Thursday 11 May 2017

Detecting Female Breast Cancer Earlier: Meet Eva

Yes, it is now safe to say we live in a "sensory driven world" and many of the new products launched nowadays are or can be controlled by our senses. Full circle or not, back in the days of Lemuria, where this ancient civilization communicated with their surroundings, solely through the use of their senses. Whether rumor or fact, here is another interesting point to ponder on.

Well, a Mexican biosensor developer (18yrs old) a breast cancer detection bra prototype, called Eva. it looks like a sports bra, but is equipped with sensors to map the surface of the breast and surrounding areas along with texture, color and temperature.

Since cancerous tumors bring increased blood flow to the skin that can change the temperatures, Eva was designed to be worn an hour to 90 minutes per week to track any changes over time. Through regular tracking and logging in an app, Eva could be used to alert the wearer of any changes and prompt them to visit their doctor. Eva still hasn’t been tested, but the idea is promising enough.
 "We know that tumors often have an abnormal system of blood vessels, but we also know that increased blood flow isn't necessarily a reliable marker of cancer,” Cancer Research UK’s Anna Perman told BBC News. 
NB: There is another company which has been working on a similar breast cancer diagnosic wearable, called the Cyrcadia's iTBra.
Stay tune for further updates.

Dialysis Treatment at home, amazing or what?

Has your kidney stopped functioning? And you cannot get a transplant or manage to travel back and fought three times a week to your Kidney Dialysis Centre? Then, your life is seriously at risk and needs urgent attention. Most likely, you will be happy to hear about Tablo Dialysis Machine, from Outset Medical. 


Every year, roughly 450,000 patients undergo dialysis treatments three times a week across 6,500 clinics in the US, resulting in 72 million dialysis treatments a year. Likewise, in the UK, approximately 40,000 patients receive dialysis or Renal Replacement Therapy (RRT) each year. This type of medical care (or therapy) cost approximately £58 million in the U.S. and £6.2 million in the U.K.
Whether, there is a better cost efficient solution available or not is yet to be proven, but recent data has overwhelmingly indicated that Home Dialysis Treatment is the future. 

According to, Leslie Trigg, Outset Medical's CEO. "Tablo was developed as a consumer product so anyone above 5th grade can [operate] it." The product is also connected to the cloud, so data can be delivered and stored and analyzed by healthcare providers. In the future, Tablo wants to make that data easily accessible and understandable to patients themselves. This ultra modern dialysis machine can be placed at district hospitals, local GP surgeries or in the home and can potentially cut the cost of Renal Replacement Treatment by up to 50%. Dialysis Treatment has finally been propelled to the 21st Century. 

Tablo is a unit about the size of a minifridge, which already sets it apart from larger traditional dialysis machines. Unlike current machines that have to start with purified water, which requires a massive amount of infrastructure at hospitals, Tablo can bring in tap water and purify it as part of the process. It has also been completely redesigned to be easier and faster to set up and it contains a touchscreen which displays instructions, as well as education and entertainment content.
Some of the biggest advantages of "Tablo" is, it has a proprietary algorithm designed to automatically remove air from the dialyser and the blood lines quickly. The setting-up steps are automated, so set up is a lot quicker than traditional machines. Furthermore, it is so simple to use, there is no need for assistance from a nurse or healthcare professional. Pending FDA clearance will make the "Tablo" home friendly soon. 
Stay tune for further updates, as you may be able to buy the Tablo machine on care-mart e-store.

Tuesday 18 April 2017

3D Printing makes Healthcare Equipment cost effective:

3D printing is part of the innovative process called additive manufacturing, which means the production of three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. It is a well-known fact that medical equipment is expensive. Total spending on medical devices in the U.S. reached about $150 billion in 2010, or roughly a nickel of every health-care dollar, according to the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), the industry’s trade group. Thus, 3D printing splints, medical models used before surgeries or other necessary means for healing could result in saving huge amounts of money. And there are already brilliant examples on the market how to do it!

Today, 3D printing is making it cheaper and quicker for patients to receive certain types of healthcare cheaper and quicker, especially when it comes to limps replacement. For example, A low-end 3D printer can print his splint quickly and affordably, about 2¢ worth of ABS plastic in about ten minutes! For developing countries, where splints can often be ordered from oversees only in bulk, it could mean the cheapest solution for poor communities. At the same time, it could easily serve personal needs.

Researchers in China and the US have both 3D printed models of cancerous tumors to aid discovery of new anti–cancer drugs and to better understand how tumors develop, grow, and spread. Researchers have also used scans of animal hearts to create printed models, and then added stretchy electronics on top of those models. Below: example of a 3D printed ear.
Also, consider this amazing scenario below. A nine-month-old baby was born with a fatal heart defect in China. He was suffering from a rare condition extremely difficult to repair. The team of experienced doctors decided to build a full-sized model of his tiny heart with the use of a 3D printer to pre-plan the complicated surgery. This was the first time someone used this method in China. The doctors completed the extremely risky and complicated surgery in March 2016.They were successful and the little boy is expected to survive with little to no lasting ill-effects.

In another case, a Dutch surgeons replaced the entire top of a 22 year–old woman’s skull with a customized printed implant made from plastic. The unnamed 22-year-old patient was suffering from a rare condition that caused the inside of her skull to grow extra bone, which squeezed her brain. The growth was discovered after she reported severe headaches and then lost her sight and motor control. If untreated, the extra bone would have killed her.

Care-mart Inc will soon be offering 3D printing services to all healthcare patients at super low prices. Stay tune.