WeirdMedical™

Now motorcycle enthusiasts have a better chance for survival…

Therapeutics hypothermia just took a huge leap from the hospital bed onto the streets. Checkout the new ThermaHelm(R) brain bucket that neatly coddles your brain like a new born babe. The manufacturer’s video says it all –>

Cryo Brain Bucket

Now EMS teams can expect more live motorcyclists due to this new cooling therapy.

Excellent intel, ThermaHelm!

Now can you make one for bicyclists?

Did you ever imagine as a kid, losing the ability to walk and getting a pair of robotic pants that your clumsily staggered around the house in?

Or…did you ever pretend you lost your eyesight and got a pair of ooky biomechanical “popping” eyes to peer at your friends?

Well, here they are 12 recent advances in robotics that even most kids did not imagine…

Advances In Medical Robotics

So goes the $6M Bionic Man…read on…

NASA…no need to say more.

Some of the most weird and heart-warming stories of 2010…

Mother’s touch revives premature twin pronounced dead…

“Kangaroo Cuddle”

Afghani teen receives nose transplant in California…

Afghani Teen Harmed by Family

All 33 Chilean Miners Survive Ordeal…

All Chilean Minors Survive

…and seven more…

Thank you, AOL, TIME, LWA, AP, Getty Images & Youtube.com!

A marriage of science, art and remarkable skill…

Dr. Larry Over, DMD, MSD, a maxillofacial prosthodontist in Eugene, OR,  rebuilds a mother’s face.

Building a new face

See the American Medical Association’s site at amednews.com for the amazing reconstruction…read on…

Number ten in the Top 10 new tech advances of 2010 goes to an ancient material…

Implanted under the skin, an array of light-emitting diodes could signal the concentration in the blood of biomarkers such as insulin. Over time, the array will dissolve away, eliminating the need for surgery to remove the implant. Flexible silicon electronics (inset) are held in place with a silk film. Incorporating antibodies or enzymes into the film will allow devices to detect biomarkers. Credit: Bryan Christie Design. Source: MIT's Technology Review

According to MIT’s Technology Review, such “dissolvable devices make better medical implants.”

And what is that mysterious yet familiar bioabsorbable material for advanced implantable electronics­?

Silk!  It can be engineered to transmit images via light waves along its fibers, deliver drugs, measure vital signs or test blood, and can be resorbed over hours or as long as two years depending upon how long it is needed. And all from the belly of a worm? Amazing. For more amazing apps…read on.

Got silk?

Let’s talk space…outer space that is…

On Monday, April 5, a new water filter system flew to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery. It’s mission? To enable emergency intravenous (IV) operations to help sick astronauts in space.

The new IVGEN (IntraVenous Fluid Generation) filtering technology was developed under the code name, “Project Clearwater,” at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio in cooperation with the team under the guidance of Philip Scarpa, medical operations manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

IntraVenous Fluid Generation (IVGEN) water filter

“Currently, NASA’s medical experts have identified at least 115 different scenarios in which a sick or injured astronaut could need an IV while living on the space station, mostly for rehydration of medicine delivery,” according to Remy Melina, SPACE.com Staff Writer. This not weird but neat website, Space.com, explores inventions going into outerspace for evaluation and testing including those for use in human health.

This is one of the last four of the NASA shuttle flights before the shuttle technology is retired:

Images – Life on the Space Station (courtesy of Space.com)

Twitter Discovery STS-131 mission realtime log (courtesy of SpaceFlightNow.com)

Lucky is the next medtech design engineer to follow his/her device into space!

Research methods in medical innovation continue to innovate…

Dozens of prescription drugs coming off patent in the next few years are encouraging researchers throughout the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to think “outside the traditional box.”

According to Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development Director Kenneth I Kaitin, “This is spurring companies across the industry to experiment with a growing range of new tools and approaches to weed out unpromising drug candidates earlier, speed development, and reduce development costs.”

Tufts CSDD has found that researchers are trying many new methodologies for developing news drugs that are expected to be faster and more efficient such those noted below.

Even though the Tufts CSDD article is a come-on for an upcoming series of conferences, it cites a critical issue. 15 years is too long from compound discovery through development and commercialization to sustain continued profitable innovation in an economy that is in a slow grinding recovery.

Consider shaving off months or even a year or more with these techniques:

• Drug development simulator software
• Blurring the lines between phases, especially Phases I & II
• Conducting FIM studies earlier similar in timing for those medical device development trials
• Partnering with other companies with knowledge in the same indication
• Conducting exploratory IND studies
• read on…

We’re in the 21st century, the age of mobile connectivity and cloud computing, we can do better than a 15 year development cycle.