Smartphone Photos to Detect Anemia
Researchers at University College London and at the University of Ghana have developed a smartphone-based system that can detect anemia through simple photos taken using the phone’s camera. The technology is intended for use in low- and middle-income countries where access to routine medical diagnostics may be unreliable. The process involves obtaining images of areas of the body which are least pigmented, including the white of the eye, the lower eyelid, and the lip. The app then analyzes the color of the imaged tissue, and as hemoglobin absorbs light in a specific fashion the app can use this information to calcula...
Source: Medgadget - March 9, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Medicine Telemedicine anaemia anemia uclnews UCLResearch univofgh Source Type: blogs
Ultrasound Catheter to Treat Hypertension
Researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the Université de Paris, France, have tested an ultrasound denervation catheter in its potential to treat hypertension. The technology is called the Paradise ultrasound denervation device and it has been developed by ReCor Medical, a medtech company with offices in California and the UK. The concept is based on the phenomenon whereby overactive neural activity in the kidney can lead to increases in sodium and water retention, underlying hypertension. The device is a catheter that can be advanced through the vasculature until it reaches the kidneys and then activ...
Source: Medgadget - March 9, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Radiology Source Type: blogs
Alpha TAU Killing Tumors With Highly Targeted Alpha Radiation
Radiation is commonly employed in hospitals around the world to treat tumors, typically using gamma ray beams of high energy photons, with a relatively long range, that penetrate all the tissues on the way to and from the tumor. This leads to substantial damage to healthy tissues and too often results in poor outcomes. An alpha particle, consisting of two protons and two neutrons bound together and akin to a helium-4 nucleus, is much trickier to work with in medicine because it is extremely powerful, yet has a very short effective range.
Ronen Segal
We recently visited the offices of Alpha TAU, a company based in Jeru...
Source: Medgadget - March 2, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Exclusive Oncology Radiation Oncology TelAvivUni Source Type: blogs
Bacteria Create Protein Nanowires for Biosensing
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a biosensor that is based on protein nanowires that are created by bacteria. The protein nanowires are highly sensitive to ammonia, in this case, which is present in the breath of patients with kidney disease, but it is likely possible to create nanowires for a huge array of other health biomarkers. The researchers genetically modified E. Coli to create protein nanowires with increased ammonia sensitivity. The nanowires are layered onto an electrode array and then if ammonia binds to them, it will change the electrical signal of the biosensor, revealing t...
Source: Medgadget - March 1, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Materials UMassAmherst Source Type: blogs
Patient-Specific Soft Robotic Heart Replicas for Treatment Planning
Researchers at MIT have developed soft robotic heart replicas that closely match the anatomy of real people. The researchers used medical images of patient hearts to construct computer models that are suitable for 3D printing. Once printed with a soft material, the patient-specific heart models can be actuated using external inflatable sleeves, in the style of blood pressure cuffs, allowing the team to match the blood flow and pressure parameters parameters of the original heart. These models allow clinicians to accurately model cardiac anatomy, physiology, and mechanics for an individual patient, and test the effects of v...
Source: Medgadget - March 1, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Cardiac Surgery Cardiology aortic stenosis mit Source Type: blogs
Neuroimmune Modulation for Inflammatory Disease: Interview with Dr. Simhambhatla, President and CEO of SetPoint Medical
SetPoint Medical, a medtech company based in California, is developing a neuromodulatory device that is intended to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The overlap between the nervous and immune systems is increasingly appreciated, and this technology aims to capitalize on this to create a new treatment for inflammatory disease.
The neuromodulation device is intended to be implanted on the left cervical vagus nerve in an outpatient procedure. It stimulates the nerve with electrical pulses. The idea is that this can act to calm inflammatory processes that contribute to rheumatoid arthritis, without the drawbacks of immunosuppres...
Source: Medgadget - February 28, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Medicine Neurology autoimmune immunology SetPointMed Source Type: blogs
Ovarian Organoids to Study Reproductive Health
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute are collaborating with a biotechnology company called Gameto to develop human ovarian organoids that will allow the study of reproductive and other health issues using tissues that closely mimic those in human patients. Another application may lie in allowing people with fertility issues to conceive. To date, ovarian organoids have been created using a mixture of human and mouse cells, which limits their relevance and translation to human disease. It is also a slow process to create such hybrid human/animal organoids.
This new approach involves using induced pluripotent stem cel...
Source: Medgadget - February 28, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Ob/Gyn Reproductive Medicine harvard wyssinstitute Source Type: blogs
Wearable Device Senses When Vocal Fatigue Sets in
Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a wearable that can detect when someone is talking or singing, and tallies this information up to provide a warning when the wearer might be at risk of vocal fatigue. Overusing your voice in a short space of time can lead to vocal fatigue and even injury. This technology is useful for patients with vocal disorders, but also for people who rely on their voices a lot, such as singers, politicians, and teachers. The device communicates with a smartphone app to keep track of voice use. The researchers are also developing a system whereby a user can indicate in the app if th...
Source: Medgadget - February 27, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: ENT etc. Telemedicine northwestern Source Type: blogs
HIV Vaccine Candidate Stops Virus As it Enters Body
Researchers at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute are developing a vaccine candidate against HIV. The vaccine is intended to block HIV entry into the body and is administered to the mucosal lining of the rectum and vagina to achieve this. The formulation then stimulates antibodies against HIV in precisely the areas where the virus first enters the body’s cells. Cleverly, the researchers designed the vaccine to target the basal cells of the epithelium, which then give rise to a constant supply of epithelial cells to replace cells that are routinely sloughed off. This may lead to long-term protection against HIV with ...
Source: Medgadget - February 27, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Public Health AIDS HIV txbiomed Source Type: blogs
Electrostatic Face Mask Self-Charges with Breathing
Researchers at City University of Hong Kong have developed an electrostatically charged face mask that can replenish its charge through the wearer’s breathing action. The electrostatic charge helps the mask to adsorb tiny particles, such as SARS-CoV-2 viruses. However, such masks typically lose their charge and ability to bind particles over time, particularly in humid environments such as right in front of the mouth. To address this, these researchers have created a mask with two triboelectric nylon fabric layers that replenish the charge as the layers move back and forth during breathing. The masks can provide protecti...
Source: Medgadget - February 23, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Medicine Public Health CityUHongKong CUHK Source Type: blogs
NextGen COVID-19 Antibodies Destroy Spike Protein
Researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia have developed a new generation of antibodies to treat COVID-19. So far, the antibodies have been shown to neutralize several of the viral variants behind COVID-19, and the researchers hope that they will form an effective treatment for at-risk patients. Previously developed antibody treatments for COVID-19 have been rendered largely useless as the virus has mutated. Such antibodies have focused on binding to the most obvious site on the viral spike protein, the ACE2 receptor binding site, but their efficacy in destroying the virus has waned with new vira...
Source: Medgadget - February 23, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Public Health Source Type: blogs
Raman-Based Urine Sensor Detects Cancer Metabolites
Researchers at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS) creaetd a Raman-spectroscopy-based urine test that can detect metabolic compounds that are produced by pancreatic and prostate cancers, potentially allowing for rapid and convenient cancer screening. The technology consists of a paper strip onto which a urine sample can be added. The paper contains ‘coral-shaped’ structures that assist in amplifying the optical signal of cancer metabolites in the urine when the paper strip is illuminated with light, letting the researchers acquire spectral signals for each sample. By analyzing urine samples from cancer pati...
Source: Medgadget - February 20, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Oncology Pathology Source Type: blogs
Exclusive Look at HandX Robotic-Assisted Surgical Device from Human Xtensions
Surgical robotics is dominated by various versions of the da Vinci system from Intuitive Surgical, a competent but expensive tool that’s become a standard in modern advanced hospitals. It took Intuitive about 30 years to achieve this status, but there are systems from J&J, Medtronic, CMR Surgical, and others that are chipping away at the company’s dominance. All of these systems operate under the “master-slave” concept, which involves a surgeon sitting behind a console, away from the patient, who manipulates the mechanical arms of the robot via some kind of joystick-like device.
Thanks to ...
Source: Medgadget - February 17, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Exclusive Ob/Gyn Surgery Thoracic Surgery Urology HXtensions surgical robotics Source Type: blogs
Personalized CAR-T Cell Therapy
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a new method to prepare chimeric antigen receptor-T cells (CAR-T cells) for leukemia patients that could result in more effective treatment. CAR-T cells start life as T cells that are isolated from cancer patients, are stimulated and primed to recognize and attack cancer cells, expanded in number, and then reintroduced to the cancer patient with the goal that the cells will destroy their cancer. However, the technique works better in certain patients, and the researchers behind this latest technique have realized that T-cells from...
Source: Medgadget - February 17, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Oncology harvard wyssinstitute Source Type: blogs
Ingestible Sensor Reveals Gastric Motility
Researchers at MIT have developed an ingestible sensor that can reveal gastrointestinal motility issues, such as gastroparesis and gastroesophageal reflux disease. The technology is intended for use as an easy at-home method to diagnose such issues, which typically require more invasive and inconvenient procedures, such as endoscopy or X-ray imaging. This new technology is based on the concept that a magnetic field produced by an electromagnetic coil becomes weaker the further away you move from the coil. This change in field signal is predictable, allowing researchers to calculate the distance accurately by measuring the ...
Source: Medgadget - February 16, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: GI mit Source Type: blogs
