How To Restore The Innovation Ecosystem For Medical Technology
The recent February issue of Health Affairs, which features a series of articles on innovation, provides us with an opportunity to examine the state of America’s innovation ecosystem for medical technology. This ecosystem has produced a myriad of medical advances, ranging from advanced imaging to molecular diagnostics, minimally invasive surgical tools, and incredibly sophisticated implants. These technologies have shortened hospital stays, reduced the economic burden of disease, and saved and improved millions of lives.
But the system is severely stressed. Policy improvements are essential if America is to remain a wor...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - February 10, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Stephen Ubl and David Nexon Tags: All Categories Competition Coverage Health Care Costs Health Reform Innovation Insurance Payment Policy Research Spending Technology Source Type: blogs
Meet Maureen L. Mulvihill
Credit: Actuated Medical, Inc.
Maureen L. Mulvihill, Ph.D.
Fields: Materials science, logistics
Works at: Actuated Medical, Inc., a small company that develops medical devices
Second job (volunteer): Bellefonte YMCA Swim Team Parent Boost Club Treasurer
Best skill: Listening to people
Last thing she does every night: Reads to her 7- and 10-year-old children until “one of us falls asleep”
If you’re a fan of the reality TV show Shark Tank, you tune in to watch aspiring entrepreneurs present their ideas and try to get one of the investors to help develop and market the products. Afterward, you might start to think abo...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - February 9, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Emily Carlson Tags: Pharmacology Profiles Source Type: blogs
Aubrey de Grey Presenting at the DGAB Scientific Symposium on Cryonics
Late last year the German Society for Applied Biostasis (DGAB) held a scientific symposium on cryonics. A number of researchers from the aging research community attended, as there is some overlap between people interested enough in radical life extension to have become members of the aging research community and people interested enough in cryonics to help advance that work. It is similar to another overlap with the field of artificial general intelligence research. If you move in these circles you'll keep bumping into some of the same people regardless of the topic of the present conference.
Why is this the case? Well, ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 6, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
A Glance at the Present State of Limb Prosthetics
The body is a life support system, carriage, and collection of useful accessories for the brain. Insofar as you as an individual are concerned, you are your brain. The rest of the body is only indispensable because we don't have other ways to provide the same capabilities. That will change, though likely not in any easily predicted way: the decades ahead are a time of great uncertainty in technological details because the pace of change is so rapid. Small differences in research today are magnified over the years leading up to future applications of that science. We might set out to draw a smooth line of progression betwee...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 17, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Our Cells Will Be Guided and Protected by Machines
A gulf presently lies between the nanoscale engineering of materials science on the one hand and the manipulation and understanding of evolved biological machinery on the other. In time that gulf will close: future industries will be capable of producing and controlling entirely artificial machines that integrate with, enhance, or replace our natural biological machines. Meanwhile biologists will be manufacturing ever more artificial and enhanced versions of cellular components, finding ways to make them better: evolution has rarely produced the best design possible for any given circumstance. Both sides will work towards ...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 19, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Biosensor Detects Protein Biomarker Tied to Brain Injury
Cardiac surgeries can lead to undetected neurological injuries whose symptoms often show up years later, at which point they’re hard to correlate with the surgery or do anything about them. Knowing in real time that something is wrong might help surgeons take safety measures during surgery, helping avoid further brain damage.
Turns out that brain injuries are linked to the production of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), a biomarker that researchers at Johns Hopkins decided to build a detector for. The new detector is about the size of a quarter dollar and the researchers claim it is the most sensitive organic ...
Source: Medgadget - November 22, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Editors Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs
Janus Nano-Carrier: Researchers Develop Multifunctional Cancer Fighting Nanostructure, Break Mold of Single-Function Nanotech
The world of nano-tech research has been, of late, giving birth to many promising cancer fighting technologies. These have come in many different forms, including cancer detection, cell monitoring, and tumor eradication, however they all share one commonality: most cancer nanotechnologies being developed today are based on a single-function design. This may be due to surface area constrictions that must be considered by researchers designing nano-scale structures, since most specific functions are carried out by nanoparticles located on the spatially limited surface of the primary nano-device.
University of Cincinnati scie...
Source: Medgadget - October 30, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Yona Gidalevitz Tags: Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs
News from the Squares – Book review
In Robert Llewellyn’s eagerly awaited sequel to News From Gardenia, erstwhile engineer Gavin Meckler is trying to get back to the present in his Youneec aircraft, but something is amiss. He soon realises he has travelled sideways through time to another possible future, as unlike his visit to 2211 “Gardenia” as our own era.
Llewellyn, known to geeks everywhere as the actor who plays Kryten in the BBC comedy sci-fi Red Dwarf and as a big fan of sustainable technologies and electric vehicles, provides an intriguing perspective on a second possible future for humanity. In “Squares”, it’s no agr...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - October 22, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Ferrying Chemo Drugs to Brain Tumors via Polymer Microencapsulation
Scanning electron micrograph of BCNU-loaded microspheres (black and white background) with 3d rendered images of brain cancers cells (yellow) and released BCNU (purple) . Image: Mohammad Reza Abidian Lab
Chemotherapy is a powerful tool in the hands of oncologists, but suffers from poor targeting and leads to patients absorbing considerably more poison than is needed to attack their cancers. Brain tumors in particular are hard to treat with chemo because the blood-brain barrier is very choosy about what it lets through, so even higher doses have to be used. Moreover, opening the cranium and applying patches coated with a dr...
Source: Medgadget - September 5, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Editors Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs
Smart Thermo/Chemotherapy Nanofiber Mesh for a Combined Attack on Tumors
There are many ways to attack a neoplasm, and it’s been found that combining therapies can sometimes potentiate each one to be more clinically effective. For example, delivering heat to cancer cells while administering chemotherapy can often boost the killing power of the chemo medication. One serious difficulty that makes combination therapy often impractical is that each one requires a drastically different delivery method.
To overcome this, researchers at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science have developed a “smart” nanofiber mesh that can deliver heat and release chemo drugs in a con...
Source: Medgadget - July 2, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Editors Tags: Nanomedicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
Innovative “Watch” Non-Invasively Measures Blood Pressure
The sphygmomanometer has endured as a doctor’s office staple for over 100 years. Just about every visit to a physician involves placing this inflatable cuff on your upper arm and having it squeezed tight to measure the force of blood pushing through your body. Surprisingly, noninvasive blood pressure measurement technology has advanced little, but now STBL Medical Research AG, with the assistance of engineers from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) have designed a device to make blood pressure monitoring as simple as wearing a watch.How did EMPA engineers manage to reduce an...
Source: Medgadget - June 13, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Scott Jung Tags: Anesthesiology Cardiac Surgery Cardiology Critical Care Diagnostics Medicine Source Type: blogs
Trying to sort out all the STEM and STEM related departments, graduate programs , at #UCDavis
Well, I was in a meeting yesterday for the UC Davis ADVANCE program. This program is an NSF funded project to improve presence of women and underrepresented minorities on the faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). So I decided to see - how many departments at UC Davis might participate in such an initiative. And, well, wow. I knew there were a lot of STEM or STEM-related departments at UC Davis but I did not know there were this many.
Here is a list I compiled of UC Davis STEM or STEM-related Departments. I included medical departments here since many people in such...
Source: The Tree of Life - April 27, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Aubrey de Grey on "The Undoing of Aging"
Philanthropy by high net worth individuals has the potential to move the needle on any major biotechnology project these days. The cost of research in the field is falling rapidly, thanks to spectacular ongoing gains in computational power and materials science. There are now thousands of individuals in the world with a net worth sufficient to completely fund a cure for a disease, from a starting point of nothing but ideas through to first human trials. But of course to exchange your entire net worth for a cure, to give up on the whole of the vast process that has been your business life to date, you'd have to be something...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
Artificial nerve grafts made from spider silk
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from paralyzed limbs as a result of peripheral nerve injury. Recently, implantation of artificial nerve grafts has become the method of choice for repairing damaged peripheral nerves. Grafts can lead to some degree of functional recovery when a short segment of nerve is damaged. But they are […] (Source: Neurophilosophy)
Source: Neurophilosophy - March 7, 2011 Category: Neurologists Authors: Mo Costandi Tags: Materials Science Neuroscience Tissue Engineering Source Type: blogs
