Helpful Medical Inventions
Nowadays much of the effort in the medical sector is dedicated to developing new medical equipment that will help people and save a lot of lives. There have been created a lot of devices and machines, which have demonstrated their utility in the healthcare practice and hospitals all over the world, as well as private practice offices that have decided to buy them and use them to the immediate benefit of their patients.
As an example, an easy to use and extremely beneficial tool is the clamp used in case of traumatic bleeding. This small device was inspired by the common hair clip and it is capable of stopping the traumatic bleeding. In the same time it was created as an easy to use medical tool, having very small dimensions.
The entire world was shaking with fear in 2009 due to the H1N1 flu endemic. Back then an interesting micro fluidic chip was invented, and it has proved to be extremely useful in the screening procedures. Doctors started to use the chip as it was a cheaper, easier to use and provided a much faster method of detecting the virus.
Measuring the temperature can be nowadays done a lot easier using a smaller device that can be plugged into the iPhone. When directed to the forehead, the device records the temperature of the person. The same invention can be also used to measure the air temperature in a room or even outside.
Malaria is still present in many parts of the globe and HIV takes the lives of many people worldwide. And the methods of testing the presence of the viruses were until recently very costly. But today, with the help of an origami paper device which is printed using specific substances, the presence of the viruses can be a lot more easily detected with the help of urine, saliva or blood.
The print on the paper turns to different colors depending on the presence of the viruses in the organism of the patients that are tested using the origami paper element. The procedure is rapid and a lot less costly.
People with a locomotor handicap have not been neglected, as medical inventors have created a new type of wheel chair vehicle that can get to narrow spaces and can be operated in all possible directions. The new chair is operated with the help of a hand held controller.
The classical method of helping people with burns meant the removal of the damaged tissue and replacing it with grafts. For decades this was a method that helped people, but also a method that in several cases led to complications of many sorts, like speech problems, deformities and the need of many surgeries.
Today doctors are using a new technique of smart biomass, which implies wearing a face shape shell that contains electrical and mechanical components. This shell is worn over a longer period of time, during which the wounds heal and stem cells are pumped into the damaged areas in order to help regeneration. There is hope that this method will be more rapid and will decrease the number of surgeries that a burned patient needs in order to have an almost normal life.
Persons that have suffered paralysis of the body and that can no longer use their arms and legs have used until now the sip and puff method in order to communicate using a straw. A recent discovery is going to help these patients a lot, as they can now use their tongue in order to communicate with the world outside of them. Magnets are put inside the tongue, and with the use of some sensors, different messages can be detected and sent to a wheelchair or even a computer.
The idea of introducing tiny devices that can travel in the blood of one person was once only a movie element, but nowadays this can be done. Very small mechanisms can be launched into the blood of one person and they can be powered without any wires, by electromagnetic waves. Once these small elements reach the desired area in the body, they can perform different activities, like diagnosing the medical problem, removing a blood clot, radiate the tumor. The devices prove to be useful in case of patients with cancer, for example, whose lives can be prolonged and the usual side effects of classic radiotherapy can thus be eliminated.
Persons that suffer from dementia, Alzheimer and other cognitive deteriorating diseases can now be helped a lot due to an interesting invention, the GPS shoes. Once the shoes are on, you will always know where the person is, so the risk of getting lost is reduced to zero.
Inventors in this domain have also thought of prematurely born babies, who are usually struggling to maintain their body temperature to the needed value. These babies do not have the necessary fat under the skin to help them feel warm, so they can die if they aren’t assisted.
While an incubator costs about 20,000 USD, a new invention that does pretty much the same thing is a lot cheaper, costing about thirty dollars. The device looks like a sleeping bag, can be easily sterilized and is made out of a special phase change wax material that radiates heat throughout the insulation.
After placing it for a quarter of an hour in hot water, it can be placed into the blanket, keeping a constant temperature for about four hours, and thus helping the premature baby survive with a minimum cost.
Scientists at Harvard have invented contact lenses that can also medicate the sick eye. A regular dose of medicine is released into the eye based on the doctor’s prescription. This process can last up to one month. Doctors agree that eye drops are in many cases inefficient, as only up to 7 percent of the medication thus given to the patient is absorbed by the sick and needy eye.
There are also contact lenses that were made so that they can measure glucose levels in the organism. The lenses change their color when the glucose level in the blood changes. This method will replace the blood checking of the sugar values, which is more difficult, painful and generally more complicated than wearing eye lenses.