Networked individuals now an imminent reality
posted by:Chris Young // 10:39 AM // June 16, 2005 // TechLife
Ottawa's Zarlink Semiconductor recently announced a new chip designed for short-range, high-speed wireless communications between medical implants and external transceivers. Needless to say, once externalized the data is easily transferred over traditional Internet links.
This is surprising even for someone forecasting a time where real-time, networked monitoring of physiological states is common-place. It seems this will occur imminently.
"Physicians can use [this] technology to remotely monitor patient health without requiring regular hospital visits. For example, an ultra low-power RF transceiver in a pacemaker can wirelessly send patient health and device performance data to a bedside base station in the home. Data is then forwarded over the telephone or Internet to a physician's office, and if a problem is detected the patient goes to the hospital where the high-speed two-way RF link can be used to easily monitor and adjust device performance."
This is an important development because this sort of technology, apparently benign as described in this press release, can easily be used for non-emergency medical monitoring, or even non-health related monitoring of physiological states. Computers monitoring equipped individuals could notify third parties, in real-time, of such events as nicotine or drug ingestion, to present but one example.
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