The artificial heart is made by a French company called Carmat, and is designed for people with end-stage biventricular heart failure. That’s when both of the heart’s ventricles—chambers near the bottom of the heart that pull in and push out blood between the lungs and the rest of the body—are too weak to carry out their function.It’s been approved as a temporary replacement while patients wait for donor hearts, and is estimated to last about five years.Carmat’s artificial heart will launch commercially in Germany and France in the second quarter of this year. https://singularityhub.com/2021/01/20/this-artificial-heart-will-soon-be-on-the-market-in-europe
DNA has been the predominant information storage medium for biology and holds great promise as a next-generation high-density data medium in the digital era.Researchers from Columbia University have demonstrated a new approach that can directly convert digital electronic signals into genetic data stored in the genomes of living cells. That could lead to a host of applications both for data storage and beyond, says Harris Wang, who led the research published in Nature Chemical Biology.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41589-020-00711-4
The ever-accelerating pace of technological innovation makes the long-term future difficult to visualise. It’s important, when thinking in the long term, to understand that different problems will require different solutions. Interstellar travel and building habitats in space may help us survive the next billion years, but these technologies will not arrive in time to allow us to live out the century. If we want to be sure we will be around to tackle major problems, we’ll need to get a lot better at thinking beyond the next five years.https://singularityhub.com/2020/12/31/forget-your-five-year-plan-what-if-we-visualized-humanitys-future-in-centuries-millennia-and-beyo
Parkinson's disease is a brain disorder, affecting > 10 million people, caused by gradual loss of dopamine neurons leading to involuntary tremors, stiffness, and balance problems. There are drugs to treat symptoms, however no drugs exist to slow progression of the disease.University College Cork researchers found neurotrophic factor,(GDF5) has protective effects on dopamine neurons in Parkinson’s. Next study will be what stage of the disease is best to deliver GDF5 to the brain to slow the disease’s progression.These are promising results and mean that the search for a new therapy for Parkinson’s focusing on neurotrophic factors should continue.https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2020/12/0
Digital health innovations are helping achieve a long-sought-after healthcare industry objective: cutting healthcare costs while improving patient outcomes simultaneously—an outcome that is especially important given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. By decisively selecting which value pools and strategies to prioritize, healthcare investors and companies can effectively thrive in the fast-growing digital health space and improve healthcare for patients worldwide.https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/healthtech-in-the-fast-lane-what-is-fueling-investor-excitement?
