Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

A company called Xhale has developed a sensor for hospitals and other medical facilities that could help reduce the number of patients that get life-threatening infections while receiving medical care. The HyGreen features sensors that are capable of detecting drugs via someone’s breath, but they’re instead used to detect sanitizer or soap fumes given off by someone’s hands. And instead of serving as a tattle-tale as to who hasn’t washed up, the HyGreen system is designed to serve as a friendly reminder to hospital and medical staff that it might be time to wash or sanitize their hands again. Here’s the ‘how it works’ blurb from the company’s press release:

The health-care worker squirts sanitizer gel or soap into his or her hand before passing it under a wall-mounted sensor. A wireless signal from a badge worn by the worker activates a green light on the hand-washing sensor. When the worker enters a patient room, a monitor near the bed detects the status of the badge, and flashes green if the person has clean hands. If the person has not washed, or too much time has passed between washing and approaching the patient, the badge will give a gentle “reminder” vibration.

At the moment the HyGreen system is being tested at the Neuro Intensive Care Unit at the University of Florida Shands medical center, and if things go well the system could be installed elsewhere to help reduce the nearly 2 million hospital-acquired infections that occur each year in the U.S. alone.

[ Xhale HyGreen ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

By Andrew Liszewski

There’s an endless number of pill containers and organizers on the market designed to help you remember when it’s time to take your medication, but I think the simplicity of the Dose Alert gives it a distinct advantage. It’s a basic one-button timer with an LCD display that simply sticks to the top of your pill container thanks to an adhesive backing. Pressing the button sets the timer from 1 to 24 hours, and when it’s time to take your pill(s) the Dose Alert beeps loudly and flashes to get your attention. Now I’m not sure if it’s re-usable when you get a refill (hopefully you can just swap the cap to the new container) but at just $8.98 it’s not terribly expensive to replace if needed.

[ Dose Alert ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

A new medical diagnosis device known as the SPTT, or Standoff Patient Triage Tool, could be our first glimpse at a real-life tricorder, or at the least a primitive ancestor of one. The SPTT uses lasers to measure vibrations of a human head and chest to calculate the vital signs of a patient, like pulse, body temperature and muscle movement from a distance of up to 40 feet away.

Now the device is no replacement for a doctor or a paramedic, but in the event of an accident or emergency where there are multiple victims, it could let first responders determine who needs medical treatment first, a process known as triage. Normally it takes a medic about 3 to 5 minutes per person to determine the severity of their condition or injuries, but using the SPTT it could take as little as 30 seconds, which really could mean the difference between life and death.

The Standoff Patient Triage Tool is expected to start field tests sometime this Fall.

[ Scientific American - Trekkie triage: Could a new device aid medics? ] VIA [ io9 ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Signostics, a self-described “pioneering medical device company” has just announced that their Signos Portable Ultrasound device has been approved by the FDA in the United States. Weighing in at just half a pound, the Signos not only makes it easy for smaller clinics and medical facilities to have access to an ultrasound machine, but it will also apparently retail “at a fraction of the cost of larger machines”, though specific pricing details have not been released just yet.

In addition to the handheld monitor with its touchscreen LCD display, the Signos also features a tethered sensor that can be switched between 3.5MHz or 7.5MHz for different applications simply by swapping out the screw on/off transducers on the tip. It also comes with a microSD card capable of storing somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 images which can be easily synced to a PC and further analyzed in the included SigViewer software.

[ Signos Personal Ultrasound ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

By Andrew Liszewski

There’s no question that CPR saves lives, however, Sudden Cardiac Arrest still accounts for some 350,000 deaths annually in the US alone. And that’s because the average rescuer is only able to perform effective chest compressions for about 2 minutes before tiring, which is far shorter than typical emergency response times of 8 to 10 minutes. But the LifeBelt, developed by Thomas Lach of Deca-Medics Inc., is a compact, lightweight device that allows CPR compressions to be performed with about half as much force, meaning a rescuer can do them for longer, increasing the likelihood of resuscitation.

The LifeBelt attaches to the victim in less than 15 seconds, and it includes an intuitive readout that warns the rescuer if the compression depth is too deep or too shallow, so they know they’re doing it properly. At the moment the LifeBelt appears to only be a fully-functioning concept, as it won the grand prize in the 2008 Create The Future Design Contest, but hopefully that success means it will eventually be a real product available to the public.

[ Deca-Medics - LifeBelt CPR ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While the CellScope looks like a monstrous cameraphone zoom lens that you could only order from a website like Brando, it’s actually a clinical-quality microscope with a magnification of 5-50X. It was designed by Daniel Fletcher, the associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley, and the goal of the CellScope is to bring modern diagnostic testing to remote areas who don’t have access to a lab or facilities with the proper equipment.

And because the CellScope is designed to be used with devices like cellphones and even camera equipped netbooks & laptops, it allows images captured by health care workers to be sent to larger medical centers for detailed examination by experts. The hope is that the CellScope will be used to more effectively diagnose diseases in rural areas to not only save lives, but also serve as an early warning for possible epidemics.

[ Telemicroscopy for Disease Diagnosis ] VIA [ Crave ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you’ve ever looked down at your keyboard and wondered what parasites, bacteria and other forms of unclassified life were crawling all over it, imagine what the keyboards at a hospital must be like. That thought alone is probably what inspired a company called Esterline to create their Medigenic Infection-Control Keyboard. Instead of raised keys, which provides endless places for crud to get trapped, the Medigenic features a flat keyboard design (with fake 3D key graphics) that can be quickly wiped clean with hospital-grade disinfectants.

Supposedly the flat design can still be used by touch typists with “conventional keyboard-like performance” and there’s a dedicated disable button which prevents accidental key presses while the Medigenic is being wiped down. There’s even a backlight allowing the keyboard to be used in low-light environments without disturbing a patient, and a warning light that will flash at user-defined intervals reminding you it’s time for a cleaning.

The Medigenic keyboard runs about $140, while the mouse, which is just as easy to keep clean, is about $80.

[ Medigenic Infection-Control Keyboard ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Most research and development facilities start from the ground up when it comes to designing new technology, but engineers at General Electric’s Global Research development arm have done just the opposite. They transformed one of the company’s existing home security motion sensors into a device that’s smart enough to classify different types of motion, even to the point of wirelessly monitoring a person’s breathing and heart rate.

The upgrades to the motion detector mostly came in the form of sophisticated processing algorithms that allow the sensor’s ‘brain’ to better process a person’s movement. Possible applications for the improved motion sensors include monitoring patients or the elderly at home as well as neonatal infant health monitoring since premature babies often have skin that’s too fragile to physically attach sensors to.

[ PR - GE Scientists Create Wireless Medical Sensing Platform ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a little out of my league when it comes to medical technologies, but I think I’ve watched enough hospital dramas to understand why the PhysioGlove seems like a good idea. Typically, a patient being monitored by an ECG setup requires 10 different electrodes to be attached to predefined anatomical locations on their body. Knowing where to properly place the electrodes requires a lot of training, and the 10 different wires coming from each lead can become tangled, or just plain get in the way.

So an Evanston, Illinois-based company called Commwell has developed a special glove that the patient wears on their left hand and simply lays across their chest. Getting it positioned correctly apparently only takes minimal coaching by the medical staff, and the glove incorporates all 10 of the required electrodes with just a single cable for connecting to a monitoring device. Now I’m sure it’s not designed to serve as a long-term solution for ECGs, since a patient could accidentally move their arm whenever they fall asleep, but when setting up an ECG is a time-critical matter, I can see why the PhysioGlove might be advantageous.

[ Commwell PhysioGlove ] VIA [ Medgadget ]