Medtech giant Medtronic won approval for its Altaviva implant, a tibial neurostimulator, in September. The device, roughly half the length of a stick of chewing gum (43.7 × 15.7 × 4.5 mm, 7.5 g), recently won a 2026 Edison Award for health innovation. Now, Medtronic has enrolled its first patient in the ENDURANCE post-approval study. “As Altaviva…
Brain implant lets paralyzed patients type with their thoughts at near-able-bodied speeds
A new brain implant is helping people type using their minds. A study published in Nature Neuroscience by investigators from Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute and Brown University describes an investigational implantable brain-computer interface (iBCI) typing neuroprosthesis. The tool uses a QWERTY keyboard and attempted finger movements, which are decoded accurately with as few as…
R&D 100 Winner Spotlight: Regenity’s RejuvaKnee brings first new meniscus repair option in years
Regenity Biosciences is tackling a long-overlooked challenge in orthopedic medicine. In this R&D 100 Award-winning interview, Natsuyo Shishido Lee (Director of R&D) and Chris Harris (Senior Integration Engineer) discuss RejuvaKnee—a purified, intact bovine meniscus implant made entirely of collagen, designed for segmental defects after partial meniscectomy. With no durable standard of care for years, the…
Patient survives for 48 hours with artificial lungs
A 33-year-old man survived without his lungs for 48 hours through the use of an external artificial-lung system until he could receive a double lung transplant. The system was designed by Ankit Bharat, a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and his team. The team published their findings in Med.…
Lab profile: Boston Scientific’s Arbor Lakes campus was built to be reconfigurable
Many R&D labs are relatively static environments where the infrastructure dictates the pace of innovation. At Boston Scientific’s new 400,000-square-foot Arbor Lakes campus, the architecture is designed to get out of the researchers’ way. By moving beyond rigid lab footprints and achieving a 50 to 70% equipment reuse rate, the facility is itself something of…
FDA approves first non-drug depression treatment
The FDA approved Flow, an at-home brain-simulation device from Flow Neuroscience, for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) on Thursday. Flow is among the first at-home non-drug therapies for the treatment of depression outside of therapies, including app-based CBT and light therapy. Depression affects more than 20 million Americans, around a third of whom…
Abbott medtech wins two 2025 R&D 100 Awards
As first reported by our sister brand, Medical Design & Outsourcing (MDO), Abbott has two winners in this year’s R&D 100 Awards. Below we add product specifics and regulatory/trial context for readers who want details. Check out the full winners list here on R&D World. Liberta RC: rechargeable DBS with remote programming Liberta RC is an…
Neuralink reaches 7 patients, enabling paralyzed users to control computers with their minds
Neuralink developed a brain-computer device that is implanted into the brain and allows paralyzed patients to control computers and even smartphones with their minds. To date, seven patients have received the device, called Telepathy, which is in clinical trials. The first participant received their implant in January 2024. Neuralink works by placing electrodes near neurons…
Korean engineers show off ultra-light prosthetic hand with single-motor thumb
A Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) team has built a myoelectric prosthetic hand that keeps weight down by driving the thumb’s two degrees of freedom: flex/extend and adduct/abduct. One small actuator enables that functionality while a linkage-wire hybrid system gives the fingers both firm pinch strength and shape-adaptive grip. This single-actuator control for…
Kablooe Design CEO Tom KraMer taps veteran designer Fred Sklenar to steer firm
Twin Cities–based medical-device design firm Kablooe Design will get its first new chief executive in 34 years this summer. Founder Tom KraMer will step aside on August 17, and move into a strategic-account role. His successor, Fred Sklenar, is a 37-year product-development veteran who joined Kablooe after running his own consultancy and teaching design-for-manufacturing courses.…
Neuralink brain implant lets ALS patient speak again
Brad Smith, a man rendered mute by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is talking again after surgeons embedded a coin-size Neuralink “Link” with 1,024 electrodes in his motor cortex, allowing him to steer a cursor and trigger AI-generated speech using pure thought. Smith is the first person with ALS, and the third human overall, to receive the…
Health-related innovation in Morocco highlighted by resident inventor patenting activity
The continents of Europe, Asia, and the Americas are widely recognized as sources of innovation, but Africa is less known for its R&D efforts. Yet, despite certain economic challenges, Africa is beginning to take its place on the world stage for invention. Recent patenting activity can identify the seeds of such nascent creativity. Patent protection…
The hospital as a robot: NVIDIA and GE HealthCare’s strategic push to augment radiology with physical AI
Imagine walking into a clinic after a doctor referred you to get your liver checked out. After walking down the hall of the hospital’s radiology wing, you enter a room with a robotic ultrasound system. An employee from the hospital greets you and has you lie on a table. She then states to the machine:…
Watch Rodney, a paralyzed man control his home with tech from Synchron, NVIDIA, and Apple
Rodney Gorham can’t move his body or speak, but with a single thought, he commands his world. Five years after receiving a brain implant from Synchron, this Australian in his mid-60s, paralyzed by ALS, can feed his dog, adjust lights, and turn fans off and on in his house. Rodney’s setup looks deceptively simple: a…