New fabrication technique promises “human s…

Novel Technique for Tracking Individual Cells

Assaf Gilad at the Johns Hopkins’ Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology has successfully engineered a “reporter gene” that will allow individual cells to be tracked throughout the body with an MRI machine. Scientists’ inability to follow the whereabouts of cells injected into the human body has long been a major[...]

Treating Tumors by Punching Holes in Cells

We missed this interesting medical development back in February. So here it is. Boris Rubinsky, a UC Berkeley researcher and professor, has shown that microsecond electrical pulses can punch nanoscale holes in the target cells’ membranes without causing any damage to the tissue scaffolding. This irreversible electroporation technique (IRE), as[...]

Fast Field-Cycled MRI

The University of Aberdeen researchers are developing a new generation magnetic resonance imaging technology called Field-Cycling MRI: The new scanner will make visible features not currently seen in conventional MRI. This improved sensitivity and specificity should lead to a better understanding of key diseases, result in more rapid and accurate[...]

Philips/Intel Mobile Clinical Assistant

Here’s a new device, by Philips and Intel, that promises to streamline clinical care and make it safer by computerizing everything from patient’s identification process, to distribution of meds by nurses, to collection of bodily fluids. The Philips MCA (Mobile Clinical Assistant) comes on the heels of a recently launched[...]

Would You Trust Your Advance Directives to a Computer?

Bioethicist David Wendler and colleagues from the US National Institutes of Health developed a computer-based algorithm that promises to predict wishes of incapacitated patients, by incorporating patients’ medical history and bio-psycho-social aspects, and extracting wish data for patients in similar circumstances. To use the decision tool, called a “population-based treatment indicator,”[...]