You may have noticed that there have been some changes afoot at Medical Design Briefs. I’m very pleased to have been come aboard as the new Editor effective with the August 2012 issue. It’s an exciting time for the magazine, having just completed its first full year as a monthly, and...

A new device about the size of a business card, developed by scientists at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute and MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, could let healthcare providers perform up to 50 tests for insulin and other blood proteins, cholesterol, and even viral or bacterial infection all from one...

Using an MRI can effectively and non-invasively screen patients for Alzheimer's disease, to determine the root cause of a person's dementia, according to a new study by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Using an MRI-based algorithm effectively...

Using two successive pairs of specialized CT scans, a team of Dutch radiologists working with researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, has produced real-time images of liver tumors dying after direct injection of anticancer drugs into the tumors and their surrounding...

Some of the most innovative products realized in 2012 included an explosion of mobile healthcare apps, rapid advances in additive manufacturing, implantable robotics, bionic eyes, and more. What do you think was the most important medical product advance in 2012?

It is common knowledge among astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, that they grow up to 3 percent taller while living in microgravity. Then, when they return to Earth, they return to their normal height. Studying the impact of this change on the spine and advancing...

Breathing sensors built into onesie infant bodysuits could help prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), where a sleeping infant suddenly stops breathing. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin used an integrated sensor system made from a...

The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, has been instrumental in growing the medical device industry in Minnesota. Still, translation of device innovations from university labs to the marketplace has been challenging in today’s economic environment. Since the technologies developed at the university...

Scientists at The University of Manchester in the UK developed a camera that can take powerful three-dimensional color X-ray images, in near real-time, without the need for a synchrotron X-ray source. Its ability to identify the composition of the scanned object could radically improve medical imaging, as well as...

Surgeons may soon be able to use a system in the operating room that recognizes hand gestures as commands to a computer to browse and display medical images of the patient during a surgery. Researchers at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, are creating a system that uses depth-sensing cameras and...

Happy New Year! Here is the latest batch of news from the medical products community. Please click the link for more.

It may have taken more than 10 years for this nanotechnology breakthrough, but when it came, it was still a shock say researchers at Rice University, Houston, TX. A team of scientists from Rice, the Dutch firm Teijin Aramid, the U.S. Air Force, and Israel's Technion Institute unveiled a new...

The inaugural Patient Safety Science & Technology Summit, held this week in Laguna Niguel, CA, made history when, for the first time, nine leading medical device companies publicly pledged to make their devices interoperable.

Northwestern University's Center for Device Development (CD2), Chicago, IL, is offering one-year paid fellowships to clinicians and engineers to team up and develop their medical device idea at Northwestern in a supportive environment with entrepreneurial and innovative mentors.

Researchers at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, have embedded needle-like carbon nanofibers into an elastic silicone membrane, creating a flexible “bed of nails” that may open the door to the development of new drug-delivery systems, they say.

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, have created a new polymer film that can generate electricity by drawing on water vapor. The new material changes its shape after absorbing tiny amounts of evaporated water, allowing it to repeatedly curl up and down. Harnessing this continuous...

Researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, have developed an imaging system enclosed in a capsule about the size of a multivitamin pill that creates detailed, microscopic images of the esophageal wall and has several advantages over traditional...

A group of researchers at Umeå University Center for Molecular Medicine in Sweden have developed a new biomedical imaging method using optical projection tomography (OPT) to study insulin-producing cells in diabetes. Initially the method could only be used on relatively small preparations, but five years ago...

At Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, scientists have demonstrated a new way of taking high-resolution, 3D images of the brain's inner workings by a three-fold improvement in the depth limits of multiphoton microscopy, a fluorescence-based imaging technique.

Here is the latest batch of news from the medical products community. Please click the link for more.

Scientists from Rice University, Houston, TX, used magnetic levitation to grow very realistic lung tissue, which could lead to faster and more effective toxicity tests for airborne chemicals. The research is part of an international trend in biomedical engineering to create laboratory techniques...

A team of engineers at Duke University, Durham, NC, are layering atom-thick lattices of carbon with polymers to create unique materials with a broad range of applications, including artificial muscles. Because of its unique optical, electrical, and mechanical properties, graphene is used in electronics,...

Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, New York, using his previously developed lab-on-a-chip and developed a way to check a patient’s HIV status anywhere in the world, and synchronize the results automatically and instantaneously with...

According to Jonathan Linkous, CEO of The American Telemedicine Association (ATA), Washington, DC, after 40-plus years of development, telemedicine is finally becoming mainstream in transforming the delivery of care. He said that more than five million Americans had their medical images read remotely...

The Food and Drug Administration published a final rule governing Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) requirements for combination products, that is products that combine devices, drugs and/or biologics, usually regulated by separate FDA divisions. This rule is intended to provide clarification...

Vaccines usually consist of inactivated viruses that prompt the immune system to launch a strong defense if it encounters an active virus. But, for certain viruses, like HIV, even this is taking too much of a chance. In recent years, scientists have been exploring DNA as a potential alternative vaccine....

University of California-Irvine neuroscientists have developed a unique method to stop severe episodes of epileptic seizures with fiber optic light signals. Using a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy, the research team created an EEG-based computer system that activates hair-thin optical strands implanted in...

Using a device that supplies humidified oxygen is more effective than a technique that reduces positive airway pressure delivered to the lungs to wean patients from a ventilator to breathe on their own, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The research...