Implants & Prosthetics

Conductive Hydrogel Holds Promise for Implants

A team of scientists has developed a soft polymer hydrogel that can conduct electricity as well as metal can. Read on to learn more.

Videos of the Month

See the videos of the month, including one on using microfluidic devices for gene therapy; one on resisting antibiotic resistance; one on a humanoid robot surgeon; and more.

Tiny Neural Implant Wirelessly Tracks Brain

Cornell researchers and collaborators have developed a neural implant so small that it can rest on a grain of salt, yet it can wirelessly transmit brain activity data in a living animal for more than a year. Read on to learn more about it.

Probe Powerfully Records Neural Circuits During Behavior

A newly developed probe, called Neuropixels Ultra, overcomes some key technical challenges in recording the cell type and activity of thousands of individual cells across many brain regions during a single experiment. Read on to learn more.

Brain Implant Enables Safer Drug Delivery

Researchers have developed a new type of brain implant that can deliver drugs to multiple regions of the brain with high precision, offering fresh possibilities for the treatment of neurological...

3D Printed Diamond–Titanium Device Could Lead to Longer-Lasting Implants

RMIT researchers have created an experimental 3D printed diamond–titanium device that generates electricity from flowing liquid and receives wireless power through tissue making it possible to remotely sense changes in flow. Read on to learn more about it.

MD&M Midwest Keynote: Let’s Break a Leg: Improving 3D Printed Prosthetics

In their keynote, Drew Davis and Eric Nickel explore how the rise of 3D printing and scanning technologies have transformed healthcare. They will talk about how and...

3D Printed Implant Helps Repair Spinal Cord Injuries

A research team at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences has developed a 3D printed implant to deliver electrical stimulation to injured areas of the spinal cord offering a potential new route to repair nerve damage. Read on to learn the details of the 3D-printed implant and how it performs in lab experiments.

Researchers Develop Ultrasound-Based Wireless Charging Technology for Implantable Medical Devices

A research team led by Prof. Jinho Chang at DGIST has developed an ultrasound-based wireless charging technology capable of rapidly and efficiently charging the batteries of implantable medical devices. The technology has achieved world-class energy efficiency, fully charging a commercial battery within two hours, even inside the human body. Read on to learn more.

Balancing Miniaturization, Power, and Compliance in Sensor Design

In this Q&A with Medical Design Briefs, Michael Klitzke, principal system architect at TE Connectivity, discusses how advances in sensor miniaturization, packaging,...

Leadless Pacemaker Prevents Invasive Surgeries

Researchers have created a groundbreaking prototype for a new kind of leadless pacemaker designed for both children and adults. The innovative micropacemaker would be the first fully leadless system to be placed in the pericardial space surrounding the heart. Read on to learn more.

Soft Brainstem Implant Delivers High-Resolution Hearing

Researchers have developed a soft, thin-film auditory brainstem implant. The device uses micrometer-scale platinum electrodes embedded in silicone, forming a pliable array just a fraction of a millimeter thick. This novel approach enables better tissue contact, potentially preventing off-target nerve activation and reducing side effects. Read on to learn more.

Product Focus: Tubing

See where the product focus is this month: Tubing, including TekniPlex Healthcare's PTA/PTCA balloon catheter tubing solutions; Kent Elastomer Products' biopharmaceutical tubing that can replace thermoplastic elastomers and is designed to reduce emissions related to single-use tubing by as much as 50 percent; cut-to-length and slit peelable heat shrink tubing from Junkosha; and more.

PHOx: An Innovative, Safer Polymer for Implantable Medical Devices

A team from the GIGA (Cardiology Laboratory) and the CESAM (Centre de recherche sur les macromolécules – CERM) at the University of Liège has developed PHOx, a thermoplastic elastomer without isocyanate PU (NIPU), which is therefore less toxic to produce and much better tolerated by the human body. Read on to learn more.

Technology

What is the first FDA-approved cardiac stent specifically designed to grow and expand with infants and young children?

Technology

What implantable system was the first to university-developed medical device to receive FDA 510(k) clearance?

PRIME Project Launches to Strengthen Nitinol Supply Chain

Five leading companies in the medical device industry have launched the PRIME project — a strategic initiative dedicated to advancing the consistency, scalability, and performance of...

Soft Brainstem Implant Delivers High-Resolution Hearing

A team at EPFL’s Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces has developed a soft, thin-film auditory brainstem implant. The device uses micron-scale platinum electrodes embedded in silicone, forming a pliable array just a fraction of a millimeter thick. Read on to learn more.

Novel Leadless Pacemaker Prevents Invasive Surgeries

Researchers have created a groundbreaking prototype for a new kind of leadless pacemaker designed for both children and adults. The innovative micropacemaker would be the first fully...

A Bionic Hand that Can Grip Like a Human

Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a pioneering prosthetic hand that can grip plush toys, water bottles, and other everyday objects like a human, carefully conforming and adjusting its grasp to avoid damaging or mishandling whatever it holds.

Prosthetic Hand Adjusts Its Grasp

Engineers have developed a pioneering prosthetic hand that can grip plush toys, water bottles, and other everyday objects like a human, carefully conforming and adjusting its grasp to avoid damaging or mishandling whatever it holds. Read on to learn more.

Miniature Intra-Bone Implants Promote Healing

Research engineers are developing smart implants that can both monitor and promote healing in fractured bones. Read on to learn more.

New Implant May Help Patients Regenerate Their Own Heart Valves

Georgia Tech researchers have created a 3D-printed heart valve made of bioresorbable materials and designed to fit an individual patient’s unique anatomy. Once implanted, the valves will be absorbed by the body and replaced by new tissue that will perform the function that the device once served. Read on to learn more.

Medical Implants: Zwitterions Coating Could Prevent Blood Clotting

Zwitterions sound likes a distant cousin of Twitter (X), but in fact they are a common macromolecule found in human cells. Scientists at the University of Sydney are also now using zwitterions to create materials that could stop blood clots from forming in medical devices and implants. Read on to learn more.

Sensitive Ceramics for Robotics, Prosthetics

Researchers are developing soft sensor materials based on ceramics. Such sensors can feel temperature, strain, pressure, or humidity, for instance, which makes them interesting for use in medicine, but also in the field of soft robotics. Read on to learn more.

Soft, Bioelectronic Sensor Implant Monitors Brain

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and New York’s Columbia University have embedded transistors in a soft, conformable material to create a biocompatible sensor implant that monitors neurological functions through successive phases of a patient’s development. Read on to learn more.

Bioprinting Method Replicates Heart Tissues

Researchers at University of Galway have developed a way of bioprinting tissues that change shape as a result of cell-generated forces, in the same way that it happens in biological tissues during organ development. The breakthrough science focused on replicating heart tissues, bringing research closer to generating functional, bioprinted organs. Read on to learn more.

FDA Approves Medtronic's Adaptive DBS System for Parkinson's

FDA has approved Medtronic’s BrainSense™ Adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS) and BrainSense™ Electrode Identifier (EI) for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Medtronic...

Prosthetic Material Could Help Reduce Infections from Intravenous Catheters

Published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers have created realistic, skin-like replicas made of Ecoflex, a type of silicone rubber that can potentially serve as a platform to evaluate risks of bacterial infections from intravenous catheters and test wearable sensors, among other biomedical applications. Read on to learn what the study found.