How does wearable electronics help the sick?
Many devices were created in order to make you, dear friends, more often get up from the chair. Similar gadgets even for kids do. But this, for the most part, is entertainment - after all, if there is a certain desire, it will not be difficult to improve your life to a healthy (relatively) person without wearable devices.
Another thing is people who, due to congenital or acquired diseases, have any limitations. As JS Hertz correctly noted , at the moment wearable electronics are failing in relation to people who really need such devices.
In this post I will talk a little about how different wearable gadgets help to investigate symptoms or to treat.
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Let's start with the news about the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The experts of this fund have teamed up with Intel to study Parkinson's disease. As is well known, Michael J. Fox, who starred in one of my favorite films, “Back to the Future”, learned a long time ago that he was ill with Parkinson, and now he invests a lot of energy in improving the lives of his fellows in misfortune. Quite successfully, he does it, continuing, by the way, to act in films.
The essence of the Foundation’s and Intel’s project is to track the manifestations of the disease in order to obtain as much detailed information as possible about the patient, including sleep quality and tremor intensity.
If in the case of the Michael J. Fox Foundation it is a “smart watch”, in the case of Google, glasses are used to help the sick. Google Glass was programmed to remind you of medications and visits to the doctor, and even to swallow drool. In the case of slow motion glasses "wake up" the owner.
"Smart glasses" will help those who do not see at all. The OrCam device allows an absolutely blind person to read, tells you who approached him using face recognition, reports familiar places and objects.
The whole system consists of a sensor with a bone conduction earpiece and a portable base on a belt attached by a wire.
Microsoft is working on a similar device now. For this, the company bought patents Osterhout Design Group. The Alice Band device is worn on the head, it recognizes objects around using sensors and cameras, and also tells them to the user.
The concept of the gadget was presented in 2012 in this video.
Paralysis is scary. It's very scary. And, probably, the impossibility of communicating with other people is most frightening in him. So how to express your thoughts? Maybe connect directly to the brain? Dr. Chang from San Francisco is currently developing this particular opportunity.
Studies are conducted as follows: a patient with an epilepsy during a brain surgery is placed a plate of electrodes. Then they do not remove this grid for several days (of course, it is difficult to remove something from the inside of the head). So doctors are looking for a source of epilepsy, and at the same time they will learn more about activity on the surface of the brain, depending on speech.
How did this get into the article about wearable electronics? And so: the end device may be more like a hat. It is a wearable thing.
People with diabetes need to constantly check their blood sugar levels. For this, glucometers are used. As a rule, you need to make a puncture in the finger and put a drop of blood on the strip. How much more convenient it would be to do such a test with a bracelet! But the maximum that we currently have is a non-invasive blood glucose meter that punctures a laser. Again, test strips are required, but at least there are no needles.
Not everything is as bad as it seems: there are a lot of wearable devices in this market. And there are even gadgets that can measure blood sugar around the clock and continuously. But to use them you need to perforate your tummy, which is unpleasant. In the photo - a device created using Guardian® REAL technology.
By the way, the bracelet-glucometer was made by Cygnus Inc. back in 2002. It is a pity, I did not know about it when I wrote the History of smart watches .
What prevented the project? He was not effective enough in terms of the accuracy of the results.
Since we are talking about glucose measurement, you definitely need to mention the lens from Google X. I wrote about it in this post .
The contact lens of the two flexible layers has a microsensor that measures sugar level through tear analysis. It works every second.
And Fuji Electric has developed a technology for monitoring blood fat levels. To do this, you do not even need to take blood: radiation in the near infrared range is transmitted through a portion of the living body, after which we get a picture. While the installation is rather cumbersome, but who doubts that it is possible to insert a smaller version into the “smart watch”? They, by the way, should be attracted to office employees.
How to understand why a person has an epilepsy attack? The Dialog device works with a smartphone application to identify external factors leading to an attack. Well, it reminds us that it's time to drink pills - any smartphone can do that.
When the device believes that the owner may have a seizure, it warns you to have time to find a safe place or to prevent seizure altogether.
It is not enough for people with heart disease to check the pulse every three minutes, as heart rate monitors do. For them, continuous monitoring is best. At a minimum - for a few days once a month to investigate changes. Maximum - constantly.
There are devices for this. For example, here is a t-shirt from Russian developers .
It cannot be said that there are no wearable gadgets for patients on the market. And all the more so because there are no ideas worthy of realization and commercialization. But you can't call it saturated either. So it’s worth paying more attention to the fact that wearable gadgets, combined with big data, can really improve people's lives, and not just make office clerks tear their asses from the chair.
Another thing is people who, due to congenital or acquired diseases, have any limitations. As JS Hertz correctly noted , at the moment wearable electronics are failing in relation to people who really need such devices.
In this post I will talk a little about how different wearable gadgets help to investigate symptoms or to treat.
')
Parkinson's disease
Let's start with the news about the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The experts of this fund have teamed up with Intel to study Parkinson's disease. As is well known, Michael J. Fox, who starred in one of my favorite films, “Back to the Future”, learned a long time ago that he was ill with Parkinson, and now he invests a lot of energy in improving the lives of his fellows in misfortune. Quite successfully, he does it, continuing, by the way, to act in films.
The essence of the Foundation’s and Intel’s project is to track the manifestations of the disease in order to obtain as much detailed information as possible about the patient, including sleep quality and tremor intensity.
If in the case of the Michael J. Fox Foundation it is a “smart watch”, in the case of Google, glasses are used to help the sick. Google Glass was programmed to remind you of medications and visits to the doctor, and even to swallow drool. In the case of slow motion glasses "wake up" the owner.
Sight diseases
"Smart glasses" will help those who do not see at all. The OrCam device allows an absolutely blind person to read, tells you who approached him using face recognition, reports familiar places and objects.
The whole system consists of a sensor with a bone conduction earpiece and a portable base on a belt attached by a wire.
Microsoft is working on a similar device now. For this, the company bought patents Osterhout Design Group. The Alice Band device is worn on the head, it recognizes objects around using sensors and cameras, and also tells them to the user.
The concept of the gadget was presented in 2012 in this video.
Paralysis
Paralysis is scary. It's very scary. And, probably, the impossibility of communicating with other people is most frightening in him. So how to express your thoughts? Maybe connect directly to the brain? Dr. Chang from San Francisco is currently developing this particular opportunity.
Studies are conducted as follows: a patient with an epilepsy during a brain surgery is placed a plate of electrodes. Then they do not remove this grid for several days (of course, it is difficult to remove something from the inside of the head). So doctors are looking for a source of epilepsy, and at the same time they will learn more about activity on the surface of the brain, depending on speech.
How did this get into the article about wearable electronics? And so: the end device may be more like a hat. It is a wearable thing.
Diabetes
People with diabetes need to constantly check their blood sugar levels. For this, glucometers are used. As a rule, you need to make a puncture in the finger and put a drop of blood on the strip. How much more convenient it would be to do such a test with a bracelet! But the maximum that we currently have is a non-invasive blood glucose meter that punctures a laser. Again, test strips are required, but at least there are no needles.
Not everything is as bad as it seems: there are a lot of wearable devices in this market. And there are even gadgets that can measure blood sugar around the clock and continuously. But to use them you need to perforate your tummy, which is unpleasant. In the photo - a device created using Guardian® REAL technology.
By the way, the bracelet-glucometer was made by Cygnus Inc. back in 2002. It is a pity, I did not know about it when I wrote the History of smart watches .
What prevented the project? He was not effective enough in terms of the accuracy of the results.
Since we are talking about glucose measurement, you definitely need to mention the lens from Google X. I wrote about it in this post .
The contact lens of the two flexible layers has a microsensor that measures sugar level through tear analysis. It works every second.
And Fuji Electric has developed a technology for monitoring blood fat levels. To do this, you do not even need to take blood: radiation in the near infrared range is transmitted through a portion of the living body, after which we get a picture. While the installation is rather cumbersome, but who doubts that it is possible to insert a smaller version into the “smart watch”? They, by the way, should be attracted to office employees.
Epilepsy
How to understand why a person has an epilepsy attack? The Dialog device works with a smartphone application to identify external factors leading to an attack. Well, it reminds us that it's time to drink pills - any smartphone can do that.
When the device believes that the owner may have a seizure, it warns you to have time to find a safe place or to prevent seizure altogether.
Heart diseases
It is not enough for people with heart disease to check the pulse every three minutes, as heart rate monitors do. For them, continuous monitoring is best. At a minimum - for a few days once a month to investigate changes. Maximum - constantly.
There are devices for this. For example, here is a t-shirt from Russian developers .
Total
It cannot be said that there are no wearable gadgets for patients on the market. And all the more so because there are no ideas worthy of realization and commercialization. But you can't call it saturated either. So it’s worth paying more attention to the fact that wearable gadgets, combined with big data, can really improve people's lives, and not just make office clerks tear their asses from the chair.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/363127/
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