In response to my post “A Challenge to History Buffs: Who Was Digikon?“, Paolo Pagani sent me the following message:
“Digikon was in the years 1977-1985 the brand name product in Italy by Biotec Biomedical Technologies of Bologna – ITALY.
Pacemakers were a Digikon O.E.M. production for the trading company of Milan Italy KONTRON already a distributor in Italy of Medtronic.
Biotec developed the first pacemaker VVIR based on physiological changes in thoracic impedance due to respiration. (Biotec RDP-3)
Biotec-Bologna was acquired by Medtronic in August 1985.”
Thank you Paolo!


Johns Hopkins’ Sridevi V. Sarma, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, has devised new seizure detection software that, in early testing, significantly cuts the number of unneeded brain-stimulation therapy that an epilepsy patient would receive.





In 1965, Australian medical device pioneer Noel Gray established Telectronics – Australia’s first manufacturing facility for producing pacemakers that were designed in-house. Telectronics was an innovative developer, achieving some major successes in the early cardiac pacing field, for example, Telectronics’ leads allowed narrowing the pacing pulse to its current nominal of 0.5 milliseconds; encapsulating the pacemaker in titanium instead of epoxy; using a microplasma weld to join the two halves of the pacemaker capsule; creating one of the first rate-responsive ‘demand’ pacemakers; and isolating the pacemaker’s battery in a separate compartment to deal with the problem of leaking mercury-zinc batteries. 


Sensors for Medicine and Science, Inc. (SMSI) of Germantown, MD was founded in 1997 to develop chemical sensing technologies based on fluorescence sensing.