Leo Chao’s ‘Beagle Scarf’ was created to aid Autistic people in times of stress.  Some studies have shown music, textured toys and aromatherapy to be of great benefit in alleviating the stress and discomfort often associated with Autism.  The Taiwanese-born, American-raised designer created the scarf which can be gently wrapped around the head.  Inlaid speakers rest near, (but not too close) to the ears allowing the hood to play soothing music when activated by the wearer.  Customized aroma patches line the hood and pockets with a textured lining are also used within the design.  No word yet on whether the [...]

CNN reports that in-store health clinics are growing in popularity. Retailers such as Wal-Mart, Walgreens, CVS, Safeway and Kroger are all seeing increased interest in the basic medical care services offered inside their shops. These easy to access, and relatively inexpensive clinics offer medical advice, vaccinations and treatments for minor medical problems. Combining low cost (the average visit costs about $60) with the convenience of having a doctor inside your local super-center have made these micro-clinocs a go-to resource for patients looking to escape the broken and expensive health care system.  It’s believed that this kind of health care will [...]

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Pecha Kucha Daily reports on a very unique project that was presented at the PechaKucha night in Trieste late last year. Portuguese designer Susana Soares uses bees exceptional odor perception as part of a beautiful and strange medical sensing device. It’s a brilliant human-nature collaboration that takes advantage of an untapped naturally occurring phenomenon.
They explain:
Have you ever heard that bees have a phenomenal odor perception? Susana Soares explained to the public of PKN Trieste how the bees can be trained within minutes using Pavlov’s reflex to target a specific odour, and their range of detection includes pheromones, toxins, and disease [...]

In the future, tattoos may be able to communicate more than just style and rebellion. Draper Laboratories of Massachusetts is developing a tattoo ink which changes color based on glucose levels inside the skin. This invention could spare diabetics from daily painful blood glucose tests.
Discovery explains how it works:
The nano ink particles are tiny, squishy spheres about 120 nanometers across. Inside the sphere are three parts: the glucose detecting molecule, a color-changing dye, and another molecule that mimics glucose. When the particles are dissolved in water they look like food coloring, says Clark.
The three parts continuously move around the inside [...]

For diabetics who need to get insulin into their bloodstream, daily injections are an unfortunate fact of life. Needles have to be used because insulin cannot be easily broken down by the digestive system, (leaving out pills as an option.) Inhalers were briefly used as an insulin delivery system, but high costs and design problems plagued the method.
Fortunately for the millions of diabetics worldwide, a needle alternative is on the horizon. Robert Doyle, a chemist at Syracuse University has found a way to keep oral doses of insulin intact from mouth to bloodstream. Which as it turns out, works most [...]

A team of Harvard University chemists have developed a simple technology that takes an expensive medical device know as a microfluidic chip and puts it within reach of the third world.  Using paper and double-sided tape as opposed to rubbers or plastics that require multimillion dollar fabrication equipment, these chips can eventually be made widely available for mere pennies on the dollar.    
[They] operate much like a home pregnancy test, in which liquid creeps up a cellulose strip toward a color-changing line. But unlike the pregnancy test, these new chips can split a single stream of liquid into dozens [...]