Computers are all over us! From hi-tech watches connected to smartphones to GPS connected chips in our shoes, wearable seems to be the next big thing in personal computing. The obvious direction for wearable computing would be towards health & well-being. Can a connected device monitor your vitals and get pro-active diagnosis of the onset of a medical condition? Is it possible for such a device to alert EMTs a few seconds before you get a heart attack? Can your doctor send you text messages with prescriptions without the need for making a trip?
These are exciting new frontiers. Before the (obvious) ethical questions around passively gathering information close to your heart(literally), is this even possible? The short answer is, yes, given time, it is possible. There are smartphone apps already available that allow you to check your pulse rate. There are machines like the Vein Finder that can be integrated with a smartphone, and if its output is plugged into an image scanner that feeds a spectrometer, a non-invasive diagnosis may be possible. With a wearable computer like Google glass and software that scans and detects pupil dilation, coupled with a smart watch that monitors your pulse, it may be able to detect signs of a stroke. Non-invasive glucose monitors have been the holy grail of diabetes research for a long time, and once there are proven working techniques, they will be introduced on a smartphone platform.
The future might even make us more open to slightly invasive technology, maybe a sensor array that can be inserted under the skin and can do better monitoring and reporting. Microchip implants aren’t anything new, but with advances in nano computers , it may be possible to have implants that are fully functional decision engines rather than simple information stores. Any advances in this direction will revolutionize the healthcare sector. It may become possible to detect cancers, alzheimers, clots, heart conditions etc much before any actual(and harmful) symptoms present themselves. Painful blood tests will go away, diagnosis times for diseases could come down from a few days to a few minutes. Research & diagnostic labs can spend their time diagnosing complex conditions, thus saving many more lives. Such devices could go beyond diagnosis, they can get to recommending known cures for illnesses, like recommending paracetamol dosage for a fever. The next step, which may sound really scary, could be such platforms auto-delivering medicines when required by the body. If you think this is a far fetched idea, then read up on drug-eluting stents already in use for treating heart conditions. The question we should really be asking it, is it worth investing research efforts towards all this technology when there are bigger health problems to be solved? To be honest, I’m not sure! Make up your own mind on this one.
Now, to the obvious question around privacy of information gathered. It is a foregone conclusion that it would be difficult to manage privacy of diagnostic information that gets gathered by these wearable devices. I mean, look what an excellent job we’ve done with keeping our lives private! However, this would be a much scarier situation to manage. Imagine your insurance provider increasing your health premiums because one of your wearable devices indicated a slightly higher level of cholesterol. Advertising being focused on you because you have a certain medical condition you may/may not know about. We may be living in a technology dream, but at the same time we are living in a privacy nightmare. As always, we may be asked to sacrifice our liberties towards the goal of greater good, but is the cost worth it?
One way or another, be prepared for a day when you will be stopped from boarding an airplane because you are reported as a high health risk, not because you are, but because the software on your smart health monitor runs on Windows XP!
This post is a part of writer’s block series, where I write on topics suggested by friends on Facebook. This topic was suggested by Gaurav Bhatia. Thanks for the idea mate!
