Latest News on MassDevice

Vital signs are improving at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — at least, techniques to measure them are, according to MIT Tech Talk.

Engineers at the school, led by mechanical engineering professor Harry Asada, built a wearable blood pressure cuff that provides 24-hour monitoring.

The idea is to allow physicians to track vital signs on a continuous basis, to improve treatment of such conditions as sleep apnea, hypertension and heart disease.

And, given the accumulation of enought data, the device might eventually allow doctors to predict when heart attacks are due, Asada told the newspaper.

A Missouri-based subsidiary of Mansfield’s Covidien, Mallinckrodt Inc., accused a pair of Italian life science firm Bracco SpA‘s American divisions of patent infringement, The Boston Globe reported.

Hazelwood, Mo.-based Mallinckrodt sued Bracco’s Lake Success, N.Y.-based E-Z-EM Inc. and Acist Medical Systems Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn., in Delaware federal court for allegedly infringing its patent for a device used to inject chemicals into MRI patients.

The National Institutes of Health tapped a prominent Boston-area physician and businessman to sit on a board responsible for setting policy at the federal health research agencies.

James Thrall, radiologist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, was one of three people named to the board on April 3.

The advisory committee to the director at the NIH is a powerful position. The 20-person board reports directly to the secretary of the federal Health and Human Services Dept., as well as the NIH director on policy matters.