Innovation, enhancement, production and what not! Technology has increased the pace for everything. We used to have just three channels on TV back in our days and now look at the number of them. Medical profession is progressing at a fast rate and that is a good sign since we are moving towards a healthier and safer environment. New procedures are being development everyday, which are becoming less and less hazardous and side-effects are being minimized to almost nothing. This list talks about the top ten medical technologies that promise to revolutionise the world. 10. Anti-Bleeding Gel At number ten, we have a gel that comes from Joe Landolina and Isaac Miller named as Veti-gel. Let’s talk about why this gel is so awesome. Ever heard of extracellular matrix? Well this substance, naturally, helps cells in our bodies to grow. This Veti-Gel mimics this substance and can stop the bleeding instantly. Yes, you read that right. The gel will stop the bleeding and will start the clotting process. So far it has been used on the carotid artery of a rat and on a live liver that had been sliced. This gel can help save a lot of lives especially in the war-zones, by avoiding the blood loss that is generally the cause of death. 9. Magnetic Levitation Artificial tissues for lung can be grown via magnetic levitation. This is something you would expect to hear in a movie or a novel. But here we are, telling you that this is possible! Glauco Souza and his team are to be blamed. They started their research in 2010 and have synthetically, using nano-magnets, grown the most realistice organ tissue ever. What originates in a petri dish- really? Like for real?- grows up into a 3D shape which results in complex cell layers. The growth is a replica of how it happens within human body. This technology promises to bring the creation and transplantation of artificial into main stream treatments. 8. Artificial Cell Mimicry Most of the medical research is directed towards coming up with ways to synthesize human organs and tissues in a lab and then use them in transplantation. So basically, what we are talking about here is production of human spare parts. So, if one of your organ fails, you can just get another one which would work just fine. This whole idea has moved down to cellular level. This particular gel mimics particular cells and their actions. It’s formed as a bunch about four times the width of a DNA double helix. The gel would take place of the cytoskeleton and will replace any cells that have been lost or damaged on the applied area. It allows the healing to continue while blocking the bacteria from entering the wound. 7. Brain Cells from Urine This may sound gross, but in the future you might have to save your pee and let the scientists turn it into your brain cells. Yeah well, as a source it’s freely available and you’d definitely want to use your own urine rather someone else’s. Okay, enough of that. Scientists were using embryonic cells for this purpose before but the side-effects were the formation of tumor. However, they have tested this procedure and the results are so far good. The implantation were successful with cells converting into neutrons without any mutations. 6. Electric Underwear Err, yeah we know-awkward. Bear with us, eh? Okay, so patients who have to stay on beds for days or weeks or months are likely to develop bed sores. Bed sores are basically open wounds formed by the lack of circulation and compressed skin. Now this may come as a surprise, but roughly about sixty thousand people die each year because of these bed sores in America. Canadian researcher Sean Dukelow, has come up with the solution; the electric underpants. These underpants also known as Smart E Pants deliver a small electric charge every ten minutes and that much is enough to activate the muscles and increment in circulation. The effect is same as if you were walking around on your own. This awkward invention will save a lot of lives! 5. Pollen Vaccines Why are most of the vaccines injected and not take orally? Okay, they are too easy for your digestive system and stomach acid dissolves them resulting in their breakdown and the end result is them rendering useless. Flower pollen on the other hand is a very common allergen and is very much able to resist the acidy-power of human stomach. Texas Tech University is conducting research to combine the two and come up with vaccines that can eventually be given to soldiers stationed abroad. Lead researcher, Harvinder Gill is hoping to extract the allergen from the pollen and inject the vaccine into it. This hard work would soon affect how humans are being vaccinated. 4. Printed Bones ProMetal 3D printer and technology has made it possible for scientists to ‘print’ a hybrid material that has the same properties as real bones. This was made possible at Washington State University. This hybrid model can be placed in the body where the fracture of bone has occurred and can be used as scaffolding while the bone heals and re-builds. The real research target was to come up with the right material for the job. The material has been tested on rabbits and it works! In fact, using this material combined with stem cells, the bone grew faster than normal. The material has been made up with a combination of Zinc, silicon and calcium phosphate. This technology will not just stop at bones; scientists are hoping to ‘print’ full organs once they’ve cracked the problem of materials to use for this. 3. Brain Damage Repair This one came as news for us. Do you know that your tongue is connected to nervous system through thousands of nerve clusters out of which a few lead to your brain? This is what kick started this idea in the first place. What if you could stimulate the nerve region of your tongue and that could make your brain to repair the damaged nerves? Well, yes, it worked out fine. A lot of patients have been treated with Neuromodulation Stimulator, PoNS, and have shown quite an improvement in only a week’s time. This technology may help us avoid the extensive rehabilitation process and speed up the recovery in case of brain damage. The scientists are working to cure other brain diseases as well such as alcoholism, Parkinson’s etc. 2. Human Powered Equipment Pacemakers are fairly expensive devices used to regulate the heart. However, they run out of power after seven years and need to be replaced via expensive surgical procedure. Dr. Amin Karami, University of Michigan, has found a remedy for that. He has come up with a device that can generate electricity from the beating of heart and that can be used to power the pacemaker. He is ready to test his device and this just might prove to be the turning point for medical science. Human generated electricity can be used to power a lot of electrical equipment and the prospects for the future are great. 1. DNA Lego Engineers at Harvard University have decided to use DNA as building blocks. These Nano-sized Lego are being used to build structures. Head researcher of the project, Peng Yin, encouraged this approach since it helped engineers in visualizing what they were creating. A DNA is coded with four letters; A,T,G and C. There’s a pattern in the way they are combined; G-C and A-T. Using this information and the concept of Lego one can build anything. This concept has spread like wildfire in the biology world. This Harvard team has even created a genetic copy of a book which is about 300 pages. It was first translated into binary and then associated with the structure of DNA. The result-strand of DNA- can be decoded to get the full text of the book. The possibilities are indeed, endless. Source
