Do you think the increased availability and lowered costs of 3D printers will take significant business away from rapid prototype manufacturers?

Remoras attach themselves to larger marine animals for transportation, protection, and food but just how they attach and detach from hosts without appearing to harm them has inspired a team of researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, to study the structure and tissue properties of...

Electromagnetic devices all require an electric current to create the magnetic fields that allow them to function. But as devices become smaller, being able to efficiently deliver a current to create magnetic fields becomes more difficult. Researchers at UCLA say that they have developed a method to switch...

Researchers at the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, have successfully coated polymer implants with a bioactive film that, they say should improve the success rate of the implants, typically used in spinal surgeries. The polymer contained in these implants, called Polyetheretherketone...

Researchers and students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, are trying to change how medical equipment is sterilized in remote clinics using sunlight, an abundant commodity. Their pilot project, conducted in Nicaragua has begun to show promising results. To care for a nation of six...

The demand for ever-smaller electronic devices has led to the miniaturization of a variety of technologies, but energy-storage units, such as batteries and capacitors, have lagged behind. Now, researchers at UCLA say that they have developed an innovative technique using a DVD burner to...

A team of neuroengineers based at Brown University, Providence, RI, has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects. Several copies of the novel low-power device, described...

In addition to the Chemicals Regulation REACH (Regulation concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical substances), medical devices will soon have to comply with the European RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive on the restriction of the...

A new study by researchers at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, examined how bacteria clogs medical devices, and found that the microbes join to create slimy ribbons that form tangles, trapping other bacteria, and creating a full blockage in a very short period of time. Their findings, they say, could...

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

A physicist at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, invented a new material, a type of silicone rubber that is both rigid and fluid, called a “viscoelastic” solid, that can act like a memory foam, but with stretch and bounce. He foresees that it may have applications as a packaging tape, as a shoe insole,...

A bedside electronic device that measures eye movements can be used to quickly determine whether the cause of severe, continuous, disabling dizziness is a stroke or something benign, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, MD. To distinguish stroke from a more benign condition, such as...

Research is being conducted at the Chevy Chase Clinical Research facility in Chevy Chase, MD, on a device that can measure the amount of force applied to the colonoscope during a colonoscopy, in order to make a colonoscopy safer and less uncomfortable. Dr. Louis Korman of Capital Digestive Care and Artann Laboratories...

Ultrasound technology could soon be improved to produce high-quality, high-resolution images, thanks to the development of a new key material by a team of researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station. The engineered material, known as a "metamaterial,"...

The Human Connectome Project, a five-year project to link brain connectivity to human behavior, has released a set of high-quality imaging and behavioral data to the scientific community. The project has two major goals: to collect vast amounts of data using advanced brain imaging methods on a large...

Longtime cochlear implant users are reporting dramatic improvements in their hearing, thanks to new image-guided programming methods developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Using a patent-pending nonsurgical process, audiologists can fine-tune and customize cochlear implant programming,...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued draft recommendations to medical product manufacturers for providing consumers with more accurate information about products not made with natural rubber latex (NRL), which can cause sensitivity or allergy in users.

A team of scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, have developed a tiny implantable device that can analyze the concentration of up to five proteins and organic acids in the blood simultaneously, and then transmit the...

The application period for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute's (NSBRI) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is now open. The two-year fellowships are available in any US laboratory carrying out space-related biomedical or biotechnological research. Applicants are required to submit...

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