When doctors assess the inflammatory skin disease psoriasis, they generally do so via a visual examination of the red, scaly patches on the skin’s surface. This can be subjective, however, plus it doesn’t take into account what’s going on at a deeper level. That’s why German scientists from Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University...
Category: <span>Devices</span>
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New disposable, wearable patch found to effectively detect sleep apnea
Results of a definitive clinical trial show that a new, disposable diagnostic patch effectively detects obstructive sleep apnea across all severity levels. Results show that the total rate of clinical agreement between the patch and standard in-lab polysomnography was 87.4 percent with 95 percent confidence interval of 81.4 percent to 91.9 percent. According to the authors, the...
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Pocket Colposcope for Cervical Cancer Screening by Anyone Anywhere
Scientists at Duke University have developed a handheld colposcope that can be used for cervical screening. The slender wand can be attached to a smartphone or laptop to display images of the cervix. At present, detecting cervical cancer requires specialized equipment. Healthcare professionals use a device called a speculum to spread the vagina and an...
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Stanford study shows fitness trackers are terrible at tracking fitness
A new study from Stanford into the accuracy of seven popular fitness trackers indicates such devices aren’t much good at estimating energy expenditure Fitness trackers have come under a bit of scrutiny lately, with Fitbit facing a class action lawsuit over the accuracy of its heart rate tracking last year and studies raising questions about the accuracy of...
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Rating Portable Diagnostic Devices That Make Patients the Point-of-Care
Although the medical tricorder will remain a dream to be chased by digital health innovators for the years to come, I collected the portable, digital health diagnostic devices currently on the market in case anyone is thinking about purchasing an effective gadget making the patient the point of care. Chasing the dream of the medical...
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Mind-controlled device helps stroke patients retrain brains to move paralyzed hands
Medical resident Jarod Roland, MD, tries out a device that detects electrical activity in his brain and causes his hand to open and close in response to brain signals. A new study shows that this device can help chronic stroke patients …more Stroke patients who learned to use their minds to open and close a...
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Sensors detect disease markers in breath
The researchers made sensors from porous thin films of organic conductive plastics with the goal of portable, disposable devices for medical and environmental monitoring. A small, thin square of an organic plastic that can detect disease markers in breath or toxins in a building’s air could soon be the basis of portable, disposable sensor...
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‘Sepsis sieve’ that cleans your blood of infections or blood-borne diseases could save thousands of lives
Device created by British scientist who said it could save the NHS huge sums Blood is removed and cleaned of dangerous microbes using magnets Machine is to undergo the first human clinical trials next year Could also be used to treat blood-borne diseases such as malaria and leukaemia A machine that ‘sieves’ the blood could...
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Medical gamma-ray camera is now palm-sized
World’s first demonstration of multicolor 3-D in vivo imaging using ultra-compact Compton camera with dramatically reduced measurement time As represented by conventional radiograph, radiological images provide only black and white figures in 2D space. The situation is basically the same for Single photon emission tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET), which are the two...
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Battery-free medical implants use body’s fluids as fuel
A team of researchers has developed a biofriendly supercapacitor that could allow for battery-free, lifelong implantable medical devices Despite the continual evolution of medical implant technologies, such as making smaller and smaller pacemakers, we still power these devices with traditional batteries. Such batteries contain toxic chemicals that aren’t ideal to have inside the human body and also...