Medical School

Neurons in the Brain

Flashes of light may one day be used to control the human brain, and that day just got a lot closer. (WIRED Magazine Science Article)

"The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition."

Thomas Edison

(Source: brucehopperjrmd)

brit:

Wouldn’t it be nice if your body sent you a text message reminding you to take your daily medication? These brand new microchip-implanted pills do just that, and more. Read on for the full story.

(via thenextweb)

2020:

Flying Robots Deliver Aid To Remote Communities

8bitfuture:

Muscle tissue produced with a 3D printer.

San Diego startup Organovo has developed a bioprinting technique which allows it to create human tissue starting with any cell source. The printer deposits lines of cells closely together, where they are allowed to grow and interconnect until they form working muscle tissue.

Unlike other experimental approaches that utilize ink-jet printers to deposit cells, Organovo’s technology enables cells to interact with each other the way they do in the body. How? They are packed tightly together, sandwiched, if you will, and incubated. This prompts them to cleave to each other and interchange chemical signals. When printed, the cells are grouped together in a paste that helps them grow, migrate, and align themselves properly. In the case of muscle cells, the way they orient themselves in the same direction allow for contractions of the tissue.

The company hopes to one day build entire organs for transplants. Because tissue is able to be built from a patient’s own cells, the risk of rejection would be very low.

(via thenextweb)

Minimally Invasive Surgery Suite

In research that further bridges the biological and digital world, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco have created bacteria that can be programmed like a computer.

A Swedish hospital reports its doctors implanted a synthetic windpipe into a 36-year-old man who had tracheal cancer, in what its officials call the first successful procedure of its kind.

Synthetic blood could arrive before 2015

(Source: 2020)

kickstarter:

Tweet Your Blood Cells With New iPhone Adaptor. One of our favorite Kickstarter projects stopped by the Gadget Lab a few days ago. The SkyLight is an adaptor that connects your smartphone to a microscope, then allows you to share the photos and videos you capture. From their project description:

The SkyLight’s universal compatibility allows previously owned technology (microscopes) to be upgraded to the digital age with the use of a widely available technology (smartphones) – good for global health, science classes, and anyone else!

Pretty amazing, this “future” thing is turning out to be.

2020:

Sofie Surgical Robot Provides Haptic Feedback to Surgeons

One of the distinctive properties of Sofie is the ‘force feedback’, i.e. ‘tactile feedback’ in the joysticks with which the surgeon operates. This counter pressure enables a surgeon to feel exactly what force he applies when making a suture or pushing aside a bit of tissue. The finishing touch of this, the control of the force feedback, is being developed.

Capsule Endoscopy

Capsule endoscopy is a way to record images of the digestive tract. The capsule is the size and shape of a pill and contains a tiny camera. After a patient swallows the capsule, it takes pictures of the inside of the gastrointestinal tract. The primary use of capsule endoscopy is to examine areas of the small intestine that cannot be seen by other types of endoscopy such as colonoscopy or esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD). This type of examination is often done to find sources of bleeding or abdominal pain. The procedure was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2001

Surgeon Uses 3D Printer To Make Models Of Bone

(via 2020)

jayparkinsonmd:

Philips just released a new iPad 2 app called Vital Signs Camera that uses the camera to measure your heart and breathing rate. It detects subtle beat-to-beat changes in the color of your face to measure your heart rate.

We’re slowly living in the future.

(via thenextweb)