Tag: MEDICINE

Doctors at McGill University Health Center in Montreal have performed the first ever robot-assisted surgery on a patient, without any direct doctor-to-patient contact. Of course, robotic surgery isn't a new approach in medicine, and, no, these 'bots aren't autonomous. Dr. Thomas Hemmerling and Dr. Armin Aprikian controlled robots named McSleepy and DaVinci, as they administered anesthesia and ...

We all know that we can't trust everything we read on the Web, yet when many of us get sick, we still tend to seek medical advice online before consulting doctors or health care professionals. Although some online sources do offer valid, fact-based advice, others can often misinform and mislead curious web surfers, who may suffer severe health consequences as a result. Rhys Morgan, a 15-year-old ...

Two-and-a-half year old Grace Freeman was recently diagnosed with a retinoblastoma -- a cancer of the eye that, if left untreated, could've easily killed her. Luckily, Grace's doctors detected the cancer before it could spread to other parts of her small body, and saved her life. But if it weren't for Facebook (and one, very vigilant friend), things could've been tragically different. The Daily ...

When Peter Bentley wrote the 'iStethoscope' app for the iPhone, it was meant, we think, to be entertainment. The $0.99 app has some surprisingly powerful features for recording and measuring heart beats, but the tiny iPhone microphone makes it quite difficult to use and a tad unreliable. In the U.S., the app hasn't seen much success, but, overseas, it's gained traction since Bentley introduced a ...

In the U.S., most vending machines provide only corn syrup confections. Vending machines in the U.K., however, may soon deliver something substantially more healthy: medicine. Sainsbury's, a U.K. supermarket chain, has already begun testing one drug delivery machine in its Essex stores. In order to use the device, customers have to use a unique ID or fingerprint, along with a special PIN ...

Forget swallowing pills or being poked by a needle. According to ABC News, scientists at Georgia Tech University have developed a way to inject vaccines directly into cells by using a laser beam to blow holes into that most basic unit of life. In this technique, scientists place blackened carbon nanoparticles (called "soot") next to the cells in question, which are then blasted with infrared ...

A new vaccine delivery system is being developed by Georgia Tech and Emory University: a small patch embedded with 100 "microneedles" that is, supposedly, almost painless. The needles themselves are about 0.65 milimeters long, filled with frozen vaccine and applied to the skin like a Band-Aid. Once the needles have deposited their weakened virus, they dissolve into the skin and leave no trace. ...

Back in January, President Obama outlined a five-year plan in which all of the country's medical records would be digitized. By streamlining and introducing electronic standards to health data, mistakes like duplicate tests could be avoided. But, considering that only "20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals use even basic electronic health records," -- according to Kathleen Sebelius, ...

A research team from Georgia Tech, led by Professor Zhong Lin Wang, have developed a nanogenerator that could one day be embedded in human bodies and power medical implants. The tiny nanowire takes advantage of the piezoelectric effect to generate electrical current as its squeeze by your muscles when you breath or your heart beats. Wang and his team successfully implanted the nanogenerator on ...

Within "a couple of years" Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg, director of Duke's Institute for Genome Science and Policy, believes that suitcase-sized devices capable of detecting disease long before a person shows any symptoms will be arriving on battlefields across the globe. The project, funded with money from the Pentagon, may prove to be a major advancement off the battlefield as well. Instead of ...

Share Rather than cause more damage, scientists say lasers could improve the healing process of scars. According to Scientific American, researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital Wellman Center for Photomedicine used a green laser and a pink dye to reconnect nerves, blood vessels, tendons and incisions in the cornea. The study's goal was to find ...

Surgery, by definition, has always been a hands-on endeavor. It gets messy, it gets fleshy, and it definitely gets a doc's hands dirty. But all that may soon change, thanks to a new, robotic procedure that doesn't even require a surgeon be in the same room as the patient. Dr. Andre Ng, a consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Glenfield Hospital in the U.K., recently became the ...

Whereas traditional therapist-patient relationships have always been restricted to the four walls of a shrink's office, doctors and patients alike have begun taking their camaraderie online. And, as the L.A. Times reports, the trend has raised the eyebrows of many medical ethicists, most of whom consider Facebook friendships or investigative Google searches a direct violation of the doctor-patient ...

With KFC's Double Down "sandwich" now threatening to slap quadruple chins across much of America, people may soon begin chomping at the bit for equally extreme diet solutions to counteract the havoc wreaked by the Colonel. Gelesis, a Boston-based drug company, has apparently read the grease-stained handwriting on the wall, and has just concocted a new pill aimed at helping plus-sized Americans ...

We've seen a slew of medical apps hit the mobile market lately, and the proliferation of those apps has raised concerns among some that there is not enough oversight with this newly available tech. There are over 1,500 apps available for health care professionals; Manhattan Research estimates that, by 2012, 81-percent of doctors will have smartphones, potentially with medical apps installed. As ...