companies and talked to a number of executives about what makes their businesses successful and why they’re at a good place being in Northeast Indiana.

Our first stop was Micropulse, a contract manufacturer of implants and instruments for a number of large medical device clients. Micropulse was originally founded to produce parts for the automotive industry, but in the early 2000′s, founder and CEO Brian Emerick saw his business growing stagnant, and so he switched to medical devices and has never looked back since. What’s interesting about Micropulse is that its facilities are also headquarters to the OrthoVation Center, a new incubator for Emerick’s other medical product ventures. The OrthoVation Center currently is home to four companies: Del Palma Orthopedics, Nanovis, BioSpine, and Sites Medical.

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The U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) recently announced plans to deploy CogniSens‘ NeuroTracker system to “improve situational awareness, multiple target tracking and decision making efficiency of soldiers as it relates to combat.” While NeuroTracker isn’t the military’s first computer-based training system, it is the first one that doesn’t involve simulated combat environments.

The premise is simple: the user sits in front of a 3D screen displaying eight moving balls and is then instructed to follow four of the balls for eight minutes, with the remaining four acting as decoys. As the game progresses, it becomes more complex and faster paced. The principle behind the game, according to CogniSens, is that “the brain structurally rewires itself if stimulated intensively and repeatedly…the same way muscle cells improve with physical conditioning.”

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We’ve seen all sorts of assistive devices designed to help disabled people do ordinary things that the rest of us take for granted.  Somehow we managed to miss Ken’s Power Caster, a fishing accessory for wheelchairs that’s been on the market for a few years. The caster can be operated via push buttons or with a chin joystick or a sip & puff controller.

The device basically snaps to the wheelchair, then connected to a power source, and can be rotated in the desired direction to automatically launch the lure. There are also options that allow for additional movements to help get the big one, and the system will reel in the fish once it is hooked.

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Brain Resource (San Francisco, CA) has been busy lately. In March the company launched a partnership with Aetna to use its Web-based tools to help individuals optimize brain health, reduce stress, and increase productivity. Last month, the company announced that its technology would be used at St. Gregory Retreat Center (Des Moines, IA) to improve the cognitive and emotional capacities of patients undergoing drug and alcohol treatment. The company’s most recent partnership is with Keas (San Francisco, CA), which will offer Brain Resource’s brain exercises and online content as part of its cloud-based social gaming-based employee wellness platform.

The Keas program enables users to identify goals and then track progress towards reaching them. To measure that progress, the site uses a points-based system, which can be used to incentivize friendly competition among employees to meet health goals such as weight loss. “Our content fits right into that paradigm because we award ‘brain points’ for working the brain-health exercises that we are providing Keas,” Gregory A. Bayer, PhD, CEO of Brain Resource told Medgadget. The company’s proprietary exercises that will be featured on the Keas platform include “Think Focus,” “Relaxation Room,” and “Catch the Feeling,” which are designed to reduce stress, improve focus, and promote positive mind states and productivity.

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We’re all fairly familiar with “Imagineering”, Disney‘s R&D branch that develops cutting-edge theme park technology and showcases the latest in moviemaking, but it’s a little known fact that the Mouse House also runs Disney Research, a group that develops technology that isn’t necessarily entertainment related.

Their latest bit of Disney magic is Touché, a technology that greatly enhances touch sensing capabilities making iPads and Androids already feel so 2012. Touché works by turning practically anything into a touch-sensitive interface, including the human body and liquids. All that’s required is a special electrode placed on the object, which in turn becomes a touch-sensitive surface, and a single wire connected to a computer. But Touché goes beyond creating touch-sensitive surfaces; multi-touch and gestures can also be used, which opens a lot of potential interactive applications.

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