In development for more than five years, WellDoc's DiabetesManager System has just received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 510(k) clearance to be marketed to health care providers and adult patients with type 2 diabetes, the company announced.

A mobile health system, DiabetesManager will offer automated clinical coaching based on real-time patient data, enabling patients and health care professionals to set parameters and manage the disease outside of office visits.

WellDoc announced that it intends to commercially launch the system in early 2011, and will be an exhibitor in the inaugural Mobile Health Pavilion at the … Read more

Scientists at the University of Aberdeen in the U.K. and IBM Research in Zurich say they are the first to use atomic-force microscopy to "see" the unknown molecular structure of a marine compound taken from the deepest place on Earth, a result that could speed up the development of new medicines.

In doing so, researchers discovered that the pressure-tolerant bacterium sampled from the deepest place on the planet--the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, 35,814 feet below sea level--contains the molecular structure cephalandole A, which was originally isolated from a Taiwanese orchid.

The group's findings appear online August 1 … Read more

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y.--When you think about diverse issues like river management during drought, urban traffic prediction, cocoa crop maximization, and how to win at Jeopardy, IBM might not be the first company that comes to mind.

But as unlikely as it might seem, Big Blue has its hands in all four of those areas and many, many more, all part of its IBM Research division, a sprawling organization that seeks to keep the company at the bleeding edge of the world's most pressing technology problems and to help it and its partners develop products aimed at solving … Read more

Are you dreading upgrading your graphics processor yet again just so you can get lost in the alien-infested urban jungle of Crysis 2? Rest assured that the immersive power of these state-of-the-art video processors is now being used for more than just visual pleasure.

A new technique for processing X-rays appears to lower the radiation patients are exposed to during cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans by a factor of 10 or more, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego.

The research is being presented this week at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine's 52nd annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Lead author Xun Jia, a UCSD postdoctoral fellow, based his team's work on recent advances in compressed sensing by developing a CT reconstruction algorithm for graphics processing unit platforms (GPU cards being used for 3D computer graphics, often in video games), thereby increasing computational efficiency to reconstruct a cone beam CT scan in just minutes.… Read more

A patch comprising hundreds of microscopic needles that dissolve into the skin could enable laypeople to administer vaccines not only easily but also painlessly, according to new research out of Georgia Tech and Emory University.

The patch contains roughly an array made of poly-vinyl pyrrolidone with 100 needles that are just 650 microns long. Once pressed into the skin, the microneedles immediately begin to dissolve in bodily fluids, and only the water-soluble backing remains. (Because the backing alone contains nothing sharp, it can simply be thrown away.)

The patches were studied on mice, and the results appeared online in the journal Nature Medicine. … Read more

An emerging technology called Lab-on-Bead could cut years off drug development time, according to new research to be published in the September/October issue of the Journal of Molecular Recognition.

Lab-on-Bead is a diagnostics tool that essentially decorates tiny beads--so small that roughly 1,000 of them could fit across a human hair--with pins designed to join the DNA bar codes of drugs to matching diseases. This process enables researchers to match drugs to diseases in a single step, speeding up drug discovery by up to 10,000 times, the team reports.

"There are an infinite number of possibilities … Read more

A new pair of robotic legs out of New Zealand lets wheelchair users do the improbable--stand, walk, and even go up and down stairs.

Users transfer themselves from their chair into the Robotic Exoskeleton (Rex) by holding on to Rex's legs. They then strap themselves in and use a hand-controlled joystick and control pad to maneuver the battery-powered mobility-assist device on solid, stable surfaces such as those inside the home or workplace. (Rex is not designed for use on slippery or soft surfaces, or in areas containing debris or small objects such as ice, snow, sand, grass, mud, or … Read more

I'll admit it. The seeming lack of scientific evidence that acupuncture actually relieves pain has left me skeptical since I first learned of the ancient Chinese technique. And to this day, it's possible that much of the relief patients feel during and after an acupuncture treatment results from the placebo effect.

But new research published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience finds that the natural compound adenosine, known for its anti-inflammatory properties, floods tissue that is punctured or aggravated, and may be the secret ingredient in acupuncture.

"Acupuncture has been a mainstay of medical treatment in … Read more

The earliest known reference to medicine in pill form dates back to 10th century Arabic medical literature, long after Egyptians were rolling active medicinal agents into breads and clays but some 900 years before the first patent for a tablet was granted in 1843.

Not much about the technology has changed in a millennium of pill production. Each tablet, shaped for swallowing, acts as a carrier of medicine. The active ingredient is typically one-thousandth the volume of the pill, meaning 99.9 percent of a typical pill is essentially filler material or agents that help digest the drug. (It is … Read more