Medical

Every five minutes someone in the U.S. dies from a blood clot, through its role in strokes, heart attacks or other severe conditions. For decades, doctors have used the anticoagulant drug warfarin (Coumadin) to prevent clots. More recently, newer anticoagulants such as Xarelto, Eliquis and Pradaxa, considered safer and more convenient than warfarin, have gained greater acceptance.

The UK designer and manufacturer of footswitches, hand controls and sensing solutions, Herga Technology, has recently received ISO 13485:2012 quality management system accreditation for the design, manufacture and related support services for the supply of medical devices. IEC 13485:2012 essentially specifies stringent procedures and requirements for Herga’s quality management system that allows it to demonstrate the ability to co...

In a paper published in the journal Nature Materials, researchers at MIT describe an adhesive patch that can stick to the tumour site, either before or after surgery, to deliver a triple-combination of drug, gene, and photo (light-based) therapy. Releasing this triple combination therapy locally, at the tumor site, may increase the efficacy of the treatment, according to Natalie Artzi, a research scientist at MIT's IMES and an assistant...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to selectively sequence fragments of DNA in real time, greatly reducing the time needed to analyse biological samples. A paper published today in the academic journal Nature Methods describes a novel technique for highly selective DNA sequencing, called 'Read Until'. The method, used with real-time nanopore sequencing, enables the user to anal...

  Designed to be a cost-effective solution for applications in industrial and medical instrumentation requiring a certified compliance with the stringent industrial or medical safety standards, the ASA 6W-M series of 6W DC/DC converters has been introduced by Artesyn Embedded Technologies.

Leading diabetes researchers believe the smartphone craze Pokémon GO could be an 'innovative solution' to rising obesity levels and chronic disease. Millions of people around the world have started to play Pokémon GO, a virtual reality treasure hunt where players must walk to places within the real world and catch, train and battle monsters which appear on their mobile phone screens.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland have created a microneedle drug monitoring system that could one day replace costly, invasive blood draws and improve patient comfort. The system consists of a small, thin patch that is pressed against a patient's arm during medical treatment and measures drugs in their bloodstream painlessly without drawing any blood.

EPFL scientist Selman Sakar teamed up with Hen-Wei Huang and Bradley Nelson at ETHZ to develop a simple and versatile method for building bio-inspired robots and equipping them with advanced features. They also created a platform for testing several robot designs and studying different modes of locomotion. Their work, published in Nature Communications, produced complex reconfigurable microrobots that can be manufactured with high throughput.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed the first placenta-on-a-chip that can fully model the transport of nutrients across the placental barrier. The flash-drive-sized device contains two layers of human cells that model the interface between mother and fetus. Microfluidic channels on either side of those layers allow researchers to study how molecules are transported through, or are blocked by, that interface.

Trials of a prototype robot for sports therapy have just begun in Singapore, to create a high quality and repeatable treatment routine to improve sports recovery, reducing reliance on trained therapists. The robot named Emma, short for Expert Manipulative Massage Automation, has already treated 50 patients in trials including professional athletes for conditions ranging from tennis elbows, stiff neck and shoulders, to lower back pain.