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World's Smallest Blood Glucose Meter Gets FDA Approved: True2Go
Posted by Kit Eaton at 7:48 PM on August 28, 2008
Testing your blood glucose levels if you're a diabetes sufferer may not mean hauling around large-ish devices now that the True2Go from Home Diagnostics has won FDA approval. It's the world's smallest, "about the size of a quarter"... it's just about the same size as an iPod shuffle. It's small enough to twist "on to a vial of test strips so diabetics can better manage their diabetes with the convenience of on-the-go testing," which is darn convenient, and it uses 0.5 microliters of blood and has a test memory display. No word on pricing or release timings yet. [Medgadget]
That 
Some medical students have come up with a handy replacement for the EpiPen called the EpiCard. It's roughly the size of a credit card and has built-in audio instructions on its use to help the patient self-administer the treatment if needed. Those of us with hardcore life threatening allergies have to keep a treatment like the EpiPen around, but they can be cumbersome. Having something like this that you can take anywhere is just what we need. [
Researchers at UC Davis have designed contact lenses that can give you an in-eye checkup to make sure there's nothing wrong, as well as dispense medication automatically when needed. The "smart" lenses use an organic polymer called PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane, if you're nasty) that detects eye pressure and sends that data to a computer--important updates to get if you're at risk for glaucoma.
What's that monkey thinking about when he's mushing down that banana or tossing faeces at you? Well, you're looking at it--this is a map of where a macaque's thoughts live. It's made possible by new 3D 
Traditional camera lenses have to have beefier optics to make up for the fact that the sensor is flat--but one reason why 
An Israeli company, Aespironics, is trying a new approach in re-designing an old faithful drug delivery system: the inhaler. They've teamed up with an expert in drug atomisation and a wind turbine researcher, and have come up with a breath-activated, turbine-assisted design that should be slim, cheap and easy to produce, and deliver dry drugs to the users lungs without leaving them sticking inside the mouth. Sounds amazing doesn't it? Particularly when you consider the implications of a simple, compact and cheap dispenser for aiding ill people in the developing world. The team is planning tests for the year end, and thinks a product could be on the market within three years. If it's an inhaler slim enough to fit in a wallet, I'll take one soon, please: lugging around a conventional one is annoying. [
The Accupal won't make your next root canal painless, but it will lessen the sting of the needle. Essentially an ultrasonic toothbrush with a hole in it, when coupled with minor amounts of topical anesthetic, you can apparently poke and prod someone's mouth all day without pain. It seems to work through a combination of loosening/stretching the tissue (so the needle goes in easier) and slightly numbing the tissue (we assume by overloading those nerves with all the vibration). Regardless, we hope our flossing regimen pays off to the point that we never discover if this thing really works. [
What wonderful times we live in. If you've got some funky stuff going on down below, a good way to diagnose exactly what's happening is to swallow a pill-sized camera robot to have a looksie. Only problem is, those things have trouble swimming upstream, if you will, to stay near the specific trouble spot. Carnegie Mellon university researchers have potentially solved that problem with a new capsule bot that uses tiny feet covered in hairlike adhesive projections to anchor the 'bot at a specific point, without damaging sensitive tissues when it's time to get unstuck. All the same, I really just don't know if I want anything anchoring to my intestines, ever. More including a quick video over at: [
Researchers at the University of Virginia hope to combat injuries suffered from elderly falls with these teched-out pants, which employ multiple sensors sewn into your standard flannel jams (aka blogging pants) to monitor the gait of the wearer for potential problems in real time. So long as he doesn't shuffle out of Bluetooth range.
