Flexible Skin Sensor to Help ALS Patients Communicate
Researchers at MIT have developed a wearable sensor that can detect small deformations of the skin, potentially serving as a way to help amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients to communicate through facial movements. The low-cost sensors are much cheaper and may be more effective than current assistive communication technologies for ALS patients.
Canan Dagdeviren, the lead researcher on the project, and who has been previously interviewed by Medgadget, became inspired to develop technology to assist those with ALS to communicate after meeting Professor Stephen Hawking in 2016, and noting that the technology he use...
Source: Medgadget - October 23, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Rehab Source Type: blogs
Doctors Urge Caution in Interpretation of Research in Times of COVID-19
September 9, 2020
To:
American College of Cardiology
American College of Chest Physicians
American College of Physicians
American College of Radiology
American Heart Association
American Society of Echocardiography
American Thoracic Society
European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging
European Society of Cardiology
European Society of Radiology
Heart Rhythm Society
Infectious Disease Society of America
North American Society of Cardiovascular Imaging
Radiologic Society of North America
Society of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance
Soci...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 17, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Medical Practice Patients Physicians myocarditis Saurabh Jha Source Type: blogs
Soft Electronics for Advanced Heart Catheters
Researchers at George Washington University and Northwestern University have developed a new class of soft devices that can provide new functionality for catheters used in cardiac procedures. The new materials are soft electronics, including stretchable sensors and actuators, that when applied to the surface of a catheter system, could greatly assist in diagnosing and treating cardiac conditions.
Catheter-based therapy for conditions such as cardiac arrhythmias is well-established. However, current catheters are quite rigid and do not conform particularly well to the soft tissues in which they are used. This makes it di...
Source: Medgadget - September 8, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Cardiac Surgery Materials Vascular Surgery Source Type: blogs
Air Force announces research platform to harness closed-loop neurotechnology and accelerate learning “on the fly”
U.S. Air Force illustration/Richard Eldridge
Air Force Neurotechnology Partnership Aims to Accelerate Learning (Military Spot):
The Individualized Neural Learning System, or iNeuraLS, is a new augmented learning platform that will enable rapid learning by closed-loop modulation of cognitive states during skill acquisition. Essentially, the AFRL team seeks to develop a capability that will give Airmen the ability to rapidly acquire knowledge and skills on the fly through direct brain interfaces with the help of neurotechnologies…
“We’re going to have unprecedented access to the brain using a novel brain-machine inter...
Source: SharpBrains - August 18, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Peak Performance Technology Air-Force Airmen augmented learning brain interfaces brain stimulation brain-machine interface cognitive states electroencephalography Individualized Neural Learning System iNeuraL Source Type: blogs
Nanoparticles for Large Gene Therapy to Cure Common Eye Diseases
Wet age-related macular degeneration and a number of other eye diseases, including congenital conditions, are related to mutated genes that result in blood vessel abnormalities. These can be treated with gene therapy, but delivering genetic material has proven to be difficult when dealing with large gene sequences that are common in retinal conditions.
Viruses have been the go-to vectors for delivering genes into the eye, but the immune system wants to fight them. Too often this results in poor efficacy on follow-up treatments. Moreover, they are not good at carrying large genetic payloads and there’s also a risk ...
Source: Medgadget - July 9, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Genetics Nanomedicine Ophthalmology Source Type: blogs
Blood Vessel Networks Made by 3D Printing Powdered Sugar
To study the complex functionality of groups of cells, and to one day build replacement tissues, researchers have been trying to find a way to generate artificial vascular networks capable of supplying oxygen and nutrients to thousands of cells. Extrusion 3D printing, in which a liquefied material is layered down and allowed to harden, has proven to be insufficient to produce fine structures with complex morphologies. Rice University scientists, with the help of others, have now developed a way of using laser-sintering of powdered sugars to produce highly detailed structures that can hold onto live cells and keep them aliv...
Source: Medgadget - June 30, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Materials Vascular Surgery Source Type: blogs
Patch for Melanoma Treatment to Make Chemo Easier, Painless, More Effective
Scientists at Purdue University are reporting a skin patch that can deliver chemotherapy into melanoma tumors in an effective, convenient, and painless way. This may be an important development, as currently chemotherapy delivery options are limited and result in systemic exposure in the whole body and/or poor effectiveness.
Previous attempts at chemotherapy delivery via a patch required the use of large needles, which themselves dissolved way too fast once inside the skin to maintain continuous drug delivery. “We developed a novel wearable patch with fully miniaturized needles, enabling unobtrusive drug delivery thro...
Source: Medgadget - June 18, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Dermatology Materials Medicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
Fidget Spinner for Rapid Detection of Urinary Tract Infections
More than half of all women experience at least one episode of urinary tract infection (UTI) in their lifetime, with men also facing increasing risks of infection as they age. Current detection of UTIs rely on patients reporting symptoms followed by a lab culture of the urine for known bacterial culprits, which typically takes a few days. However, doctors tend to prescribe antibiotics to suppress any suspect cases of UTI before they get the test results, contributing to the increasing problem of antibiotic resistance. Dipstick tests that reduce the time taken for diagnoses come with a high chance for false positives.
...
Source: Medgadget - May 26, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Rukmani Sridharan Tags: Diagnostics Medicine Urology Source Type: blogs
Smartphone Measures Hemoglobin Levels in Photos of Eyelids
Anemia is properly diagnosed using a blood test that measures hemoglobin, but simply looking behind a patient’s eyelid can be a pretty good alternative if you know how red the tissue is supposed to be. Now, a team at Purdue University has developed a technology that lets a clinician use smartphone pictures of the inner eyelid to automatically obtain surprisingly accurate results of blood hemoglobin levels. This capability is expected to soon be fully integrated into an app that will perform the necessary image analysis.
Unlike blood tests, smartphone apps are incredibly easy to roll out and put to use in even some...
Source: Medgadget - May 26, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Diagnostics Informatics Medicine Pediatrics Public Health Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
Reusable Disinfectant Developed from Mussel “Glue”
Mimicking mussels’ natural “glue” could have multiple benefits.
Many species have developed unique adaptations to help them thrive in their environments, and scientists in a field called biomimicry use these examples as the basis for tools to help humans. Biomimicry researchers have made a wide range of products, from climbing pads modeled after gecko feet to a faster, sharp-nosed bullet train based on the beak of the kingfisher bird. The animal kingdom also provides inspiration for biomedical products. For instance, scientists at Michigan Technological University in Houghton discovered that a natural ...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - May 20, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Susan Johnson Tags: Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Cool-creatures Research-organisms Wound-healing Source Type: blogs
Research assistant / Lab manager position available in the O-Lab at Duke University
We are looking for a highly motivated recent or soon-to-be graduate to join the O-Lab, led by Prof. Tobias Overath, in the Department of Psychology& Neuroscience at Duke University. Work in our lab investigates how sounds, from simple sinusoids to complex speech signals, are analyzed in the human brain, using a combination of behavioral (psychoacoustics) and neuroimaging methods (fMRI, EEG, ECoG) to track the underlying neural processes. Current projects investigate the transformation from acoustic to linguistic analysis of temporal speech structure, online measures of statistical learning, and optimization of coc...
Source: Talking Brains - April 21, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Research assistant / Lab manager position available in the O-Lab at Duke University
We are looking for a highly motivated recent or soon-to-be graduate to join the O-Lab, led by Prof. Tobias Overath, in the Department of Psychology& Neuroscience at Duke University. Work in our lab investigates how sounds, from simple sinusoids to complex speech signals, are analyzed in the human brain, using a combination of behavioral (psychoacoustics) and neuroimaging methods (fMRI, EEG, ECoG) to track the underlying neural processes. Current projects investigate the transformation from acoustic to linguistic analysis of temporal speech structure, online measures of statistical learning, and optimization of coc...
Source: Talking Brains - April 20, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Stanford ’s Smart Toilet Scans Urine and Stool for Diseases
Advancements in wearable sensors have allowed us to quantify and monitor the many bio-signals, and sometimes even bio-fluids, that emanate from our bodies. But when it comes to urine and fecal matter, which can contain a wealth of information, we’ve largely relegated its inspection to the yearly physical or when helping a doctor diagnose a disease.
Over at Stanford, Dr. Sam Gambhir and his team have published a paper discussing the progress they’ve made on a smart toilet system that can automatically analyze stool and urine for the detection of some cancers, as well as some digestive and renal disorders.
...
Source: Medgadget - April 8, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Scott Jung Tags: Diagnostics Geriatrics GI Medicine Source Type: blogs
Iris Needle Guidance for Lumbar Punctures: Interview with Dev Mandavia, CEO of Ethos Medical
Ethos Medical, a startup founded by Georgia Tech alumni, has developed the Iris needle guidance system to assist clinicians in successfully performing lumbar punctures. The system allows a clinician to visualize the needle traveling through tissue in real time. Tracking the needle path in this way is intended to improve the success rate and reduce the chance of complications in such procedures.
Lumbar punctures are used to diagnose several diseases,
including multiple sclerosis and meningitis. However, they aren’t always
straight-forward, with certain patients posing a unique challenge to clinicians
because of the...
Source: Medgadget - March 18, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Anesthesiology Exclusive Neurology Neurosurgery Radiology Source Type: blogs
Spiral Hydroporator To Deliver Nanotechnologies Into Cells
A myriad of different therapeutic, diagnostic, and research-oriented nano-scale devices and molecules have been developed to work inside living cells. While many of these particles are very effective at what they do, it is often the difficulty of delivering them that is the real challenge in using them for practical purposes. Typically, either some sort of vessels are used to carry these particles into cells or the cell membrane is broken to let the invaders in. As such, these techniques either injure cells or are not very good at consistently delivering their cargo, and they can be hard to automate.
Now, a team of coll...
Source: Medgadget - March 18, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Medicine Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs
