We most of us have heard of the FitBit, the small wristband that monitors your exercise and health goals by collecting data from your body. Now we have arrived at the next step. Soon ECG’s or electrocardiograms may become a thing of the past. The process of monitoring a person’s heart is can now be done with a stick-on device that reports the person’s health data to a cloud database. If a problem is detected, the biosensor uses Bluetooth to connect to a mobile phone and send the data back to doctors.
This is now possible with VitalConnect’s VitalPatch biosensor. This device is more advanced than today’s commercial fitness gadgets. This disposable patch is placed directly onto the skin and monitors anything from heart rate, respiratory rate, skin temperature, body posture, fall detection and activity including Steps.
This device is currently being tested with at-risk patients in general wards, using a cloud-based system to alert doctors to any problems. The benefits of this type of monitoring means that eventually patients will be able to leave the hospital sooner and be monitored in the comfort of their own home.
Allowing patients to move around without wires confining them to bed leads to shorter recovery times in hospitals as well as at home.
In the future this kind of health monitoring is going to become more of the norm. But as we enter this brave new world the privacy concerns persist. If our bodies are monitored all the time, who has right to view or use that data. For example should an employer have allowed access to health data to check on an employee who has called in sick?
