Last night I was lucky enough to be out at the Science Park with a group of smart folk from several companies and education institutions – examining a process to engage Northern Ireland’s growing technological and design assets to attract mobile operators from Europe to consider our region as a centre of competence. Frankly, the amount of information shared was amazing and as Eoin Lambkin put it “In no other region in Europe, and perhaps the world, could you get such a cross sectoral group together in so little time.”
This morning, this conversation was continued with Eoin’s presentation on the European Connected Health Campus, based in Northern Ireland and dedicated to a platform-agnostic resolution on best practises in Connected Health (also called Telemedicine, Telecare).
Then, I read this
“Imagine – AppleStores with shelves of niche, stylish sensor products for sale in a year’s time – pollution sensors, particulates analysis, spectroscopy, soil analysis, cholesterol? All for the price of a Nike+ or so?”
This comes on the back of a demo of a Diabetes sensor talking to an iPhone and reporting information to the owner, as well as possibly sending reports to clinicians and care workers. This was on-stage at the recent preview of iPhone OS 3.0 – Connected Health is obviously a major talking point for Apple.
That blog post also points to Tellarts open source NADAmobile project which allows you to easily prototype physical/digital/sensor apps on the iPhone through a cable that cleverly connects to the audio jack.
People don’t realise that they may already have two medical sensors – the Nike+ and the WiiFit – already in their house – never mind others. These devices have snuck in the back door and there’s a realisation that health technology is probably going to be even more profitable selling to the healthy than it ever was selling to the sick.
I’m excited to see the possibilities coming out of this – where will the technology lead us – I want ‘sensor shoes’ for my iPhone and remote sensors to pick up information. Why? Because I can? What sort of geek wouldn’t want this info?