Augmented reality meets next generation screen technology meets personal health: "A contact lens with augmented-reality powers would take personal health monitoring several steps further, Parvis said, because the surface of the eye can be used to measure much of the data you would read from your blood tests, including cholesterol, sodium, potassium and glucose levels." (People are getting excited, very excited about AR) This article is a fun read, anyway: More
Printable electronics: This sounds less like a future technology, which the author claims it is, and more like Vitality's Glow Caps product: "You wake and head to the bathroom, and a bottle of pills senses that you're awake and reminds you to take your pill. The bottle displays the number of pills left, and will automatically order more medicine from the e-pharmacy store via wireless Internet." Of course, one difference is the pillbox's label in this scenario has a real-time countdown on it thanks to printable electronics. The intelligence, then, is in the label, not the cap. More
ZigBee sensor network for tracking hospital assets: Frank R. Howard Memorial Hospital (Howard Hospital), in Willits, California announced that it is using Skytron Asset Manager, which powered by Awarepoint ZigBee-enabled wireless sensor network. The hospital uses it to track mobile patient care assets including beds, infusion pumps, suction and aspiration devices, electronic thermometers, telemetry and vital signs monitors. More
From COWs to WOWs: This article from the New York Times uses Kaiser Permanente as a brief case study for EMRs' benefits and challenges. Funny to read that KP's workers refused to call Computers On Wheels "COWs" so they call them WOWs instead -- Wireless On Wheels. More
