Health tech

As the Ravens take on the 49ers in New Orleans this weekend during the 47th Super Bowl, physicians will be on the lookout for more head injuries. There were over 160 in the 2012-13 NFL season, and it's become a larger problem as players get bigger and stronger.

The problem is that many concussions go undetected. Impakt Protective's Shockbox is a helmet g-force sensor that measures the impact a player sustains and gauges whether a medical assessment is in order.

The device can fit into any helmet with space amid the interior padding so that it's right … Read more

Some see, not to mention make, art in unusual places. And so it is with U.K.-based musician Sivu, who is letting viewers peer inside his mind while he sings -- literally.

Reportedly inspired by the work being done on children born with cleft lips and palates at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, Sivu lay in an MRI scanner for almost three hours and sang his new single, "Better Man Than He," repeatedly. The resulting music video is an edit of that footage, relying on nothing but the relatively new real-time medical imaging technique often used … Read more

Judging by the number of weird sleep aid devices on the market, people must be desperate to catch a few quality winks. Getting in a decent nap is even harder when you're on the go. So far, we've seen a pillow that swallows your head and a neck contraption that holds your chin up. Now, meet the Relax Ally.

The Relax Alley on Indiegogo is described as a "travel restband." At first glance, it looks like a sporty headband you might wear to participate in a tennis tournament. Look closer and you see it has another band attached at the back. That second band hooks over the headrest of your seat. Tighten it up and your head is held in place.… Read more

When the Country Fire Authority in Victoria, Australia, noticed that its firefighters were showing signs of heat stress even when their ear thermometer probes were reading normal temperatures, they decided it was time to find a better gauge in the hopes of preventing heat-related illnesses.

So they tested a smart pill on 50 firefighters evacuating 20 people from a burning medical center, and have already used the readings to change firefighter work patterns, including how long they're exposed to blazes, according to the Australian Associated Press.… Read more

There are many ways of discovering just how bad the flu is in your area. You and all your friends and co-workers could get sick. You could hear about it on the local news. Or you could check Esri's social-media flu map tracking tweets, YouTube videos, and Flickr photos having to do with Flu Invasion 2013.

The nice part of the Esri map is you can check it from the sterile safety of your own home where you've locked yourself up in a hermetically sealed environment with weeks worth of Spam and Top Ramen to tide you over until flu season subsides.… Read more

Some 10 million people around the world seek treatment for head trauma every year, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) is predicted to become the world's third leading cause of death and disability by 2020.

The Infrascanner Model 2000, a portable intracranial hematoma detector, just may put a dent in the death rate if it helps to quickly spot potential brain bleeds in TBI victims.

The handheld device, recently approved for both military and civilian use by the FDA, uses near-infrared (NIR) tech on eight different points of the brain. Because there is a higher concentration of hemoglobin in a … Read more

We've seen fitness trackers before, but here's one with impressive smarts. The Amiigo can automatically identify more than 100 activities with custom algorithms.

Amiigo is a waterproof bracelet and shoe clip that not only counts how many bicep curls or golf swings you do, but monitors your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, skin temperature, activity level, and the number of calories burned, according to the gadget's crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

Sensors and machine-learning algorithms identify the exercise you're performing, and store the data in the device before uploading it to your mobile device. The tech can discriminate between running on the treadmill, for instance, and exercising on an elliptical machine. … Read more

Meet the "apparatus for treating obesity by extracting food." That's what Dean Kamen's stomach pump is called in a recently granted U.S. patent, and it looks a lot less fun than Kamen's most famous invention, the Segway.

The good part is you can eat anything you like. The bad part is you have to get a tube put into your stomach and then suck the food out with a gadget called the AspireAssist.

Kamen and a team of physicians developed the pump as an obesity treatment that's reversible and, as they describe it, "minimally invasive." … Read more

Without the aid of a timer, how likely are you to brush your teeth for the recommended two minutes?

Not very, according to the folks behind a new smart toothbrush, the Beam Brush. They say the average person spends only 46 seconds brushing their teeth, but that a simple timer makes them 50 percent more likely to reach the two-minute mark.

So their Bluetooth-enabled brush, which debuted a year ago at CES, got FDA approval in June, and became available as of last week for $49.99, includes not only a sensor to track frequency and duration of brushing but also a timer that can play the user's music of choice for two minutes.… Read more