Medikey™, a health data aggregator that empowers consumers and employers to take greater control over healthcare costs, today launched a partnership with Teladoc (NYSE:TDOC) and eDocAmerica to offer underinsured and uninsured consumers unprecedented access to quality, affordable medical care online or by telephone. A benefit once available only through employers and health plans, consumers can now access directly from Medikey™ this type of convenient, non-emergency care from board-certified phys...

Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center have developed diagnostic mapping system for making and recording differential measurements of periodontal structures of a dental patient. The invention employs first and second ultrasonic sensors controlled by a dental hand-piece to make measurements of the cemento-enamel-junction (CEJ) of each tooth and the depth of the periodontal pocket or cavity of the tooth relative its CEJ. These measurements are visually displayed, recorded (or mapped), and c...

A directional, cylindrical antenna of ~0.095-in. (~2.4-mm) diameter has been developed for localized delivery of microwave radiation for heating (and thus killing) diseased tissue without excessively heating nearby healthy tissue. By "localized" is meant that the antenna radiates much more in one radial direction than in the opposite radial direction, so that it heats tissue much more on one side than it does on the opposite side. Prior compact, cylindrical antennas designed for therapeutic l...

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technologies to provide clinical health care at a distance. It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations. Although there were distant precursors to telemedicine, it is essentially a product of 20th century telecommunication and information technologies...

With Lumify, high-quality portable ultrasound is available almost anywhere. Just subscribe, download the Lumify app, plug in the transducer, and you're set. Meet patients at the point-of-care, make a faster diagnosis, and deliver care whenever it's needed. https://youtu.be/HRLHtnza2jM Royal Philips launched the Lumify smart ultrasound device, offered as part of a “novel subscription model.” Customers with subscriptions, which Philips said start at a monthly price of $199, receive equipm...

Foot Drop Management, Post Stroke The STIMuSTEP system is a highly recommended treatment that helps correct dropped foot in chronic stroke patients. Since the product was entered into the market in 2004, many patients worldwide (mainly within Europe) are benefiting from it. The use of FES to treat Foot Drop is N.I.C.E (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) recognised, following the Interventional Proce...

Smart medical devices for patients   Cue IoT Advantage: self-diagnosis Benefit: Enables preventive care Cue’s multi-use wand and corresponding cartridge increase the ways that patients can track their own health. With this smart medical device, patients can take their health into their own hands—testing their nasal fluids, saliva and blood. Quell IoT Advantage: pain relief Benefit: Improves quality of care Quell Relief is worn below the knee like any brace—but its embedded sens...

Smart medical devices for doctors Medtronic IoT Advantage: Monitoring Benefit: Enables preventative care Medtronic’s digital blood-glucose meter measures the glucose levels of patients’ tissue fluids with a sensor that wirelessly connects to patients’ and clinicians’ digital devices. This smart medical device alerts clinicians to adjust a patient’s therapy up to 30 minutes before a patient’s health condition escalates to a critical stage. Biotronik IoT Advantage: Monitoring Benefit:...

Vida provides expert, personalized, on-demand health coaching and programs from a network of experienced health care providers and leading medical health care providers and leading medical institutions. Vida assigns you a health coach that is an expert in nutrition, fitness, and motivational psychology. These coaches are available 24/7 through text messages and weekly video check ins as well. They help make sure you are adhering to your physician’s recommendations and compliant with your trea...

One minute. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that in just that small period of time, almost every minute, a person in the United States will develop one of the top-10 killers in America: Alzheimer’s. 2015 was the first year in which Alzheimer scientists were able to see some real, substantial success in clinical trials. Bill Klein, in neurobiology and neurology at Northwestern, and his team have turned their focus away from what was once considered the cause of Alzheimer’s, plaques an...

Researchers from Northwestern Medicine and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) have made smartphone activity trackers smarter than ever; they have trained trackers to have the ability to detect the difference between fake and real activity. Insurance companies and health care providers base rewards to individuals who stay active and healthy on the results from wearable activity trackers, among them smartphones. They also rely on these devices to monitor a patient’s activity and determin...

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shown that it may be possible to reverse autism. Autism is a genetically-linked condition and there is still much uncertainty as to what all the different genetic causes of the condition are. One genetic cause for example, affecting 1% of the those with autism, is the lack of a Shank3, which has responsibilities related to brain development. Those missing the gene experience autism symptoms such as avoiding social activities/interact...

    Need to check your child’s temperature? Want to track it over time? Flo, a small Bluetooth enabled non-contact thermometer, gives users accurate readings, allows them to track health and family pictures over time, and share them on social media. Flo is relatively easy to use. Point the thermometer within 1 cm of a child’s forehead, push a button, and then you’ll be able to determine whether your child has a fever. The thermometer by itself doesn’t show the exact temper...

Innovators at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have developed a filtration device to eliminate contaminants from water supplies. Originally developed to purify wastewater for reuse aboard the International Space Station, the innovation is applicable to numerous situations on Earth where there is a need to collect potable, medical-grade water from a contaminated water supply. The unique aspect of the technology is its use of acoustics rather than pressure to drive water through small-diameter carbon n...

Acoustic levitation (also: Acoustophoresis) is a method for suspending matter in a medium by using acoustic radiation pressure from intense sound waves in the medium. Sometimes ultrasonic frequencies can be used to levitate objects, thus creating no sound heard by the human ear, such as was demonstrated at Otsuka Lab, while others use audible frequencies. There are various ways of emitting the sound wave, from creating a wave underneath the object and reflecting it back to its source, to usin...

Sensor-enabled pills: providing doctors with better insights Proteus Discover is changing the way doctors and patients gain information to deal with complex and chronic conditions. Using a sensor-embedded pill and a patch placed on your body, Proteus Discover hope to provide better insights for the patient as well as the healthcare professionals involved. Thus enabling them to provide specific treatment that suits the patient. Together with the regular medication prescribed, the healthcare...

Inspired by her late grandmother who had Alzheimer’s disease, Sha Yao, an industrial designer, developed Eatwell: a user-centered tableware set designed to help increase food intake and maintain dignity for those with Alzheimer’s. Her product won first place at 2014 Stanford Design Challenge out of 52 teams from 15 countries. Firm in her commitment to improve the quality of life for those with Alzheimer’s, Yao set out to understand more about their lives. Through volunteering, she discovered ...

There is a lot of work and research being done to find ways to improve life for partially-sighted and blind people. Reading and recognition devices could make smartphones, tablets, and smart glasses into indispensable aids for the visually impaired. CINVESTAV (Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute) in Mexico, there is another smart glasses project in progress. It combines computational geometry, artificial intelligence, and ultrasound techniques, among...

The Johns Hopkins students’ tamper-resistant pill dispenser prototype features a fingerprint scanner, at left, which verifies the patient’s identity and then releases, at right, the correct dosage only within the prescribed time frame. You can whack it with a hammer, attack it with a drill, or even stab it with a screwdriver. Try as you might, you won’t be able to tamper with a high-tech pill dispenser. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated that drug overdoses kill m...

Flosstime is the world's first smart floss dispenser that will help you build daily flossing habits and helps you to remember to floss. Flosstime, launched on Kickstarater is a smart floss dispenser that is mounted on the mirror to help build daily flossing habits. It sits on the mirror of the bathroom and dispenses the right amount of floss when you press a button, lighting up to show a blue smile. When you don’t press the button, and thus don’t floss, for a few days, the Flosstime lights tu...

EyeGuide Focus, a 10-second concussion detection tool, measures neurocognitive impairment quickly and reliably, following established research protocols to return quantifiable results, aiding athletic trainers and other healthcare providers in making informed decisions on concussions. It detects concussions in 10 seconds by recording and interpreting athletes' eye movements. Focus can be administered immediately after a possible concussion. Just as important, it can be used to monitor recovery, ...

US scientists have bred a genetically modified mosquito that is incapable of spreading malaria to humans, according to reports. A gene editing technique called Crispr was used to alter the genetic makeup of the insect, making it resistant to Plasmodium falciparum, one of the parasites that causes malaria in humans. Crucially, the GM mosquitoes passed on their anti-malarial DNA strain to 99.5% of their offspring, raising the prospect of the altered species being released in the wild one day to co...

According to a study published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, a team of researchers led by Bas Oldenburg, MD, PhD, University Medical Center Utrecht, analyzed data on 1,273 IBD patients (34% Crohn’s disease, 63% ulcerative colitis, and 3% unclassified) who had experienced a total of 4,327 surveillance colonoscopies between January 1, 2000 and January 1, 2014. Surveillance is recommended for patients with long-term inflammatory bowel disease because they have an incre...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the chief cause of death and disability among children and adults from 1 to 44 years of age in the United States, leading to more than two million emergency department visits annually. A brain protein is thought to be the source of long-term cognitive impairments in those who have had seemingly mild, concussion-type head injuries, and a blood test may one day be available to predict such damage. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of...

In an international study, Northwestern Medicine scientists and colleagues have identified a novel strategy for reducing the side effects of uncontrolled movement caused by the drug levodopa, commonly used to treat the stiffness, tremors and poor muscle control of Parkinson’s disease. These unwanted movements caused by levodopa significantly diminish the quality of life for Parkinson’s disease patients. A team lead by D. James Surmeier, PhD, chair and Nathan Smith Davis Professor of Physiology f...

A new study shows that a certain type of protein can be used to determine if a lung cancer patient will respond positively to chemotherapy. While prognosis for the most common form, adenocarcinoma, has remained poor, new research has shown a link between the absence of a specific protein and improved patient outcomes. Scientists at Lawson Health Research Institute have found that patients who undergo chemotherapy and surgery experience significantly improved survival rates when their tumor is la...

MIT researchers have developed a biomedical imaging system that could ultimately replace a $100,000 piece of a lab equipment with components that cost just hundreds of dollars. The system uses a technique called fluorescence lifetime imaging, which has applications in DNA sequencing and cancer diagnosis, among other things. So the new work could have implications for both biological research and clinical practice. “The theme of our work is to take the electronic and optical precision of this big...

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego developed a new technology that uses an oscillating electric field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from blood. The technology could serve as a general tool to separate and recover nanoparticles from other complex fluids for medical, environmental, and industrial applications. Nanoparticles, which are generally one thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, are difficult to separate from plasma, the liquid ...

Many nanotherapeutics are currently being tested in clinical trials and several have already been clinically approved to treat cancers. But the ability to predict which patients will be most responsive to these treatments has remained elusive. Now, a collaboration between investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) has led to a new approach that uses an FDA-approved, magnetic nanoparticle and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify tumors mos...

UW-Madison scientists have grown human vocal cord tissue in a dish, which made sound when transplanted into voice boxes from cadaver dogs, a development that could lead to better treatments for people with voice disorders. Such implants likely won’t be ready for human testing for years. But re-creating the tissue, known as a vocal fold, and showing it was functional in dog larynges and was not rejected by a mouse model of the human immune system are significant steps, the researchers said. “We n...