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Google now tells you why you're feeling sick
Google made improvements to how you search for symptoms and illnesses in the past, and now it's looking to be even more helpful. The company will now show you a list of medical conditions when you search for symptoms. In the above example, entering "headache on one side" will bring up a group of related conditions that include headache, migraine, common cold, sinusitis and common cold. When you search for something less specific -- like just "headache" -- Google will serve up information on the issue alongside some self-treatment options that might keep you from having to go to the doctor.
Philips camera monitors baby vitals from afar
Sure, junior looks fine sleeping on the baby-cam, but do you know her or his oxygen level, heartbeat and breathing rate, you monster? Of course not (don't worry, you're a good parent), because there's no way of monitoring such things short of hooking the poor tyke up to a pulse oxymeter. At least, until now. Philips has revealed a camera that can detect all those things from afar, without touching the patient. The fruit of the companies contactless monitoring project, it can get a pulse rate, breathing rate and blood oxygen level by detecting changes in skin color that are invisible to the naked eye.
Nintendo has a new game plan
In case you didn't get the message yet, Nintendo is trying lots of new things. To that extent, it's formalizing some of that in its official charter next month. While most of it is rewording in places, the updated charter includes new references the manufacturing and selling of medical devices and computer software -- the latter possibly being different from the gaming software it's famous for. It also offers a reminder of all the things that Nintendo does that you might not know about, including office equipment and the management of "restaurants, dining halls, cafes". (Where's my Mario Cafe?)
PillDrill does smart medication tracking in style
Folks who rely on medication for a long period may forget their routine once in a while, especially the elderly or anyone with memory loss. It also gets rather dull when every conversation with the family starts with, "Have you taken your pills yet?" This is where PillDrill comes in. The system consists of a hub that resembles a cute-looking alarm clock, a couple of weekly pill strips containing RFID pods (you can add more strips, too), a dozen alphabetical RFID tags for your own bottles, a "mood cube" and a mobile app. You don't need to learn how to program your schedule: Just take your pills the way you're used to -- be it with the pods on the pill strips or with the original pill bottles -- and scan their RFID tags onto the right hand side of the hub as you go along.
Theranos CEO faces ban from operating a blood-testing lab
As more details surface about blood-testing startup Theranos, federal regulators are looking to ban the company's founder. The Wall Street Journal reports the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is looking to not only revoke Theranos' federal license, but it also wants to keep its founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes and president Sunny Balwani from owning or running another lab for a minimum of two years. Theranos currently has testing facilities in California and Arizona, so the ban would impact both locations.
Report: Facebook is deleting medical marijuana pages
NJ.com reports that Facebook has deleted the business pages of medical marijuana dispensaries -- three in New Jersey so far as well as a handful of others across the nation -- for violating the site's terms of service. In their place, the dispensaries found note reading "We remove any promotion or encouragement of drug use. Your page is currently not visible on Facebook. It looks like content on your page does not follow the Facebook Community Terms and Standards."
A sponge-filled syringe could save you from bleeding out
RevMedx's sponge-filled syringe, the XSTAT 30, was approved for military use in treating gunshot wounds last year. Now, the FDA says paramedics and other first responders can use the device to treat civilian injuries as well. The syringe is filled with tiny sponges that are designed to control severe bleeding from wounds in places a tourniquet can't be used. Each syringe contains 92 compressed sponges that expand to fill the wound to block blood flow for up to four hours.
MIT researchers develop ingestible sensor to measure vital signs
Stethoscopes listen to your body. These acoustic devices have been around since the 19th century and are still the norm for auscultating or examining the internal sounds of your body. But a team of researchers at MIT have developed an ingestible sensor that could measure your vital signs from the inside, specifically from the gastrointestinal tract. The new sensor, packaged inside a silicone capsule that's the size of an almond, is expected to make both short and long term assessments easier on patients. Beyond hospitals, it could also help monitor soldiers and assist athletic training programs.
Robotic exoskeleton and zaps of electricity helped man walk again
It's not the first time Mark Pollock tested Ekso Bionics' exoskeleton, but he can now move more naturally, as you can see in the video below the fold. That's because Pollock, who's been paralyzed from the waist down since 2010, gained back some control of and feelings in his legs, thanks to a process known as "transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation." A team of UCLA scientists attached electrodes on his skin and stimulated his spine with jolts of electricity. After the process, Pollock's legs tingled when exercising, regained enough voluntary control -- he can raise them and flex his knees now -- and even started sweating, which hasn't happened since his accident. As a result, his legs and the battery-operated exoskeleton now work in tandem to give him a more natural gait.
Octopus-inspired surgical tool will dig deep into your guts
Telecommuting surgeons are becomingly increasingly adept at working on humans but there are still limits on what they can do using the stiff metal manipulators of a robotic stand-in like the DaVinci. This new omnidirectional grasping appendage, however, could one day wind its way into the most remote corners of your body cavity and gently cradle your guts with the same dexterity as an octopus' tentacle.
Prosthetic electrodes will return amputees' sense of touch
For all the functionality and freedom that modern prosthetics provide, they still cannot give their users a sense of what they're touching. That may soon change thanks to an innovative electrode capable of connecting a prosthetic arm's robotic sense of touch to the human nervous system that it's attached to. The device is part of a three year, $1.9 billion DARPA project and is being developed by Daniel Moran and his team at Washington University in St. Louis. The electrode, technically called a macro-sieve peripheral nerve interface, is comprised of a thin contact lens-like material less than 20 percent the diameter of a dime. It reportedly allows its users to feel heat, cold and pressure by stimulating the ulnar and median nerves of the upper arm.
Telesurgery tests highlight the limits of the Internet
Telesurgery has the potential to bring surgeons in contact with patients anywhere, any time. In a remote robotic-assisted surgery, a doctor would be able to guide a mechanical device at a far away location to perform the procedure. The use of robotics in surgeries has been successful, as long as the operator and the device are in the same OR. But putting distance between the two has been problematic. The whole process relies on a strong network or Internet for connectivity, which invariably results in some amount of latency. Even the slightest lag can have serious implications. With a $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Florida Hospital Nicholson Center has completed a series of tests that reveal improvements in bandwidth technology are making telesurgery safer.
Apple's ResearchKit is now open to medical researchers
ResearchKit, Apple's open-source initiative to transform iDevices into medical diagnostic tools, is now available to researchers so they can create their own apps. ResearchKit launched with apps aimed at studying asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson's disease, but now scientists can develop programs that gather information about other medical conditions. Tens of thousands of users have already submitted data to ResearchKit, including 11,000 to a Stanford University cardiovascular trial in the app's first day. The raw data and interest is there, though the quality of the information sent via ResearchKit is still up in the air, for now.
How electrifying the brain wards off Parkinson's disease
Implanting electrodes in the brain and zapping it helps patients with Parkinson's and other disorders, but doctors have never been sure why, exactly. Now, researchers from UC San Francisco think that the therapy (called deep-brain stimulation, or DBS) works by altering neural timings, in much the same way a defibrillator resets heart rhythms. In a healthy brain, neuron firing is controlled by low frequency rhythms that sync up movement, memory and other functions. But the UC team found that the synchronization is too strong in Parkinson's patients, making it harder for them to move voluntarily.
Smartphone accessory puts HIV diagnosis in doctors' pockets
People living in far-flung locations, especially in developing nations, could always use affordable tests for various diseases that enable remote diagnosis. Take for instance, this new two-part biosensing platform developed by a team of scientists from Florida Atlantic University, which can detect E. coli, staph and even HIV with just a drop of the patient's blood. We say "two-part," because it's comprised of (1) a cheap, thin, flexible film and (2) a smartphone app. Each film detects a different disease, which it identifies from the patient's blood. If the bacteria or virus being tested for is present, the blood gets dyed a different color by nanoparticles.
Pocket camera helps the visually impaired navigate the world
This might be one of the least invasive sight aids for the visually impaired that we've spotted: it's a camera that sits in the shirt pocket, Her-style, and uses auditory alerts to warn when the user approaches obstacles. The idea here is to help folks with loss of peripheral vision (from glaucoma, for example) to keep from bumping into things. The device uses time-to-collision predictions rather than proximity sensors, so rather than a constant beep just because you're standing next to a pillar, the gizmo will apparently only ping you when you might actually run into said pillar.
Apple wants your iPhone to double as a medical device
Apple's taking another step in its ongoing effort to make its iDevices more friendly to medical professionals. "ResearchKit" was introduced this morning in a San Francisco event by Senior VP of operations Jeff Williams; he calls it, "a software framework made specifically for medical research." More specifically, ResearchKit is a solution for making iOS devices with HealthKit into "powerful tools for diagnosis." The long and short is ResearchKit is intended to make medical diagnosis apps easier to create by medical professionals. A handful of apps were shown off that help with diagnosis of a range of conditions, from Parkinson's to breast cancer. The data collected by these apps, which Apple says it won't see and you can opt out of sharing, can be used for enormous research projects.
Test for HIV in just 15 minutes with this $34 smartphone dongle
A dongle created by Columbia University researchers can turn any smartphone (whether iPhones or Android devices) into an HIV and syphilis tester. Even better, it only takes 15 minutes and a tiny drop of blood to get a result -- the device doesn't even need a battery to work. According to the paper the researchers published in Science Translational Medicine, the dongle performs enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect HIV antibody, treponemal-specific antibody for syphilis, and non-treponemal antibody for active syphilis infection. Labs don't currently offer the three tests needed to detect those in a single format. ELISA machines, by the way, cost around $18,000, but each of these dongles only cost around $34 to manufacture.
Eve the robot scientist discovers new drug candidate for malaria
Meet Eve: she's darn smart, can make the process of finding new drugs a lot faster and cheaper -- and she costs around $1 million. That's because Eve is a robotic scientist developed by researchers from the Universities of Aberystwyth and Cambridge, the same team who created her predecessor (you guessed it) Adam back in 2009. Since Eve was created specifically to automate the early stages of drug design, she's capable of scanning over 10,000 compounds a day, whereas humans obviously wouldn't be able to process as many in the same timeframe. As Professor Ross King from the University of Manchester (which Eve calls home) said: "Every industry now benefits from automation and science is no exception. Bringing in machine learning to make this process intelligent -- rather than just a 'brute force' approach -- could greatly speed up scientific progress and potentially reap huge rewards."
BabyBe brings premature children closer to their mothers
CES 2015 does not lack for connected devices. Lightbulbs, beds, socks... seriously, everything is a connected device at CES. But, let's be honest with ourselves: These are luxury goods for people with disposable income. BabyBe is using Intel's connected-device platform Edison to actually better the lives of people, specifically premature babies and their mothers. The most important component is the "Cradle," a pad embedded with air bladders and heating elements, sheathed in a medically safe polyurethane. It's soft and a little odd-feeling. It's supposed to mimic the density and texture of human skin, but kind of ends up falling into uncanny valley territory. The air sacks inside mimic the heartbeat and chest movement of the mother, who can't hold her fragile, premature child.