Personal Medical Devices (1)
A posting from Mamamusings.net (Elizabeth Lane Lawley's thoughts on technology,
academia, family, and tangential topics)
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Devices that monitor people have the potential to become a boon to doctors and patients
alike. The field is particularly important for the elderly, who tend to need more
monitoring than younger patients. While
medical alarm systems, which Life Alert makes, provide 24/7 protection in
case of home emergencies, the devices discussed below are used primarily for non-emergency
applications, where one needs to be monitored for various data (for example, blood
sugar levels in diabetics). The
posting from Mamamusings.net (edited slightly here) discusses one academic’s
opinions about such devices. I agree with her assessment that we need to fund research
to improve these devices and make them more widespread – especially in the “peripheral”
areas of interfaces to devices and visualization of data. Research that “crosses
over disciplinary boundaries” has historically been where some of the greatest discoveries
and inventions have arisen. Many believe blogging (itself a recent invention) will
become an effective tool to sway public and medical opinion, and hence may be used
to encourage the funding of more forward-thinking research. Doctors and NIH officials
may find it wise to begin reading online blog journals like Ms. Lawley’s, as well
as those written by seniors and scientists, in order to accurately monitor public
and academic opinion. We encourage more seniors to dive into
the world of blogs. Starting one is easy, often free, and fun – and can
serve not only as a creative outlet, but as a way to voice one’s views, letting
others benefit from years of life experience. --Dr. Don Rose, Writer,
Life Alert
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One of the more interesting topics that came up at lunch today was the work being
done by Ben Shneiderman's students on interfaces for "personal medical devices"
-- like the monitors used by diabetics to record blood sugar, for example. Coincidentally,
one of the faculty members at the lunch was a diabetic, and she was wearing an automated
insulin pump -- which spurred some interesting dialogue.
Shneiderman told us about a physician he's been working with at Johns Hopkins who
wants to work on how these devices record and report data, so that they (a) better
match patient needs for record-keeping (think about critical data that
medical patients are often expected to record about themselves...the potential for
accidental or intentional error is enormous), and (b) better match physician needs
for analysis. Even when a patient properly records blood sugar 4 times
a day in a 30-day log, for example, that information isn't generally in a form that's
useful to the medical practitioner.