While powered lower limb prosthetics can greatly improve the mobility of amputees, errors in the technology can also cause users to stumble or fall, say researchers at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They are examining what happens when these...

Testing for ovarian cancer or a chemical presence may become much simpler thanks to a new microscopic acoustic device that has been dramatically improved by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL. The device, known as a surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor, detects...

At Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, a biology professor researching echolocation in bats teamed up with an associate professor of computer science and an interdisciplinary team of students to develop a device that can help the visually impaired navigate better. Their research focused on...

Scientists at Brown University, Providence, RI, say that a new wireless brain-sensing system will allow them to acquire high-fidelity neural data to advance neuroscience that cannot be accomplished with current sensors that tie subjects to cabled computer connections for analysis. Their results show that...

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

Most robots today work in manufacturing facilities where, for safety reasons, they are removed from being in close proximity with humans. But, Georgia Tech robotics researchers believe people and robots can accomplish much more as co-robots, which work beside, or cooperatively with, people. This symbiotic relationship...

Don't forget to vote for the Medical Design Briefs' Annual Readers' Choice Product of the Year. You’re invited to cast your vote for the one product among the 12 Products of the Month that you feel was the most significant new product introduced to the engineering community in 2014.

An engineering professor at the University of Texas at Dallas applied robot control theory to enable powered prosthetics to dynamically respond to the wearer’s environment and help amputees walk. The robotic leg wearers were able to walk on a moving treadmill almost as quickly as an able-bodied...

According to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, future fitness trackers could soon add blood-oxygen levels to the list of vital signs they measure. By switching from silicon to an organic, or carbon-based, design, the researchers say that they were able to create a device that...

Touch feedback, or haptics technology, has been changing rapidly over the last few years with new uses in entertainment, rehabilitation, and even surgical training. Now, using ultrasound, scientists have developed virtual 3D shapes that can be seen and felt in mid-air. The researchers from the UK...

While touch may be subtle, the information it communicates can be understood and acted upon quickly. For the first time, scientists are reporting that they have developed a stretchable “electronic skin” that can detect not just pressure, but also which direction it’s coming from....

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say that they know how to reverse the characteristics of a key bonding material—polyurea—to provide an inexpensive alternative for a broad number of applications, such as drug delivery, tissue engineering, and packaging.

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

Engineers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have developed a plastic blend that, they say, can dissipate heat up to 10 times better than its conventional counterparts. While plastics are inexpensive, lightweight, and flexible, they tend to restrict the flow of heat, so their use has been...

A team of researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, are trying to help stroke patients improve arm movement by using a device called a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator (TMS) to reduce activity on the healthy side of the brain, so that the stroke-injured side may...

Seeking a way to print technology, improve device portability, and lower the cost of electronics, a team of engineers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, led by Assistant Professor Anming Hu, has discovered a way to print circuits on paper.

The FDA has signed a five-year collaborative research agreement with Dassault Systèmes Vélizy-Villacoublay, France, a world leader in 3D design software, for the development of testing paradigms for insertion, placement, and performance of pacemaker leads and other cardiovascular devices...

Scientists at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have demonstrated a new technique for harvesting energy from mechanical vibrations of the environment and converting it into electricity. They explain that energy harvesters are needed, for example, in wireless self-powered sensors and medical...