TI Chief Scientist on the future of medical electronics (1)

Personalized health care

For healthcare providers and patients, technical progress allows healthcare personalized gradually in the following aspects become reality: control of chronic diseases and predicting disease patient in a comfortable home through the life of the last time.

These advanced technology also makes healthcare as part of our daily lives. The following are specific examples.

● With embedded devices and to detect potential health problems of bathroom equipment.

For example: an analysis of the urine and find kidney disease or such as diabetes and hypertension, chronic diseases, the development of the toilet. Another example is able to detect the weight or body fat sudden change of the bathroom body weight scales. These devices can automatically upload data to the patient's doctor and the doctor prior to the scheduled set of medical appointments.

• Retinal scanner Diagnostics devices can and with existing consumer electronic products (such as digital cameras, etc.), and discover the important diseases of the retina disease or precursor and turn this information available to the relevant medical personnel.

● Alarm clock to remind someone gets up and scheduled to hospitals, may be based on the family in other healthcare equipment collected information, such as: embedded into the bathroom mirror of retinal scanner.

This example gives the "personal area network (PAN)" new meaning, in the local area network in a variety of household equipment regularly and non-invasive monitoring and record a person's life.

● You can install the device to your home, and remotely connect to a network of healthcare providers.

An elderly patients wear products under development, it is based on the gyroscope, can detect whether the falls in elderly patients. This device can be connected to the patient's PAN, send for help information. You can also fall on similar and long sedentary (this may be a physical or mental problem symptoms) to archive and report to the doctor.

• Remote surgery, world renowned expert can use holographic image command are thousands of miles to surgery surgical robot.

• Virtual locations call, practitioners use a video conference and family-oriented diagnostic equipment (for example: portable ultrasound system).

For those who cannot see a doctor (maybe because the bedridden, people with doctor phobia or traffic conditions more limited) of patients, the virtual locations call also enable them to access to healthcare.