Medical innovations that are making this the best time ever to be alive

“There has never been a better time to be alive” is the opening statement on the About page of Tech Insider, a digital publication focused on technology, science and innovation that is celebrating its first anniversary this month. Thanks to a LinkedIn connection, I came across a video montage on the site, “Four medical innovations that could save millions of lives,” that goes some way toward validating the optimistic outlook.

Sans narration, the well-edited, two-minute video shows four medical devices—one of which is designed for animal use only—that achieve some rather remarkable results. To wit:

Xstat from RevMedx Inc. (Wilsonville, OR), a syringe-like device filled with dozens of tiny sponges that can plug a gunshot wound in seconds. (PlasticsToday wrote about the product at some length last year in an article titled, “When war breaks out, innovation wins.”)

Vetigel, marketed by Sunrise (Brooklyn, NY), can stop moderate to severe bleeding in animals in seconds. It is made from algae, whose particles bind together tightly to form a mesh that creates a mechanical barrier at the wound site.

The Vein Viewer from Christie Medical Holdings (Memphis, TN) allows visualization of veins under the skin in real time. The device shines near-infrared light on the skin, which is reflected by surrounding tissue while being absorbed by proteins in the blood and—voilá—an image of blood flowing through the vein is projected in real time onto the skin. Shades of X-ray Specs!

Truly surreal is the so-called cholesterol removing machine, which looks like a miniaturized tunneling device that snakes through the artery and literally scrapes plaque from the artery wall using a built-in drill. This animation alone is worth the price of admission. Here’s the thing, though: The link to the inventor/company, Dahir Insaat, on the Tech Insider page leads to a Russian-language website that is “under construction.” So this device may only exist in the mind of the inventor; based on the video representation, that might be just as well.