20 Greatest Medical Technology Inventions of All times

(Last Updated On: April 16, 2021)

Medical technology and its inventions are a continuous process. From time immemorial, we have witnessed a lot of sequential and amazing inventions in the medical fields. Some, among those medical technology inventions, have paved the way to the entire journey and progress of the medical arena. In this article, I am going to share 20 of the all-time medical technology inventions.

Medical technology inventions

Let’s find below a list of 20 medical technology inventions.

1. X-Ray imaging

It’s exhausting to think about the right diagnosis and remedy of accidents as common as fractures without X-ray imaging experience, which is one of the greatest medical technology inventions. X-rays have been by chance found when a German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was learning electrical currents passing via a fuel of extraordinarily low strain.

He noticed that in a darkened room, the cathode ray tube coated with barium platinocyanide precipitated a fluorescent impact. Since the cathode rays are invisible, he didn’t know what the rays have been and named it X-radiation for its unknown nature. He received the first-ever Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his discovery.

The preliminary reception to the invention, nevertheless, was met with hostility and mockery with a New York Times journalist referring to it as “an alleged discovery of a method to photograph the invisible”.

2. Antibiotics

People mostly affiliate the arrival of antibiotics with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, which is one of the greatest medical technology inventions.

In actuality, the age of antibiotics started in 1907 with the creation of Salvarsan by Alfred Bertheim and Paul Ehrlich.

Today this Salvarsan is named Arsphenamine. It was the first drug to successfully counter Syphilis, marking the start of anti-bacterial remedy.

Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the anti-bacterial property of Penicillium Notatum in 1928 was when antibiotics began gaining mass consideration.

Today, antibiotics have revolutionized medication, and together with vaccines have helped with eradicating illnesses like tuberculosis.

3. Stethoscope

Before the stethoscope was invented, docs would take heed to their affected person‘s heartbeats by placing their ear on to their chests, a fairly crude and inefficient methodology.

For occasion, if there was appreciable insulation between the precise heart and exterior of his chest within the type of fats, this methodology failed.

French doctor René Laënnec confronted an analogous scenario when he could not precisely choose one in all his sufferers‘ heart charges on account that the affected person had an excessive amount of fats on him.

He invented the ‘stethoscope,’ making a trumpet-shaped wood tube that amplified sounds coming from lungs and heart. That precept of sound amplification has but to alter.

4. Cardiac Pacemaker

This milestone invention was the fruit of two Australian scientists’ labor, Mark C. Hill and physicist Edgar H. Booth in 1926.

The prototype was a transportable arrangement consisting of two poles, one related with a salt answer soaked skin pad, and the opposite to a needle that was inserted into the affected person’s heart chamber, which is one of the greatest medical technology inventions.

Despite such a crude design they each efficiently introduced again to life a stillborn child. Today the pacemakers are rather more refined with a mean battery lifetime of 20 years.

5. Modern Telehealth

Telehealth helps to considerably scale back the variety of ER visits and hospitalizations worldwide. By combining highly effective telecommunications experience and healthcare developments, sufferers and docs can join like by no means earlier than without consideration for geographical boundaries.

Telehealth helps extra environment-friendly prognosis, remedy, and care administration for sufferers by enabling docs to share and enter diagnostic photos, video, and affected person information, which is one of the greatest medical technology inventions.

6. Prosthetics, Bionic Prosthetics, and Implants

The invention of the prosthesis has been an enormous breakthrough, enabling the bodily handicapped to stay a life that’s not restricted to wheelchair and crutches. Nevertheless, the first iterations of this invention have been limiting. Over the years prosthesis expertise has blossomed providing wearers extra flexibility and mobility. Bionic prosthetics would ultimately observe, coming into fruition in 1980.

The modernbionic prosthesis is produced from carbon fiber making it lighter and stronger than metallic.

The sturdy artificial limb is intuitive, options, inbuilt myoelectric sensors that allow gripping and holding, could incorporate 3D printed applied sciences, can connect with a wearer’s thoughts, and will ultimately enable wearers to really feel objects once more.

It shall be attention-grabbing to see how artificial intelligence and machine studying proceed to enhance the fashionable bionic prosthesis.

7. Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART)

This medicine has been in improvement phases for years however has confirmed to be a robust symptom reliever for sufferers affected by HIV/AIDS.

By utilizing three medicines to create one highly effective mixture, HAART has been clearly proven to delay the development of AIDS and lengthen the lifetime of contaminated sufferers wherever from Four to 12 years.

8. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

By non-invasively recording mind indicators without the dangers of radiation, this new approach tracks blood move within the mind to watch areas of exercise.

It can be utilized to watch the expansion of mind tumors, decide how properly the mind is functioning after a stroke or prognosis of Alzheimer’s illness, and discover the place within the mind seizures are originating.

9. Cardiac Defibrillator

Defibrillation of the center isn’t a really current idea, it has been recognized for many years,.

However, its introduction into the medical setting was caused by Claude Beck when he efficiently defibrillated a younger boy’s heart throughout a surgical procedure. Today, defibrillators save tens of millions of lives from the brink of loss of life worldwide.

10. CT Scanner and MRI

X-Ray’s discovery led to a surge within the efforts to seek strategies to enter many more particulars without chopping open a body. This subsequently led to the invention of the CT scanner, which is one of the greatest medical technology inventions.

Its industrial model was invented by Dr. Godfrey Hounsfield who acquired a Nobel Prize for the medication in 1979. This machine was in a position to show a number of layers inside a number of X-ray photos.

Soon after, Dr. Raymond V. Damadian invented a method to distinguish between cancerous and regular cells utilizing nuclear magnetic resonance which later was improved and referred to as purposeful magnetic resonance imaging or MRI.

11. Disposable Catheters

Modern disposable catheters have been invented within the 1940s by David S. Sheridan, a person who’s also called the Catheter King.

Either associated with sickness or accident, there are individuals world wide that endure from a neurological dysfunction that impairs and even inconceivable to naturally empty their bladder.

Disposable catheters give these individuals the chance to stay lives comparatively regular lives via the method of intermittent self-catheterization.

12. Molecular Breast Imaging

Molecular breast imaging is the method of utilizing a radioactive tracer and a particular digital camera to search out breast most cancers.

The invention is revolutionary. Mammography remains to be one of many main instruments for the screening of breast most cancers. However, this screening takes a look at is thought to underperform in some ladies.

Molecular breast imaging (MBI) might turn out to be an ideal supplemental approach. MBI screening assessments have garnered traction over the past twenty years as a result of they’re straightforward to disseminate, have excessively affected person acceptance, and could be extensively adopted.

13. The Artificial Heart

Robert Jarvik, MD is extensively often known as the inventor of the first profitable everlasting artificial heart, the Jarvik 7, first implanted in 1982. You may also love to know about the steam engine invention.

Since that point, this medical invention has helped save 1000’s of lives everywhere in the world, as heart illness is the number one explanation for loss of life in the United States and lots of different countries, main cardiologists repeatedly seek methods to enhance heart well being.

Currently, short-term and everlasting artificial hearts are getting used to assist sufferers to keep wholesome whereas awaiting a heart transplant or to nurse their present hearts again to well being.

14. Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgeries

Surgeries aided by robots have been first launched within the late 1980s with laparoscopic procedures and have been advancing ever since.

Today’s “da Vinci” robotic has handled greater than 775,000 sufferers, and Instead of leaving sufferers with in-depth scarring, these minimally-invasive surgical procedures go away only some small marks on the body and permit for higher accuracy throughout surgical procedure and fewer post-operation restoration time.

15. Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI)

This technology is making an influence in the fight in opposition to breast cancer. While mammography has been one of every one of the main strategies of detection for breast cancer for years, it has not been efficient in detecting tumors in dense tissue.

MBI is a protected and more highly effective scan which serves as an encouraging various to mammography.

16. Hypodermic Needle

A hypodermic needle with its austere look and easy working precept was invented solely about 150 years in the past.

Before that in ancient Greece and Rome, physicians used skinny hole instruments to inject fluids into the body. In 1656, a canine was given an intravenous injection through a goose quill by Christopher Wren.

The fashionable hypodermic needle was invented by Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood someplace within the mid-1800s.

Today, these needles are used to ship the right drug dosage in remedy and extract body fluids with minimal ache and threat of contamination.

17. Spectacles

Spectacles are one of many different medical breakthroughs that individuals normally take as a right. There isn’t any important proof to find out any singular individual to credit score with the invention of the specs.

Centuries in the past, students and monks used an early prototype of the fashionable spectacles which needed to be held in entrance of a wearer’s eyes whereas studying or balanced on the nostril (there have been no arms to anchor them to ears).

With the elevated availability of printed books within the late 1800s, the instances of myopia elevated, which led to the introduction of spectacles to the plenty.

18. Laser Surgeries

Laser surgical procedures have been first used to right imaginative and prescient, however right this moment their use spans throughout many medical and beauty procedures.

Whether used for corrective eye surgical procedures, beauty dermatology, or the removal of precancerous lesions, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASER) permits for a correct deal with very small areas of the body.

19. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computerized Tomography (CT)

These two medical applied sciences appear to be customary procedures right this moment, hinting at their important influence on healthcare.

The first whole-body MRI scanner was constructed in 1977 by Dr. Damadian, which he dubbed the “Indomitable” and CT scans have been developed by Sir Godfrey Hounsfield and Dr. Alan Cormack, for which they have been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979.

20. Medical thermometer

Thermometers are so ubiquitous right this moment, but we’re not precisely certain who invented the machine, which is one of the greatest medical technology inventions.

Gabriel Fahrenheit first invented the mercury thermometer in 1714, which remains to be in utilization right this moment.

However, the first machine used to measure temperature appeared within the 1500s and was created by Galileo.

The machine was primarily based on the easy precept {that a} liquid’s density adjustments with respect to its temperature. Nevertheless, mercury thermometers are being phased out in favor of the digital thermometer as a result of the toxic nature of mercury.