The Medical Device Business Journal — Medical Device News & Articles | MassDevice
How do you change the world?
That’s the central question behind The Disruptors, a new web video series co-produced by MassDevice and HB, which focuses on the minds behind some of medical technology’s most disruptive innovations.
For the next several months we’ll be interviewing a select group of visionaries who we believe have changed or are going to change the world through disruptive medical technologies and processes.
Bedford, Mass.-based robotics maker iRobot Corp. (NSDQ: IRBT), best known for its autonomous floor-cleaning Roomba and bomb-defusing military robots, is making a foray into health care with an emphasis on robots that can help at home.
By Hiep Nguyen
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Health care providers now have their own section of the successful AppStore, called "Apps for Healthcare Professionals," currently includes 49 apps for iPhone users and 52 for iPad.
The new section includes six categories for doctors to choose from: reference apps, educational apps, EMR & parient monitoring apps, imaging apps, point of care apps and personal care apps, and about a dozen of the apps are for consumer use.
I got off the phone yesterday with my 85-year old mother following her fifth Facebook training exercise. Only now can I say I feel she might find this interesting after all.
Wireless devices have changed the way health information moves, making data more abundant and more accessible. But it’s also made medical devices more vulnerable.
Researchers at MIT and the University of Mass. Amherst are the first to develop a technology that could protect the millions of existing medical device implants without altering or replacing them.
Wireless technologies made their mark on medical devices in a big way, attaching themselves to everything from pacemakers and defibrillators to insulin pumps and nerve stimulators.
Athersys Inc. (NSDQ:ATHX) reported that results from a phase 1 trial of its stem cell therapy suggest its MultiStem technology could hold benefits for heart attack patients.
Most of the millions of implanted medical devices in existence today have a wireless component that allows doctors to monitor patients’ vital signs and revise treatment programs by tapping into the device’s signal.
But those wireless capabilities could also make devices susceptible to hackers, say researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Worst case scenario – hackers could program a device to deliver a medication overdose or electric shock that kills the victim.
The U.S. Army announced that it will begin testing 85 smartphone apps, including ones designed to help medics share medical information in the field.
The Army first announced that it would consider battlefield smartphone apps in December, when it began conducting pilots to determine whether medical record applications running on Apple and Android devices would be helpful in the field.
The latest series of tests include apps that allow soldiers to track moods and emotional well-being and medics to report a wounded soldier’s information and GPS location.
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