We’ve all seen or heard commercials from the American Stroke Association (ASA) encouraging people who suspect they might be having a stroke to call 9-1-1 right away, because “time lost is brain lost.”. Stroke is the No. 5 cause of death in the United States, killing nearly 130,000 people a year. That’s one in every 20 deaths, according to the ASA. But even if you survive a stroke, you are not even close to being out of the woods.
Before he was an “Outdoor Man” marketing sporting goods in the Rocky Mountains as the Last Man Standing, Tim (“The Tool Man”) Taylor did most of his work indoors — on a little show called Home Improvement. Fortunately for the often accident-prone know-it-all, he had a competent sidekick in the mild-mannered Al Borland, who often knew a better way to get things done properly.
When incorporating human factors into medical device development, conducting user testing and gathering feedback from the device’s target end users is critical. To do this properly, the end user groups must be appropriately defined.
Moisture can be harmful to implantable medical devices that operate with electronics. The excess moisture can cause oxidation and dendritic growth in metal parts and wires, and can cause many problems including a fatal electrical shortage or complete device failure as worst case scenarios.
The biocompatibility of silicone is important for medical devices. This article offers a brief overview on the types of silicone that can be used in the different classes of medical devices, the required molding processes, and additional quality considerations.
A common myth is that larger pixel size image sensors are always more sensitive than smaller pixel size image sensors. To explain that this isn’t always the case, this paper will look at the effect that the pixel size has on image quality, especially for the overall sensitivity, which is determined by the quantum efficiency.
The medical device industry is familiar with quality audits, but is less familiar with the benefits of having a cultural audit to assess the competence, dedication, and passion that each party brings to the table.
Collaborating with a lighting expert can help ensure that a medical device’s lighting system is optimized for the instrument design while keeping manufacturing costs down and streamlining the path from product idea to operating room.
The LHL Series of magnetic latching solenoid valves are available in plug-in, face mount, and soft tube ported configurations. Their low power (5.5 mJ per switch), low heat, and small size, make these valves ideal for portable, battery powered medical devices. They’re also an ideal flow control solution for oxygen delivery systems, patient monitors, air calibration equipment, ventilators/respirators, and more.
The R9 is a 9mm miniature diaphragm isolation valve designed to deliver the liquid flow capabilities of a 16mm valve. These valves feature a 44% reduction in width, pressures up to 100 psi, low carryover performance, and particulate and crystallization resistance.
The Proto Labs CNC turning process is capable of producing custom prototypes and end-use production parts in as fast as one day and is best used for creating parts with cylindrical features, as well as parts with axial and radial holes, flats, grooves, and shots.
The Digital Laser/Galvano Scanner series from Canon includes three different models with various features and application areas. Each Galvano scanner has digital servo controllers and encoders, ensuring good temperature characteristics.
Medical device design and development is the cyclical process of creating a device for a specific task or set of tasks, and then continuously reevaluating its effectiveness and improving upon it until the device reaches obsolescence. Design and development begins with ideation and the creation of a concept that, if found to be both fiscally and clinically viable, is then designed, engineered, and prototyped. This preclinical period includes bench testing — accomplished through simulated use of the product — and animal testing, along with any necessary redesign work.
Throughout the process, the proposed medical device, and the process by which it will be manufactured, is examined for flaws that may negatively impact the device’s safety, market viability, regulatory acceptance, customer satisfaction, usability, or profitability. Any shortcomings are corrected, and the improvements applied to the final design. Due to the wireless connectivity capabilities of many modern medical devices, cybersecurity and interoperability also must be incorporated into the design. Clinical testing is conducted, using human subjects, to further expose flaws and confirm product strengths. Once both the product design and the manufacturing process have been validated and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), production and commercialization of a device may begin.
Each year, nearly 800,000 people in the U.S. experience a stroke, and almost 90 percent of those are ischemic strokes in which a clot cuts off blood flow to part of the brain. To prevent further injury, blood flow to the brain must be restored as quickly as possible.
Empatica Inc has received clearance from the FDA for Embrace, its award-winning smart watch. Embrace uses AI (advanced machine learning) to monitor for the most dangerous kinds of seizures, known as "grand mal" or "generalized tonic-clonic" seizures, and send an alert to summon caregivers' help.
For the first time, researchers have fabricated sensing elements known as fiber Bragg gratings inside optical fibers designed to dissolve completely inside the body.
A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a way to wirelessly deliver light into deep regions of the body to activate light-sensitive drugs for photodynamic therapy (PDT).
Extremely fine porous structures with tiny holes - resembling a kind of sponge at nano level - can be generated in semiconductors.
Tyndall and Sanmina Corporation have announced a research collaboration, which will focus on the development of a novel wireless technology for a commercial wrist-worn health-monitoring platform.
When studying diseases or testing potential drug therapies, researchers usually turn to cultured cells on Petri dishes or experiments with lab animals, but recently, researchers have been developing a different approach: small, organ-on-a-chip devices that mimic the functions of human organs, serving as potentially cheaper and more effective tools.
Cells communicate with each other through a number of different mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are well-known: in animals, for example, predatory threats can drive the release of norepinephrine, a hormone that travels through the bloodstream and triggers heart and muscle cells to initiate a "fight-or-flight" response.
Each year 40,000 babies in the U.S. are born with a congenital heart defect, often caused by a defective heart valve, which is estimated to account for 8,000 to 13,000 new cases in the U.S. alone.
A team of researchers at DGIST has recently developed a technology which enables to acquire a high resolution mass spectrometry imaging in micrometer size of live biological samples without chemical pretreatment in the general atmospheric pressure environment.
