Easy Step for Pregnancy Protection
Surprisingly, urine can be a very good indicator of your health, which is why women who are expecting usually have a urine analysis conducted routinely at checkups. The Pregnancy Control is a take-home urinalysis instrument that anyone can use. With a simple placement of the urine sample into the device, the user can monitor their body for dehydration, malnutrition, infection, and other unwanted conditions in a flash. The elegant exterior and simple controls make for a modest and friendly design sensitive to the needs of moms-to-be.
Designer:
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Skin cancer-detecting laser tool now available
The word cancer often evokes a sense of dread in us, simply because it is one of those diseases that can be pretty hard to manage if it has developed into an advanced stage. Well, when it comes to skin cancers, one would most probably hope it isn’t melanoma by any means, since it is the deadliest. Out of 115,000 new cases of melanoma diagnosed in the US last year, nearly 8,700 resulted in death. Scientists at Duke University intend to reverse that trend with a new laser-based tool that was specially designed to identify malignant melanomas sooner, without having to go through the trials of a false diagnosis and unnecessary surgery. How does this work? For starters, this technique will require a couple of low-energy lasers to probe suspect moles, with the redistribution of energy being examined to identify microscopic areas of varying skin pigment. After highlighting higher levels of a skin pigment known as eumelanin in melanomas, it has proved to be quite reliable in positively identifying all eleven samples of melanoma in a particular study. Of course, the trial will need to continue via thousands of archived skin slices as tests before it can be made available mainstream.
Skin cancer-detecting laser tool now available, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : iPad 2 Review, Atrix Review,
Haptic Feedback Tools To Help With Laparoscopic Surgery Training
Laparoscopic gastric banding is a surgical treatment for morbid obesity, and apparently the most important factor in the success of this operation is the hands of the surgeon. He’ll need plenty of proficiency and skill to do the necessary inside the patient’s body. Now researchers have recently won a $2.3M federal grant in order to develop a touch-sensitive virtual reality simulator that can realistically replicate how performing a gastric band operation feels like, thanks to the magic of haptic technology (or touch feedback). With this in place, surgeons will be able to practice and refine the surgical skills needed to perform a laparoscopic procedure in their own virtual operating theater, without having to worry about hurting someone and inviting a lawsuit.
Permalink: Haptic Feedback Tools To Help With Laparoscopic Surgery Training from Ubergizmo | Hot: iPhone 4 Review, iPad Review
AgaMatrix WaveSense Cable Will Let Diabetics Connect Their iPhone To Their Blood Glucose Meter
By Andrew Liszewski
AgaMatrix, maker of the Jazz blood glucose meter, already has an extremely popular free database app for the iPhone available that lets you manage and track your diabetes ’scores’ which is an important part of managing the disease. But until now, or very soon at least, users have had to manually enter the results from the meter into the application. Not a giant inconvenience mind you, but one that’s soon to be a thing of the past thanks to the company’s new WaveSense Direct Connect Cable which allows the glucose meter to transfer the results directly to their app on the iPhone, iPod Touch or the iPad. The cable is currently pending review and approval from the FDA, but when available it will sell for around $25-30. Until that time you can sign up on the AgaMatrix website to get a notification when the cable is finally ready for sale.
[ AgaMatrix WaveSense Direct Connect iPhone Cable ] VIA [ DiabetesMine ]
New robotic system could let surgeons operate on a beating heart
It may not have been put into practice just yet, but it looks like a new robotic-assisted system could one day let surgeons use a surgical robot (like Da Vinci system pictured at left) to operate on a beating human heart. That impressive development comes courtesy of a group of researchers at France’s Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Microelectronics, and centers on a new 3D modeling system that can track the motion of the heart’s surface as it beats. It can even apparently adjust for things like movement of the patient’s chest wall during breathing, and predict the movements in a single step (unlike previous attempts that resulted in a delay). When paired with a robotic arm, the system would effectively let surgeons operate on a heart as if it were completely still. In addition to being generally amazing, the system could also potentially open up a number of new possibilities for heart surgery, not the least of which is the ability to operate on patients for whom the risks of surgery have previously outweighed the benefits.
New robotic system could let surgeons operate on a beating heart originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted: December 11th, 2009
at 9:42pm by Donald Melanson
Topics: Medical, MedicalRobot, MedicalRobotics, Montpellier Laboratory, Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, MontpellierLaboratory, MontpellierLaboratoryOfInformatics, RoboticSurgery, Robotics, Surgery, and Microelectr, france, medical robot, medical robotics, robotic surgery
