MedTech News
.................... by Andrew Celentano

Not all colonoscopies are the same. New AI tool audits them at scale.
Study of 19,000 colonoscopies shows AI can accurately assess quality metrics from procedure videos

Abbott earns FDA approval for new dual-energy ablation catheter
Abbott (NYSE: ABT) earned FDA approval for its new dual-energy catheter, TactiFlex Duo sensor-enabled ablation catheter.

Vitamin A metabolite keeps immune cells active against recurrent brain tumors
Immune cells can become exhausted after prolonged exposure to cancer, gradually losing their ability to attack tumor cells. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in aggressive brain tumors and can severely limit the effectiveness of immunotherapy.

Smart jumpsuit produces growth charts of infants’ motor performance
Researchers at the University of Helsinki and HUS Helsinki University Hospital have built normative growth charts for infants’ gross motor development using measurements made in the children’s own homes. In the study, 92 typically developing infants ages 4–19 months wore the MAIJU smart jumpsuit during free play, producing 580 measurements and 1,227 hours of data covering activities from lying on the floor to walking fluently.

Beating ‘mini-heart’ derived from patient’s blood cells offers personalized disease model
A team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center (The Institute) have created a three-dimensional, beating heart-on-a-chip, or “mini-heart,” using blood cells from a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a leading cause of heart transplantation.

Scientists engineer ready-to-use cancer-fighting T cells for solid tumors
T-cell receptor, or TCR, therapy is a cancer treatment that genetically reprograms immune cells, called T cells, to hunt down cancer with precision. It’s similar to another treatment, CAR T-cell therapy, but with one key difference: CAR T-cell therapy can only spot proteins that naturally appear outside a cancer cell. TCR therapy, however, can also catch small protein fragments from inside the cell that are carried to the surface and displayed like little name tags.

Soft back belts ease everyday low back pain, 12-week trial suggests
For many in the workforce, spending hours at a computer is an unavoidable part of daily life. Sitting for prolonged periods in the same position can contribute to low back pain (LBP), which affects up to 80% of people over their lifetime and remains a leading cause of disability worldwide. A group of French researchers decided to find out whether wearing a soft, flexible lower-back support belt can help people with common, unexplained lower back pain feel better and move more easily.

Powerful Medical’s AI heart attack detection model secures FDA approval
Powerful’s Queen of Heart analyses ECG reads to detect STEMI and STEMI-equivalent patterns indicative of acute coronary syndrome.