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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 28 2015, @11:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the let-there-be-light dept.

Imagine if you could eliminate the tangle of wires that snake across a hospital patient's body so machines can monitor his or her vital signs. Sounds like a great idea. But wirelessly transmitting data from the patient to the machines cluttering hospital rooms creates the risk of electromagnetic interference. So one group of researchers in South Korea is proposing that some machines use Li-Fi instead.

The team used visible light communications, also known as Li-Fi, to transmit readings from an electroencephalograph (EEG) over a distance of about 50 centimeters. "It's a very much friendlier means of transmitting biomedical signals in a hospital," says Yeon Ho Chung, an engineer at Pukyong National University in Busan. The group described their work in the IEEE Sensors Journal.

Li-Fi would benefit places that experience a lot of interference from crowded wifi nodes as well, as long as there are no side effects.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:17AM (#228930)

    Jenkins: The patient has no pulse, doctor
    Dr. Markov: Emergency defibrilation, NOW
    Jenkins: It's not working doctor, it's not working
    Dr. Markov: Damnit Jenkins, get out of the line-of-sight of the li-fi heart-rate monitor! You moron!

    This is all great but cables can snake around things when doctors are hanging over your body, lifi... not so much

  • (Score: 1) by Pino P on Friday August 28 2015, @12:21PM

    by Pino P (4721) on Friday August 28 2015, @12:21PM (#228950) Journal

    This failure mode can be fixed: make distinct sounds for "no pulse" and "lost connection". Likewise, the photosensitive epilepsy trigger problem alluded to at the end of the summary is fixable by using a DC-free code to ensure that the intensity variation below 60 Hz is near zero.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:32PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 28 2015, @07:32PM (#229137) Journal

      That works for me as long as they don't eliminate the sticky contacts for the cables. It would ruin my "I am Scaramanga" line.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:03AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:03AM (#229251)

        At last! Someone else who has the same compulsion to say that!

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @12:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @12:42PM (#228955)

    Easy fix: Instead of IR, use X-Rays. Problem solved.