Liftware ’s Smart Utensils Cancel Out Hand Tremors and More (Interview)
For most people, meal time is something to look forward to. But for the millions of people with hand tremors and irregular hand movements caused by Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, spinal cord injuries, or just old age, using utensils can turn an enjoyable meal into a frustrating experience.
Liftware hopes to resolve that frustration. The company’s two products, Liftware Steady and Liftware Level, are both specialized eating utensils consisting of a handle and a detachable utensil head (available in soup spoon, normal spoon, fork, or spork options). Liftware Steady’s handle has an on-board computer that detects...
Source: Medgadget - February 14, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Cici Zhou Tags: Exclusive Neurology Rehab Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 12th 2018
In conclusion, most experimental data on immune changes with aging show a decline in many immune parameters when compared to young healthy subjects. The bulk of these changes is termed immunosenescence. Immunosenescence has been considered for some time as detrimental because it often leads to subclinical accumulation of pro-inflammatory factors and inflammaging. Together, immunosenescence and inflammaging are suggested to stand at the origin of most of the diseases of the elderly, such as infections, cancer, autoimmune disorders, and chronic inflammatory diseases. However, an increasing number of gerontologists have chall...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 11, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
StimRouter Receives Health Canada Approval: Interview with Mark Geiger of Bioness
Bioness, a Valencia, California medical device/rehabilitation company, recently received approval from Health Canada for its StimRouter device, an implantable peripheral nerve stimulator designed to reduce chronic pain. We spoke with Mark Geiger, the Global Director of Marketing for Implantables at Bioness to learn more.
Ben Ouyang, Medgadget: Tell me about Bioness and the StimRouter.
Mark Geiger, Bioness: Bioness is a 14 year old medical device company based out of Valencia, California. The founder, Alfred Mann, bought a product called the BION, an implantable to help people with paralysis, and a company called NES...
Source: Medgadget - February 5, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Ben Ouyang Tags: Anesthesiology Exclusive Neurosurgery Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Medgadget ’s Best Medical Technologies of 2017
We reported a surge in the use of augmented reality in healthcare at the end of 2016, with the trend continuing in 2017. Notably, Microsoft’s HoloLens was successfully used for spinal surgery applications by a surgical navigation company named Scopis. There are several advantages to this system including reduced radiation exposure of patients, improved screw placement accuracy, and decreased surgery times.
It has been an exciting year for healthcare with many advances in how diseases are diagnosed, treated, and cured. Medical devices are constantly becoming smaller, smarter, cheaper, more precise and user friendly...
Source: Medgadget - December 26, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Exclusive Source Type: blogs
Exponential Medicine 2017 Day 1 & 2 Conference Overview: Virtual Reality, Transcriptomics, and an Exciting Announcement by the ACS
Welcome to Medgadget’s overview of this year’s Exponential Medicine (ExMed) conference by Singularity University (SU), which took place, for its fifth year in a row, in San Diego, CA at the Hotel Del Coronado last month. This year ExMed brought together innovators from nearly 40 countries to discuss the technologies and trends reinventing the future of health and medicine. For those of your who were not able to tune into the live stream, this conference report, broken up into two segments, will provide an overview of the conference talks and topics, including additional details from a few select sessions we we...
Source: Medgadget - December 21, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Michael Batista Tags: Exclusive Medicine Source Type: blogs
The Hubris of Head Transplantation
As a rehabilitation physician with an interest in acute spinal cord injury, I try to keep abreast of neuroscience research both in animals and humans that might suggest a breakthrough in spinal cord injury recovery. Sadly, despite increased awareness by the general public from high-profile individuals who suffered this devastating injury (notably Christopher Reeve and his foundation), ongoing research in chemical, cellular transplant (including some... // Read More » (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - December 19, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Mark McQuain Tags: Health Care bioethics biotechnology enhancement syndicated Source Type: blogs
Zebrafish Scrapbook
Name: Danio rerio
Hometown: Freshwater ponds and rivers of India, Nepal, and neighboring countries
Occupation: Research
Long-term goal: Solving the basic mysteries of life
Work site: More than 600 science labs worldwide
That’s me and some other zebrafish, swimming in a tank in one of the more than 600 labs around the world that use us to study embryo development, genetics, and all kinds of human diseases. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Azul.
Apart from the tell-tale stripes that give me my nickname, zebrafish, I look a lot like your standard minnow swimming in the shallows of any pond, lake, or river. But I like to think I...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - December 7, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Beth Azar Tags: Genetics Research Organisms; Cool Creatures; Regeneration Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 20th 2017
This study cohort is a healthy subset of the EpiPath cohort, excluding all participants with acute or chronic diseases. With a mediation analysis we examined whether CMV titers may account for immunosenescence observed in ELA.
In this study, we have shown that ELA is associated with higher levels of T cell senescence in healthy participants. Not only did we find a higher number of senescent cells (CD57+), these cells also expressed higher levels of CD57, a cell surface marker for senescence, and were more cytotoxic in ELA compared to controls. Control participants with high CMV titers showed a higher number of senes...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 19, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Stem Cell Therapy Partially, Unreliably Repairs Spinal Cord Injuries in Rats
Engineering regeneration of an injured spinal cord is one of the fields to watch as a marker of capabilities in stem cell medicine. There is a fair amount of funding and effort directed towards this goal, and it requires overcoming a number of issues that are relevant to other types of regenerative medicine. These include overcoming scarring, inducing healing in tissues that normally do not regenerate in adults, ensuring the reliability of the outcome, and so forth. As the study here indicates, reliability remains a challenge. In all stem cell therapies, the factors that affect patient outcomes are still poorly understood....
Source: Fight Aging! - November 17, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 13th 2017
In conclusion, we have developed an effective PILs strategy to deliver the AUF1 plasmid to a specific target, and this system may be useful for the development of new anti-aging drugs.
Considering the Evidence for Vascular Amyloidosis as a Cause of Aging
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2017/11/considering-the-evidence-for-vascular-amyloidosis-as-a-cause-of-aging/
The balance of evidence for the aging of the cardiovascular system suggests the following view. It starts off in the blood vessels, with the accumulation of senescent cells and cross-links. Cross-links directly stiffen these tissues, while...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 12, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Investigating the Cellular Biochemistry of Spinal Regeneration in Geckos
A broadening collection of research groups are investigating various highly regenerative species - zebrafish, salamanders, spiny mice, and in this case geckos - in order to understand what exactly how they achieve regrowth of lost limbs and organs. The answers will probably be at least slightly different in each case. It remains to be seen as to whether or not the basis for a near-term therapy for human medicine is there to be uncovered, a way to make a comparatively small adjustment to our biochemistry that leads to similar outcomes. Maybe so, maybe not.
Many lizards can detach a portion of their tail to avoid a ...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 7, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Degeneration of Axons in Aging
This open access review discusses what is known of the way in which the function and structure of axons in nerve tissue decline over the course of aging, walking through evidence linking this degeneration to the various pillars of aging defined a few years back. Axons are fibers connecting nerve cells, usually those in close proximity to one another, but over distances of up to a few feet in cases such as the spinal cord cells that communicate with nerve cells in the feet. That connectivity is of course vital to the operation of the nervous system, and especially the brain. Axonal degeneration is one of many well-studied i...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 27, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
My Guide To The Future of Medicine: 22 Trends Shaping Healthcare
Digital technologies have completely transformed our lives in the last couple of years and started to entirely reshape the landscape of healthcare. Yet, this is only the beginning. Huge waves of changes are on their way. Thus, it is of utmost importance to familiarize with the latest technologies and trends in medicine to be able to prepare for the future in time. And while doing so, not to lose the quintessence of practicing medicine, the human touch. That’s the synopsis of the newest edition of my book, The Guide to the Future of Medicine.
Today’s healthcare innovations sound like yesterday’s science fiction
Surge...
Source: The Medical Futurist - September 21, 2017 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Bioethics Biotechnology Future of Medicine artificial intelligence digital digital health GC1 genetics Healthcare Innovation social media wearables Source Type: blogs
Back to basics about psychosocial factors and pain – iii
Last week I discussed some of the areas in the brain, and basic principles, that are currently thought to influence our pain experience. This week I thought I’d introduce one of my favourite ways of considering pain mechanisms, mainly because it helps me think through the four main kinds of mechanisms, and can influence our treatment approach. At this stage I want to raise my hand to acknowledge the following:
My gratitude to Dr John Alchin, longtime friend and colleague, who first pointed this paper out to me and has shared it with hundreds of people who go to see him at the local tertiary pain management centre.
W...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - September 17, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: adiemusfree Tags: Education Pain Pain conditions Research Science in practice biopsychosocial Chronic pain Health pain management Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 28th 2017
In conclusion, CAVD is highly prevalent. Long understood as a passive process, it is now known to be complex and one which involves pathophysiological mechanisms similar to those of atherosclerosis. Understanding these mechanisms could help to establish new therapeutic targets that might allow us to halt or at least slow down the progression of the disease.
Early Steps in the Tissue Engineering of Intervertebral Discs
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2017/08/early-steps-in-the-tissue-engineering-of-intervertebral-discs/
In this paper, researchers report on progress towards the manufacture of interve...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 27, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
