If you flinch at the sight of a needle or face difficulty in swallowing pills, here’s an alternative method to alleviate your pain. The Centre for Biomedical Engineerin at IIT Delhi has created a device, which can be worn like a watch, to administer medicines using electric current. Agonizing as it may sound, the process is pain-free, claim researchers.
Based on a concept called Iontophoresis, the process includes application of low intensity current to the skin which causes a drug to permeate inside without any needle pricks.
This is a preview of Drug Delivery Without Pain: Medical Device from IIT, Delhi.
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A miniature atom based magnetic sensor developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been used to measure alpha waves in the brain associated with a person opening and closing their eyes, as well as signals resulting from stimulation of the hand.
The sensor could be used for biomedical applications such as studying mental processes and advancing the understanding of neurological diseases.
Measurements were compared with the signals recorded by a SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) – the world’s most sensitive commercially available magnetometer. Although currently less sensitive, the NIST sensor is said to have the potential for comparable performance while offering potential advantages in size, portability and cost.
This is a preview of Atom Based Magnetic Sensor for Biomedical Applications.
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These researchers previously transformed scar-forming cardiac cells into beating heart muscle-like cells in petri dishes. Now they have accomplished this transformation in living animals, and with even greater success.
In laboratory experiments with mice that had experienced a heart attack, the team delivered three genes that normally guide embryonic heart development —together known as GMT — directly into the damaged region. Within a month, non-beating cells that normally form scar tissue transformed into beating heart-muscle cells. Within three months, the hearts were beating even stronger and pumping more blood.
Researchers working at Purdue University and Princeton University have developed a proof-of-concept device, called MedMon, that blocks hackers from hijacking or interfering with wireless medical devices, like pacemakers, insulin pumps, or brain implants. The researchers were motivated to work on the problem after discovering how easy it was for hackers to break into current wireless medical systems.
The researchers believe that hundreds of thousands of people using wireless insulin pumps or wireless-enabled pacemakers are currently vulnerable. Other devices, not yet in the market, like brain implants that manage epilepsy and “smart prosthetics” could also be hacked. Despite the potential for hacking, the researchers admit the chances that any given would be hacked is low.
An innovative cough detector uses acoustic respiratory monitoring (ARM) to detect wheezes, rhonchi, and coughs, aiding the diagnosis of respiratory conditions.
The Wheezometer device is an ultrasound-based cough detector using ARM technology that fits against a patient’s neck, automatically detecting coughs and counts coughing events by detecting both high and low frequency mechanical vibrations in the tracheal area, and then tracking their severity and duration. The device then stores that data or sends it wirelessly to a computer or other logging device. Just 30 seconds of breath sounds are sufficient to use the advanced signal processing algorithms to detect, quantify, and objectively document the presence of wheeze and its extent.
This is a preview of Wheezometer- Ultrasoung Based Respiratory monitoring Device.
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