Medical tools

Insulin pumps, which deliver fast-acting insulin continuously through a catheter and are often preferred over injections, are still only used by only 20 to 30 percent of the 1.5 million people in the U.S. who are diagnosed with Type I diabetes.

Pumps might start getting more popular as the systems are get smaller, sleeker, and easier to use. Take Tandem Diabetes Care's t:slim, an insulin delivery system that has just been cleared by the FDA.

It's not only the smallest, but also the first to employ touch screen technology. Friends just might get gadget envy.… Read more

Ph.D. student Chris Seaton, who studies computer science at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, witnessed firsthand the horrors of serious burns while deployed in Afghanistan, Kenya, and elsewhere during his four years as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

So with the help of plastic surgeons at the University of Liverpool, Seaton developed Mersey Burns, an app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that helps reduce errors when treating burn victims.

Mersey Burns has already won an innovation award, and it is set to be featured in the January issue of the Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons.… Read more

Do you hurt everywhere? Can't find any lasting solutions? Before you start popping pills, consider a little talk therapy--by telephone.

Chronic widespread pain, a condition called fibromyalgia, affects as many as 1 in 10 Americans, and is notoriously tricky (and expensive) to manage.

In the first six months following diagnosis, it costs on average $3,481 for medications, consultations, tests, and emergency room visits, according to researchers at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Manchester, both in the U.K.

So the researchers decided to investigate two less expensive alternatives: exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy (by phone).… Read more

Driven by the oft-overlooked needs of the visually impaired, Selene Chew wanted to develop something that would improve their social lives. She came up with the concept of BlindSpot, which looks like a normal white cane, but integrates a mobile phone.

You could say the device--Chew's final-year industrial design thesis project at the National University of Singapore--is a smart cane.

Instead of a screen, users navigate the menu with a tactile navigator and listen to audio cues via a Bluetooth headset. Both the headset and phone can be charged wirelessly.

Like most of today's smartphones, BlindSpot has built-in Wi-Fi, 3G, and GPS connectivity. … Read more

Toyota wants to help Japan's aging population with machines than can help people move around with a leg brace and a personal transporter.

The Walk Assist Robot is made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic and attaches to the legs of patients who have suffered paralysis to help them walk.

Weighing 7.7 pounds, the device has a position sensor on the thigh area, a pressure sensor on the sole, and a knee actuator that moves the brace based on data from the sensors.

A timing-lock mechanism ensures that the brace doesn't bend when the foot is planted. The device can also be used for physiotherapy when patients are relearning to walk, according to Toyota.

If the Walk Assist Robot looks like part of Cyberdyne's HAL robot suit, then Toyota's Care Assist Robot takes a page from Riken's Riba person mover.

The Care Assist Robot doesn't look like a giant teddy bear, but it's also designed to help reduce the burden on caregivers who have to move bedridden patients. … Read more

If you'd like a better understanding of what it takes for sperm to be considered fertile, go grab your measuring spoons and look at the quarter teaspoon. Roughly that amount of ejaculate should boast anywhere between 20 million and 150 million sperm. Anything less than 20 million and fertility just might be an issue.

So Loes Segerink, a researcher at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, has developed a "fertility chip" that can accurately count one's sperm concentration as well as measure its mobility (when discussing sperm the synonym "motility" is often used). What's more, the test can be taken at home, with the ejaculate being, ahem, collected in a more private environment.

While simple home tests are already commercially available, the concentration readings are, well, simple, and indicate only whether sperm concentration is above or below that 20 million mark. But one man's sperm concentration of 19 million is certainly more fertile than another man's count of 1 million.

Segerink, who will be defending her doctoral dissertation in November, says the sperm flows past a liquid-filled channel on the chip beneath electrode "bridges." When cells pass beneath these bridges, a brief fluctuation in electrical resistance occurs. By counting these events, the chip is counting sperm.… Read more

Researchers at Stanford are developing new sensors so flexible and pressure-sensitive that they could be used to make touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs, pressure-sensitive badges, and more.

By incorporating a transparent film of carbon nano-springs, the sensor "can register pressure ranging from a firm pinch between your thumb and forefinger to twice the pressure exerted by an elephant standing on one foot," says postdoctoral researcher Darren Lipomi, co-author of a paper published October 23 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. "None of it causes any permanent deformation."

The team built those nano-springs by airbrushing nanotubes (which are in liquid … Read more

It may be benign, but researchers have turned the virus M13 into a sophisticated engineering tool that could lead to the manufacturing of materials with biomedical properties that can be fine-tuned, such as bone, skin, and corneas.

"We took our inspiration from nature," said Seung-Wuk Lee, an associate professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley who describes the team's self-templating material assembly process in the journal Nature. "Nature has a unique ability to create functional materials from very basic building blocks. We found a way to mimic [this]."

Lee points to the protein collagen as the … Read more

As scientists unveil artificial organs and prosthetics to improve the function of our hearts, kidneys, hands, and even eyes, it's easy to gloss over these devices' Achilles' heel: power.

Even building devices that run on very low power, such as pacemakers, tend to require additional invasive surgeries just to replace their batteries. Meanwhile, artificial limbs can be huge energy hogs, with the power source needing to be swapped out as frequently as every few weeks. Impractical is an understatement.

Biofuel cells could very well solve this problem. Researchers around the world are investigating how to use a body's own energy to power various devices, and one team out of France last year successfully implanted in a rat a biofuel cell that uses glucose and oxygen to generate electricity.… Read more