“Open your mouth and say Ahhhhh!.”
These words have been used by doctors for hundreds of years but soon you’ll be hearing them coming from your smartphone. And next time you need your temperature taken a sensor on the smartphone may be standing in for a nurse.
Smartphones & Sensors Proliferating
New smartphone, sensors and applications are coming fast and furious and will further change the way people interact with doctors, predict and monitor weather, interact with ID systems, diagnose illness, water their plants, assess drunkenness (ie: breathalyzers) and more. Also imminent is the widespread use of sensors allowing gesture control of computers of all kinds, including smart phones and tablets.
The following apps already exist or are under development where indicated:
- examine your ears – Cellscope
- take your blood pressure – Withings Blood Pressure Monitor
- monitor and heal your heart- AliveCor
- count your calories burned with precision – BodyMedia Armband
- help you breathe – Leslie Saxon
- analyze your blood cells – Holomic
- identify health problems – Oxford University
- share your fetus photo – Mobile Baby
- coach your life – Ginger.Jo
- fix your vision – EyeNetra, EyeCatra
- help you sleep – Zeo Sleep Manager
- get you pregnant – Duofertility Monitor
- perform ultrasound – Mobisante
- track your blood sugar – Sanofi-Aventis
- monitor your moves – Moves & Selene Mota
Increasing Acquisition Of Knowledge Through Info Sharing
There will also be quite a lot of smart phone users roped in to scientific studies to help scientists and researchers understand natural and manmade phenomena including cosmic rays, atmospheric measurements, climate forecasting, hurricane tracking, nuclear fallout (Fukushima), fire detection, etc. The true meaning of crowdsourcing will become apparent to everyone as huge groups of people will form online communities and share information in real time, much more quickly solving problems then was heretofore possible.
Now A Well Funded Technology
There is also quite a bit of money flowing into the smart phone/sensor market. For example, Novi Smartphone has raised $465,000 on Fundable. Novi’s vision is to become the world’s simplest and most accessible security system to help users monitor and protect their homes. The system uses sensors to detect smoke and motion, cameras to take photos, an Internet connection to relay photos to a smartphone and a response system to call the police, ignore because it was your cat or request more images.
On the hardware front, there is much progress too. According to Computer World, Japanese chipmaker Rohm unveiled a prototype sensor device, referred to as the “Swiss Army Knife of Sensors” at the Ceatec tradeshow in Japan earlier this month. The device includes an accelerometer, gyroscope, pressure sensor, magnetometer, ambient light sensor, color sensor and a Bluetooth Low Energy chip for communication and control.
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- NASA’s New No Flap, Jointless Wings
References and related links:
- Smartphones with biometric sensors may be required to be labelled as medical devices in South Korea | BiometricUpdate
- Which sensors are coming to your next smartphone? | mobihealthnews
- mHealth devices must auto-collect data from cloud, sensors – FierceMobileHealthcare
