The potential of wearable computing

Science is once again catching up with science fiction.

Without seeing the newsletter, I'm guessing that the wearable computing applications for the healthcare industry would be divided into two categories.

The biggest category would be patient applications. With the proper hardware and software, a person could be monitored 24/7 and checked in 'real' environments. If a set of problems is known in advance, the wearable computers could control an array of medicines that could be released into the bloodstream to keep the body in working order.

The expensive category would be healthcare personnel applications. Doctors, nurses and medical techs could have instantly available information about patients and potential treatments. They could also have interfaces to medical hardware that don't vary from machine to machine, even if the hardware gets upgraded.

Better yet, if properly set up, the problem of mistaken identity could be greatly reduced. Horror stories of the wrong body part being removed during an operation could be reduced to an even smaller number than actually occurs.

It will be interesting to see what the article is like.

I wish they had it widely available now. I haven't read the article you are talking about, but wearable computers in healthcare would help over-burdened medical staff monitor their patients better.

Too often in hospitals, there are mistakes made that would be eliminated with a wearable computer that was able to provide every detail of a patients condition.

Also, a wearable computer would know if someone had their medication or not.

I think its a great resource for healthcare workers and patients.

The impact of such development could have a huge impact of the lives of many. Seven years ago without warning I became very sick and was diagnosed with Leukemia. I had to under go a bone marrow transplant to treat the disease. After under going the transplant my body was so fragile and my physical condition could change within minutes that I had to move and live within 10 minutes of the hospital. Needless to say that relocation caused many other problems. With the evolution of wearable technologies my physical condition could have been monitored while I had lived at my own home and if problems had arised I could have been treated at my local hospital with instant feedback from the specialists at the cancer center to the local doctors.

Because there are so few really good cancer centers in the world many patients must travel hundreds of miles to be treated. These technologies couls also have a great impact on those who live in rural areas that cannot support a small hospital or even a doctor in some cases.

These technologies could greatly lessen the emotional and financial impact of of a serious illness.