Medical

Worm glue could help repair broken bones

By Jeff Salton

01:28 October 28, 2009 PDT

A sea creature called the sandcastle worm could hold the secret to repairing broken bones in humans. The screws and pins favored by many surgeons today have achieved much success over the years, but they are not suitable for repairing all kinds of fractures. For more precise reconstruction of compound fractures and shattered bones, bioengineers have looked beyond metal hardware and have now duplicated a natural glue secreted by the tiny sandcastle worm. The research team hopes it will provide a better solution to fixing small bones broken in battlefield injuries, car crashes and other accidents. Read More

Researchers ease monthly burden for world's poorest women

By Sandra Arcaro

16:16 October 25, 2009 PDT

For most women the obligatory monthly visit that is the menstrual cycle is a quietly endured and discreetly dealt with occurrence. Feminine products in every size, shape and color, and available for purchase from supermarkets to public restrooms, lessen the burden. But contrast this reality with that of women living in impoverished countries for whom these commonplace hygiene products are unaffordable luxuries. This glaring discrepancy has prompted Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), together with researchers from North Carolina State University, to create affordable, quality sanitary pads to ease the lives of millions of women who, for several days a month, know another kind of period pain. Read More

GE Vscan portable ultrasound scanner unveiled

By Paul Ridden

07:56 October 23, 2009 PDT

General Electric has unveiled a pocket-sized ultrasound scanner at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Looking very like (and not much bigger than) a clam-shell mobile phone, the device allows physicians to scan any part of the body by placing the attached wand on it. The system will be able to see real-time black and white or color inner body images on the screen of the Vscan and data can be also be saved and reviewed at a later date. Read More

The interactive 3D Virtual Autopsy Table

By Paul Ridden

16:17 October 20, 2009 PDT

Swedish researchers have developed an interactive touchscreen 3D autopsy table that allows pathologists to examine virtual representations of real bodies in minute detail and from numerous viewing angles. Using data provided by scans of an actual body, the table allows the user to remove layers such as skin and muscle, add or remove tissue and circulatory systems, zoom in and out and cut through sections with a virtual knife. The video below is a "must watch". Read More

Diagnosing depression in less than an hour using an ‘ECG for the mind’

By Darren Quick

01:00 October 16, 2009 PDT

Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) cost upwards of US$2 trillion globally every year and affect one in four people in their lifetime. At present, diagnosing these conditions relies on an often unreliable process of questions and interviews, which means it can take many years for sufferers to be correctly diagnosed. A new diagnostic technique that measures the patterns of electrical activity in the brain’s vestibular (or balance) system could dramatically fast-track the detection of mental and neurological illnesses. Read More

Scientists grow patch to heal a broken heart

By Darren Quick

00:48 October 13, 2009 PDT

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in many parts of the world, including the U.S., England and Canada, so it's not surprising that bioengineers at Duke University are excited by what they believe could be an important first step toward growing a living “heart patch” to repair damaged heart tissue. In a series of experiments using mouse embryonic stem cells, the bioengineers used a novel mold of their own design to fashion a three-dimensional "patch" made up of heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes. The new tissue exhibited the two most important attributes of heart muscle cells - the ability to contract and to conduct electrical impulses. Read More

3D cryo-imager can identify a single cancer cell

By Mick Webb

10:22 October 1, 2009 PDT

Recent developments in the fight against cancer have promised better ways to both identify and treat the disease. Adding to the ever growing list of advancements is Dave Wilson, a Professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Frustrated by blurry low resolution optical images of diseased tissues, he has developed a cryo-imaging system which can identify and pinpoint the exact location and number of cancer cells in a particular area while displaying the findings as a detailed three dimensional color cyber model. Read More

Targeted chemotherapy - fighting cancer without the side effects

By Loz Blain

02:28 September 14, 2009 PDT

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, after watching helplessly through his sister's painful and terminal battle with cancer, has spent the last 9 years working on a system that lets doctors cut off blood flow to tumors, isolating them from the rest of the body and allowing the injection of a targeted dose of high intensity chemotherapy. Since the chemo drugs aren't let loose around the rest of the body, the usual devastating side-effects aren't an issue - and the drug dosage at the tumor site can be safely administered at a much higher concentration than usual. The IsoFlow Isolation Catheter has just received FDA marketing approval in the USA. Read More

‘Mixed reality’ patient helps medical students with intimate exams

By Sandra Arcaro

17:47 August 12, 2009 PDT

Routine physical examinations of a more intimate nature may become a little less awkward and a little more precise according to a team of engineering students from the University of Florida. The team's design of a ‘mixed reality’ human patient could be the answer in managing this delicate aspect of bedside manner. The mixed reality human is named Amanda Jones and she exists, in both virtual and physical form, as a life-sized cyberspace image on a flat screen, and as a mannequin with a prosthetic breast. Her purpose is noble: to help train medical students to conduct intimate breast exam procedures. Read More

Spinal Cord Stimulators - the 'pacemaker' for chronic pain

By Loz Blain

02:20 August 12, 2009 PDT

While nobody's exactly sure how it works, it's been clinically proven over the past 30-40 years that low levels of electrical energy, delivered straight to the nerve fibers in the spinal cord, can disrupt the signals that certain chronic pain conditions send to the brain, and replace them with a much more pleasant tingling sensation. Now, St Jude Medical has received FDA and CE mark approvals for the world's smallest and longest-lasting rechargeable neurostimulator. The Eon Mini is the size of a silver dollar, about 1cm thick (1/2 inch), and weighs only 29g (1oz). It sits under the skin of the buttock or abdomen, and its rechargeable battery should last nearly 10 years. It can be programmed by remote control to treat as many as eight different chronic pain areas and, in doing so, it can get many patients with chronic pain off morphine and back into a semblance of normal life. Read More

Blue M&M food dye reduces paralysis from spinal injuries - but turns you blue

By Loz Blain

00:20 August 11, 2009 PDT

Spinal injuries are both common and devastating, leaving many victims paralyzed and relegated to wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. But in most cases, the worst spinal cord damage doesn't happen at the scene of the injury - it's the swelling around the spinal cord and the crazy firing and burning out of otherwise healthy neurons in the hours and days following the incident that turns a bad situation permanently worse. Now, scientists in Rochester, New York, have discovered a simple way to stop a lot of this secondary damage in its tracks - using the same, familiar blue food dye that gives M&Ms and blue icy poles their color. Patients with spinal injuries could escape with vastly reduced loss of function - but they'll turn bright blue in the process. Read More

High-tech tattoo ink - just as permanent but 4 times quicker to remove

By Loz Blain

01:24 July 27, 2009 PDT

Gone are the days when tattoos were only for registered bad-asses - today's tattoo owner is just as likely to get inked up with a tramp stamp or football team crest as a Hells Angels insignia. If you're thinking of getting a tatt to commemorate a relationship, or for fashion reasons, or simply as a dare or a joke, you might want to make sure the artist is using InfinitInk - a high-tech tattoo ink that's just as permanent as regular ink, but four times quicker to remove through laser treatment if you ever want to get rid of it down the track. Read More

Possible cure for radiation sickness discovered?

By Darren Quick

23:38 July 21, 2009 PDT

According to a report in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronoth, US and Israeli researchers have developed a drug that offers protection from the damaging effects of radiation sickness. The medication could not only provide effective protection in the event of a nuclear or “dirty bomb” attack, but it could also enable cancer patients to be treated with more powerful doses of radiation. Read More

Invisibility cloaking creeps closer to reality

By Dario Borghino

18:28 July 18, 2009 PDT

Researchers at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have recently designed a peculiar material — called a dc metamaterial — that has the property of making objects wrapped in it undetectable to magnetic and very low-frequency electromagnetic fields. The breakthrough brings the dream of "invisibility cloaking" closer to reality and could have important repercussions in both the military and medical fields. Read More

Early detection of Alzheimer’s disease using x-rays

By Darren Quick

22:42 June 21, 2009 PDT

A highly detailed x-ray imaging technique previously been used to examine tumors in breast tissue and cartilage in knee and ankle joints could used for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are the first to test the technique’s ability to visualize a class of minuscule plaques that are a hallmark feature of Alzheimer’s disease. Read More

Over 60% of all U.S. bankruptcies attributable to medical problems

By Mike Hanlon

14:02 June 6, 2009 PDT

June 6, 2009 An article in the latest issue of The American Journal of Medicine makes chilling reading, and presents compelling evidence that the US health care system is broken. In 2007, before the current economic downturn even began, an American family filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of illness every 90 seconds; three-quarters of them were insured. Over 60% of all bankruptcies in the United States in 2007 were driven by medical incidents. Summarising the results of the first-ever national U.S. random-sample survey of bankruptcy filers, the article shows the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 50% between 2001 and 2007. Medical bankruptcy is a unique American phenomenon, which does not occur in countries that have national health insurance. Read More

Scientists defy gravity with metal that pumps liquid uphill

By Darren Quick

01:42 June 4, 2009 PDT

Gravity can make it difficult to move liquid uphill but scientists at the University of Rochester have created a simple slab of metal that does exactly that using the same wicking process that trees employ to pull vast amounts of water from their roots up to their leaves. The metal could be used to pump microscopic amounts of liquid around a medical diagnostic chip, cool a computer's processor or turn almost any simple metal into an anti-bacterial surface. Read More

Alkeo ultra-violet cutting board

By David Greig

18:55 May 18, 2009 PDT

One quick way of coming down with a bout of food poisoning is by transferring bacteria and viruses from one food source to another – raw meats are a good example where contamination can occur. A cursory wipe with a cloth, or even a wash in hot soapy water, is unlikely to remove all the bacteria. The Alkeo from Joe Brussel is a self-sanitizing cutting board design that aims to improve food preparation safety by incorporating a medical-grade, germicidal UV lamp to destroy any nasty bugs. Read More

Radical tissue scaffold to treat knee injuries

By Darren Quick

23:21 May 16, 2009 PDT

Damage to knee cartilage is one of the more common types of sports injuries. Treatment often involves drilling a hole through the cartilage into the bone to stimulate the bone marrow to release stem cells, transplanting cartilage and the underlying bone from another part of the joint, or removing cartilage cells from the body, stimulating them to grow in the lab and re-implanting them. Now MIT engineers have built a new tissue scaffold that can stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into knees and other joints, potentially offering a more effective, less expensive – and painful – option to more conventional therapies. Read More

Healthmap.org – charting global public health threats

By Mike Hanlon

01:03 May 15, 2009 PDT

Tapping the Internet – including personal Web searches, news reports, blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites – is fast becoming a way to get a complete, up-to-the-minute view of public health threats, say researchers from the Informatics Program at Children’s Hospital Boston (CHIP) in a Perspectives article published Online First by The New England Journal of Medicine on May 7, 2009. In an accompanying sidebar, they describe the use of HealthMap.org – a freely available Web site that aggregates, categorizes, filters and displays real-time information on emerging infectious diseases – in tracking the current H1N1 swine flu outbreak.


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World's fastest camera captures images at six million frames per second

By David Greig

18:06 May 14, 2009 PDT

Using a new approach based on more than 10 years of research, engineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have demonstrated a camera that captures images at 6 million frames per second - that's a thousand times faster than any existing conventional camera. This technique could lead to fresh insights into fast moving phenomena in physics, chemistry and biology. In medical research for example, it may lead to image capture of individual cells in blood streams, opening up the possibility of detection of unhealthy or cancerous cell forms. Read More

Researchers develop smart monitoring device for brain injury

By Darren Quick

01:41 May 8, 2009 PDT

A multi-purpose “lab on a tube” developed by Engineers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) could provide significant advance in the treatment of traumatic brain injury. A serious knock on the head results in not only the initial damage, but a second wave of injury caused by swelling and lack of oxygen among other factors. Currently, the status of these injuries can only be intermittently examined, but the “lab on a tube” gives medicos the capability to continuously monitor crucial physiological characteristics. Read More

Ultrasound images a snap with a smartphone

By Darren Quick

23:56 April 27, 2009 PDT

Looks like smartphones are getting even smarter. We can already access our email, GPS navigate and use a wide range of business document formats, making them an integral part of a business person’s day. Now doctors might soon be packing a smartphone alongside their stethoscopes. Computer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have coupled a smartphone with USB-based ultrasound probe technology to produce a mobile imaging device that fits in the palm of a hand. Read More

Ossur rolls-out next generation POWER KNEE

By David Greig

01:19 April 24, 2009 PDT

Earlier this week we looked at developments in low-cost prosthetics, but at the other end of the spectrum, advanced prosthetic devices like Ossur's recently announced second generation POWER KNEE are opening up new frontiers in the field. As the world’s first motor-powered artificially intelligent prosthesis for above the knee amputees, the POWER KNEE is designed to enable daily activities without having to think about movement. Something most of us take for granted. Read More

Gemalto launches innovative e-Health Terminal

By Mike Hanlon

23:02 April 14, 2009 PDT

Perhaps a glimpse of the near future of digital health care globally, Gemalto has commercially launched its Sealys e-health terminal, specially designed for the progressive German market, and a significant development on its previous GCR 550 health card reader. The new unit has been developed to incorporate the latest technological advances requested by German health professionals and includes access to the patient’s electronic medical file and emergency data such as blood group, allergies and ongoing treatment records. Doctors will also be able to issue electronic prescriptions that facilitate data exchange with pharmacists and reduce fraud, while eliminating paperwork. The Gemalto terminal offers optional connection of biometric and contactless devices, allowing doctors to sign e-prescriptions using their fingerprint or any contactless device. Read More