Newswise — Imagine a world in which your medicine cabinet notices that you are due for a prescription refill and calls it in. A sensor implanted under your skin detects a fluid buildup in your lungs and alerts your doctor, who decides your heart medication needs an adjustment and contacts the pharmacist to change your dosage.
Meanwhile, sensors in your toilet confirm that your body has adjusted well to your other medications but sees indications that you may be a borderline diabetic. Your doctor, given these readings and your family medical history, suggests that you change your diet. Noting that fact, your bathroom scale asks you to punch in a weight loss goal and starts giving you a regular progress update. Your medical checkup isn't an annual event--it happens every day, simply as you go about your daily life.
Joseph M. Smith from West Wireless Institute introduces this world, describing devices that are already on the market, those awaiting FDA approval, and those that are on the outer edge of possibility. He admits that a technological revolution in health care has been predicted before, but says that we are at an inflection point now, where wireless connectivity, personal cellular devices, pervasive sensing technologies, social networks, and data analytics are mature enough to make wireless medicine a reality. And he believes that when wireless health-care technologies become pervasive, they will reduce cripping health-care costs while keeping people healthier.
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