Medical mood ring will keep doctors in their patient’s loop
Misty Harris
Sun
Although it has been baptized as a mood ring, the device is actually aimed at measuring people’s physiological responses. CREDIT: Vancouver Sun
Wireless technology has produced a “medical mood ring” that heralds a revolution in emergency health care.
Phillip Shaltis, one of three mechanical engineers behind the invention, says the battery-powered ring transmits a patient’s vital signs to a cellphone or computer, allowing caregivers to determine remotely if medical assistance is needed.
“The idea, ultimately, is to try to shrink an entire intensive-care unit down into a single ring,” says Shaltis, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “We want to provide a new kind of direction to medicine in general, taking a lot of the health care out of the hospital by providing a new modality to patients.”
Although MIT has baptized the device as a mood ring for the medical set, it’s actually aimed at measuring people’s physiological responses. Equipped with two diodes that send pulses of red and infrared light through the wearer’s finger, the ring tracks temperature, heart rate and blood-oxygen levels.
Shaltis, along with fellow MIT engineers Harry Asada and Sokwoo Rhee, designed it to be used in hospital waiting rooms, to monitor at-home recovery after surgery, to track patient reactions to medication, and for general fitness monitoring.
“The biggest difficulty with any of these wearable devices is providing a signal that’s reliable outside a hospital,” Shaltis says. “When a patient is outside running around, it’s much, much harder to transmit data because of all the motions being made and the conditions the body is going through.”
A new report issued by the Cambridge consultancy, Wireless Healthcare, suggests mobile carriers will play a key role in health monitoring in the future, and recent developments in the field support that view.
“Canada is going head to head with a number of key research groups and everybody is focusing on wireless,” says Masako Miyazaki, lead researcher on a $2.84-million University of Alberta study using computer-linked wrist monitors.
“Everybody is trying to miniaturize so their product is non-invasive, easy to manage and not so sensitive to the location of application.”
Miyazaki predicts that eventually, the new ring and wrist monitors will be replaced by biodegradable monitoring chips that can be inserted directly into the body.
“Wireless health care will become crucial in the future,” she says. “Overall, it will affect health-care expenses in crisis areas, meaning we can delay people getting sicker and reduce health-care dollars.”
For the past three years, NASA has been working on its own wearable health monitor. The crew physiological observation device, or CPOD, is a 2.1-ounce monitor that wraps around the waist and transmits astronauts’ health information to doctors in real time.
Similarly, a portable health-monitoring kit made by the Canadian company March Networks is now being used on a Mount Everest expedition. The telehealth equipment monitors the climbers’ vitals, stores the data on Bluetooth-enabled PDAs and transmits it via satellite to a website. (Bluetooth is a wireless technology that transmits data over short distances. The personal digital assistants, such as a Palm device, can be equipped to transmit data over long distances to the satellites.)
So far, none of the devices are being sold directly to patients. But Shaltis says they hope to have their medical mood ring commercialized and mass-produced within the next five years, at an estimated retail cost of a few hundred dollars per device.
When good phones go bad: portables that can kill
Sarah Staples
CanWest News Service
April 21, 2004
In two decades, the cellphone has evolved from a clunky thing complete with cumbersome battery pack to a ubiquitous consumer tool.
It has also emerged as a pre-eminent terror and counter-terrorism device, useful for the same reasons that make it a practical necessity, experts say.
Its use is all the more chilling because bombs designed to be triggered by cellular signal are technically difficult to disarm.
“It’s magnificent in terms of technology; versatile and attractive, very affordable and amazingly easy to get access to,” said Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent who runs an Ottawa security consulting firm, The Northgate Group Corp.
“But the human brain is capable of twisting something good into something bad, and that’s what we see with the cellphone.”
With the number of cellphone subscribers now estimated at more than one billion worldwide, according to the wireless market researcher EMC, the phones offer terrorists the convenience of a weapon that can be used in plain view without raising the slightest suspicion.
Unlike alarm clocks, cellphones rigged to detonate when called offer the convenience of precision timing managed by remote control.
“What if you change your mind and want to set it five minutes later because there’s more people? With the cellphone, you’ve got the luxury to detonate at will,” said Juneau-Katsuya.
What sets cellphones apart from other everyday items is that, like the planes that were turned into weapons on Sept 11, 2001, they’re suited to the macabre business of inflicting mass casualties, he said.
To the terrorist the cellphone represents the ultimate in global reach: Anyone in the world can make the call that detonates a cellphone-rigged device. And unless security forces know the phone number, such a trigger is difficult to stop.
Cellphones have been exploited successfully by terror groups ranging from al-Qaida to Ireland‘s Real IRA. The bombs that exploded on Madrid commuter trains March 11, killing 191, were triggered by cellphones hidden in backpacks left on the trains — although in that case it was the internal alarm clock function of the phone, not its ringer, that functioned as the trigger.
Sony packs up the old TV into portable kit lighter than laptop
Vancouver Sun
April 21, 2004
Gizmo-crazed Vancouverites will soon be able to go gaga over Sony’s LocationFree portable TV system, available this fall.
Like something out of a 1940s science fiction story, the all-in-one entertainment device — with its 30-centimetre LCD touch screen monitor and base station — allows you to take your fun with you in an easily-totable package that costs a mere $2,499.
It weighs less than a laptop and once you set up this multi-tasking chameleon you can, using its graphical on-screen interface, watch television programs, flip through your digital photos and even take a look at streaming videos.
Also, you can go on the Internet, read your e-mail or even take a gander at your favourite website.
As well, you can listen to Internet radio.
According to Sony, the unique product is a fusion of traditional television and broadband technology.
“It’s a location-free TV that’s perfect for those without a laptop PC or who simply don’t want the hassle of complicated hookups, synching and downloading the way you must do now if you want mobile entertainment using PC-based systems,” said Sony of Canada’s, general manager, consumer display products, Toshi Matsuo.
The base station, which has an Ethernet jack for a direct connection to the Net, sends its signals to the monitor over a Wi-Fi connection, similar to the wireless ones used in today’s hot spots.
In addition to being a monitor, the touch screen unit — which has a built-in slot for Sony’s Memory Stick media — can display digital images, including videos.
For business travellers and road warriors, an additional smaller portable monitor will also be available that can be carried to the local coffee shop for browsing or to their hotel room. The wireless TV will be available in October.
© The Vancouver Sun 2004