Medical researchers have started an outpatient trial on a medical device built by reconfiguring a smartphone that will allow patients with type 1 diabetes to more easily monitor their condition. The smartphone-turned-into-medical-device is handheld and can continuously monitor a patient’s glucose level, reports ScienceDaily. The device automates much of the work to maintain safe blood [...]
Polymers Help Researchers Form New Antibiotics
May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Scientists have developed a method using nanoparticles laced with polymers that promises to deliver potent antibiotics directly to bacteria. The method would bypass the body’s natural resistance to certain designer drugs, and combat bacteria that have grown resistant to existing drugs. A team of researchers built the nanoparticles from a polymer coated with polyethylene glycol, [...]
User Interface Devices Go Under the Skin
May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Patients who have implanted medical devices, such as pacemakers, may eventually be able to recharge or reprogram them without the use of wireless transmissions — which could be vulnerable to hacking — and perhaps save a trip to the doctor’s office. Researchers say that the advantages of implanted user interfaces over mobile and wearable user [...]
Polymers Help Make New Drugs Faster, Cheaper
May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Researchers at Michigan State University have discovered that certain kinds of polymers can improve a protein purifier that could help pharmaceutical companies save time and money. When prescription drugs are created, desired proteins need to be isolated from the others, a process called purifying, which is time-consuming and expensive. Capturing the proteins is a necessary [...]
Wireless Defibrillator Gets Closer to Approval
May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel has backed a new type of implantable heart defibrillator, but before the medical device gets full approval, other concerns will need to be addressed. What is new about the device — developed by Cameron Health Inc. — is that it is implanted underneath the skin and does [...]
Bionic Eye May Become Reality
May 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
First, there was the $6 Million Man (as anyone over 45 can remember). Then there’s The Terminator (just about everyone else). What is one of the things that the two fictional characters have in common? A bionic eye. And as soon as next year, such a device could become a reality, or at least tested [...]
Device Makes Quick Genetic Tests
May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Canadian researchers have developed a medical device the size of a toaster that can perform the same genetic tests as a fully equipped laboratory in a fraction of the time. The key to the device — developed at the University of Alberta — is a small plastic chip that can make several determinations: from whether [...]
Bipolymer Microthreads Regenerate Human Tissue
May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
American researchers are developing a system that uses microthreads to regenerate human tissue and heal wounds. George Pins, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, got the idea of using microthreads as the basis for tissue engineering when he wanted to find a better way to repair torn anterior cruciate [...]
Blood Type Identified Quickly on Paper
May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment
For those who need to learn a person’s blood type quickly, there’s a new device that will literally spell it out for them on paper. The blood types are common knowledge: A+, AB-, O+, etc. As Bethany Halford writes in Chemical & Engineering News, Australian researchers have invented a method that makes these letters and [...]
Device Speeds Detection, Treatment of Bacteria
April 30, 2012 By 1 Comment
When a patient has a stubborn infection, sometimes doctors are at a loss to know what type of infection it is and how to treat it. Making cultures of the bacteria to unveil their identity can take hours, sometimes too long for sick patients. In the meantime, doctors often throw a wide spectrum of antibiotics [...]
