health tech

LAS VEGAS--Those who scoured the health and wellness zones at CES both this year and last may be wondering why they came at all in 2012. Many of the gadgets and services were either already in the works last year or being held behind the curtain for future reveals.

Within the designated Fitness TechZone in the North Hall, a few sub- or satellite genres were nearly empty or devoid of cutting-edge tech. Being six months pregnant, I had a personal interest in Mommy Tech this year. Yet when I approached BabyPlus(one of the only booths in the tiny Mommy … Read more

Sometimes people ask me to look at frightfully exciting things.

These normally come via the incomprehensible medium of the press release. However, sometimes I get sent things (in this case, via an e-mail from my louche engineer friend George) describing a new invention that seems positively useful and even vaguely comprehensible.

This thing is called the SkyLight. It allows you to take your iPhone, Android phone, or any other that might still exist and turn it into a microscopic eyepiece for the world.

Its creator is medical designer Andy Miller. He has already designed the Global Focus microscope, a light, cheap fluorescent microscope for developing countries. … Read more

Sarah Churman is the unlikeliest Internet star. The Texas stay-at-home mom of two little girls has somewhat ordinary interests--she loves to read, watch movies, and attend concerts with her husband of almost 10 years, Sloan.

But on September 26 of this year, Churman was catapulted to YouTube fame due to an intimate, home movie that went viral. She was born deaf. But on that day, she heard her own voice for the very first time. The 91-second video clip brought this viewer goosebumps, tears, and an empathy for this remarkable woman.

When I interviewed Sarah and Sloan Churman at medical offices in San Jose, Calif., she explained to me that the deaf community tends to be divided into two categories: those who want to use technology to restore their hearing and those who try to make the most of life without it. She is very firmly rooted in the first camp and has spent a good deal of her adult life researching the latest hearing devices to come onto the market. In May 2011, Churman heard a radio ad for Envoy Medical's Esteem implant. That set the balls in motion for a summer of hope, frustration, high emotion, and ultimately, success. … Read more

I don't trust chiropractors.

They always seem to find the sorts of pain solutions that require you to spend the rest of your life visiting a chiropractor.

In fact, if you walked into many a chiropractor's office and said you were suffering at the hands of a redneck, they surely wouldn't think twice before laying you down and twisting your neck toward Texas and then back.

I am not surprised, therefore, that the chiropractic profession has come up with a brand-new ailment: text neck.

This is, apparently, caused by stretching your neck unreasonably in order to send … Read more

"The laughter felt loud," said Sarah Churman.

It's impossible for anyone who isn't deaf to even imagine how it might feel to hear laughter for the first time. Or, indeed, your own voice.

Yet Churman's husband decided to film the moment. He then posted it to YouTube.

In the notes to the video, Churman explained that hearing aids only help so much. Eight weeks ago, however, she was given an Esteem implant, made by Envoy Medical.

The device itself is placed behind the ear and no part of it is visible. It doesn't have … Read more

Combine the words "vibrator," "touch," and "heightened sensitivity," and the subject is obvious, right? A tricked-out glove that heightens your sense of touch.

The glove, developed by Georgia Tech researchers, includes a tiny vibrator that sits on the side of your finger. Turn the vibrator so low that you don't quite notice it vibrating, and voila, your fingertip is more sensitive to touch.

Prototype tests showed that the heightened-sensitivity glove enabled people to sense lighter touches and distinguish sensory points that were closer together than they could without it. People correctly distinguished among different fineness levels of sandpaper 15 percent more often with the glove.

The glove could help surgeons and others who rely on a fine sense of touch, and it could help people with an impaired sense of touch.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--CES 2011 was the first to group sports and fitness tech into a dedicated zone, appropriately named the Fitness TechZone. The overarching theme throughout these booths (and those at the neighboring Mommy Tech zone) has been about mobile monitoring (of heart rate, memory skills, anxiety levels, sleeping babies, and more).

Unfortunately, even among the coolest booths, it was hard to find any truly new and exciting tech. Everything felt like a spin-off or extension of previous years' unveilings. It seems that we're still a few years off from, for instance, heart-rate monitors that don't require those finicky … Read more

We all have some kind of relationship with our bodies.

Sometimes, let's admit, it can be abusive. We put cupcakes, cocaine, cognac, cauliflower, and cigarette smoke in there (well, not always all at once), and we somehow expect our bodies to love it.

One man, though, has perhaps stood above all others when it comes to testing the body's limits. That is Ozzy Osbourne, former lead singer of Black Sabbath, husband of Sharon, and one-time spokesman for World of Warcraft.

Osbourne has, at least in the past, thought nothing of a live bat as hors d'oeuvre, a … Read more

Here's one for the important-but-obvious files.

New research at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York finds that medical professionals writing prescriptions by hand are seven times more likely to make errors than those using electronic systems.

Researchers looked at prescriptions written by health care providers at 12 community practices in the Hudson Valley region of New York. They compared the number and severity of the found errors between 15 providers who wrote prescriptions by hand and 15 who used a commercial system that provides dosing recommendations and checks for drug allergies, duplicates, and combination effects.

The researchers inspected … Read more