The 2net ecosystem contains four gateways. Qualcomm Life (San Diego) has acquired the coordinated care platform HealthyCircles, which it will link to its wireless 2net platform. The acquisition will enable clinicans to share information from electronic health records and biometric data on the 2net platform. “I think this is also actually very exciting for the medical device engineering community,” says HealthyCircles founder James Mault, MD, who is now Qualcomm Life’s chief medical officer....

The size of a AAA battery, a pacemaker from Nanostim (Milpitas, CA) could represent a considerable advance in the field of heart-rhythm devices. Now being tested in clinical trials, the Nanostim doesn’t use leads that are used in conventional pacemakers and ICDs. Leads can fracture, become dislodged, and cause other problems like infection. Heart device leads have received a substantial amount of negative attention recently—especially St. Jude's Riata and Durata products. While the former was...

Robert Torgerson, Founder/President of RxFiber, LLCAs we discussed in a previous article, the use of industrial-grade yarn, which is used for applications such as seatbelts and t-shirts, has a long history in the medical device space. The use of such material for medical device applications, however, is becoming obsolete owing to increasing oversight from the FDA and other regulatory bodies. This image shows RxFiber's RxFibron 40/27 fiber, which is used for applications ranging from...

Inventions that were discovered inadvertently often make for good stories. For instance, consider how a Raytheon engineer named Percy Spencer became known as the inventor of the microwave oven. While working on a radar research project after World War II, he stood in front of microwave-emitting vacuum tubes known as magnetrons. He reported feeling a tingling sensation and later noticed that the Mr. Goodbar candy bar he had in his pocket had melted. Then, working under the assumption that the...

Medical device failure can be disastrous if not properly analyzed to determine what happened that caused the device or device component to not work as intended. There can be various reasons a device or material could fail in the field as the recent article, “Five Common Causes of Medical Device Failure,” discusses. To determine what the actual cause is for a given failure, in-depth testing must be performed by an experienced laboratory with expertise in examining failures. This article will...

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) found a new way to give robots a sense of touch. In a paper published in the April edition of the International Journal of Robotics Research, scientists describe a robot arm that was able to 'touch' objects when used in conjunction with electronic vision.Differentiating between objects by touch can be a challenging endeavor. As one Georgia Tech researcher notes, many people have trouble identifying coins in their pockets only by feel...

The portable Quotient ADHD system uses Infrared technology  to detect a patient's movements while taking a test.  There is a long history of controversy surrounding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD. Decades ago, psychiatrists admitted the difficulty in precisely defining the condition, which was first referred to as minimal brain dysfunction and later attention deficit disorder. Stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin have been shown to be effective in treating the...

A recent video (embedded below) showcases five eye-cathcing technologies from BIOMEDevice Boston that caught the eye of editors from MPMN and Qmed. Featured in the video are the Baxter robot from Rethink Robotics, two 3-D printing technologies, a device that can analyze metals at a distance, and motion-control technologies.1. Baxter from Rethink Robotics. On the show floor at the show, robot named Baxter proved to be one of the most popular technologies, seemingly always attracting a crowd of...

Computational modeling is becoming increasingly important in the development and testing of medical devices, explained Matthew Myers, PhD, a research physicist at FDA in a presentation at BIOMEDevice Boston. The agency is now working with collaborators to create computer models incorporating radiological imaging data of healthy and diseased anatomy for a variety of diseases. FDA plans on ultimately integrating these models with genomic and physiological data to create complete physiological...