We all know that kids hate brushing their teeth. That’s why since the dawn of time, so many of them end up as toothless seniors. Now there’s a new way to trick them into brushing. Researchers at the National Taiwan University have come up with something which turns brushing your teeth into a webcam-tracked video game.

With an LED toothbrush, a camera mounted above a mirror, and an LCD display, kids can watch plaque and debris get fragged in a cartoon mouth while they scrub. The system tracks three-demensional movement of the child’s hand, covering 24 separate areas of the mouth. Kids who tested the system ended up brushing twice as well as those who hadn’t used it. Check out the video below.

You would think that after years of fancy Doctor school, surgeons would know better then to sew you back up with say, a sponge or other equipment inside of you. These bozos are basically using their patients for mobile storage of their equipment. At least we can now do something about the sponges. The idea is that every single sponge has to be accounted for. You can’t rely on nurses to manually count the sponges before and after an operation. They’re too busy admiring and having sex with Doctor Hunk to give a toss.

Rely instead on the Safety-Sponge system from SurgiCount. It uses special bar codes printed on every sponge that are scanned into a PocketPC computer before and after they’re used. Because every single sponge has a unique bar code, the system even alerts the operating room staff if the same sponge has been scanned twice. So now you know. There is no longer any reason for these quacks to leave sponges inside of you. Other tools are still fair game, though. Like those tweezers in your abdomen.

Loyola University Medical Center will be one of the first hospitals in the US to use a Virtual Reality (VR) game to help aid burn patients in their recovery. The idea is that it will distract patients from their pain as they enter into a virtual ‘polar landscape of gently falling snowflakes, snowmen, penguins, igloos and icy rivers.’

According to the game’s developers the game will cause the mind to ‘block your view of the real world’ while helping you escape from your pain. I guess only time will tell just how well it works and with how many burn patients. While I think that the mind can be distracted, it remains to be seen if you can block out that kind of pain just be tricking the other senses. Then again, in burn cases, any distraction from the pain is a welcome thing and has to help in their recovery.

I’ve got a full head of hair, so I’m pretty lucky. But I imagine it’s hard for some guys when you suddenly wake up one day to find that you are bald or balding. Some people can get away with it. But your Kojaks and Captain Picards are pretty rare exceptions. Most likely you’re a George Costanza type.

Which is why you would want to turn to a crazy gadget like this in the hopes that it can restore you to your former glory. The X5 HairLaser blasts your scalp with “15 distinct points of coherent laser light at the optimum power and wavelength,” which is supposedly gives you hair growth. It will take 10-15 minutes of this, three times a week. $300 may seem steep, but if it actually regrows hair it’s worth it. If not, there’s always that paint on crap.

A company in Dublin, Ireland named Lincor Solutions has created the MEDIVista, a touchscreen LCD display designed to be used by patients, doctors and nurses. The device could serve many different purposes. The displays are conveniently mounted next to the bed so that healthcare workers can use it for medical needs. Typical things like displaying x-rays or medical info. But the cool part is that the patient can also use it to entertain themselves.

The patient can watch TV, listen to the radio, even make calls, as well as surf the web and check email. It also sports web based games and audio books. The company recently signed an agreement with a New Jersey based hospital to install the interactive displays on all 397 hospital beds. This should make hospital stays much more pleasent. Now if you can only get some good food, you’d all set for a long stay.

If the mpion MP3 player didn’t remove your hardcore teen acne, try this Zeno device. It claims to be an acne Clearing device, that will improve your complexion. In fact, it’s the 1st FDA approved home gadget to remove acne.

The tip heats up when applied to a pimple. Supposedly that will cause some sort of a shock to the bacteria that causes acne. They claim that “two to three 2 1/2 minute treatments spread over 24 hours are sufficient for most pimples” and most pimples will disappear. There’s no question that this is the geeky gadget way to remove acne, but does it work? I think if ANYTHING worked the way they claimed, there would be no need for this product. It retails for $184.95.

Dental gadgets are nothing new. Does the iPod teeth whitener ring a bell? Well thanks to this device, which looks like Geordi La Forge’s visor on Star Trek: The Next Generation, you can have a more enjoyable visit with your Dentist. It’s never going to be a pleasure, but the relaxView B.V. display device is designed to more or less completely distract you. It rests on the bridge of your nose and covers nearly all of a person’s field of vision, while hooked up to a DVD player. Thanks to it’s design it gives the impression of looking at a 60-inch screen.

The idea is to completely distract the victim patient from the dental work going on in their mouth. There is a school of thought that believes that the slightest awareness of any dental procedure enhances sensitivity and increases discomfort. That equals more pain. If you block out all outside stimulus, it makes for a more comfortable dentist visit.

The Exmocare watch has a sort of sporty look, but sports is not what they had in mind. It knows how you are feeling and wants to send that info to someone who cares about you using e-mail or IM. Someone like a relative of caregiver.

The watch uses infrared LEDs to measure the heart rate and its variability. It can also process galvanic skin response that signals the emotional state of the wearer. Another feature is the on-board accelerometer that detects movement. When the Exmocare watch is worn over time, it learns to recognize the wearer’s baseline physical state. That’s how it knows when your vitals deviate too much. This could be very beneficial to those elderly who do not get checked in on very often.

Now here’s an interesting new concept in dental care. Throw out the paste. Instead of using toothpaste, the Soladey Ionic Toothbrush uses energy created from light.(fluorescent tube, light bulb or the good old sun) It converts light into negative ions which when mixed with saliva and water can clean the bacteria from your teeth. This is all thanks to a titanium ionic conducting rod which creates the negative ions. It kills the bacteria and gets rid of bad breath.

I hear ya. What about that minty fresh feeling? Well, I suppose you could keep a tube of toothpaste around just to satisfy your strange craving. Or maybe they could make the bristles on this new brush have a minty flavor.

The internet giant is never content to sit back and let anyone else take a large piece of the pie. Hey, that’s how they got so rich! That’s why they are following Microsoft’s lead where health and medical records are concerned. They plan to roll out Google Health sometime early next year if they keep to their schedule.

It makes sense since users all begin at the Google page to search for health and medical information anyway. So they will be applying Google’s expertise in indexing, searching, and managing vast amounts of information to the idea. It also doesn’t hurt that they will have the health industry targeted with their Adwords program. If Google’s history has shown us anything, it should be a huge success and give the giant still more dominance in the industry.

The portability aspect of this half meter wide briefcase is debatable, but what’s inside is what makes it cool, in a CSI kind of way. NEC is calling it the first portable DNA analyser. That’s right, now it’s official. Anybody who has watched even one hour of crime-time television can be their own detective and solve murders.

The briefcase can be used for all 5 stages that make up the DNA analysis process. It is also a real time saver if you only plan on being a part time crime solver, since it …

Patients in a Canadian hospital are getting a good dose of physical rehabilitation gaming by using the Nintendo Wii and its new controllers to work on movement and balance issues while recovering.

Therapists at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton report using the Wii Sports boxing game to help a patient who is recovering from a brain injury from, well, boxing in fact. The therapists stated the playing the Wii boxing game was much more motivating for the patient than traditional therapies, and describe the patients progress …

Today Intel and Motion in Computing have both announced the Motion C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA). The C5 is the first product built on Intel’s MCA platform and is designed for use in the health care setting to allow providers to spend more time near patients while staying connected and can also help with medication administration.

The MCA platform is the Intel’s first built specifically for healthcare and works towards connecting clinicians on health care facility floors to real-time information with a light, durable and easily-disinfected …

An artificial heart that doesn’t beat? The Food and Drug Administration approved the first fully implantable artificial heart. The new innovative design is based on a pulse-free, continuously-pumping architecture. The ground-breaking design brings hope to patients near death from certain heart failure, although some problems remain with its large size and relatively short lifespan.

The new device is dubbed the AbioCor and is made by Massachusetts-based Abiomed. The AbioCor uses a hydraulic pumping system to simulate a natural heart beat. An alternative design formulated by O.H. “Bud” Frazier, a prominent heart surgeon, pumps blood through …