A man paralysed from the neck down was able to high-five his girlfriend through a robotic arm, which he directed using only his mind.

Tim Hemmes, 30, controlled the arm through an implanted microchip in his brain. Tim is quadriplegic following a motorcycle accident seven years ago.

Tim said: “It wasn't my arm but it was my brain, my thoughts. I was moving something...I don't have one single word to give you what I felt at that moment. That word doesn't exist.”

Scientists at Pittsburgh University attached the robotic arm, which Tim directed by looking at an electronic grid.

“We really are at a tipping point now with this technology,” said Michael McLoughlin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Maryland, USA, which developed the humanlike arm in a $100 million project for DARPA, the Pentagon’s research agency.

The arm that Tim tested was under observation by the FDA, who allowed the chip to remain implanted in his brain for a month to test the technology’s ability to move three-dimensionally.

Tim said that learning to operate the arm was like learning to drive a car with a manual transmission. But on his final day with the arm, Tim managed to touch hands with scientists and even high-fived his girlfriend.

Monkeys at Duke University have previously been trained to feed themselves using thought-powered virtual arms, and a project called Braingate has allowed a number of paralysed people to use computers or make simple movements with prosthetic arms using only their thoughts.

The FDA has granted US approval to Zynex for NexWave, a medical device to be used in electrotherapy treatment.

The next generation medtech system combines three modes of medical technology to provide a wide range of pain and muscle rehabilitation therapies: traditional TENS, interferential and neuromuscular electrical stimulation – through one non-invasive device.

Thomas Sandgaard, CEO of Zynex, said: “The combined modalities of our NexWave provide doctors and clinicians a more comprehensive pain therapy solution for their patients. This device was designed with the patient in mind, as it is compact and easy to use.”

US-based Zynex Medical engineers and manufactures its own design of electrotherapy medical devices for pain relief, pain management and stroke and spinal cord injury rehabilitation.

An ultra-thin, stick-on tattoo that uses sensor technology could one day replace wires and cables connecting patients to machines to monitor heart rate and brain waves.

The epidermal electronic system (EES) contains tiny transmitters and receivers, miniature sensors, light-emitting diodes, and networks of carefully crafted wire filaments.

The new technology is being developed collectively from three universities in the US and two from Singapore and China.

John Rogers, Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, described EES as “a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology”.

The “electronic skin” is designed to be “mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user,” said Dr Rogers.

He claimed that the technology will also solve many problems with current systems using complicated wiring and cables, which can be inconvenient and distressing for patients and doctors.

The prototypes look like flat, stick-on, lacework tattoos and are about the size of a postage stamp.

At less than 50 microns, each tattoo is thinner than a human hair. They don't need glue to stick to the skin, as they use close-contact van der Waals forces that act at the molecular level.

During a study, the researchers found that the devices stayed in place for up to 24 hours, under ideal conditions.

The EES devices can take their power either from stray, or transmitted, electromagnetic radiation and partly from miniature solar panels.

Insulin pumps and blood sugar monitors could be hacked into, putting diabetes patients at risk, a security researcher has found.

Speaking at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas, USA, Jerome Radcliffe said that insulin control devices that are part of an electronic hospital or remote monitoring system can be remotely accessed and their settings changed – with potentially lethal consequences.

This could happen in the context of a personal attack or as a step in a wider hacking operation aimed at secure communication systems.

Scientists are developing ‘jammers’ to block hacking – but these may also block remote monitoring by clinicians, derailing the evolution of e-health.

Radcliffe, himself a diabetes patient, said that he had experimented on his own equipment and found the ‘secure’ data vulnerable to hacking. He commented that his reaction was one of “sheer terror”.

Other systems that could be vulnerable to attack include pacemakers, operating room monitors and ICU equipment. Hackers could not only stop these devices but actively take control of them.

Radcliffe said he had hacked into the remote control of his own insulin pump, using a USB device available from medical suppliers. He was able to access the operational data and change the settings.

Attacks of this kind could be carried out from any location within 200 feet of a patient. They may increase the security risk to public figures who use electronic medical devices.

Insulin pump

A clinical warning system using wireless sensors to track at-risk patients is undergoing a feasibility study in the US.

The device takes blood oxygenation and heart rate readings once or twice every minute, transmitting the data to a base station, where the readings are combined with the patient’s electronic medical record.

The incoming data will indicate clinical deterioration, in which case a nurse will be called to check on the patient.

Dr Chenyang Lu, the principal investigator for the trial at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St Louis, said the idea is to create a virtual intensive care unit (ICU) where patients can move around freely without being wired to beeping machines.

Dr Lu believes it won't be long before any serious medical condition can be tracked using virtual ICUs. He claims that patients would wear a wireless medical device that monitored their health on a smartphone, which would call doctors or relatives if clinical deterioration occurred.

The study is supported by the National Institutes of Health's Clinical and Translational Science Award through the Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences and the BJH Foundation.