Tag: Health

A dating app is bringing people with disabilities together. Now, an Ottawa-based startup is ensuring people with physical disabilities get the help they need by connecting them with caregivers on a new digital platform. It might be personal hygiene, cleaning and cooking. But equally shopping, collecting the post and providing speedy assistance when clients’ potentially height-adjustable, electric wheelchairs break...

A research camera supplies high-quality images from near and far. Doctors also need a keen eye. For example, when analysing the 70,000 pictures captured by a camera capsule that serve as an alternative to traditional endoscopies. A huge amount of images for humans to process. Cue a Montreal-based startup which has trained an artificial intelligence using 4.9 million images...

Records from sugarcane are good for the environment. Chocolate, meanwhile, is good for our mood - even if too much sugar is unhealthy. But who said sugar was necessary to make chocolate? A Zurich-based research team dried the fibre-rich innermost layer of the cocoa hull - called the endocarp - and ground it to powder. Next the pulp from...

Internal wounds could be closed by a robot with an integrated 3D-printer. Sometimes, however, a blood transfusion is required. Here, blood type and Rh factor must be identical for donor and patient, although type 0 can generally be used for types A, B and AB. Need is unpredictable, and donated blood can only be stored for 42 days. Now,...

Vaccination patches could be printed locally. Now, a long-term study is offering hope to those who suffer from bacterial urinary infections. Over a 9-year period, a British medical team observed the effects of a spray (containing different types of bacteria) administered under the tongue to 72 women and 17 men. All had suffered previously from UTIs  and took a...

Self-dissolving medical aids can heal external wounds or restore defective heart valves. Now, using the body’s natural mechanisms, a Canadian-based research team has developed a similar concept to treat corneal abrasions. A certain amount of the enzyme MMP-9 is found naturally in the eye. Released in quantities that are proportional to the wound’s size, it helps the cornea to...

Pullovers from oyster shells are no sailor’s yarn. Mussels can also be a useful medical aid as a South Korean research team has proved with its biodegradable adhesive patch. To make it, they combined sticky proteins from the shellfish with two polymers: polyacryl and sodium salt. When dry, the patch is not adhesive. Instead, its adhesive effect comes into...

An armband could make hot flushes easier to manage. Those engaging in hormone-free birth control mostly use condoms or the coil. The latter, however, have barely changed in design for fifty years. Reason enough for a female-led US startup to develop a new model. The team’s solution comprises 3 copper-coated elliptical parts which each have a magnetic plus and...