A PDA for Pain

Business Week on the latest technology from Medtronic (MDT):

You might use the alarm on your watch (if you still wear one) or your Treo as a reminder to take your medicine. Now you can go one step further by using a personal digital assistant (PDA) to wirelessly control an internal pump that streams medication directly to its target inside your body.
It’s an early but significant advancement in the convergence of consumer gadgets and patient-controlled medical tools. Health-device giant Medtronic—known for its pioneering pacemakers and insulin pumps for diabetics—recently released a device in the U.S. called the Personal Therapy Manager (PTM), a retooled version of a Palm handheld. A first for the market, it’s a patient-controlled device with a screen interface that can sync with the company’s programmable implanted pumps to deliver medicine, via catheter, to the fluid near the spinal cord—a process known as intrathecal drug delivery.

Posted by on January 12th, 2006 at 10:49 pm


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