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With the year 2010 coming to a close, we’ve composed a list of the 10 best new medical technologies and devices of the past twelve months. As part of our job as Medgadget editors, we look at thousands of new products, news stories and press releases and from these we distill the most noteworthy for your reading pleasure. This year our efforts resulted in a total of approximately 1800 posts, so there was no lack of material to choose from for this best of list. Many new devices and technologies were creative, innovative, expected to make a long-lasting impact, and some others were plain silly. Here, in no particular order, are those that clearly stood out this year in a positive way:

GE V-scan Portable Ultrasound
In February, GE introduced its Vscan, a pocket-sized ultrasound device. It changed the definition of portable ultrasound, which previously referred to rather large laptop-sized devices. Despite its small dimensions, the Vscan includes features such as power-doppler, and the device is powerful enough for most applications, including emergency medicine, cardiac and obstetric ultrasounds. Although it is still far too expensive to give out to every doctor in those specialties, it is not hard to envision it becoming a tool as indispensable as the stethoscope one day.

The iPad
The hype around the iPad has not gone unnoticed in the medical world. Previous (medical grade) tablets did not make a significant impact. However, the iPad has sparked a rich ecosystem of medical apps and even some add-on medical devices. We had over 50 posts referring to the iPad one way or another. Highlights include the introduction, the first clinical tests, the first appearance in an operating theater and several great apps including reference apps, radiology viewers and electronic health records. With the iPad 2 expected in 2011 we expect no end to to the stream of news about this wonderful device. Also tablets from competing manufacturers are starting to mature and might stiffen up the competition in the next year.

Artificial life
In May, the J. Craig Venter Institute announced it had for the first time replaced the DNA of a bacterium with a complete set of synthetic DNA. This was the result of 15 years of work, with the aim of creating a living, replicating cell. The process currently still means recreating an existing genome rather than designing one from scratch, and still needs existing cells to put the DNA into. Meanwhile, some living tissues were connected to chips in order to better study them. In June, a living and breathing lung on a chip was announced, with the researchers working on getting other organs connected as well. Other scientists managed to grow individual neurons on microchips and neurons within neural networks got pinned down for study.

Retinal Implant
In March, the company Retina Implant AG from Reutlingen, Germany reported the first results of human trials with the firm’s subretinal electronic chips in blind volunteers. Implantation was successful in 11 patients without any adverse events. In November actual results of the performance of the implant itself in the first three volunteers were published. The previously blind persons could locate bright objects on a dark table and one of them could name objects like a fork or knife and differentiate between various kinds of fruit. After the pacemaker and the cochlear implant, this may well be the next electronic device to be widely implanted in patients.

Hemolung Respiratory Dialysis

Mechanical ventilation is often a life-saving intervention in critically-ill patients. However, it has some serious drawbacks, including the need for sedation, the risk of ventilator associated pneumonia, and intubation or tracheostomy related complications. ALung Technologies’ Hemolung overcomes many of these drawbacks by using dialysis to perform respiratory gas exchange in a process similar to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. During therapy, the patient can stay awake, allowing him to eat and communicate. In February, the first patient was successfully treated with the device, and clinical trials are currently underway. If successful, this could revolutionize the practice of medicine in the ICU.

Ardian Symplicity
The best innovations are simple and effective, and these criteria both seem to apply to the Symplicity catheter system. In addition, it targets one of the most common chronic conditions affecting the western population: hypertension. By reducing or eliminating the sympathetic innervation of the renal arteries, it reduces both the pathologic central sympathetic drive to the kidney and the renal contribution to central sympathetic hyperactivity. In an initial clinical trial, the procedure reduced blood pressure by 30/10 mmHg without causing any serious complications. A one time catheter treatment versus lifetime-long treatment with antihypertensive drugs might be a realistic choice soon.

Telemedicine
Telemedicine has been a promise for many years, slowly coming to fruition. This year some significant leaps were made. Airstrip technologies, which previously released a remote obstetric monitoring app, in August released remote critical care and cardiology monitoring solutions for the iPhone. Basically, it gives you a vital signs monitor for any connected ICU or cardiac patient right in your pocket. Meanwhile, Littmann keeps improving its teleauscultation offering, adding scope-to-scope teleauscultation. On the treatment front, we saw the first remote cardiac catheterization, transcontinental anesthesia and all-robotic surgery and anesthesia.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging
MRI is one of the most advanced diagnostic techniques in clinical use. It is still undergoing rapid development giving rise to new applications, better image quality and shorter acquisition times. A few of the highlights this year were real-time MRI of moving organs, further digitalization of the hardware, combined PET/MRI devices and, as the most curious of all, a live birth within an MRI scanner.

Skin Bioprinting for Burn Wounds
Burn wounds are something that modern medicine has not yet found many effective treatments for yet. However, this year we saw a device that could print skin grafts to cover the burn wounds, accelerating recovery and minimizing scar tissue. The prototype device was tested on artificially created full-thickness skin wounds in nude mice, resulting in much faster wound recovery.

General Purpose Pathogen Detector
Identifying the causative organism of an infection often takes several days, while broad spectrum antibiotics are given in the meantime. The Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array might change all that. It promises to detect about 2,000 viruses and 900 bacteria within 24 hours. Current methods are limited to detecting any from about 50 organisms in one test. And the next-generation of the device is already in development, with 2.1 million probes, able to detect thousands of bacteria and viruses and in addition thousands of fungi and about 75 protozoa.

That’s it! If we missed anything, the comments section is open for your additions. With this list, we wrap up the year 2010. In 2011 we will be back with more news and some major improvements to our website. We wish you all a happy new year!

The DiabetesMine Design Challenge, a competition of ideas to improve the lives of people living with diabetes, is over and the winners have been announced. This year 130 submissions came in from diabetics, university groups, professional designers, and just average people with good ideas. We were happy to participate in the judging and would like to congratulate the winners.

LINK: 2010 DiabetesMine Design Challenge Winners…

If you’ve been keeping up on our coverage of the BMEidea competition, you were probably getting anxious wondering who would take home the $10,000 grand prize. Well, the answer has finally arrived, and the winner is Johns Hopkins Rapid Hypothermia induction device.

Here’s more from the press release:

The BMEidea Competition, now in its sixth year, is open to collegiate teams from NCIIA member institutions from across the United States. First place—an award of $10,000—was awarded to the Rapid Hypothermia Induction Device team from Johns Hopkins University. Working to combat cardiac arrest, the Johns Hopkins team has designed a device that emergency or ambulance personnel can use to quickly and safely administer a therapeutic hypothermia treatment to patients and improve their chances of survival upon reaching the hospital.

The second-place prize of $2,500 was awarded to OneBreath, a team from Stanford University that was recently featured in Popular Science. The team developed a low-cost ventilator for use in developing nations and large-scale disasters. Designed to treat acute respiratory distress patients in low-resource, pandemic and emergency environments, OneBreath provides an alternative to existing ventilators, which are too cost prohibitive for many hospitals. In addition to its low cost, the device is rechargeable, portable and disposable.

Third place, and $1,000 in cash, was presented to Natural Orifice Volume Enlargement (NOVEL) Device from the University of Cincinnati. The device enables an incision-free approach to urogynecological procedures by providing improved visibility and access to deep target tissues within the peritoneal cavity. This reduces post-operative complications such as adhesions, incisional hernias and patient recovery time.

Congratulations Team Johns Hopkins, and to all the up-and-coming inventors out there: keep up the good work!

Read more here…

Dr. Richard Marks, a lead R&D manager at Sony and inventor of the EyeToy, demoed and talked about the new PS3 Move for the keynote talk to kick off Games for Health 2010. Dr. Marks showed some demos of ideas he had before he created the EyeToy, before there were even rumors of the Wii, early versions of what would eventually be the Playstation Move. The technology was very impressive, but apparently was not feasible for mass marketing at the time.

Dr. Marks then went on to demo various applications of the PS3 Move itself. The PS3 Move is an interactive technology consisting of a controller and a camera connected to the PS3. The camera can detect the user’s face and controller’s 3D position in space, and the controller also contains gyroscopes and accelerometers to detect 3D rotational movements. In the first demo the Move controller was turned into a sword and various other objects on-screen. The accuracy and response time of the 1:1 movements of the player and the onscreen object blew the audience away. The next demo had Dr. Marks using his controller as a paint brush. In another demo he had two controllers in each hand and controlled an on-screen puppet. The puppet also moved side to side based on his face movement.

The technology seems incredibly promising, and potentially could have many non-gaming health-realted applications (e.g: rehab, exergaming etc…) Luckily we here at Medgadget got a chance to sit down with Dr. Richard Marks to explore the technology and it’s health-related potential. Check out the interview after the break.

The early work you were doing with EyeToy looked very similar to this, were you limited by some technology at the time?

The balls were bigger. The lighting in the room was really dependent then, so we had to have really good lighting. We kind of solved that. I avoided doing a light source. At the time red-green-blue LEDs weren’t really popular or low cost. The idea of making a wireless controller, until we got to PS3, wasn’t so viable. PS2 had a wired controller. If you have a Li-ion battery and an RGB LED that can change, then you have the whole package together. There was some limitation in technology. You don’t get the angle data very well from the camera, so that comes from gyros in the controller. If we did this 7 years ago it would be over $100 per controller.

So when people claim that PS3 is a Wii clone do you show them your early work and say you have proof your ideas are original?

We do have proof. I don’t want to be defensive, because I think the Wii did a great job with what it did. We did a great job with the EyeToy. I just want it all to get better across the industry. I’m sure the next thing they will do will be something awesome too.

What’s the cost?

1 controller, a camera and a game will be under $100.

What’s the next secret project you’re not allowed to tell us about?

*laughs* Well… we’re gonna work on other technology for user interfaces. That’s what area I cover. We’ll do a little bit more with this controller. There are still gameplay mechanics that the game teams might not have resource to investigate, so we’ll try to do some of that for them; make some more tech demos that show how you might use the controller in a new way. Then we’ll start work on other technology. Take things further. Not exactly sure yet what, probably couldn’t say yet.

But there is something?

Yeah, there’s always more to do. The user interface space is not dead.

Have you ever read Medgadget.com?

No, actually… Well I read one article.

It wasn’t sexy CPR was it?

No. *semi-uncomfortable laughter* What’s the gadget in that?

Ummm… We have very broadly defined what a medgadget is…

Has there been much of a push for health-oriented software?

Our London office has a game that kinda keeps track of calories and things on a rough level. The EyeToy has been used in the industry a little bit. There hasn’t been a big push for it by our company.

So it’s “If you build it they will come”?

It’s been like that more. I really want to change that a little bit. Part of the reason for coming here is really that. I want to make it an impetus of our company. And our biz dev people are starting to look at new areas. So it’s a good time for them to get more info I think. So I’m going to get a barrage of emails from this conference and forward it all to them!

Since active games and exergames have been big lately, do you have any views on what would bring active games to the next level?

I feel that Nintendo did a good job of squeezing what they could out of how much technology is really there. Wii Fit does not have very much technology. Even the original Wiimote, it didn’t have as much technology as everyone thought it did. What it had they capitalized on really well. Our design strategy is that we need to give a complete answer to people and let them figure out if they can use this data for games. I think that’s what we felt was missing. They are kinda taking the little bit of data they have and doing as much as they can with it. Everyone else tries to do something a little bit more, and they can’t do anything more. They hit a dead end. Same thing happened with EyeToy when we made it. We had this motion detection and you could do this certain level. Then everyone is like “let’s do the next level,” and they hit a wall. And we don’t want that to happen where you just say “I can’t do the next thing now, I’m stuck.” We want to have a full solution to what people think they have and what they really do have.

Is there exergaming software for the PS3 Move in the works?

There is one game announced that has some calorie tracking in it. I do expect something else soon.

On boredom and exergaming:

That’s what I think the exercise community is looking for from the game industry. A way to hide the boredom. I didn’t get to talk about that today. In the exercise community now there are a lot of new techniques that people are exploring. Muscle confusion is this big thing now. You don’t do the same thing ever. Other things that hardcore athlete trainers believe one set is the right amount. That sounds like a dream, except that you have to be careful because it has to be one set at your maximum energy level. You can get hurt easily doing that. The fitness area has got a lot of new things going on. I think video games really could hide a lot of the boredom.

In terms of rehab and other non-gaming applications for this technology there isn’t as much a financial incentive. How would you like to see that area develop?

Sony won’t make those games. It’s possible we could facilitate those games to be created by somebody else. That’s the hard part I want us to solve. We started a group in our company that’s looking at non-game applications. They would be more small market and targeted. We have the ability to lend the development kit to universities. There are ways we can already get academics up and running, but that’s still not solving how we can get into other markets.

Read more about the PS3 Move here…

It’s that time of the year again when the brightest collegiate minds in the country try and solve the most difficult and frustrating problems and make the rest of us feel like lazy bums. The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance has been having their annual competition, BMEidea, since 2004. The competition pairs up college teams with both university and industry mentors to solve real world health problems with designs that must be practical and have potential for commercialization. First prize is $10,000 dollars, which will also include product development and commercialization resources and training.

This year’s finalists have been announced and are as follows (from the website):

Natural Orifice Volume Enlargement (NOVEL) Device team: University of Cincinnati
A device that will help urogynecological procedures, by providing surgeons with improved visibility and access to deep target tissues, and thereby reducing post-operative complications such as adhesions, incisional hernias, significant patient pain and prolonged recovery time.

A Low Cost Ventilator for Use in Developing Nations and Large Scale Disasters team: Stanford University
A low-cost ventilator designed to treat acute respiratory distress patients in low-resource, pandemic and emergency environments. To fill the need in all cases, the device is affordable (approx $300), rechargeable, portable, and disposable.

Rapid Hypothermia Induction Device team: Johns Hopkins University
A device that emergency or ambulance personnel can use to rapidly and safely administer a therapeutic hypothermia treatment to victims of cardiac arrest, to improve their chances of survival upon reaching hospital.

All the devices seem prize-worthy, and the hypothermia and low-cost ventilator devices seem to have some serious life-saving potential. However, if any of you readers has ever sat or stood through a Bonanza (a urogynecology fellow’s loving term for rectocele/cystocele repair with a TAH and urethral sling) you know that the more “Orifice Volume Enlargement” the better. The winners will be announced next Wednesday, June 9th.

Read more at the BMEidea 2010 Website…

Flashbacks: 2009′s Winners, 2008′s Winners