My
son, who has just returned back from a short US visit, recently
showed me a plastic band that he was wearing on his wrist. This band
is actually a personal health monitor that accurately keeps track and
record of day's activities like steps walked, distance covered, and
calories burned. At night it tracks sleep quality and wakes the
wearer silently in the morning. It's manufacturer 'Fitbit' has named
it as 'Flex.' One can set personal goals in all these factors that
are monitored. Flex uses five white LED indicator lights to show you
how wearer's day is stacking up against his/her goals. Each light
represents 20% of wearer's goal. Tapping the display twice shows the
progress made against daily goal. Flex can be connected to a PC by
means of a sync dongle that plugs into USB port. Flex can also be
Synced to a smartphone or tablet by Bluetooth 4.0. Company has a
special smartphone app that connects with Flex.
I felt
that flex is a damn good idea because on many days, all our schedules
go haywire, we miss the jog, we eat unseemly large portions of a
desert we love. If there is someone, who can keep reminding us that
we should do something to remedy the situation, things would be
better. Unfortunately, Flex does not come cheap and it retails in US
for about US$ 100. The price is a big dampener for anyone, who is
enthusiastic about this health monitor and wants to use it. I found
few other sour points too. It is made from some synthetic material.
No one knows, whether there would be any allergic reaction to an
individual. It has a lithium-polymer battery built in, which needs
charging every 3 days. All these little irritants matter and the
wearer might find his initial enthusiasm tapering off.
I
recently came across a report about such or even more sophisticated
health monitors of the future that might eliminate all the negative
aspects of Flex. One such monitor is under development at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where electrical engineer
Giovanni Salvatore and his colleagues are fabricating thin complex
electronic circuits, so elastic that they can be wrapped around a
strand of human hair without cracking or short-circuiting. The report
says: “ Giovanni's research group is building transparent circuits
on a membrane of a polymer plastic called parylene that is 1-micron
thick. As a pilot project, they built a see-through strain gauge to
monitor the buildup of pressure in the eye and mounted it on a
contact lens. They also are developing a digital tattoo that can
monitor heart rate and transmit the data wirelessly to a cellphone.”
photo
sciencejournal@wsj.com
See
what I mean? The health monitor would come in the shape of a tatto,
which can be stuck on your body and it would keep reporting things
like heart rate to an app on smartphone. That is real convenience.
The opportunities are really without any limit. We can have a digital
tattoo that transmits skin temperature; a transparent sensor on a
contact lens that tests for glaucoma and a pliable pacemaker wrapped
around a beating heart.
Science
magazine reports that researchers at Urbana-Champaign. Beckman
Institute from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, both in US, are developing such tattoo-like
electronic thermometers. A material scientist John A. Rogers at the
University of Illinois and bioengineer Yonggang Huang of Northwestern
University are collaborating to produce a wireless sensor that peels
on and off like a Band-Aid. This sensor along with a simple
monitoring device can eventually replace a hospital
electrocardiogram. Amongst other developments made by them is a
wearable digital thermometer that is extremely sensitive. The report
says that the team had assembled off-the-shelf commercial components
into a wireless stick-on digital skin patch. This patch can monitor
heart and brain activity as effectively as bulkier hospital
equipment.
photo
sciencejournal@wsj.com
Researchers
at Seoul National University in Korea probably gone even a step
further. A publication Nature Nanotechnology, has reported that the
university researchers have created a digital skin patch, which worn
on the wrist can store and transmit information about a patient's
movements, receive diagnostic information, and automatically dispense
medication into the skin as needed. They have also come up with a
smart bandage that can not only record muscle activity and trigger
the release of a drug but also manages to dissolve by itself leaving
no trace behind. They use silk to enclose and waterproof the
electronic circuit. They program the device to dissolve on schedule
by varying the strength of the bonds between the silk molecules and
by the thickness of the circuit itself. After specified time outer
silk bag dissolves and then the device.
photo
sciencejournal@wsj.com
As
things stand at present, a patient admitted in a nursing home,
immediately has to face a battery of different monitors with their
sensors attached to the body along with the sensors. All these
equipments are heavy and bulky and can not be carried home. The new
wearable sensors can change all that and a simple smartphone can do
the job of present expensive monitors. With these new research, the
field of patient care is likely to see an ocean of change. Flex
health monitor is probably just the beginning.
23rd
April 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment