It’s no secret that prescription drug abuse is a huge problem all around the world. The most-often abused medications are powerful painkillers, which are easy enough to misuse due to the way they’re distributed. They come in little plastic bottles, usually with a month’s worth of pills at a time. The patient can easily take more than the prescribed dose or just sell their pills to someone else.

Engineering students at Johns Hopkins University were asked to come up with a better solution that would make pill dispensation safer for the patient. They invented a tamper-resistant pill dispenser that only dispenses the correct dose at the correct time to the correct person – this is ensured with a built-in fingerprint scanner programmed right at the pharmacy. The very tough steel alloy that forms the body of the dispenser is resistant to hammers, drills, and other methods used to try to break it open.

Only a pharmacist can open the dispenser with a special key – a key which only the pharmacist has access to. The students and faculty at Johns Hopkins are still developing the technology and hope to receive a grant from the National Institutes of Health in order to continue their research and hopefully commercialize the dispenser in the future. Will it entirely prevent prescription abuse? Probably not. But at least the special dispenser will make patients more aware of the proper dosage and stop others from stealing their pills.

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In the early 20th century, medical technology was still pretty primitive and often exceptionally dangerous. But few devices were as widely used as the violet ray, an electrotherapeutic device that was said to treat everything from joint pain to bad skin, poor circulation, stuffy noses, prostate issues, and warts. The violet ray machine was more or less a portable Tesla coil that patients could take home to electrify themselves without a doctor’s supervision.

Treatment with a violet ray machine involved attaching one of a various set of evacuated glass tubes to a handle, holding it to whatever part of your body was troublesome, and then switching it on. This caused a high voltage, high frequency, low electrical current to run through the body. Similar technology is actually still used today in TENS machines that zap low currents into a targeted area of the body to relieve pain through nerve stimulation, though modern machines are safer and their use is monitored by trained professionals who use them only for specific types of pain. A violet ray machine, on the other hand, was capable of creating a powerful electric arc that could cause serious skin burns.

The violet ray machine proved to be a little too popular for its own good. Once manufacturers caught on to how many doctors were prescribing them for various ailments, the devices were suddenly said to cure just about anything. By the mid-20th century, the bizarre marketing claims caught the unwanted attention of the FDA. The machines were recalled and ordered to be destroyed.

But, as is the case with many “miracle” cures, there are still some firm believers in the good old violet ray. Their manufacture is banned in the US but plenty of companies outside of the States still make them. The antique versions are popular with collectors of vintage medical devices. In his day, Edgar Cayce was a big proponent of violet ray treatment and followers of his advice still use the machines today – but they tend to use them for skin oxygenation and stimulation rather than as a miracle cure for the common cold.

The post Portable Tesla Coils Were Yesteryear’s Futuristic Cure-All first appeared on Gajitz.

Diagnostic tests for measuring various health parameters usually involve drawing blood, which is invasive and kind of icky. But a team of researchers at the University of Cincinnati and the US Air Force Research Lab have invented a much less painful system that involves using sweat to track health.

The system involves a Band-Aid-like adhesive patch that uses microfluidics to collect sweat from the skin. You don’t have to run a marathon to work up a sweat; the device will use an electrical process called iontophoresis to stimulate the production of sweat. The process applies a very small electrical charge to the skin – so small that the pain experienced by the patient is minimal. The method can keep sweat flowing from a very small area of the skin for hours or even days if the researchers need it to.

The patch then wicks away small amounts of sweat via microfluidic channels for analysis. Super-absorbent hydrogels keep the sweat pumping even after it’s passed through the sensors by soaking up the old sweat so that it doesn’t mix with new sweat. The electronics in the patch have no power source of their own; the patch contains a small RFID-like chip that is externally powered by a smartphone.

It’s this smartphone that provides the analysis, as well. Initially the team had their collective eye on using the patch to monitor athletes’ health. Knowing when your electrolytes are low can be crucial when you’re training, which is lucky because electrolytes are simple to measure. The team thinks they will soon be able to measure other factors like lactic acid, metabolites, proteins, amino acids, and creatinine with the patch. Although measuring glucose, or blood sugar levels, would be an amazing use of this technology, science has yet to figure out how to do that using sweat.

The system could be useful for a huge number of people and situations. Premature babies could be monitored for any changes in their general health. Medication levels in a patient’s sweat could help doctors to determine correct dosages. Military members could be monitored in the field for signs of muscle exertion, injury, and exhaustion. A large number of other physical factors can be read through a person’s sweat, so there’s a good chance that in the future you’ll be experiencing fewer blood draws but more tiny electroshocks to analyze your sweat.

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In the case of a medical emergency, prompt CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) can be the key to saving a life. The trouble is that most people only know of CPR what they’ve seen in movies and on TV, and that usually includes blowing air into the victim’s lungs. In most cases, though, the truly important action is keeping blood flowing through the body until medical help arrives.

The Cardio First Angel is a simple device placed over the victim’s sternum to help anyone perform vital CPR – even those completely unfamiliar with the process. The confidence that comes from using the device rather than relying on one’s memory of the method can shave vital seconds off of the time it takes to aid the victim.

Produced by Munich-based Cardio First Angel Group, the small device comes in a protective plastic case. In case of emergency, it is removed from the case and placed on the victim’s chest. A foam backing on the device helps keep the victim’s sternum from being damaged during CPR. A large red button on the top of the Cardio First Angel illustrates exactly where to place it and then how to use it.

As the button is depressed and pops back up, it makes a clicking sound which tells the operator that they are using enough force to make the device effective. The clicks also help the operator maintain the optimal pace of 100-120 compressions per minute until emergency services arrive to take over. In many cases, those crucial first few minutes of CPR can keep the victim’s blood circulating long enough to avoid permanent damage.

The post Illustrated Device Teaches CPR in a Few Simple Pictures first appeared on Gajitz.

Implantable medical devices have been a huge benefit to millions of people, but there have been problems plaguing this type of technology from the very beginning. Although scientific advances have led to smaller and more efficient implanted medical devices, one problem has never really been solved: the battery.

Currently, the medical implant devices (like pacemakers) have to be removed from the body when the battery needs to be replaced. This results in costly, painful, and dangerous surgeries. A new technology described in a study from Stanford University’s Ada Poon could result in implantable medical devices that are the size of a grain of rice and do not require bulky batteries.

The technology has been tested in the form of a pacemaker installed in a rabbit. The device, hardly bigger than the tip of the scientist’s tweezers, is powered by near-field communication power transfer. This method has been explored in the past, but it was considered too weak to power implanted devices.

To solve this problem, Poon’s method places a metal plate powered by a cell phone battery a few inches from the body. The method uses the rabbit’s own body tissue to act to help deliver the electrical signal to the pacemaker. Although it is not yet known if this method will work on humans, the research is very promising. It could mean fewer surgeries, simpler power delivery, and more effective medical implants.

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