Recent Patents on Biomedical Engineering (Discontinued) - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2011

Cardiac valve surgery, for either replacement or repair, has seen significant advancements over the last several decades. The majority of operative techniques that have been developed, such as valvular commissurotomy, debridement, prolapse reduction, and native valve replacement, are performed through a full sternotomy or lateral thoracotomy. Although a conventional full median sternotomy offers good exposure to the heart and the origins of the great cardiac vessels, the associated surgical trauma and postoperative bleeding, risk of wound infection, thoracic wall instability and the appearance of the sternal scar from the lengthy incision have driven the current trend toward less invasive cardiothoracic surgical procedures while maintaining or even improving the effectiveness and safety of standard operative procedures. Minimally invasive cardiac surgery has been expanding during the last decade with the use of significantly smaller and shorter incisions, providing patients less painful and better aesthetic outcomes with faster recovery times and lower hospital costs. The use of these new techniques will certainly lessen the increased morbidity and mortality that results from reoperations. Patients have come to expect and request smaller incisions rather than the traditional full median sternotomy access. In this review, we highlight current trends in minimally invasive heart valve therapy, specifically the surgical instruments, devices, and surgical visualization techniques developed for this approach. These modern surgical instruments and devices are essential to help surgeons compensate for limitations in both the field of view and actual surgical field in which to operate by using video assistance and more sophisticated and precise instruments. The many innovative solutions to these challenges that have been designed and manufactured will be addressed.

Calcium phosphates, with a composition and structure similar to the mineral phase of bone, have been recognized as satisfactory materials for bone repair because of their excellent biocompatibility, osteoconductive, and bioactivity. In this paper, the recent related patents are reviewed, including four parts, such as calcium phosphate bioceramics, calcium phosphate coatings, calcium phosphate based particles and calcium phosphate with electromagnetic stimulation for bone repair, which might indicate that calcium phosphate materials have been widely used to repair bone. However, there are still some other interesting points, which are expected to be included in the coming patents, four points of which, such as the calcium phosphates with novel specific microstructures, composites that include calcium phosphates and carbon nanotubes, composites that include calcium phosphates and collagen and calcium phosphates based system that could be combined with many different drugs, are described in the conclusion and perspectives part.

In today's world, the importance of quality and healthy life has increased and new methods that are provided by technological developments offer new opportunities in the field of health. For this purpose, many studies have been done. It is thought that examination of these studies will reduce the waste of time, prevent repetitive work, provide sharing of information for future studies. The aim of this study is to make a general evaluation of the patent works, studies in literature that have been developed with wearable systems and designing of wearable ECG monitoring athlete application. The most important features of the athlete application in this study are ease of use, reduction of detractive artifacts, interchangeability, less inconvenience and wearability. The findings of this article are real time ECG monitoring application with designed athlete, current status and future expectations of wearable system. This prototype athlete application can be used achieving different physiological signals by changing sensors. In addition, this application can be wireless by using wireless modules.

The computerization of hospital systems has traditionally been incremental in manner, over the years, various computer systems have been linked together. Frequently, however, a hospital utilizes computer systems from multiple vendors. One reason is that various hardware and/or human systems are provided with their own computerized systems (e.g., an image processing workstation can have a specific imaging system). There is a gradual movement to integrate such systems, for example, by setting standards (DICOM, HL7) and by providing integrated systems that simultaneously replace several hospital systems. This review summarizes the available methods for exchanging medical records and surveys a range of patents that describe the latest advancements taking place in this area.

The diagnostic power of physiological electric and magnetic signal detection has been universally recognized during the rise of modern medicine. Iconic technologies that illustrate this point well include the electrocardiogram (EKG), electromyogram (EMG), electroencephalogram (EEG), and, more recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These technologies have transformed medicine by providing invaluable diagnostic tools for the contemporary physician. Over the last few years there has been increasing interest in exploring other electromagnetic imaging modalities for physiological application. Many of these are non-perturbative technologies and include superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) and atomic magnetometer, and electric potential sensors. This review objectively surveys a range of recent patents and journal articles relating to developments at the forefront of this exciting and already proven field of medical biotechnology.

The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the use of lasers in laboratory and clinical techniques used in Implantology, with particular reference to Erbium lasers and recent patents on this field. Laser applications in oral Implantology have been of considerable scientific interest throughout the recent years. Erbium lasers can be used in many procedures, ranging from placement, second stage recovery and gingival management, sinus graft, through to the treatment of peri-implantitis.

Portable Biomedical Devices for health care management are producing a great impact in the monitoring of patients located in areas different from clinical environments such as houses, military bases, ships, and the like. A number of applications, ranging from data collection, to chronic patient surveillance, and even to the control of therapeutic procedures, are being implemented in many parts of the world. The development of portable devices for telemedicine is accelerated by new technologies such as wireless transmission, GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers, Internet applications and GSI (Giga Scale of Integration) of electronic devices. In recent decades the development of portable biomedical devices has led to the presentation of numerous patents. The aim of this paper is to review some of these patents, with emphasis on the possibilities of patients remote monitoring, providing all necessary information in real-time from their homes to the health facility. Thus the specialist can make his diagnosis from the hospital. This is the new concept of home care.

Medicinal plant formulations have been used in traditional medicines for thousands of years. Plant-based medicine is still a major source of new drug leads and herbal treatments are highly lucrative in the international marketplace. The intellectual property issues for medicinal plant formulas are complicated for numerous reasons. Many of the patents are attempting to emulate the pharmaceutical model of composition patents that as we will discuss, is usually not an appropriate approach for medicinal plants. This paper does not seek to be an exhaustive review but rather provide an overview of the many aspects of medicinal plant patents, a topic of considerable future growth. Our experience has been that the merging of modern and traditional knowledge leads to unexpected correlations, elucidations and insights with tremendous potential for patentable discovery. A continuation of the dialogue on indigenous intellectual property rights will benefit from the inclusion of an increased diversity of voices that have the ability to recognize the mutual and often complementary abilities of traditional and modern sciences. The question is not how to simplify the complexity but rather how to embrace the complexity from the traditional medicine worldview with the tools of science.

The patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent databases. These recent patents are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue, categorized by medical imaging, bioinformatics, image processing, biomaterials, pharmaceutical drugs, bioengineering, medical devices, design, biological devices, biomechanics & diagnostic devices related to biomedical engineering....