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First Internet-Connected Pacemaker Goes Live
The Register is reporting that a New York woman has become the first person to have her pacemaker wirelessly connected to the internet for full-time monitoring. "The device contains a radio transmitter which connects to receiving equipment in New Yorker Carol Kasyjanski's home, using a very low-power signal around 400MHz, to report on the condition of her heart. Any problems are instantly reported to the doctor, and regular checkups can be done by remotely interrogating the home-based equipment — the pacemaker itself doesn't have an IP address, fun as that would be."
>I wonder what a DDoS would do to it ...
Blue face of death?
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Does it run Linux?
Brings a whole new meaning to Ping of Death.
...then the next step is to see what a little overclocking would do to it...
Recipient of said device breathes a sigh of relief when he discovers his heart won't be slashdotted.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I don't know ... I mean ... what could possibly go wrong with connecting a pacemaker to Twitter and a live internet connection?
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
As someone fitted with a pacemaker of late, having means to often update the doc with performance data would be nice - if not downright life-saving.
With current technology, I have to go in for my "tuneup" every six months. It does involve a wireless interface, and there is an impressive amount of data dumped. A great many parameters can be changed with ease by a trained technician. When we determined that my natural resting heartrate was under 60bpm, reprogramming that to a minimum of 50bpm was trivial.
Transmitting ongoing data to the doc would be convenient, making it easy to email "hey, something funny happened today, please look into it" without having to wait until a scheduled appointment involving a not-always-available technician. Being able to transmit critical event as they occur is also very desirable - duh; my Medical Alert necklace may direct medics to call my cardiologist, who would be much more effective if he already had incident data.
Of course the real problem is remote control. Informing the doc of ongoing/critical data is one thing; allowing access to make remote updates is a different issue. Making the unit such that remote changes are impossible is, of course, possible. However, if ANY change will be made to such a critical device, then it should be done IN A DOCTOR'S OFFICE. One of my diagnostic routines is dropping my heart rate to 40bpm - harmless if done right, lethal if screwed up.
Of course the real concern to most /. readers is the LOLFAIL headline. "Hey, watch out for a DDOS on your pacemaker! Ha ha ha!" Nothing wins a lot of reads like a headline making some technical advancement sound really dumb. Funny how so many readers of a high-tech news source treat high-tech advancements like Luddites.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?