Category: Conference

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41710.wss IBM is planning a a brain-inspired model for a new generation of highly-interconnected, asynchronous, parallel and large-scale computing systems based around the concept of cognitive computing.  It is an ecosystem designed for programming neurosynaptic chips that have an architecture inspired by the function, low power, and compact volume of the brain Cognitive computing systems can be…

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/medical-and-healthcare/in-depth/tailored-treatments-sensors-for-personalised-medicine/1016865.article Doctors are still dependant on single point-in-time measurements of factors such as blood glucose and hormone levels, which do not show how these factors dip or rise into danger zones over the course of a day.   Similarly, monitoring heart rates over time in a hospital does not always show the physical responses caused…

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/stem.1473/abstract Professor Antonio del Sol of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine has developed a model that makes predictions from which differentiated cells, such as skin cells, can be very changed into completely different cell types, such as nerve cells.  Embryonic stem cells are not used.  Researcher Issac Crespo describes the process: “Our theoretical model first queries…

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-22/medtronic-insulin-pump-cuts-deadly-night-blood-sugar-lows.html Medtronic has designed an insulin pump that temporarily shuts off when blood sugar levels fall too low—a key advance in the effort to fully automate the delivery of insulin in diabetes patients.  Current technology allows people who use insulin pumps to wear a sensor that measures the amount of blood sugar in the body, which…

http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/108/ Harvard researchers are developing a device that could be used to rapidly remove pathogens from the blood of patients with sepsis.  The dialysis-like machine acts as an artificial spleen, filtering the blood using injectable magnetic nanobeads engineered to stick to microorganisms and toxins.  After the beads are injected, blood is removed and run through a…

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130524-zapping-bacteria-the-wireless-way Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois has created bio-absorbable electronic circuits which could be implanted into wounds and powered wirelessly to destroy bacteria during healing before dissolving harmlessly into body fluids once their job is done.  Rogers and others have previously reported biodegradable flexible circuits and electronic devices that can be safely laid directly…

http://phys.org/news/2013-04-d-printer-synthetic-tissues.html Oxford University scientists have created a custom-built programmable 3D printer that can create materials with several of the properties of living tissues. The new type of material consists of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies. These printed ‘droplet…

http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibm_predictions_for_future/ideas/index.html IBM published its annual report, this year focusing on the five basic senses.  Highlighted future abilities of computers include: -the ability to identify distinctive image features, foregoing the need for tags -the development a sense of taste -smelling computers that detect explosives in the public and cancer in our bodies -touch sensitivity, allowing us…

http://blogs.computerworld.com/healthcare-it/21405/top-four-trends-will-shape-digital-health As we approach 2013, the following trends continue to spawn companies, investment, and technologies: The proliferation of personalized mobile health technologies.  The maturation of the Big Data ecosystem in health care. The rise of health startup accelerators. The emergence of health care exchange and alternative care delivery platforms.