QNX Software Systems Limited, Ottawa, Canada, a subsidiary of BlackBerry, announced a new release of its OS for medical devices. The QNX® OS for Medical 1.1 complies with the IEC 62304 medical device standard and is designed to help manufacturers reduce the cost of developing robotic surgical instruments, patient monitoring...

In the late 1960s, Timothy Leary advised people to “Turn on, tune in, drop out” by using psychedelic drugs. Fifty years later, the message might be “Turn on, sync in, stay connected 24/7”.

In the absence of true standards of medical device communication, medical device integration is a proven, reliable solution for accurate and timely delivery of those data to the various systems and applications running throughout a healthcare organization. While some device...

Tekscan, Inc., Boston, MA, announces its latest sensor offering: the FlexiForce® Enhanced Stability Series 301 (ESS301). The ESS301 sensor is made from Tekscan’s new Enhanced Stability Series pressure sensitive ink that allows for the same high quality performance as other standard FlexiForce sensors but with...

Researchers in the George Washington UniversitySchool of Engineering and Applied Science, Washington, DC, have created a smartphone-controlled liquid handling system that could make handheld diagnostic testing a reality. Their technology is operated by a smartphone, using a mobile app that they also designed,...

A team of scientists in a collaboration between the Cambridge Graphene Centre at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Plastic Logic Ltd., also in Cambridge, have created a prototype of a flexible display incorporating graphene in its pixels’ electronics, marking the first time that graphene has...

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

To get an accurate MRI, the patient must lie completely still for a long period in a confined space, be able to hold their breath on command, and withstand loud banging noises. That’s why it’s often very difficult to get young children to comply, even though they may need the scans for their healthcare.

When a patient has sepsis, in which bacteria or fungi multiply too swiftly in a patient's blood for antibiotics to help, the result is often deadly. However, a new device inspired by the human spleen and developed by a team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, MA,...

While wearable electronic activity monitors may help users reach their fitness and health goals, choosing the right one and remaining motivated enough to wear it may be the bigger hurdle. A team of researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston took on the task of analyzing more than a dozen...

By creating easy to snap together components, a team of scientists at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, Los Angeles, say that it is now possible to build a 3D microfluidic system quickly and cheaply. Microfluidic systems are used to precisely manipulate small volumes of...

A team of scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, invented a Wearable Artificial Kidney device, designed to untether patients from large dialysis machines. The device can give patients with end-stage renal failure a degree of mobility and freedom for such routine activities as...

Silicon is generally the material of choice in the electronics industry. Yet transistors, the switchable valves that control the flow of electrons in a circuit, cannot simply keep shrinking to meet the needs of powerful, compact devices. Physical limitations like energy consumption and heat...

Chips that could use light, instead of electricity, to move data would consume much less power—a growing concern as chips’ transistor counts rise. Of the three chief components of optical circuits—light emitters, modulators, and detectors—emitters are the toughest to build....

Engineers at Oregon State University, Corvallis, have developed an implantable device using a simple pulley mechanism to improve hand function after surgery. They say that this is one of the first instruments ever created that could improve the transmission of mechanical forces and movement while implanted...

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

A scientist at the University of Eastern Finland has developed a new, easy-to-use electroencephalography (EEG) electrode set to measure electrical activity of the brain. The new design allows the user to attach the electrode set to the patient quickly, without any special treatment of the skin. Its design also pays...

The safe use of silver ions in antibacterial textiles has been a matter of debate worldwide, with consumers increasingly seeking a proven alternative. Sweden’s national agency for chemical inspection has ruled silver a health risk, citing possible damage to human genetic material,...