Showing posts with label Medical Monitor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medical Monitor. Show all posts

March 5, 2011

iPhone Plug Ins: The Possibilites Are Endless




I just love all the new plug ins for the iPhone--maximizing it's use as a powerful handheld computer.
Whether it's attachments for talking fingerprints and iris scans (from MORIS--that I wrote about in a prior blog) to running credit card payments (from Square), the iPhone has amazing versatility and almost endless practical use--as we are all coming to learn and enjoy.
With Square, the simple credit card reader plugs right in to the headphone jack.
Then by simply launching the app, users are ables to run payments through just as any professional business would.
Simply type in the dollar amount, sign with a finger, send a receipt via email, and even display the GPS of where the charge was made--all done by mobile device and wirelessly.
According to BusinessWeek (10 Feb 2011), smart-phone card readers will process $11 billion in payments this year and this is projected to rise to $55 billion by 2015.
"Square charges merchants 2.75 percent of sales plus 15 cents per card swipe," but in turn creates new opportunities to sell remotely and transact business seamlessly.
It is only a matter of time before hard currency becomes obsolete as electronic payments becomes easier and matter of course.
My pockets are already empty and I do not miss the greenbacks--bits and bytes registering securely in the bank are more than fine by me.
Next up as for attachments to the iPhone--medical scanners (the possibilities are endless, but some examples could be for diabetes metering, X-rays, and much more.)

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September 30, 2010

Apps for Mobile Health Care



Talking about apps for your phone…this one is amazing from MIT Media Labs.

Attach a $1-2 eyepiece (the "NETRA") to your phone and get your eye prescription in less than 2 minutes.

What's next?
I wonder if they will come out with more apps for health and wellbeing that check your vital signs such as temperature, pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and more.

I can envision the smartphone becoming our personal health assistant for monitoring and alerting us to dangerous medical conditions.

This will increase our ability to get timely medical care and save lives.
This is a long way from "I've fallen and I can't get up," and that's a great thing.

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February 28, 2008

Bionic Eyes and Enterprise Architecture

Remember the TV shows The Bionic Man and Woman? These folks had implants that gave them amazing super-human strength, speed, hearing, and vision.

Bionics is a term which refers to flow of ideas from biology to engineering and vice versa…In medicine, Bionics means the replacement or enhancement of organs or other body parts by mechanical versions. Bionic implants differ from mere prostheses by mimicking the original function very closely, or even surpassing it. (Wikipedia)

Believe it or not, bionic eyes are now a reality, at least in a research stage.

MIT Technology Review, 25 January 2008, reports that “researchers have created an electronic contact lens that could be used as a display or medical sensor.”

Although, this bionic eye cannot see miles away like a telescope yet, it was created to see if it would be possible to fulfill two primary purposes:

  1. Augmented reality display—a “display that could superimporse images onto a person’s field of view, while allowing her to see the real world...soldiers could use the technology to see information about their environment, collected from sensors. Or civilians could use the electronic lens as a cell-phone display, to see who is calling and to watch videos during a commute.”
  2. Noninvasive medical monitor—“use the lens as a sensor that could monitor chemical levels in the body and notify the user if they indicate signs of disease...many indicators of health can be monitored from the surface of the eye. The live cells on the eye are in direct contact with blood serum, which contains biomarkers for disease."

How is the bionic eye made?

It “incorporates metal circuitry and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) into a polymer-based lens...a functional circuit that is biologically compatible with the eye.”

What are some of the challenges in making the bionic eye work in the real world?
  1. Heat—The bionic eye is a functioning circuit and could generate heat that could adversely affect the eye.
  2. Power—How will the contact lens be powered while worn?
  3. Size—To create a visible display, the LEDs will have to shrink in size and in the process not break in the lens-shaping process

From a User-centric EA perspective, bionics is one of those incredible fields where end-users really benefit in everyday functions, in life-altering ways. Bionics opens up possibilities for people with disabilities (due to illness or accident) that are nothing short of miraculous. Imagine people being able to walk, look, hear, and so on not only on par with healthy individuals, but maybe even with an edge. Of course, this could open up all sorts of ethical dilemmas. If we think Olympians taking steroids is an issue, we haven’t seen nothing yet. Bionics is a field that is only just beginning, but it will have enormous implications for process improvement and reengineering based on new incredible capabilities of those that have these implants. Bionics is an example par excellence of technology enabling process (in this case, the very elements of mechanical human processes).


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