Top 10 Medical Advances of the Decade

ABC News, in collaboration with MedPage Today and the American Association for the History of Medicine, has published a list of what they consider to be the top medical breakthroughs of the past 10 years.

I wish I could find a similar list from 1999. It would've been interesting to see how medicine has changed since then.

Only a few of them are directly related to medical devices (see #8 and #10), but these discoveries open up many different applications for medical devices for the next decade. I believe that when the 2019 version of this article is printed, medical devices, bionics, and regenerative medicine will have a greater presence in this list. I also believe that drug therapies will be phased out as genome and stem cell related discoveries will cure diseases that drugs could only treat the symptoms.

The Top 10 Medical Advances of the Decade:

1. Human Genome Discoveries Reach the Bedside
2. Doctors and Patients Harness Information Technology
3. Anti-Smoking Laws and Campaigns Reduce Public Smoking
4. Heart Disease Deaths Drop by 40 Percent
5. Stem Cell Research: Laboratory Breakthroughs and Some Clinical Advances
6. Targeted Therapies for Cancer Expand With New Drugs
7. Combination Drug Therapy Extends HIV Survival
8. Minimally Invasive Techniques Revolutionize Surgery
9. Study Finds Heart, Cancer Risk With Hormone Replacement Therapy
10. Scientists Peer Into Mind With Functional MRI

Learn More: The Top 10 Medical Advances of the Decade [via ABC News]

National Geographic Special: Bionics

National Geographic Magazine just published an amazing piece about the technological advancements in bionics and medical devices. The online feature includes the article from the January 2010 issue of NGM, a photo gallery of the various protheses and their users, and my favorite: an interactive graphic showing the human body and the various prostheses being developed, with in-depth descriptions of the bionic skin project, the artificial limb, and USC's artificial retina.

Be sure to check out the feature and pick up a copy of National Geographic Magazine. This feature is the cover story for the issue, titled Merging Man and Machine.

Learn More: Bionics [via National Geographic Magazine]

Research Roundup

Merry Christmas all!

Here are a few interesting discoveries relevant to biomedical engineering that you might find intriguing:

• The Daily Mail highlights a treatment to cure blindness using stem cells from a patient's good eye. The procedure only works for those who have properly functioning stem cells in one eye, but the results show a successful movement towards regenerative medicine.
• MIT has developed special gold nanoparticles that attach to tumors and convert infrared radiation to heat that destroy tumors without harming the surrounding tissue. They claim higher precision than physical removal and chemotherapy.
• The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) has developed synthetic red blood cells that closely mimic the physical and functional properties of erythrocytes. Their goal is to create an effective drug delivery agent, however, synthetic blood will also prove useful during blood shortages or in places like the battlefront.

Amputee Controls Robotic Arm With Thoughts

Prosthetic limbs are fairly common among amputees today, but the functionality they offer is limited. Most are mainly flesh-colored devices with a metal hook at the end to add a bit of usefulness.

Technological advancements (and some movie magic) in the past 20 or so years have greatly changed the development of prosthetic limbs. What once only belonged to a futuristic cyborg resembling California's governor is now becoming a reality for amputees.

I'd like to suggest the development of artificial, robotic limbs can be divided into three stages. The first, mimicking the kinetics of limb movement, is doing fairly well. With the advancement of actuators, materials, and integrated circuits, scientists and engineers can create a fairly good endoskeleton that can perform many of the movements of a real arm/hand. True, there is still an endless number of movement combinations that can be worked out, but as a whole, I think the mechanics of the arm are working well.

The second stage, the one that this entry's title alludes to, involves interfacing the arm with the brain. An Italian amputee participating in a study was recently able to control his robotic arm using his thoughts much like we control our limbs. During the one-month study, electrodes were connected to him, and he eventually gained to ability to move his fingers, make a fist, grab an object, even flip the bird. This is a huge advancement given the fact that in our bodies, nerves control each of the individual muscles involved in hand movement. As the article on Discovery.com mentions, scientists now need to research how long the electrodes can stay implanted in the body without an immune response. They also need to miniaturize the technology so the processing unit that joins the electrodes and the arm can fit into a feasible prosthetic device.

What is the third stage? It's implementing the sense of touch in the prosthetic arm. Once the user is able to control the movements of the prosthesis with his mind, the prosthesis will need to give him feedback, such as the amount of force he is applying, the temperature and texture of the surface the fingers and contacting, and of potentially hazardous extremes. One of the researchers working on this is a former professor of mine, Gerald Loeb, from the University of Southern California. Professor Loeb and his lab have created a device that mimics human skin in terms of sensation, inspired by a feature on our own hands called fingerprints.

I think advancements in prosthetic limbs are probably one of the most visible applications of biomedical engineering. Pretty much everyone know about cyborgs from popular media, and I think a lot of people would be amazed to see similar technology become a reality for amputees.

Learn More: Amputee 'Feels' Fingers For First Time With Robotic Hand [via Discovery.com]

Lab-on-Chips made from children's toy

I'll be honest. I didn't know what Shrinky Dinks were until this past summer. I used them for their intended purpose, to "shrink" colorful works of art drawn on flexible plastic sheets into shiny, rigid works of art.

Never would I have thought to use them to scale channels and reservoirs down to a size suitable for microfluidics!

Michelle Khine, an associate professor at UC Irvine, came up with the idea. And her solution didn't stem from a problem with physics or the engineering process. It was simply because her lab couldn't immediately afford the specialized machines used to create the molds.

I took a class on microfluidic devices during my senior year and wrote a paper about them (see related post here). I actually got to watch a microfludic device get fabricated, and I found it's fairly complicated. It basically involves printing a series of masks and "etching" the mold out using light radiation. It requires a fair amount of precision as you are forming the actual micro-channels. The shrinky dink method, however, produces a mold in a matter of minutes.

While there are issues to work out, researchers say there are advantages to this process. It's much cheaper, faster, and works on printed metal patterns, opening up an infinite number of applications.

I really enjoy reading about engineering solutions like the one Professor Khine came up with. It's straightforward to implement, and it's thinking outside the box. Reminds me of that old joke about NASA spending millions of dollars developing a pen that writes in space while Russian cosmonauts used pencils. Only this time we look far less stupid.

Learn More: A children’s toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips [via MIT Technology Review]

Website Downtime

Hi everyone, sorry for the extended downtime I had. I've been busy with a bunch of things and have not had time to focus on blogging. I have some more free time now so I'll start up blogging again within the next couple days! There's a lot of cool stuff out there I want to write about, so stay tuned!

iPhone Light-Therapy Application

I'm a proud iPhone user. I've had my iPhone 3G for a little over a year and are amazed at the ever-increasing applications for the iPhone.

One that struck me today (as well as Engadget) was a new application called the BlueWave/RedWave. It claims to utilize the LED in the iPhone screen to administer light-therapy. The application claims to have features such as "exacting nanometers" to adjust the specific wavelength of the light emitted. Depending on the color/wavelength of light emitted, such therapy can supposedly cure a number of symptoms ranging from acne to depression.

I think the application is good in concept. The developer has a number of studies on his website citing the benefits of light therapy. Light therapy certainly has some promise, but my biggest concern is that the iPhone hardware was not meant for such use and is not medical-caliber. I think the developer has good intentions, but makes too many bogus claims about his application specifically. There is no such thing as "exacting nanometers" unless he is referring to specific wavelengths of light (which are measured in nanometers). For such a device, you cannot trust the wavelength emitted (not specified in the application) because smartphone screens are not held to specific calibration standards that other light-emitting devices, such as spectrophotometers, are held to. Depending on the brightness of the LED and the color LCD that it shines through, the wavelength can vary significantly.

I'm not going to mock this application like Engadget did and call it the "worst iPhone application. ever", but I will say that it lacks specific backing and research. It would be like me reading claims about acupuncture benefits and then grabbing my home sewing kit for a pokefest. Who knows? His application might deliver benefits, but it needs a little more research.

On the more serious note, I think it's a great thing that the iPhone is being used for such a wide range of medical applications, no matter how far-fetched they might seem. Gene Roddenberry had such a vision when he came up with the famous Tricorder from Star Trek. He probably didn't realize how far technology would come by 2009 and even make his visionary Tricorder seem somewhat last-century

Learn More:

pocketpaindoctor.com - the application's website

Light therapy [Wikipedia]