New PDA Listens To Your Heartbeat

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday August 16, 2003 @02:38AM from the phoning-home-when-trouble-strikes dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "CardioNet Inc., a company based in San Diego, has developed a wireless technology to monitor heart patients. According to this Computerworld article, the technology was 'originally developed by Qualcomm Inc. to track and send messages to large truck fleets.' CardioNet's service is initially focused on the 2 million U.S. people suffering from arrhythmia. Each patient is equipped with a PDA-type electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring device connected by a short-range wireless system to electrodes on his chest. Data is sent to his doctor via a built-in cell phone chip. More details, including a diagram and pictures showing how the system works are also available."

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Re:well by in7ane · 2003-08-16 02:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

Ahh, but better yet are the false positives when it gets disconnected etc.

I think it would be more useful for monitoring (heart beat up, irregular - shove into a database, data-mine, look for high risk 'patterns') rather than notifying people of your death.