The Droid’s Sensors Blogclick to enter

Clinical trials have begun of a smart plaster – a sensor-studded band aid that wirelessly monitors vital signs.

Once stuck to a patient’s chest, the band aid monitors heart rate, blood pressure and other health indicators.
Its creators hope it will eventually take over from the wired devices that limit a patient’s movement.
As well as monitoring standard vital signs, the gadget can be tuned to capture far more subtle indicators of a patient’s condition.
The trials will see how the disposable device performs in several different scenarios, said Dr Nick Oliver, a clinical research fellow at Imperial College’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, who is overseeing the trial.
Initial trials will test the integrity of the data being gathered and transmitted by the plaster to ensure it gives accurate readings of a patient’s condition. The basic device monitors temperature, heart rate and respiration.
The second series of trials will see it placed on patients who are recovering from minor illnesses and assess how it fares when the patient has a shower or an x-ray.

Dr Oliver said the wireless plaster could also allow patients to be monitored from afar as data could be piped beyond a bedside readout to a central location for immediate analysis.

In addition, Keith Errey, co-founder of Toumaz Technology which is developing Prof Toumazou’s idea, said the smart plaster could monitor far more than just basic vital signs.
He described the plaster as a “platform” that can be loaded with all kinds of sensors that can keep an eye on other bodily indicators, such as glucose levels, blood pressure in different parts of the body and other fleeting signs that show a patient is recovering or getting worse.
It could also be used as a location monitor so staff can keep an eye on the whereabouts of patients or those at risk of falls.
Professional sports stars were also interested in using the device, said Mr Errey, so they can fine tune their training regime.

Direct link: link

(sensors for mobile phones, not ordinary Health 2.0  web portals )

As the editor of two medical software blogs for iPhone and Android, I can notice that there are the low share of apps and the low profit in medical and healthcare categories because of poor quality of majority of the apps . Therefore at the present time there is almost nothing innovative there from the user’s or technological points of view, isn’t it?

As an analyst I can conclude that the electronic medical records sphere could not reach the end-consumer still . Now it is just creating the solutions for the b2b market which is for sure potentially less than the mass-market.

By the way it’s clear to all industry leaders that no one normal consumer will enter somewhere the big database of his illnesses on his own, write down all his steps (what he eats, what drugs he has taken, what and how long something hurts) daily, take on trust the information from the ordinary medical web-portal without confirmation of his personal doctor etc.

What will save all these billions of investments and elevate the Health 2.0 sphere on the fundamentally new level?

It’s simple – Only new products which are really necessary for usual consumer.

What does consumer want?
He just wants to receive every day the reliable personal instructions/advices concerning health without any own efforts .
Yes, yes!
Without the tiresome fillings of forms, documents, papers and so on.
Without the searches at “doubtful” forums and sites.
Without the preliminary studying of 100 inconsistent opinions of anonymous users in “chat”.

He just wants the product, which KNOWS him and KNOWS what he does every second, to give out him accurate and simple advices, like «you may do it, you may not do that, it’s better to make/choose that thing, danger threatens you, it’s dangerous to eat that as you are diabetic etc.».

How is that possible?

For the creation of such product it is necessary mass production and integration of various mini – sensors for the mobile phones , which will study environment and generate corresponding recommendations and advices on the basis of global medical knowledge databases and a personal medical card of the consumer without the user’s troubles .

Do you think it’s unreal?Why?
Two leaders, Google and Microsoft, have already useful b2b infrastructure and medical knowledge databases(Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault).

Creation of the sensors, which are comprehensible to the consumer, though and slowly, but begins to develop:
- Recently NASA has created a sensor for iPhone, which allows defining poisonous gases in the air.

- The standard complete set of iPhone includes accelerometer, which allows to define movements of the person (it is already applied for monitoring of old people fettle)

– Recently it was put out the solution, which lets to use iPhone as a stethoscope;

Research and Development of the other, more advanced, sensors are held now. These sensors will become new sense organs for the human are conducted and will allow people to study environment every second more complex and detailed.

So it’s possible that in 3-5 years there will be tiny sensors which are capable to study structure of food , to learn the safety of environment, to analyze the key parameters of person’s health, his psychological fettle etc.

After It will be necessary just to collect all these data from sensors on the Internet servers, to “connect” data with a personal medical card of the person and to analyze them, giving out those or other recommendations on-line.

Do you imagine how perspective and profitable it is?

Author:
Vit Goncharuk,
Editor at iPhoneMedicalApps.com
CEO at VIactivity LCC[Software development, production and SEO for iPhone, Android, Symbian, Web-projects etc]

MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive.

Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

“We convert cellphones into devices that diagnose diseases,” said Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, who created the devices. He has formed a company, Microskia, to commercialize the technology.

The adapted phones may be used for screening in places far from hospitals, technicians or diagnostic laboratories, Dr. Ozcan said.

In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection, he said.

Read more: link