Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year
Each year Time Magazine in conjunction with CNN come up with a list of best inventions for various categories. Because of the large number of categories and each invention is listed on separate page (I guess for more advertising opportunities), it is cumbersome to go through all of them. I have condensed the best inventions on the Health category into a single page. The best invention in my opinion for the health category is….
- PowerFoot One, is the world’s first actively powered foot ankle prosthesis. The inventor an MIT professor is himself a double amputee. The secret to long battery life is to recapture energy during walking.
Time Link iWalk - Schizophrenic mouse. Akira Sawa of John Hopkins has been studying how variants of a gene called DISC1 increase the risk of schizophrenia. The Sawa Laboratory has developed a schizophrenic mouse model that will some day lead to better understanding and perhaps better treatment for this debilitating form of mental illness. This research group is trying to match findings obtained in patients with schizophrenia with those from animal models using MRI and PET.
Time Link Sawa Laboratory - Blood Type Conversion System. Group O blood is highly desirable for blood transfusion because the red blood cells do not have A antigen or B antigen on their cell surfaces. As such it can be transfused to patients with Group A, Group B or Group AB blood type and of course also to patients with Group O. Therefore Group O blood type is also known as universal donor blood. Danish scientists have discovered two bacterial enzymes that will cleave the sugar molecules eliminating the A and B antigens and thus converting the blood essentially to Group O blood.
Time Link ZymeQuest - Do it Right. In the heat of a CPR resuscitation one can over compress or under compress the chest. Worst still because of the intensity of the situation at hand (pardon the pun), we tend to compress the chest at a higher rate than is usually recommended. A group of final year engineering student from McMaster University came up with a simple and elegant solution to this problem. Sensors embedded in neoprene glove detect the pressure exerted by the palm and also keep track of the rate of compression. The data feed back to the machine is used to determine the type of verbal cues offered to the resuscitator such as “compress faster”.
Time Link CPRGolove - Prognosticating Cancer Recurrence. Amsterdam-based Agendia molecular diagnostics was one of the first companies to be approved under FDA’s new In Vitro Diagnostic Multivariate Index Assay (IVDMIA) Guidelines for their diagnostic kit for breast cancer prognosis. Agendia’s proprietary gene expression analysis can identify older breast cancer patients at low risk for metastatic disease. This valuable information can be use clinically to decide which treatment regime to use for specific breast cancer patients.
Time Link Agendia
My favorite invention this year is the cprGlove. Simple and elegant solution to an unmet need.
