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AT&T Pushes 'Connected' Clothing For Healthcare
gManZboy writes "Babies, athletes, first responders, the elderly — a growing list of people could benefit from connected clothing, says AT&T, which claims 'the stars have aligned' for this technology. Prices of clothing sensors have come down; Wi-Fi and wireless networks have become ubiquitous; and mobile apps have become easier to design and simpler to use. 'For example, parents of babies could cover them in connected clothing to check on their children when they were out of the house ... And relatives of elderly people who are "aging in place" in their homes could check on their vital signs and make sure their loved ones haven't fallen. This could help the elderly stay out of assisted living facilities, as most prefer to do.'"
I thought AT&T was complaining about saturated wireless phone bandwidth, to the point where purchasing T-Mobile was a supposed business neccessity. What would happen if tens of thousands of these "BioHarness" systems were connected through the network currently used by phones?
...as long as someone other than AT&T implements it, so those of us who live in the Bay Area or New York City can actually use it.
On a more serious note, if wireless clothing becomes a tool for remotely monitoring medical status, doesn't this open carriers up to potential lawsuits when their network fails and someone dies of treatable maladies as a result?
I would like to see AT&T and whomever do this right - run a decently powered study to see if such monitoring actually helps the patient instead of the company's bottom line. Given it is AT&T and the US healthcare system, I imagine that it will be done exactly backwards from this.
Yeah, the stars are aligning. The stars in the account's heads when then can get every baby and grandma on a monthly data plan.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
On the plus side, this also implements a framework for health sensors.
For example, the clothing could have an array of sensors which monitor various aspects of ones health - temperature, blood O2, and heart rate come to mind.
This could be linked to alerts, such as "having a heart attack". Having more information will allow us to better tune our detection criteria, will allow us to detect problems more quickly, and administer emergency care quicker.
Like any technology, can be used for good or bad.
This concept gives a whole new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death"... if your elderly parents are wearing a smart, web-enabled track suit that tells you their vital signs on your smart phone... who the heck wants to see their parents flatline in real time? And suppose the smart clothes crash or go offline? This seems to me to be akin to what we get from car alarms: I hear car alarms going off in parked cars all the time without ever checking to see if the car is actually being stolen. Its just security theater. Criminals aren't actually deterred by the sound of car alarms. I guess that seeing my father flatline several times because of hardware or network failure will prepare me for the inevitable end of his life. So, ATT can start marketing a line of clothing that is linked to your cell phone bill... sure, everyone would by a web enabled shirt for their elderly parents but in reality all those shirts are going to end up hanging unworn in closets all over America. It sounds like a great way for ATT to open up a whole new revenue stream without actually having to deliver very much at all in terms of service.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
http://www.lifealert.com/lifealertmobile.aspx
why repeat this technology, and they also make baby monitors...
the idea of 'smart clothes' is dead on arrival
i know it's through a cell phone, but someone somewhere had to have thought of having wireless medical monitoring, people do not want microchips in their clothes how can you wash them?!? hot water is the bane of electronics and can penetrate most waterproofing, except full board immersion in polymers.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
We'll put on connected clothing that's just a bit behind the technology curve.
For the first few years, it'll cover only the parts of our bodies which have the most money.
We'll slowly get more material to cover the rest of our body, but only in exchange for tax breaks.
Instead of changing our entire outfit, we'll replace the clothes in sections, and then only when that piece has a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction.
And we'll keep the underwear on for more than 80 years.
In case you were wondering why you haven't seen me in a while in your end stages, you shouldn't worry. Instead of stopping by, or calling... I just checked a quick app on my iphone and it said you were still alive.
Ahem...
There is a point where technology passively degrades your true human values. We've had it for decades, and it will only become more of a burden to be aware of. In all cases, don't forget what really matters --- ease and efficiency may be the ends by which important things, like face to face interaction with loved ones, are lost. Always remember what matters most.
First, nowhere in the article was there any talk of mandating this clothing for anybody, let alone everybody. And while, yes, it could represent a revenue stream for AT&T, that doesn't keep this from being a very welcome development for a very large number of people. If your choices are between being confined to a nursing home so that you can be visually monitored 24/7, or being able to live a reasonably normal life monitored remotely through your clothing, most people I know would pick the latter.
Eventually most people have to pick between the lesser of two evils in some context of their lives. This, to me, seems like it's setting the "lesser" bar considerably lower.
But I know that, when you're young and invincible, it's difficult to appreciate that, despite your best efforts, your body will eventually start wearing out. In fact, most people in the West spend a lot more time in decline than in the ascent, and you've got about a one in three chance of spending at least 3 months of your life disabled in some way before the age of 65, and the likelihood of a permanent long-term disability to vision, hearing dexterity or mobility, let alone disorders like diabetes and cancer, increase every year.
While the hope is that we can each put off needing this sort of technology as long as possible, I'd much rather it was well developed both technologically and sociologically/legally by the time I need it. We need to work on legal protections for privacy. Technology is going to keep removing the physical ones.
If you feel like being cynical, that's your right. It's a free country. But I find it's best not to put too many statements out there for Karma to work with.
Next week: how to conceive, gestate, and birth a baby in a wi-fi ready uterus from GigundoCorp.
I would think a device that's worn like a wristwatch has a better chance of working.
Or a pendant on a neck strap, and maybe a retired Surgeon General to shill for it?
But these will never go mainstream.
The pendant or the watch can stay with you, and you only need one. If you build it into clothing, you need
dozens for every user, one for every garment. How can you make money selling ONE to a customer?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I work in a nursing home and we had a resident that had a wireless ekg hooked up for to weeks that relaid the info to a cellphone she had to keep in her pocket and that relaid the info straight to the hospital where they were monitoring her. It was actually kinda cool.