Moxi, a socially intelligent mobile nurse’s aide robot designed by Austin-based Diligent Robotics, has been successfully integrated in a Texas hospital. Moxi retrieves and transports items and delivers supplies, but has no direct patient interaction.

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An algorithm developed by scientists at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley did better than two out of four expert radiologists at finding tiny brain hemorrhages in head scans. It took one second to determine whether an entire head scan contained any signs of hemorrhage. It also traced the detailed outlines of the abnormalities it found.

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The problem with 3D-printing is that, although it provides a string of advantages to the legitimate manufacturers, it also provides the same kind of benefit to the counterfeiters, making it extremely difficult to separate counterfeit designs from legitimate ones.

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Researchers from Clinatec and the University of Grenoble report that a man has been able to move all four of his paralysed limbs with a mind-controlled exoskeleton suit. Surgery places two implants on the surface of the brain, covering the parts of the brain that control movement. 64 electrodes on each implant read brain activity and beam the instructions to a nearby computer which controls the suit.

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A doctor in India has performed a series of 5 successful percutaneous coronary intervention procedures on patients who were 20 miles away, using a precision vascular robot developed by Corindus. Telemedicine is an emerging field, leveraging advances in networking, robotics, mixed reality, and communications technologies to beam in medical experts to remote locations for everything from consultations to surgical procedures.

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Designing an effective surgical instrument requires multiple prototypes in stainless steel, each costing $5-10,000, and taking weeks to produce. With 3D printing, prototypes cost about $100 each, and are completed within days.

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IBM, Walmart, KPMG, and Merck were chosen by the US Food and Drug Administration to run a pilot project using blockchain to identify, track, and trace prescription medications and vaccines distributed in the US. The pilot is intended to quickly identify suspicious products and speed the recall process.

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Shoppers Drug Mart plans to use blockchain technology to trace the source of the cannabis it distributes, as part of an effort to set standards for the flourishing industry. It is teaming up with Canadian software firm TruTrace to develop and deploy a pilot project to ensure the traceability of medical cannabis.

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A forecast of technological change in what being human means, including tiny wireless brain implants called neurograins; CRISPR genetic editing; the elimination of death; and the associated ethical questions.

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Researchers at Stanford University have created predictive AI to detect the likelihood of aneurysms in three-dimensional brain scans with high accuracy, although this advance will not be available for years. The search for an aneurysm is one of the most labor-intensive and critical tasks radiologists undertake.

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Danial Tse, a researcher at Google, and colleagues trained a deep-learning algorithm to detect malignant lung nodules in more than 42,000 CT scans. The resulting algorithms turned up 11% fewer false positives and 5% fewer false negatives than their human counterparts. The work is described in a paper published in Nature.

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Bioengineers from Rice University and the University of Washington, with other collaborators, have cleared a major hurdle on the path to 3D-printing replacement organs with a breakthrough technique for bioprinting tissues. The new innovation allows scientists to create exquisitely entangled vascular networks that mimic the body’s natural passageways for blood, air, lymph and other vital fluids.

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Bioengineers led by Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital describe a robotic catheter that can navigate autonomously. The catheter found its way along the walls of a beating, blood-filled heart to a leaky valve in an animal model, without a surgeon’s involvement. The device could eliminate the need for fluoroscopic imaging in these types of valve repairs, which exposes patients to ionizing radiation.

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A custom-built drone with eight rotors to ensure stability and a special apparatus to control the environment, delivered a donor kidney to surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center, ferrying it from a hospital about three miles away. The kidney was then successfully transplanted into a patient with renal failure. It’s the first time a drone has been used to drop off an organ for a transplant.

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The device scans a patient’s retina to diagnose potential issues in real time. The images are analyzed by DeepMind’s algorithms, which return a detailed diagnosis in about 30 seconds. The prototype system can detect a range of diseases, including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration – as accurately as top eye specialists. It may be several years before it is widely available.

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Neuroscientists have designed a device that can transform brain signals into speech, modelling the vocal system. Making the leap from single syllables to sentences is technically quite challenging and makes the device impressive. The device transforms brain signals into estimated movements of the vocal tract, and turns these movements into synthetic speech. People who listened to 101 synthesized sentences could understand 70% of the words.

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Scientists at Tel Aviv University have 3D-printed a small heart using human tissue that includes vessels, collagen, and biological molecules — a breakthrough that they hope could one day render organ donation obsolete.

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Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Screening has a 96% false positive rate. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and its Hillman Cancer Center used a machine learning algorithm to substantially reduce false positives without missing a single case of cancer.

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New research from Guangzhou, China, created a natural-language processing AI that is capable of out-performing rookie pediatricians in diagnosing common childhood ailments, using the same deductive reasoning that the doctors use. Currently, experienced pediatricians out-performed the AI.

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Vicarious Surgical, a Massachusetts start-up backed by Bill Gates and other high-tech company founders, is developing technology for remote surgery. A small robot will be inserted into a patient’s body, and controlled by a remotely-located surgeon using a virtual reality headset.

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National Institutes of Health and Global Good researchers have developed a deep-learning algorithm that analyzes digital images of a woman’s cervix, and accurately identifies pre-cancerous changes that require medical attention. The algorithm was better at identifying pre-cancer than a human expert reviewer of Pap tests under the microscope.

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Five progressive digital trends for healthcare in 2019 and beyond: 1. Artificial Intelligence (Medical diagnosis, Pharmaceutical product development, Workflow optimization); 2. Big Data & Analytics; 3. The Internet of Medical Things; 4. Telemedicine; 5. VR/AR (Emergency response, Prevention and diagnostics, Surgery, Education, Rehabilitation and emotional recovery).

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A new AI algorithm can reliably screen chest X-rays for 14 different pathologies: For 10, the algorithm performed just as well as radiologists; for 3, it underperformed them; and for 1, it outdid them. In all cases, the algorithm took <1% time. Show full article

University of Utah biomedical engineers have developed a method to 3-D-print cells to produce human tissue such as ligaments and tendons, a process that will greatly improve a patient’s recovery.

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City University of Boulder engineers have developed a 3D-printing technique that allows for localized control of an object’s firmness, opening up new biomedical avenues that could one day include artificial arteries and organ tissue. The layer-by-layer printing method features fine-grain, programmable control over rigidity, allowing researchers to mimic the complex geometry of blood vessels that are highly structured and yet must remain pliable.

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Orthopaedic surgeons are using scans of actual patient anatomy to 3D-print model bones on which to plan and practice procedures.

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Of the 500,000 deaths worldwide caused by breast cancer, an estimated 90% are the result of metastasis. Researchers at the Naval Medical Center San Diego and Google AI have developed algorithms that autonomously evaluate lymph node biopsies, achieving 99% detection accuracy (compared with human pathologists, who may miss small metastases as much as 62% when under time constraints).

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AI chatbot apps, such as Babylon Health, a London-based digital-first health-care provider that is working within the National Health Service, are designed to reduce unnecessary visits to general practitioners, while providing immediate medical advice. Babylon’s AI scored 81% on a version of the final exam of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners (UK), 9% higher than the average grade achieved by UK medical students.

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National University of Singapore researchers used the CURATE.platform to deliver optimal doses of medication and halt the progression of a patient’s advanced prostate cancer.

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An Australian research study used a cmbination of machine learning algorithms to accurately predict social outcomes one year later in up to 83% of patients at high risk of psychosis and 70% of patients with recent-onset depression.

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A summary of the issues relating to the use of surgical robots from the robotics research wing of the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Differences in implementation are reviewed between the US’ private health system and the UK’s public National Health System.

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Researchers from the University of Minnesota have used 3D-printing technologies to create light receptors on a hemispherical surface, a “significant step” towards the creation of synthetic eyes which could either restore sight for the blind or improve levels of sight for the visually impaired.

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A team of engineering and medicine researchers at the University of Central Florida has recently developed a new AI system to spot often-missed cancerous tumours on computerised tomography scans. It was 95% successful (compared with 65% for radiologists).

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Researchers from Google Brain and Stanford University are using big data and deep-learning methods to predict the fate of inpatients, including death; readmissions to measure quality of care; a patient’s length of stay to measure of resource utilization; and a prediction of a patient’s diagnoses to see how well clinicians understood a patient’s problems.

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Advances in 3D printers, materials and other technology have enabled manufacturers to design and deliver custom-made, high-resolution 3D-printed implants on patient demand.

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German researchers at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (Berlin) and the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel) have developed a neural network that can spot the signs of myocardial infarction, matching the performance of human cardiologists for the first time.

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The Auris Health’s Monarch™ Platform lets specialists using a minimally-invasive endoscope see inside the lungs, obtain a tissue sample for biopsy, and enable earlier, more accurate diagnosis of small and hard-to-reach nodules in the periphery of the lung.

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Researchers in Germany, the USA and France trained a deep learning convolutional neural network to identify skin cancer by showing it more than 100,000 images of malignant melanomas, as well as benign moles. Its performance was better than that of 58 international dermatologists.

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The University of Pennsylvania performed the first-ever robot-assisted spinal surgery, using Da Vinci’s robotic arms to remove a rare tumor where a spine meets a. The successful two-day operation involved neurosurgeons preparing the spine using ultrasonic cuts, and the robot clearing a path for removing the tumor through the mouth.

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‘Deep learning’ computers in Case Western Reserve university’s diagnostic imaging lab routinely defeat their human counterparts in detecting various cancers and predicting their strength. Case studies:
• Diagnosing heart failure: 97% accuracy c.f. 74% for two pathologists.
• Distinguishing benign from malignant lung nodules on CAT scans: 5-8% superior to two human experts.
• Prostate cancer scans: computational imaging algorithms detected cancer in an MRI scan in >70% of cases where radiologists missed and correctly detected no cancer in 50% of cases where radiologists reported cancer.

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UC San Francisco research showed that advanced machine learning can classify essential views from heart ultrasound tests faster, more accurately, and with less data than board-certified echocardiographers.180,000 real-world echocardiogram images were used to train a computer to assess the most common echocardiogram views. Both the computer and skilled human technicians were tested on new samples. The computers accurately assessed images 91.7-97.8% of the time, versus 70.2-83.5% for the technicians.

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Confirmation of a prostate cancer diagnosis normally requires a biopsy sample to be examined by a pathologist. Chinese researchers have developed an AI system with similar levels of accuracy to pathologists, while accurately classifying the level of malignancy of cancer, eliminating the variability which can creep into human diagnoses.

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Johnson & Johnson announced the acquisition of French Orthotaxy, a developer of robot-assisted orthopedic surgery solutions, including for knee replacements, for which about 780,000 are performed in the US annually. There’s currently a rush to develop new robot-assisted surgical devices, in the areas of laparoscopy, pediatrics, and minimally-invasive surgeries on delicate tissues, such as the lungs.

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Researchers at UC San Diego, with colleagues in China, Germany, and Texas, have developed a new computational tool to screen patients with possible macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema. Machine-derived diagnoses were compared with diagnoses from 5 ophthalmologists who reviewed the same scans. With simple training, the machine performed similar to the ophthalmologists, generating a decision on whether or not the patient should be referred for treatment within 30 seconds, with more than 95 percent accuracy.

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A recent study from researchers at the Singapore National Eye Center showed that deep learning software, built to recognize and classify retinal images, was reliable in recognizing diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration. This can potentially reduce 80 percent of the workload of graders and optometrists, freeing up their time for treatment.

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Stanford researchers trained a convolutional neural network to detect abnormalities (like fractures, or bone degeneration) better than radiologists in finger and wrist radiographs. (However, radiologists were still better at spotting issues in elbows, forearms, hands, upper arms, and shoulders.) Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent AI researcher, told the New Yorker that advances in AI mean that medical schools “should stop training radiologists now.”

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An 84-year-old Chinese patient recently received a knee-revision surgery with the implantation of the first 3D-printed tantalum knee joint in the world. Personalized 3D printed tantalum joints create better compactness, helping assure the initial stability of the implantation, simplify the surgery procedure, reduce the surgery time and risk of complication.

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Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong have built a micro-scale robot swimmer made from spirulina, a green-blue alga, which is biocompatible and, being shaped like a coiled spring, is very maneuverable. Coating the alga with iron oxide nanoparticles tracks its position via its fluorescent glow, while shallow, or using nuclear magnetic resonance. Next step is to train the robots to deliver drugs.

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A partnership between Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and medical device company Anatomics resulted in the first successful implantation of a 3D printed titanium and polymer sternal and rib cage in a New York patient. Anatomics’ ‘PoreStar’ technology, a unique porous polyethylene material provided “bone-like” architecture to facilitate tissue integration.

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Two Caltech researchers have developed a prototype microscale processor that can respond to magnetic fields as atoms in the human body do under MRI, thereby demonstrating their exact location and delivering drugs exactly the site they’re needed, with sub-millimeter precision. ATOMS (Addressable Transmitters Operated as Magnetic Spins) devices can give its location accurate to 360 microns. Next steps are to add sensors to transmit data as it travels, and to handle disposal when finished.

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A form of robotic-guided spine surgery results in a 5-fold reduction in surgical complications and a 7-fold reduction in revision surgeries compared to freehand methods. That’s according to the interim results of a multi-center prospective study that includes 379 spine surgery patients. The guided-surgery tech used in the spinal surgery study is called the Renaissance Guided System by Mazor Robotics. Mazor is a publicly-traded Israeli company.

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A robot dentist created in China has successfully performed dental surgery on a patient without human input. The robot implanted two artificial teeth within the margin of error required for the specific type of operation it was performing. The artificial teeth were created using 3D printing technology. Medical staff were needed to position orientation equipment, program the robot’s movements, and determine the angle and depth needed to properly implant the teeth.

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Switzerland will be the first country in the developed world to have permanent drone networks, with drones flying through urban airspace near busy international airports. Permanent drone delivery networks are already in use in Africa, where drones send units of blood for transfusions to remote clinics in Rwanda, and will soon deliver other medical supplies such as antimalarial drugs and emergency vaccines in Tanzania. Matternet, a Silicon Valley-based tech company, designed the drones, along with a cloud system for sending and receiving platforms–and a newly launched system that can autonomously load, launch, and land the drones.

 

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Surgeons at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital have performed world-first surgery, transplanting a 3D printed shinbone into the leg of a man who faced amputation. The surgery ensures there is sufficient blood flow to allow the new bone to grow around the outside of the 3D bone scaffold. The scaffold was modeled at the Queensland University of Technology, where it was “spun” from a polymer, and then ‘printed’ in Singapore. As the new bone grows around the scaffold, the scaffold will slowly dissolve.

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Caltech scientists have developed the proof-of-concept for a “cargo sorting” DNA nanorobot programmed to autonomously “walk” around a surface, pick up certain molecules, and drop them off in designated locations. Future uses could include creating programmable drugs or delivering them when a specific signal is received in the bloodstream or cells.

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Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the University of Wollongong have 3D-printed human-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), using a custom bio-ink. This flexible 3D tissue engineering technology enables iPSCs generated from an individual’s own body to divide after printing and differentiate allowing the formation and replacement of any tissue type of the body. Once acceptable reliability is achieved, healthy tissue could be manufactured to replace or repair organs that were damaged due to injury or disease.

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The robot has wheels, visual sensors, and an articulating arm appendage. It can perform simple tasks around the house like opening/closing doors and fetching water bottles. Toyota also has projects underway targeting improved mobility for users with limited or impaired capacities, including a wearable robotic leg brace, help for those with sight problems gain improved surrounding awareness, robots to help transfer patients between beds and chairs, and a device to help transfer in/out of car seats.

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David Fleck, an associate professor at the UC College of Medicine, and his co-authors used artificial intelligence called “genetic fuzzy trees” to predict how bipolar patients would respond to lithium. The best of 8 common models used in treating bipolar disorder predicted who would respond to lithium treatment with 75 percent accuracy. By comparison, the AI model was 100% accurate, and even predicted the actual reduction in manic symptoms after lithium treatment with 92% accuracy. Unlike other types of AI, fuzzy logic can describe in simple language why it made its choices. The model could help personalize medicine to individual patients, making health care both safer and more affordable. Fewer side-effects mean fewer hospital visits, less secondary medication, and better treatments.

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University of Florida (UF) researchers have developed a method for 3D-printing soft-silicone medical implants that are stronger, quicker, less expensive, more flexible, and more comfortable than the implants currently available. Create a customized part for an individual patient using the current molding technology is very expensive and take days or weeks. The 3D printing method cuts that time to hours, potentially saving lives.

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Surgeons successfully used a remote-controlled robotic system operating inside the human eye, paving the way for robotic assistance in clinical treatments requiring extreme precision and stability, e.g. Controlled delivery of gene therapy & stem cells.

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Researchers at the University of Utah have developed a computer-driven automated drill, similar to those used to machine auto parts, that produces fast, clean and safe cuts, reducing the time the wound is open and the patient is anesthetized, thereby decreasing the incidence of infection, human error, and surgical cost. The new machine can make one type of complex cranial surgery 50 times faster than standard procedures.

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South Korean researchers have developed a deep-learning neural network that can identify, with 81% accuracy, those likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the next three years. The evidence continues to suggest that deep-learning machines can spot complex conditions earlier and more accurately than humans.

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A team of researchers from the UK University of Nottingham has developed a machine-learning algorithm that can predict your likelihood of having a heart attack or stroke better than a doctor, using ACC/AHA guidelines. The neural network algorithm beat the guidelines by 7.6% while raising 1.6% fewer false alarms.

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Northwestern University mechanical engineering professor Todd Murphey and his team are engineering robots to make robotic assistance seamless by teaching them the tasks that humans do and helping them to adapt to human unpredictability. This approach may be helpful in stroke rehabilitation.

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Natural Dental Implants AG (NDI) announced a 3D-printed tooth replacement, which features an anatomically-shaped, 100% customized, titanium-zirconia tooth, and a customized cover shield designed to protect the tooth during the healing process. This offers patients an immediate, minimally invasive alternative to traditional dental implants and three-unit bridges, which can be modified to overcome anatomical limitations or to meet specific clinical requirements.

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Two hospitals in Lugano have been testing the use of drones to transport laboratory samples. Since mid-March, logistics company Swiss Post has operated more than 70 tests flights and plans a regular service by 2018. It’s the 1st time drones will be used commercially for this purpose in an urban area. The drones are made by American company Matternet, have a load capacity of up to two kilograms, a range of 20 kilometers, and a top speed of 36 kilometers per hour.

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Google has been working on an advanced image-recognition system for several years, initially for the autonomous car project, now for cancer diagnosis. Recently the AI system was pitted against an experienced expert pathologist to examine slides in an unlimited time frame. While the human being achieved 73 percent accuracy, by the end of tweaking, GoogLeNet scored a smooth 89 percent accuracy.

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Panasonic has developed a proof-of-concept robot that boasts “human-like” movements and communication skills. The desktop companion robot connects via Wi-Fi to natural language processing technology. The robot can access and use cloud data and communicate with devices in other locations. The size of a standard kitchen countertop blender, the robot includes an embedded projector that is enclosed within the eggshell-shaped device.

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If astronauts aboard the International Space Station need a medical tool, such as a surgical instrument or a finger splint, they used to wait for a resupply mission. Now, they will use a 3D-printer aboard the ISS. This ground-breaking concept was devised by Toronto doctor Julielynn Wong. In 2011, Wong founded the company 3D4MD, which uses 3D-printing and low-cost technologies to supply remote locations, including space, with healthcare supplies.

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Researchers from Showa University in Yokohama, Japan have built software that can detect bowel cancer in less than a second. In recently-conducted trials, the AI-powered system was able to spot colorectal adenomas – which are benign tumours that can evolve into cancer – from magnified endoscopic images. The images were matched against 30,000 others that were used for machine learning. The system analyzed more than 300 colorectal adenomas in 250 patients, taking less than a second to assess each magnified endoscopic image and determine the malignancy of the tumours with 94 percent accuracy.

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ELDERCARE FORECAST: Smart devices in the home will help with daily living activities (cooking, dressing, toileting). In-home health monitoring and health information access will detect changes in mood or behavior and alert caregivers. Better hearing aids and visual assistive devices will mitigate the effects of hearing and vision loss, improving safety and social connection. Personalized rehabilitation and in-home therapy will reduce the need for hospital or care facility stays. Physical assistive devices (intelligent walkers, wheelchairs, and exoskeletons) will extend the range of activities of an infirm individual.

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A team from the Houston Methodist Research Institute has developed artificial intelligence software that analyzes mammograms for breast cancer with 99% accuracy. This could help keep women from undergoing unnecessary biopsies and would shield them from the agony of false positives.

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