The Coolest Gadgets Healthcare Professionals Get to Work With

Modern technological developments have revolutionized the healthcare industry, placing tools in the hands of medical professionals that earlier generations could never have dreamed of. Devices that seemed like science fiction 50 years ago are now used each and every day by healthcare providers to give patients accurate diagnoses and optimal care. Here are some of the coolest gadgets that modern healthcare professionals get to work with.

3D Bioprinters

One of the most exciting new technologies in the world of healthcare is the growing ability to print muscles, skin tissue and even organs using 3D printing processes. 3D bioprinters use a matrix containing live human cells to produce living replicas of human tissue. Though it is still highly experimental, it is thought that this technology could one day replace the need for organ donations and allow medical professionals to replace failing body parts as needed.

Ultrasound Machines

Even though they’re far from a new technology, sonograms are one of the most useful means of noninvasive imaging. Sonogram machines use sound waves to produce a picture of structures inside the human body, letting physicians see organs easily. Because of their ease of use and ability to produce good images noninvasively, sonograms have become a very common tool in the modern medical industry. Like many other medical imaging technologies, sonograms are also getting continuously better, with image quality gradually improving to give doctors more and better information.

Surgical Smoke Evacuators

Most people who have never been in an operating room wouldn’t think of it, but most surgeries produce some amount of smoke because of the heat generated by laser cauterizers and other high-energy surgical instruments. This smoke can be dangerous to the health of a surgical team because of the compounds that are found in it and must be removed from the operating room as it is produced. Smoke evacuation tools are used for this purpose. These tools, which range from small vacuum pens to whole-room evacuators, play an instrumental role in ensuring the success and safety of already tricky operations.

Centrifuges

Many medical tests require that certain elements of a biological sample be isolated. For this job, healthcare professionals use a centrifuge, a device that will spin the samples at a high rate of speed to separate out the various parts. Because of the force generated by the high-speed rotation, centrifuges can separate components of a sample out by density. This process is particularly useful in DNA testing, in which DNA must be separated out from a blood sample. Centrifuges, however, are useful in a wide range of tests and can be found in almost any medical laboratory.

Surgical Robots

Arguably the single coolest gadget available to the medical profession at the moment is the surgical robot, a relatively new technology that is rapidly revolutionizing the way surgeries are performed. Surgical robots use relatively small incisions and extremely precise motion controls to execute surgeries in a less invasive manner than most traditional surgical methods. In the future, these surgical robots may become more widely used and may save many lives on the operating table in extremely delicate surgeries.

Though these are some of the coolest gadgets that healthcare professionals have the privilege of working with, they are far from the only ones. Modern medical practices are heavily dependent on technology and innovation, and the biomedical sector is turning out new gadgets to optimize patient care each and every year. As medicine continues to progress, we can expect to continue to see newer and even cooler gadgets in the years to come.