Digital Health Trends: What To Expect In 2019?
Discussions about a global FDA
In recent years, with the digitization of healthcare and the spread of communication technologies, the idea of borderless health started to emerge, and we expect it to reach a tipping point and represent a widespread practice instead of a sporadic phenomenon soon.
The Medical Futurist expects to see the increase in the supply and demand of cross-border health services in the coming months. Just imagine a French patient sending a tissue of his tumor to a Belgian company specializing in precision diagnostics. They establish that a Swiss pharma company has the exact type of clinical trial that t...
Source: The Medical Futurist - January 17, 2019 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Business Future of Medicine Medical Professionals Patients Policy Makers Researchers 3d printing bioprinting blockchain car digital digital health digital health trends fda genomics Healthcare Organovo smartwatch Source Type: blogs
Medgadget ’s Best Medical Technologies of 2018
The year 2018 is nearly over, and it is time for us to reveal what we believe were the most notable developments in medical technology. We considered a technology’s clinical importance, the greatness of the leap that it’s making over existing solutions, as well as how we expect it to be adopted by doctors and nurses. Additionally, we place great value on the novelty, the engineering brilliance embedded within, and how a new technology makes possible what recently seemed nearly inconceivable. As such, a technology that may not be the most useful, but if it strikes our imagination and opens up new possibilities i...
Source: Medgadget - December 28, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Exclusive Medicine Society Surgery Source Type: blogs
Designer Babies: A Dystopian Sidetrack of Gene Editing
A Chinese scientist shocked the scientific community a couple of days ago with the announcement of having modified the very blueprint of life. If his claims are true, he tried to bestow two baby girls the ability to resist possible future infections with HIV. The outrage shows that humanity is not prepared to utilize the power of gene editing on embryos yet. We have no idea about the biological consequences, and we haven’t tackled the necessary legal and ethical issues.
Genes to become toys of the “Gods”?
Humanity has come a long way since Aldous Huxley pinned down how methods of genetic engineering, biological cond...
Source: The Medical Futurist - December 15, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Bioethics Future of Medicine Genomics designer babies designer baby Gene gene editing genes Genome genome sequencing Health Healthcare healthcare system Innovation technology Source Type: blogs
Four Blind People Go Home With New Bionic Eyes
Bionic Vision Technologies, a firm based in Australia, has announced that its bionic eye system has been used to restore a “sense of sight” to four completely blind people suffering from retinitis pigmentosa. The findings from the study, which was performed at Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, were presented at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists Scientific meeting.
Unlike previous studies of the technology that were limited to in-lab use, the four patients were able to use the system in their everyday environments.
Each had an implant placed on the scalp with an ...
Source: Medgadget - November 20, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Neurology Ophthalmology Rehab Source Type: blogs
Perfecting The Power to Talk – The Future of Voice And Speaking
Talking, conversing, exchanging words: for more than 10 million people, this seemingly simple act cannot be imagined without assistive technologies, such as voice generating devices, touch screens or text-to-speech apps. What does the digital future bring for them? How could innovations turn around the translation industry or the medical administration process? Here’s a glimpse into the future of voice and speaking.
Speaking, identity, voice stereotypes
Give me the key! – This simple sentence carries much more information when it’s pronounced. A weary Philippino mother could instruct her little child as she cannot op...
Source: The Medical Futurist - October 30, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Cyborgization Future of Medicine Medical Professionals Patients apps assistive technology Health Healthcare Innovation speaking speech speech generating voice voice generating device Source Type: blogs
When Sam Found Language
I will never forget the day that I met Sam. He came into my room cautiously and sat quietly. I greeted him and he smiled tentatively in return.
Sam came to me like most of my other students—severely language deprived. He was 8 years old, with bilateral cochlear implants, unable to speak, sign, read or write. Although he was a typical child developmentally and cognitively, he used tantrums to communicate.
I asked him how he was doing. He smiled again. I pointed to myself and signed my sign name. “Kim.” Then I pointed to him and gestured for him to introduce himself.
“Eh,” he said.
“How old are you?” I signed. ...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - October 24, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Kimberly Sanzo Tags: Audiology Schools Slider Speech-Language Pathology Apraxia of Speech Augmentative Alternative Communication hearing loss Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs
The Future of Making Sense of the World
Hug shirts, smellphones, virtual tastes, bionic eyes and hearing aids doing translations – just a few keywords showing how technology will take human perception to a higher level in the future. Innovative healthcare solutions will go way beyond improving our senses when we experience problems, they will augment our capabilities and open new horizons for humanity. Let’s jump into the pool of details.
How humans perceive the sensory cacophony called the world
Car. Flower. Smartphone. Leaf. Shadow. Ponytail. Red Sweater. Monitor. Water. Coffee. Beeps. Sidney Bechet tunes. Bicycle. Laugh. Light breeze. Holiday memorie...
Source: The Medical Futurist - September 20, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Biotechnology Cyborgization Health Sensors & Trackers Medical Professionals Patients body augmentation future Healthcare hearing human human perception Medicine sense sensing smell taste touch vision Source Type: blogs
Glaukos iStent Inject Implant FDA Approved to Treat Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma
Glaukos, based in San Clemente, California, won FDA approval to introduce its iStent inject Trabecular Micro-Bypass System in the United States. The device, designed to treat mild to moderate primary open-angle glaucoma, is implanted alongside cataract surgeries to reduce intraocular pressure.
The implant is tiny, measuring only 0.23 mm x 0.36 mm, and Glaukos believes it is the smallest device ever approved by the FDA. It’s positioned to allow for fluid to move through the trabecular meshwork, producing flow in both direction within the Schlemm’s canal.
Some details about the study that led to the approva...
Source: Medgadget - July 17, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Ophthalmology Source Type: blogs
Experiences from the First StimRouter Implanted in Patients in Canada
As a shadowing medical student in family medicine clinics in Toronto, I’d seen patients with chronic pain of a neurogenic origin and always felt heartbroken. I’d looked on in helplessness as we consoled the patients and offered them physiotherapy, bedrest, and pain killers. We and the patients knew none of these options were curative, and subsequently tiptoed around that subject.
Fortunately, Health Canada approved a new solution earlier this year: a peripheral nerve stimulator called the Bioness StimRouter. It’s a minimally invasive neuromodulation device consisting of an implanted lead, an external pulse generator,...
Source: Medgadget - June 28, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Ben Ouyang Tags: Anesthesiology Exclusive Pain Management Rehab Source Type: blogs
Exclusive Tour of Materialise, a Leader in 3D Printing of Patient Specific Parts
3D printing technology was originally touted to provide consumers the ability to print customized mugs, plates, and other household items. The reality turned out to be a lot more exciting, at least for us in the medical space, since 3D printing is already being used daily by thousands of doctors to help perform procedures that would otherwise be too risky or simply impossible. For a great example, you can read our recent piece on how cardiologists at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit are able to implant transcatheter mitral valves.
While on that visit, we learned that Materialise, a Belgian company with North American hea...
Source: Medgadget - June 8, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Cardiac Surgery Cardiology Exclusive Orthopedic Surgery Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 9th 2018
This studycounters that notion, and the findings may suggest that many senior citizens remain more cognitively and emotionally intact than commonly believed.
"We found that older people have similar ability to make thousands of hippocampal new neurons from progenitor cells as younger people do. We also found equivalent volumes of the hippocampus (a brain structure used for emotion and cognition) across ages. Nevertheless, older individuals had less vascularization and maybe less ability of new neurons to make connections. It is possible that ongoing hippocampal neurogenesis sustains human-specific cognitive function...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 8, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Future of Sex and Sexuality
Long-distance kisses, hugs, and caresses. Virtual reality porn stars. Sex robots threatening the world’s oldest profession. Technosexuals living with life-sized dolls. At the dawn of a new sexual revolution, it’s time to face where technology may take the most intimate area of our lives.
If technology is everywhere, why would sex be an exception?
A swarm of apps, such as Tinder, Happn, Grindr or online dating sites, as eHarmony flank the road of technology marching into dating. By now, even genetics is invited into romantic relations to help in figuring out whom we should spend the rest of our lives together. While th...
Source: The Medical Futurist - March 6, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Bioethics Cyborgization future porn robotics science fiction sensors sex sexuality technology virtual reality Source Type: blogs
