Health tech

If your life or that of a loved one has been touched by cancer, here's a new social network where you can share your experiences and offer mutual support.

I Had Cancer recently launched to connect current and former cancer patients, as well as their supporters.

Users can build profiles, create circles of friends, contribute to discussions, and send cancer itself a message via the "Dear Cancer" tab.

If they want to find someone who has gone through similar circumstances, they can also find users by location, gender, age, type of cancer, and treatment.

Founder Mailet Lopez … Read more

Combine the words "vibrator," "touch," and "heightened sensitivity," and the subject is obvious, right? A tricked-out glove that heightens your sense of touch.

The glove, developed by Georgia Tech researchers, includes a tiny vibrator that sits on the side of your finger. Turn the vibrator so low that you don't quite notice it vibrating, and voila, your fingertip is more sensitive to touch.

Prototype tests showed that the heightened-sensitivity glove enabled people to sense lighter touches and distinguish sensory points that were closer together than they could without it. People correctly distinguished among different fineness levels of sandpaper 15 percent more often with the glove.

The glove could help surgeons and others who rely on a fine sense of touch, and it could help people with an impaired sense of touch.… Read more

It's not just your mom who's telling you to sit up straight anymore.

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel have developed a new training method that uses Webcam imaging to tell workers sitting at computers when their posture needs a boost.

In their six-week study of 60 university and hospital workers using the Webcam pop-up photo method, the researchers report in the journal Applied Ergonomics that while traditional ergonomic training and photo training both resulted in short-term improvements in posture, only the Webcam approach resulted in longer-term gains, and it had the most impact on … Read more

As a people, our butts are expanding at a much faster rate than our toilet seats. The Japanese have also been kicking our wide posteriors when it comes to toilet technology.

Now you can say hello to a distinctly American toilet seat innovation, the Adjustable Advantage. The seat features two wings that expand out to either side to accommodate varying sizes of derrieres.

The seat's most impressive stat is its ability to handle up to 1,000 pounds. The seat may hold up, but the toilet itself could be crushed. The company recommends double-checking the weight-bearing capacity of your toilet before testing the seat's limits.

Toilet tech doesn't come cheap. The Adjustable Advantage costs $180. It fits on both round and elongated bowls and comes with a lifetime warranty.

The Adjustable Advantage isn't just for people who have packed on a few pounds. The company is also promoting its use by pregnant women and folks with sciatic nerve issues. The seat clocks in at a few inches higher than a standard seat, so there's less distance to travel on the way down to a seated position.… Read more

A psychology professor and an electrical and computer engineering professor at Clemson University in South Carolina have teamed up to develop a watch-like device that tracks wrist-roll motion to count how many bites the wearer takes.

In the lab, they report, their Bite Counter has been more than 90 percent accurate in tallying bites regardless of the food, utensil, container, or user.

They say the device, which can be turned on and off at will, is something of a pedometer for eating. It's certainly not tracking types of food. But even if it's intended to monitor mere quantity of consumption, it can only be so accurate.… Read more

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have created a disposable lab-on-a-chip sensor that can test levels of potentially harmful heavy metals in humans in as few as 10 minutes.

Their work, published in the August issue of the journal Biomedical Microdevices, is co-authored by assistant professor of environmental engineering Erin Haynes, who has also been studying air pollution and the effects of lead and manganese on residents in Marietta, Ohio--home to the only manganese refinery in the U.S. and Canada. (Manganese compounds are used to make steel and other products.)

Manganese is naturally ubiquitous and considered essential both nutritionally … Read more

Researchers have built a battery that's six times thinner than a bacterium. The microscopic power pack could be used to run all sorts of minuscule electronic devices, including sensors that spy on single cells.

Does this mean we'll start seeing commercials for the Energizer bacterium? At 150 nanometers wide, the nano battery is hundreds of times thinner than a human hair and more than 60,000 times smaller than a AAA battery. How many "A"s is that?

The little battery, developed at Rice University, is actually a cross between a battery and a supercapacitor. Supercapacitors can deliver more power at once than batteries--a bigger jolt. The diminutive battery is made by the thousands in dense arrays. Each battery is a nanowire, with one half of the wire working as a negative electrode and the other half as a positive electrode.… Read more

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program was the first to win 11 national championships and the first to win seven Heisman Trophies. Now, it'll be among the first to try out a new protective mouthguard that records and reports impact data to help battle concussions.

Pro and college football are much more concerned with head injuries than they were even five years ago, with more data supporting the theory that multiple concussions--even in youth--can lead to long-term depression, permanent memory problems, and dementia later in life.

The "intelligent mouthguard" by Seattle's X2IMPACT records the g-force … Read more

During a recent visit to the doctor, I marveled that all the patient files were still in paper form, filling up multiple filing cabinets in the small office.

Well, they're having none of that old-time clutter at the New York University Langone Medical Center, which started scanning palms last month to reduce paperwork and prevent identity theft.

Instead of asking patients for insurance cards, the hospital uses a PatientSecure device to scan palm vein patterns with infrared light, associating unique biometric traits to electronic health records.

This certainly isn't the first palm scanner in use, but its presence in a hospital may signal growing acceptance. The hospital says more than 22,000 patients have already used the system.

The system is optional, the data is protected by law, and it's designed to increase efficiency. Still, it wasn't surprising that at least one patient wasn't keen on the high-tech palm reading.

"It was the kind of intrusion that, if government needed it, you'd have to be under arrest or something," the patient was quoted by the New York Daily News as saying.

What do you think? Would you mind having your palm scanned at the hospital if it could protect your identity and speed up service? Vote in our poll and be sure to add your comments below. … Read more