Health tech

Robot-assisted surgery to remove cancerous prostate glands is safe over the long term and has a major complication rate of less than 1 percent, according to research published by the journal European Urology.

An earlier study showed almost 87 percent of patients had no recurrence of cancer after five years, according to a release by the Henry Ford Health System. The procedure removes the entire prostate gland and some surrounding tissue.

Researchers followed 3,317 patients at the Vattikuti Urology Institute in Detroit from January 2005 to December 2009. The institute is known for the work of Dr. Mani Menon, … Read more

It's about time gyms started playing catch-up with our gadgets. No more should patrons have to argue over which episode of "Glee" to watch or which Beyonce album to blast. (Shoot, if it were up to me I'd run my heart out to the Sex Pistols while watching "Doctor Who," the combination of which would surely empty most gyms.)

A platform released as a separate add-on screen by Netpulse in 2010 may just help those of us who don't know what we want figure out how to get it. (OK, I'll stop … Read more

For centuries now, horses have been passed up by technology--forced to live in the shadows of manmade monstrosities like the train or the motorcar that add insult to injury by co-opting the name of their equine forebears with twisted phrases like "Iron Horse," "horsepower," and "Mustang GT."

Those dark times are coming to an end; the age of the bionic horse is upon us.

A miniature horse born sans much of his right leg was recently fitted with a nifty new prosthesis that makes him able to run like some sort of Lee Majors/Seabiscuit hybrid, except, uh...smaller.

When we first heard about this story, we naturally all had the same reaction: "We've gotta get on whatever health insurance plan that tiny horse has!"… Read more

The Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect has been put to its most imaginative use yet, and it's no game: saving lives. Surgeons and scientists are using the motion-sensing game controller in medical procedures and research, helping surgeons to operate and blind people to see.

The sawbones at Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital are firing up the Kinect in the operating theater. No, they're not playing "Operation" while waiting for the anesthetic to kick in, but actually using it to view and manipulate medical imaging.

Read more of "Microsoft Kinect scrubs in to help surgeons operate and the blind see&… Read more

We're still not at the place where we can have real-time X-ray video like in "Total Recall," but that doesn't mean X-ray technology hasn't come a long way in the last 116 years.

To underline that point, researchers in the town of Maastricht in Holland have fired up an X-ray machine from 1895 and compared it with a modern machine.

As you can see in the photos to the right, things have gotten sharper. The original device was built by a local educator and doctor just weeks after the first "how to" on X-ray machines was published. It was found in a warehouse and then dusted off by researchers from Maastricht University Medical Center who wanted to show it off.

The old machine was originally produced and built in the Dutch town, and the team didn't just turn it on, they replicated as closely as possible the conditions that would have been available and used by doctors of that time.

But it's not just the better-looking images that make modern X-ray machines better, according to the BBC, but also the fact that they use 1,500 times less radiation, making them safer and cheaper. The machine wasn't just fired up for fun, but for science, by doctors who chronicle their findings in the journal Radiology.

Still, that doesn't mean that we can look down at the venerable old Dutch machine. If you hadn't been told that the image on the left came from a Victorian-era machine, would you have been able to tell? Probably not.… Read more

Is that a speck in your eye? Or just a microrobot helping preserve your vision? Researchers are working on tiny machines that can be directed through eyes to help treat conditions like macular degeneration, which can impair vision.

Scientists at the Swiss-based Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) led by Bradley Nelson are developing tiny, electromagnetically controlled microrobots that can move to a target location in the eye and remain there for months, releasing drugs.

The therapy is seen as an alternative to multiple eye injections to treat macular degeneration, which can lead to legal blindness. In the New Scientist vid below, the robot is seen moving in an eye taken from a dead pig.

The microbots can also position a biodegradable drug capsule before they are removed with a magnetic needle. … Read more

With some 26 million Americans living with diabetes (8.3 percent of the U.S. population), according to the American Diabetes Association, a lot of research is going into how to make blood glucose monitoring more effective and affordable.

Researchers at Arizona State University and the Mayo Clinic are partnering up to develop a monitor that enables people to dab their tear ducts instead of prick their fingers--which could be a big deal for those who currently draw blood as many as a dozen times a day to monitor their blood glucose levels.

"The problem with current self-monitoring blood glucose technologies is not so much the sensor, it's the painful finger prick," Jeffrey LaBelle, a bioengineer and chief designer, said in a news release. "This new technology might encourage patients to check their blood sugars more often, which could lead to better control of their diabetes by a simple touch to the eye."

The team reported on the first stage of their research on the sensor in Diabetes Science and Technology in March 2010, and quickly sparked interest from Arizona-based nonprofit BioAccel, which works to speed up the process of bringing biomedical technologies to the marketplace.

Using funding from BioAccel, the team is now compiling data to apply for human clinical trials of the device, but major challenges remain, including accuracy, efficiency, speed of performing the test, reproducible results, and of course making sure the test sample does not evaporate before it can be read.… Read more

On March 8 and 9, 2011, just days before the largest earthquake in its recorded history literally moved Japan 8 feet, the country played host to the inaugural International Forum on Cybernics 2011 in Tokyo.

While calling the event groundbreaking might qualify as crass, researchers showcased some truly innovative ideas in the world of cybernics, an emerging field that Japan's University of Tsukuba Cybernics department describes as the "fusion of human, machine and information systems." The word itself is a fusion of cybernetics, mechatronics, and informatics.

One of those ideas, the HAL-5 exoskeleton robotics suit by Tokyo-based company Cyberdyne, is a wearable device that helps ordinary people accomplish extraordinary feats, such as lifting objects they otherwise couldn't. (We covered an earlier iteration of this in 2009.) Think of the improvements possible for caregivers, people with missing or paralyzed limbs, the elderly who want to continue living independently, factory workers, etc.… Read more

I gave up on trying to eat a healthy lunch long ago. I'm at the mercy of the burger joints around me. In theory, I could bring my own lunch from home, but I'm 34 years old, so that just sounds silly.

Maybe if I had someone to make my lunch each morning, I might change my tune on that. But not if I'm using this new lunchbox concept from Ochanomizu University in Japan. It has an integrated camera and video touch screen that's activated when the lid is opened.

It's an experiment in family communication. If someone's packing the lunch, it records them doing so to play back later when the lunch is being eaten, and vice versa. The idea is that the eater will see the care that went into packing the lunch, prompting them to return a "thanks, that was tasty!" or something equivalent to the lunch packer. Conversely, the packer gets the satisfaction of a thanks, and can see what the eater liked and didn't like.

It's cool in theory, but I don't like people watching me eat as it is. A noontime Eye of Sauron keeping an eye on me as I munch my Lunchables isn't my idea of a relaxing lunch break. That said, I could see this being very popular with the helicopter parents crowd if it ever makes its way to production.

Check out the video after the jump to see it in action, and maybe get some ideas yourself.

… Read more