The world of healthcare is witnessing a groundbreaking advancement with the development of the mobile app “BegIA.” Created by two visionary Master’s Degree students in Bioinformatics and Biostatistics at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), BegIA utilizes the power of artificial intelligence to revolutionize the early detection of debilitating eye diseases such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and cataracts. With a simple selfie, this innovative app can swiftly diagnose these conditions, guiding users to seek timely medical intervention and expert care. The app’s potential to transform global eye health has been recognized, and it recently earned the prestigious Ramón Molinas Foundation Prize for Social Impact at the 2023 SpinUOC event.
Biotech
This company can help you control your electronics with your tongue
People with mobility impairments might need assistance with typing, scrolling, or gaming. These disabilities can affect someone’s ability to work or connect with others socially.
Corten Singer and Tomás Vega, co-founders of Augmental, an MIT Media Lab spinoff, are determined to give people with disabilities more control — and that’s where a new assistive technology called MouthPad could have a big impact.
What is MouthPad?
MouthPad allows users to control their electronic devices with their tongues. MouthPad resembles a plastic retainer, like Invisalign, and encases a trackpad, pressure sensor, battery, charging coil, and Bluetooth chip.
U.S. company implants brain chips for 50 people to cure blindness, deafness and more…
A US firm has implanted 50 chips into people’s brains, with scientists at the company hopeful that they will one day be able to massively improve the lives of people with blindness, deafness, depression and physical paralysis.
The device is called the NeuroPort Array and it’s been made by a company called Blackrock Neurotech, based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
What is the aim of the NeuroPort device?
This medical device aims to increase independence and mobility, and ultimately, quality of life, for people with paralysis.
For those implanted with the chip to be able to control robotic arms and electric wheelchairs with their mind, amongst other things.
Study reveals blind individuals have an enhanced capacity to sense their own heartbeat
A study conducted by scientists from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Jagiellonian University in Poland reveals that blind individuals exhibit an ability to sense their own heartbeats. The study suggests that blindness results in an enhanced capacity to perceive internal bodily signals.
What was involved in the study?
Thirty-six blind and an equal number of sighted participants were instructed to count their own heartbeats without taking their pulse or touching their bodies.
How were the participants monitored during the study?
The researchers monitored the participants’ actual heartbeats using a pulse oximeter. By comparing the reported and recorded numbers, the researchers evaluated the participants’ ability to accurately sense their own heartbeats.
Apple AR/VR headsets rumoured to assist people with vision loss
According to information released by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his most recent issue of the PowerOn newsletter, future iterations of the AR/VR gear that Apple is working on could aid those with vision loss.
Gurman says that Apple has a dedicated XDG team looking into options for future AR/VR headsets that will help those with vision impairments, as well as next-generation display technology, AI, and other possibilities.
What are some of the rumoured features?
The first iteration of the AR/VR headgear will possibly include more than a dozen cameras, some of which will be used to map the user’s immediate surroundings. The headset might be able to present additional visual information for those who are legally blind or have other visual impairments, as well as give auditory directions to people who are blind.
Wearable assistive robot developed to prevent falls for elderly
Researchers from Nanyang Technological University Singapore and Tan Tock Seng Hospital have created a wearable assistive robot that prevents falls and assists in physiotherapy for the elderly.
How does it work?
The Mobile Robotic Balance Assistant (MRBA) has sensors to immediately detect a loss of balance and catches its wearer with a safety harness worn around the hips. It helps users to stand up safely from a seated position and sit down from a standing position.
The device can also predict potential falls by estimating a user’s state of balance in real time using machine learning and a deep sensing camera that observes their movement.
Experiment shows surprising results of echolocation
Echolocation has been used as a way for blind people to navigate, despite the skill’s usefulness, few blind people have actually learned how to use echolocation. Now, though, researchers say humans can learn echolocation in as little as 10 weeks.
How many participants were involved in the experiment?
The researchers ran the experiment using 12 participants who had all been diagnosed as legally blind at a young age. They also included 14 people who had no issues with their sight in the experiment.
What was involved in the experiments?
They taught the participants how to use echolocation over the course of 20 training sessions.
New study reveals blind people remember speech and language better than sighted people
Blind people can remember speech better than sighted people, but a person’s ability to see makes no difference in how they remember sound effects, found a new study by Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Irvine.
What memory tests were conducted?
Researchers conducted two memory tests with 20 blind adults and 22 blindfolded sighted adults. They wondered if blind participants would outperform sighted ones at remembering spoken sounds. First, participants listened to series of letters, followed by a delay.
Then they heard either the same series or a “foil” series where a letter is replaced or put into the wrong position. Participants then judged whether the second series of letters was the same as the first.
Can these eye drops replace reading glasses?
After the age of 40, many people start developing presbyopia, a medical term rooted in the Greek phrase for old eyes. It gets harder to read books, food labels and menus. Soon people are reaching for drugstore reading glasses stashed in desk drawers and handbags, but now there is also this bottled solution: prescription eye drops designed to help older people see better up close.
An Allergan product called Vuity, is the first to reach the market. The drops were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late last year. Nearly a dozen companies have similar drops in clinical trials, each of them aiming for a “safe, effective, reversible therapy that gives people what they want, which is good near vision,” says Eric Donnenfeld, an ophthalmologist at New York University, who consults for Allergan and another drop manufacturer.
Patients receive miniature telescope implant to improve vision
Three patients in Italy have been successfully implanted with SING IMT, an implantable miniature telescope that improves vision in late-stage age-related macular degeneration, according to a press release from Samsara Vision.
How long is the surgical procedure?
The Smaller-Incision New-Generation Implantable Miniature Telescope, or SING IMT, is a Galilean telescope device implanted during routine outpatient cataract surgery.
Do patients see right away after surgery?
After the procedure, patients work with occupational therapists and low vision specialists to learn how to use their vision.