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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Researchers want to wire the human body with sensors [nature.com] that could harvest reams of data — and transform health care.
...
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 [soylentnews.org] 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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