Watch Like Device for At-Risk Patients

DigitalDame writes "At-risk patients will soon have a little help from a device worn on the wrist that can measure vital signs including pulse rate, cardiac rhythm (ECG or EKG), and blood oxygen levels. It can either store the data and transmit it to a medical center at a later time or, in the case of an emergency, transmit the information in real time using the built-in cellular phone while sending an alarm to a caregiver."

Comments

A very bad idea

[nanoakron]

As a trainee cardiothoracic surgeon, I see patients in both the Intensive Care Unit and in the High Dependency Unit at our hospital...and I can't tell you the number of times alarms go off needlessly for such things as minor ECG changes and decreasing blood oxygen saturations.

Causes for alarms going off:
Patient takes a deeper breath than normal
Patient moves
Patient strains on the toilet
Patient has a shower
Patient's sensor falls off
Patient's fingers get cold

And any other innumerable causes for spurious alarms.

So how do we know if a patient is really sick? Simple - look at them!

This is precisely what can't be done with one of these remote monitoring devices - I looked into setting up a remote ECG monitoring system myself about 5 years ago but I can guarantee no cardiologist will want to be woken at 3am for false alarms.

So either this device will cost one hell or a lot to run (may even be cheaper to book yourself a room in hospital for the rest of your life) or have the alarms so insensitive that a lot of people die before this fails.

-Nano.