New wireless technology could help improve health care and cut medical bill
Thirteen million baby boomers are currently caring for their elderly parents, either in-home or overseeing their care from afar, according to Senior Journal. Keeping tabs on the condition and well-being of parents, as well as getting them to doctor appointments, can be a daunting and stressful job- A new technology is seeking to make that job easier.
Introduced by the University of Florida and IBM, this health-care advancement enables home computers and cell phones—via Bluetooth wire¬less transfer—to send real-time readings of vital signs from personal medical devices such as glu¬cose meters, body-weight measuring systems, and respiratory monitoring devices to doctors and families—even many states away.
"Connecting health-care devices into today's range of wired and wireless networks presents us with an opportunity to turn islands of medical information into evolving networks of health-care monitoring and control.” says Scott de Deugd, IBM's director of emerging technology and stan¬dards. He adds that current integrated solutions are inflexible, and that the key to making this new system work is using innovative wireless devices and open standards*
The middleware technology acts as an inter¬mediary to ensure that a glucose monitor generates data in standardized Web-based formats for health-care providers. To accomplish this, the researchers used a service-oriented architecture
In addition, a network of open-standard comput¬ing platforms can be used to develop new solutions with little programming. The regular updates to doctors or family members provide a more unified picture of an individual's health and allow doctors to be more in touch with their patients’ care while reducing appointments.
According to project leader Sumi Helal, many hospitals have already requested the technology It's based on open standards that will make it easy for product developers to tap the technology for new devices, which could be on the market within a year—Tracy McNamara PC magazine October 2007
