A small scanner can tell whether and how well a worker has washed his hands. E-books are back again; this time, looking more like the real thing. The Star Trek-ish communicator badge from Vocerawows a hospital that bought it. An electronic magnifier for the vision impaired is a major step up from glass magnifiers. As […]

Prosthetic devices were prominent this month: A prosthetic knee transmits information about every step its recipient takes; an exoskeleton turns a 70-pound backpack into a five pound load and may soon be helping the disabled to walk; and a wearable (but only just) “seeing” assistant helps blind people read books, surf the Web, recognize faces, […]

Another improvement to miniature fuel cells brings them closer to powering your cell phone, or to the doctor’s pen-sized combination phone, PDA, ultrasound scope, and diagnostic lab chip. Maybe they’ll throw in the capability to tell the doctor how a patient is really feeling. It’s probably too much to hope, but for nostalgia’s sake, perhaps […]

More powerful automatic language interpreters are close to reaching the market, including an Arabic-English medical interpreter. And even English speakers need help interpreting the jargon on medical websites. Meanwhile: Invisible thin-air monitors have not disappeared from view. A cheap laser sorts microscopic particlesfor microscopic drug capsules. Arrays of hundreds of micro-syringes could be delivering insulin […]

This month’s devices are too disparate to weave into a narrative, so here’s a simple list: Sensors in development can detect the faintest whiff of chemical warfare agents, a single cancer protein molecule, illegal drugs, and human deceit. Combination PET/CT scanners produce much more useful imaging while dramatically shortening scanning time. Plans for a multi-billion […]

A new fuel cell from Honda delivers twice the output using half the components of its predecessors. We don’t know if this is the same one Honda is currently testing as a residential power station to run a house and fuel the family hydrogen car, but we predict something like it will be on the […]

You know that major movements in the medical technology sector are afoot when Big Blue starts to take a direct interest, as it has by making a wireless heart monitor. Already, defibrillator and pacemaker manufacturers are competing to build wireless monitoring and management capabilities into their implant devices, and next-generation LVADs, small enough for implant […]

Korean researchers have improved on their earlier method to increase the viewing angle of 3-D displays, but the Japanese are not holding their breath — Sharp’s 3-D laptop goes on sale next month. And 3-D ultrasound, invented by a Japanese 20 years ago, is likely to become ubiquitous within five years. Biochips (a.k.a. microarrays) are […]

Diverse devices reported recently include the following: Nanoscale submarines that cruise the vascular system fixing problems along the way are a step closer with the development of prototype “biobots” and nanoscale electric generators. A living cell or bacterium on a chip gives early warning of airborne killers. An improved method of finding matches in a […]

For good or ill, perceiving itself dependent on technology for cultural advancement, humanity in general abhors the status quo. Having already achieved printer and computer display resolutions of high-quality photographic levels, we face a never-ending status quo of picture-perfect two dimensional images. We can of course always tinker with the form factor of displays, such […]