In the 1970s and 1980s, tissue engineers began working on growing replacement organs for transplantation into patients. While scientists are still targeting that goal, much of the tissue engineering research at MIT is also focused on creating tissue that can be used in the lab to model human disease and test potential new drugs. Continue reading

A "smart" prosthetic foot and ankle system uses microprocessor technology and a smartphone app that allows the device to adjust to a user's needs by responding to the environment or taking orders directly from the patient. Continue reading

CIMIT grant announcements for the 2013 Student Technology Prize for Primary Care and 2013 Young Clinician Awards. Continue reading

Bryan Laulicht, a postdoc in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer have now joined Karp in developing a new type of medical tape that can be removed without damaging delicate skin. Continue reading

A team of researchers from MIT, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) demonstrate for the first time that this battery could power implantable electronic devices without impairing hearing. Continue reading

An experimental device that converts energy from a beating heart could provide enough electricity to power a pacemaker. Such pacemakers could eliminate the need for surgeries to replace pacemakers with depleted batteries. Continue reading

CIMIT COO and Technology Implementation Director John Collins, PhD, is speaking about CIMIT and CIMIT CoLab™ at the "Blueprints for Innovation in Academia" panel discussion on Monday, November 12 from 9:20-10:30 a.m. Continue reading

The 1st Annual IEEE Healthcare Innovation Conference, sponsored by the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), will be held in Houston, Texas from November 7-9, 2012 at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute. CIMIT's Michael K. Dempsey, Entrepreneur in Residence and Accelerator Program Leader, is speaking at the Commercialization Keynote Panel to discuss the future of healthcare commercialization on Friday, November 9 from 2:15-3:45 p.m. Continue reading

At hospitals around the country, mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet computers, are becoming critical to efficient and precise patient care. Continue reading

MIT researchers have built a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving. The prototype system, described in a paper slated for the Intelligent Robots and Systems conference in Portugal next month, is envisioned as a tool to help emergency responders coordinate disaster response. Continue reading

Engineers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have created a new imaging tool for primary care physicians: a handheld scanner that would enable them to image all the sites they commonly examine, and more, such as bacterial colonies in the middle ear in 3-D, or monitor the thickness and health of patients' retinas. Continue reading

As consumers we want our electronic gadgets to be durable. But as patients, we might want them to dissolve - inside our bodies. Scientists reported Thursday that they succeeded in creating tiny medical devices sealed in silk cocoons that did the work they were designed for, then dissolved in the bodies of lab mice. It's an early step in a technology that may hold promise, not only for medicine, but also for disposal of electronic waste. Continue reading

Recently FDA approved S-ICD System provides an alternative for treating patients with life-threatening heart arrhythmias for whom the routine ICD placement procedure is not ideal. Some patients with anatomy that makes it challenging to place one of the implantable defibrillators currently on the market may especially benefit from this device. Continue reading

ITIF panel discussion about the mHealth (mobile health) Task Force recommendations for leveraging wireless health and e-Care solutions to improve healthcare quality, access and efficiency. Continue reading

A laser device for less painful injections has been developed by South Korean scientists. The system could replace traditional needles, with a jab as painless as being hit with a puff of air. Continue reading

Imagine, for instance, bioengineered cyborg blood vessels that could sense glucose levels and activate an implanted insulin pump, or nanoscale pacemakers coupled to nanoscale defibrillators within artificial heart tissue. Continue reading

A team of researchers from MIT, Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital has now added a new element to tissue scaffolds: electronic sensors. These sensors, made of silicon nanowires, could be used to monitor electrical activity in the tissue surrounding the scaffold, control drug release or screen drug candidates for their effects on the beating of heart tissue. Continue reading

Digestible sensors that can report medication adherence and vital signs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The ingestible sensor can transmit information about the patient to medical professionals and help them customize care. Continue reading

New app is streamlining and improving emergency care at Children's Hospital Boston. BEAPPER — Bidirectional Electronic Alert Patient-Centered Provider Encounter Record — provides real time updates about patients to doctors and nurses in the Emergency Department. Continue reading

A computer science student at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire has created a working prototype of a biometric bracelet that can identify who's wearing it and send medical information right to the patient's medical record. Continue reading

Researchers at MIT, Harvard, and Seoul National University have created a robotic worm—the Meshworm, as it’s called. Sangbae Kim, a mechanical engineer at MIT who led the Meshworm project, says he believes the technology could be used to make endoscopes and implants, among other devices. Continue reading

The concept of medical devices that patients can use themselves is accelerating because consumers are accustomed to using the Internet to gather information. Adjustable prostheses and other high-tech devices may benefit patients who have a tendency to ignore or delay care, but they also raise concerns that they could give patients a false sense of security. Continue reading

A group of Canadian scientists has developed a new sequencing approach to provide a more effective, low cost method of BRCA1/2 mutational analysis. Their work is published in the September issue of The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. Continue reading

Researchers created an artificial jellyfish made partly of biological materials. The jellyfish, which acts a pump when it swims, is a first step toward building artificial hearts. Continue reading

Harvard's Robotically Steerable Thermal Ablation Probe is a device designed to help minimize the number of injections required when treating something like a tumor. Continue reading