Researchers want to wire the human body with sensors that could harvest reams of data — and transform health care.
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Working with researchers at Linköping University in Sweden, Gustafsson's team has developed skin-surface and implanted sensors, as well as an in-body intranet that can link devices while keeping them private. Other groups are developing technologies ranging from skin patches that sense arterial stiffening — a signal of a looming heart attack — to devices that detect epileptic fits and automatically deliver drugs directly to affected areas of the brain.These next-generation devices are designed to function alongside tissue, rather than be isolated from it like most pacemakers and other electronic devices already used in the body. But making this integration work is no easy feat, especially for materials scientists, who must shrink circuits radically, make flexible and stretchable electronics that are imperceptible to tissue, and find innovative ways to create interfaces with the body. Achieving Gustafsson's vision — in which devices monitor and treat the body day in, day out — will also require both new power sources and new ways of transmitting information.
Hot on the heels of the other day's story about how doctors don't know what to do with the data from fitness trackers, is this more of the same, ie. a mass of data doctors can't use, or a fundamentally different quality of data that would be useful?
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A number of doctors aren't so sure about the benefits of wearables eithers. A recent MIT Technology Review story found doctors from a number of specialities unsure about what to do with the data many of their fitness-tracking patients are bringing them."Clinicians can't do a lot with the number of steps you've taken in a day," Neil Sehgal, a senior research scientist at UCSF Center for Digital Health Innovation said. Andrew Trister, an oncologist and researcher at Sage Bionetworks echoed this sentiment. "[Patients] come in with these very large Excel spreadsheets, with all this information," he said. "I have no idea what to do with that."
One of the short-term problems for trackers is that their [sic] not actually reliable enough to be medically useful. The sorts of measurements that devices cheap enough to be commercial products tend only to focus on vague metrics that could just as easily be inferred from a short interview or basic examination. While certain health trackers have shown promise—such as the small implants that manage insulin for diabetics—they can also produce a hyper-vigilance and paranoia, leading to a degenerative process of over-managing issues that a person's body is already handling.
Are there Soylentils that do use fitness trackers regularly? Do they help you manage your health?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @07:10AM
counts as wearable electronics!
This is a consumerist shit site, right? Anything not consumer shit is shit you haven't heard of and therefore irrelevant. YEAH baby!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @08:07AM
oooh oooh ooh oooh ooooooooooooohhhh!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Valkor on Monday December 07 2015, @07:13AM
I don't know the first thing about doctoring. I do know how to clobber half of Adafruit's inventory (including badges) in to something useful though. So ask the doctors and research minions what useful data would be. Then I'll make something for them and cash in on the "durable medical equipment" scam! It'll be great!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 07 2015, @07:46AM
Heh, no.
Medical devices. Regulations. Certifications. Trials. Insurance.
Even to run a scam, with a fully non-functional device it will cost you more money in lawyers than parts.
And the scam market is already chock full-o-crap..
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday December 07 2015, @06:36PM
So, you're going to create something "useful," that provides functionality that is in-demand by doctors, and exchange it for money?
Damn, that's some scam!
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday December 07 2015, @07:34AM
i'm not against putting technology in people but i think it would be best if we actually put sensors in people with a specific purpose lest we end up with everyone having an internal fitness tracker that doctors really don't give a shit about.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday December 07 2015, @07:43AM
Well, I'm sure your insurance company will find it quite useful.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 07 2015, @07:48AM
Where do you get your insurance?
Everything they pay for is a loss to them. Even shit you need is likely to be denied.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday December 07 2015, @07:55AM
And this would give them more information to use to deny your claims.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday December 07 2015, @08:06AM
Or force them to approve your claims in a way they can't deny.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday December 07 2015, @08:36AM
The only way to "force" them to approve your claim is to go to court. Or perhaps convince their arbitrator. But either [or, more likely, both] takes a bunch of time and money to go through. And, of course, you generally will have needed the procedure/s already, so you will have to front the money for that as well.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by TheLink on Monday December 07 2015, @08:39AM
Wearable = spectacles, contact lenses. If you don't like em you can take them off without too much pain and bleeding.
Implant = intra-ocular accommodating lenses. If you don't like them, you better get a skilful surgeon to take them out.
FWIW stuff like Google Glasses and those fancy step counters are crap. I don't want more ad-delivery devices or boring crap marketed as innovation. I want actual human augmentation- "iSavant". Remember those autistic savants? I want the savant bits without the autism. I want 3D videographic/eidetic memory, fast counting, fast object location, automatic facial and voice recognition (help detect a boss/customer/friend/congressman/voter in a crowd), virtual telepathy and virtual telekinesis*. And plenty more. I want REAL INNOVATION, not disappointing "progress" that Marketing/MBAs excreted.
* virtual telekinesis only at supported locations ;).
For the military edition stuff like gun muzzle/miltary vehicle detection and identification, camouflage countermeasures, plus crack-thump sniper location and UWB radar/comms.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday December 07 2015, @10:07AM
I want actual human augmentation ... I want REAL INNOVATION
what you want is to run while we're just learning to crawl. a brain interface worth a damn is still many decades away. go read a book because that's the only way you're going to get to the future any faster.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Monday December 07 2015, @02:06PM
Most of stuff I mention is possible with current tech. Brain computer interfaces would be nice but not necessary to help us do cool stuff. There are plenty of other ways to signal to your device what you want to do. We already have tech to help Stephen Hawking talk. Able bodied people should be able to do even better. Gamers already do all sorts of weird stuff to control things[1]. People are already sending messages to other people across the world, a bit more seamless and it gets close to virtual telepathy (till we can get the brain or subvocal interfaces). Same goes for virtual telekinesis (message the area-control server accordingly and stuff happens). Facebook is already doing facial recognition, city councils are already doing license plate recognition.
The CPU power and battery life maybe not be there yet to do all of those things all of the time. But you don't need super bright big energy hungry screens if the screens are smaller and near your eyes, so the power consumption can be cut down. And some of the stuff can be done in more efficient hardware than general purpose CPUs. But we might not need so much of those- Intel and competitors have been working hard at making their CPUs more powerful and more efficient.
As for storage, say you continuously record at high res and low res, selecting record and the past high res 5 minutes in the buffer is saved for long term and so is the current high res recording till you stop it. Let's be conservative and say it's about 2GB per hour for 1920x1080, so that's 48GB per day, 350GB for a weeks worth, doable with current tech even with "Full HD", might even be able to store a month on the device with lower res. Converting what is heard to text for easier referencing and lookup is also possible (even though it may make a mess of some stuff at first, but some of the required tech is coming: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/537101/deep-learning-machine-solves-the-cocktail-party-problem/ [technologyreview.com]
and I'm sure the system can do better at figuring things out if you indicate the direction to listen at with your eyeballs or other means).
In contrast going to Mars is trying to jump before we can stand (we don't have mature tech for artificial gravity and radiation shielding), and yet we're still trying to do stupid stuff like that. Artificial gravity and radiation shielding is possible with current tech, but NASA and the others have not made any significant attempts to turn such stuff into mature technologies, nor do they seem to be planning to and yet they still talk about going to Mars.
[1] And some handicapped gamers do pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83nSodg-HTU [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday December 07 2015, @03:50PM
from your comment, it seems to me that you only have general grasp of the various technologies involved. computer vision is hard. identifying objects is something that is being worked on but it's a complicated task. processing power is nice and all but there are fundamental issues we don't yet understand. it could be a while, so grab that book.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Monday December 07 2015, @06:19PM
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday December 08 2015, @01:58PM
I never said computer vision was easy. So what's your point?
the point is that you should be silent or actually help but not simply bitch about it.
I should "read a book" merely because some of the stuff I wanted is not possible now? That's pathetic.
alright, then go ahead and solve the problem yourself.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:18PM
You're still being more pathetic and useless than I am with your responses. Bitching still has a greater chance of changing things than telling people to stick their noses in a book.
I've bitched in various places about various stuff to try to get stuff improved. But given that I'm a nobody, in most cases people don't listen to me. Once in a while somebody does: https://queue.acm.org/fullcomments.cfm?id=2071893 [acm.org] [1] (where I suggested that they were barking up the wrong tree with trying to reduce buffer sizes- Byte Queue Limits etc, and should instead not hold on to packets for too long, which resulted in them coming up with CoDel - which still can't help much unless it's more widely implemented ).
Plus I'm trying to create awareness, a demand for better. More people should want devices that make them more powerful rather than settle for stuff that make Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook etc more powerful. How much more powerful would Google Glasses make you? Not much more than you having a smartphone, perhaps you get more convenience. More people wearing Google Glasses would increase Google's power more than it would increase the power of the users. Same for the Apple wearables.
You can be silent and suck it up when you or others are served crap but if you don't like my bitching you can go take your own suggestion and read a book instead.
[1] actual article: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2071893 [acm.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 07 2015, @01:39PM
Sorry, they come packed as uint64_t lately. You'll need to bitwise-AND to get your bits of interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 07 2015, @01:32PM
Ah, you're a Linux user, I see [xkcd.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by goodie on Monday December 07 2015, @05:08PM
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-october-26-2015-1.3288374/digital-sensor-drug-shares-health-data-prompts-ethical-concerns-1.3288419 [www.cbc.ca]
The audio had some interesting points. But then again, harvesting large amounts of data for a whole population is, in my opinion, useless. In the end, it will be about selling something, not policy-making.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday December 09 2015, @03:04PM
(a) Let's see what sensors we can make.
(b) We need a FOO sensor in our research.. Hey, someone has made something like one.
(c) Lengthy and expensive double-blind study on something that happens to use the sensor.
(d) Occasionally, something useful, possibly not involving the sensor.