Health tech

A smart bed that automatically repositions a patient throughout both day and night may soon come to market in Switzerland, according to a report on the conclusion of the start-up's first round of financing.

Michael Sauter, the young entrepreneur and mechanical engineer who came up with the concept two years ago with funding from Empa and the ETH Zurich and launched the spin-off company Compliant Concept, says an industrial partner will help manufacture the first beds, possibly by the end of 2011.… Read more

While humanoid robots in the U.S. are helping paralyzed patients regain some independence, a Japanese firm has released a Twitter client for iPad that lets people tweet simply by breathing.

TechFirm's Breath Bird is a free app that works as a simple pointing device for people who can't use their hands or fingers.

The software was developed in collaboration with Keio University in Tokyo and other partners. It's linked to a Twitter account and displays the timeline to the left of a grid of letters in the English version or hiragana characters in the Japanese version.

A moving cursor slowly highlights rows of letters one at a time. The user breathes into a microphone headset to make selections.

When the user blows into the mic, the row will be selected. Next, individual letters will be highlighted in turn, and are selected by blowing into the mic. Finally, a "tweet" function can be selected to send out the message.

The process takes time, but it seems to be quicker than Guger Technologies' EEG skullcap that lets you type just by thinking. … Read more

What if, instead of waiting a few weeks for your dentist to produce a cast for dental implants or replacement crowns, your jaw was scanned and, during that same dentist's visit, you were able to pull a perfect polymer shape out of a 3D printer and be on your merry way?

Mechanical engineers in Iran report in the International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing that printing our own teeth may not be so far off into the future.

While the process could be prohibitively expensive for years to come, it turns out that 3D printing, coupled with the comparatively affordable cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), may ultimately revolutionize prosthetic dentistry.

The tech, called rapid prototyping, uses a 3D image to control a laser that cures powdered or liquid polymer into highly complex shapes. In fact, Hossein Kheirollahi of the Imam Hossein University and Farid Abbaszadeh of the Islamic Azad University say this technology can produce just about any solid, porous, or complicated shape.

While the Iranian team has been able to demonstrate the use of rapid prototyping in developing dental objects quickly, we're likely at least a few years out from actual commercial development.

Below, watch tool replication via 3D printing:… Read more

PR2, the beer-fetching, laundry-folding, breakfast-making jack of all trades robot, has taken up a job as personal assistant for a man disabled by a stroke.

Maker Willow Garage has partnered with Georgia Tech's Charlie Kemp and colleagues of the Healthcare Robotics Lab to help Henry Evans and his wife Jane in a project dubbed Robots for Humanity.

It sounds rather grandiose, but the humanoid robot has made a real difference in the life of Evans, who suffered a brain stem stroke at age 40 that left him paralyzed and mute. Therapy has enabled him to move his head and a finger.

That allows him to use a computer and control PR2. The bot helped him scratch an itch for the first time in 10 years.

As the vid below shows, Evans prefers to shave himself with PR2 rather than have others do it. … Read more

The term "sudden infant death syndrome" is vague for a reason; it names the unexpected and inexplicable death of a child under age 1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that roughly 2,500 babies in the U.S. alone die from SIDS each year.

While the cause of the syndrome remains unknown, researchers theorize that a big drop in heart rate precedes the death--which is why two students at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel have been busy working on a computer system that would sound an alarm should an infant's heart rate drop below a certain level.

Using what is described as a basic video camera with a home computer, the researchers added software which, while still being developed, actually monitors the baby's skin tone to detect a drop in pulse.… Read more

You may not have thought of using your iPhone to catalog your moles and freckles, but Health Discovery Corporation has. The company is the developer behind MelApp, a $1.99 iOS app that gives you a risk assessment for melanoma on your skin.

According to the American Melanoma Foundation, one American dies of melanoma every hour. It's worthwhile to dedicate a little time to watching your moles.

Here's the process. Take a picture of a suspicious mole with your camera. Label it, mark the diameter, and indicate how fast the mole's evolution has been. Click on the "Check Risk" button.

The image is uploaded to a server and run through an image analysis risk assessment process. According to the app's developer, MelApp has been validated using an image database licensed from John Hopkins University Medical Center.

MelApp comes back with a high- or low-risk diagnosis based on five parameters ranging from mole asymmetry to rate of evolution. A self-assessment feature can help verify the app's findings.… Read more

Baby, it's the way you make me kinda get me sit straightly, never wanna stop.

The Back Straight Boys aren't singing that tune yet, but they probably should be. The teenagers did, after all, name themselves after the boy band Backstreet Boys. But instead of targeting screaming teens, they're targeting screaming adults--screaming in pain, that is--with a device that aims to prevent poor workstation posture by monitoring wearers' stance and training them to correct it when needed.

Sean Colford, Ethan Epstein, Brandon Loye, and Michael Walsh, all of San Diego and just out of their freshman year of high school, came up with the idea for Posture Pad back in middle school after experiencing firsthand the discomfort computer use can cause.

"We noticed that at school, all the computer workstations were the same size, but Ethan and I had a 15-inch difference in height," Loye said. "I had to hunch my back to see the monitor, and Ethan had to sit on his legs. This caused us discomfort, and we thought we could do something about it."

So the longtime pals decided to delve deep into improper posture at computer workstations and the consequent musculoskeletal problems it can cause among kids and adults in classrooms and offices.

Many hours of research spawned the "Posture Pad," which strategically embeds sensors and microcomputers in an ergonomically designed seat pad to gauge a computer user's positioning and connects to the user's computer to deliver visual and/or audio feedback via special software. … Read more

New technology out of Georgia Tech may reduce the number of pills people with multiple prescriptions need to take every day--or that Ray Kurzweil takes to try and live long enough to become immortal. That's because researchers have developed a new gelcap with multiple compartments that can be used to take different drugs at the same time.

Right now the hydrogel capsules are very tiny--just one micron across--and no one's actually tried to fill one with medication yet. But the researchers say a meta-pill could have significant advantages, like being able to suppress resistance to certain drugs by co-mingling them with medications that counter adverse effects. The one-shot capsules could also afford more precise control over dosages, and, of course, could mean less time spent organizing pills.

What's cool about the multi-compartment pills is that they can deliver two very different kind of drugs at the same time--those that can dissolve in water, and those that are hydrophobic, or generally repelled by water (think of how cooking oil refuses to mix with water). This is done by inserting microscopic polymer chains in the pill. The hydrophobic drugs are trapped within nanoparticles assembled from the polymer chains.… Read more

Dr. Cal Lightman is about to be out of a job. The micro-expression expert central to the TV show Lie to Me could soon be joined by legions of fellow human lie detectors--but instead of squinting intently Lightman-style, they'll be wearing high-tech specs.

So hopes electrical engineer Rosalind Picard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, who recently shared a pair with journalist Sally Adee for the magazine New Scientist.

In her interview, Adee describes the sensation of wearing the glasses, which featured a blinking red light alerting her to the general confusion and utter boredom of … Read more