Health tech

You forgot to feed your gerbil. In the middle of the night, it escapes its cage and gnaws off your ear. Who you gonna call? Your local 3D print shop. It'll run off a perfect copy of your ear in no time flat.

This is the kind of futuristic scenario that Cornell University's Hod Lipson and colleagues have been painting while discussing "bioprinting" at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Bioprinting refers to the practice of using 3D printing to make biological tissue such as skin, bone, and cartilage.

The technology has been around for two decades, but researchers recently began using it to create biological structures. The idea is to make custom-designed tissue and organs from a patient's own cells, perhaps eliminating the need for donated organs.

Companies like Organovo are already developing bioprinted blood vessels, which will be essential for artificially grown organs.

"The next big thing and next logical step is [the] development of robotic methods of functional human tissue and organ bioassembly," Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina wrote in a meeting abstract. Mironov has been trying to grow meat in his lab for a decade.

One study has shown how tissue engineering was used to repair a calf's femur. Printing organs such as livers could be next. … Read more

University of Michigan computer scientists and engineers are at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco today presenting papers on two systems: a prototype implantable eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients and a compact radio for wireless sensor networks.

What makes their presentation so remarkable is that both systems involve what is believed to be the first complete millimeter-scale computing system.

The near-invisible package is just over 1 cubic millimeter in size and includes an ultra-low-power microprocessor, a thin-film battery, a solar cell, memory, a pressure sensor, and a wireless radio with an antenna.

"Millimeter-scale systems...have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment, and our buildings," said Professor David Blaauw in a news release. "Because they're so small, you could manufacture hundreds of thousands on one wafer. There could be 10s to 100s of them per person, and it's this per capita increase that fuels the semiconductor industry's growth."

The team points to Bell's Law, formulated by computer engineer Gordon Bell in 1972, which says that a new class of smaller and cheaper computers is developed roughly every decade. This is considered to be a partial corollary to Moore's Law, established in 1970 and named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore (first names coincidental), which describes the now 50-plus-year trend that the number of transistors able to be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years.

The new system out of Michigan is being hailed as the first in a new class of millimeter-scale computing, and while the researchers are specifically targeting the medical side of body sensor networks, other potential applications include tracking such things as pollution, weapons, structural integrity, and more.… Read more

In what is being hailed by experts as a "scientific breakthrough" that could "revolutionize" the way blood pressure is measured, researchers in Singapore and the UK report in the current issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on a novel device that can measure blood pressure near the heart.

The CASPro blood pressure monitor is named after central aortic systolic pressure (CASP), which is the pressure exerted by the aorta--the body's largest artery--that extends out from the heart. CASP is a key indicator of stroke and heart disease risk, and its measurements … Read more

There's a big question being explored right now about the intersection of health and social media: Does the tracking and sharing of personal fitness and diet data motivate us to get, and stay, healthy?

A host of Web sites and mobile apps are banking on the answer being yes. FitDay provides a free diet journal; Daily Burn offers logs to track diet, exercise, and weight; an Awareness app promises to upgrade one's mental software; and dozens of other sites and apps cater to specific types of diets, exercises, and desired outcomes.

So the just-launched Humana fit social network, designed to help users live healthier, more active lives, is going to have to offer some pretty stellar features to stand out.… Read more

Pacemaker patients who opt for magnetic resonance imaging risk serious complications, including damage to the pacemaker's parts or a change in the device's ability to consistently trigger a heartbeat (called pacing capture threshold). That is, until now.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has just approved Medtronic's Revo MRI SureScan pacemaker for use in the U.S.; in doing so, the SureScan has become the first and only pacemaker in the country approved as MR-Conditional.

Minneapolis-based Medtronic says it will begin shipping the pacing system--which costs between $5,000 and $10,000--immediately.

"[This] is a … Read more

A prototype wireless electroencephalogram (EEG) headset debuts this week at the Medical Device and Manufacturing conference and exhibition in Anaheim, Calif., and European developers IMEC and Holst Centre say it could lead to not just neuro-feedback but improved safety (no more sleeping behind the wheel) and entertainment (real-time video game adjustments based on the user's mood).

Currently, recording the brain's electrical activity involves having subjects sit in a lab or hospital room and perform activities over 20 or so minutes with electrodes placed via gel all over their scalp.

So as strange as this prototype headgear may look, the advantages are numerous: ultralow power electronics, dry electrodes, wireless real-time transmission of high-quality EEG signals to a receiver within 10 meters, and the ability to record activity in real-life scenarios.

Side effects may include, but are not limited to, people staring and asking unsolicited questions, which may or may not interfere with EEG results.… Read more

There is no shortage of health-related apps. Some 1,500 cater to professional caregivers and laypersons alike for a range of purposes, from counting calories to learning anatomy or pulling up drug dosage recommendations.

But Mobile MIM is the first mobile app to be cleared (just last week) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that allows physicians to make medical diagnoses using images transmitted to their iPhones or iPads.

The app transmits several image types, including those from computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and nuclear medicine technology such as positron emission tomography (PET). Using software developed by Cleveland-based MIM Software, Mobile MIM allows for not just viewing of medical images, but also displaying measurement lines, annotations, and areas of interest.

While the app is indicated for use only in the absence of a workstation, it's pretty clear that the ability to view radiology images on the go could result in, shall we say, dusty workstations.… Read more

Not long after creating a functioning rat lung in her lab, Yale University Professor of Anesthesiology and Biomedical Engineering Laura Niklason is testing bioengineered human veins that could benefit some 500,000 patients a year who need to undergo vascular surgeries such as coronary artery bypass.

The tissue-engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs) were generated in a bioreactor using a relatively new tissue engineering method called decellularization--a process by which researchers remove a tissue's individual cells while leaving its structure intact. The veins are off the shelf and available at the time of surgery, and are said to be less likely to result in obstruction, clotting, or infection.

The findings, published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine by researchers from East Carolina University, Duke, Yale, and Niklason's company Humacyte, suggest the veins could work in both large- and small-diameter applications (6mm and 3mm), be stored up to 12 months in refrigerated conditions, and provide unobstructed blood flow in large animal models for up to a year.… Read more

Body device developer IntriCon is now selling its tiny new hearing aid, which manages to pack a few punches into a gadget that's smaller than a dime.

Called APT, the hearing aid can be reconfigured to fit the left or right ear quickly and easily (this feature is patent-pending) and comes with a wax guard system that is replaceable, so if you fall into a fountain while texting and damage the shell, you can just swap it out for a new one.

The hearing aid is small enough to not obstruct the ear canal (these are called "open-ear" hearing aids), so the user doesn't suffer through that blocked-up feeling so common in bulkier ones. It also includes what the company calls the AcousTAP Switch, which lets the user toggle between settings by patting the ear instead of the hearing aid.… Read more