Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Not Your Dentist's Drill Bit

The WSJ awarded it's annual Innovation Gold Award to a company called Vidacare. Vidacare developed a device to introduce fluids into the vascular system where the subject's veins have collapsed. The device is a hollow drill bit which, for example, an emergency medical technician on a call might use on a patient in desperate need of an IV, but unable otherwise to have one introduced. The EMT drills into a bone of the patient (the tibia) and introduces the medicinal substance into the marrow through the drill bit. The marrow, as I understand it, is a very effective portal to the bloodstream.

This is the path to the WSJ article itself, but I'm not sure it's available directly. But I think you can access the article by way of the Vidacare site or simply read about the device on that site, although the description there appears to be untouched by any English major within several miles.

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