iPhones are being used in all sorts of interesting ways to track our health, but this is one of the more interesting ones we’ve seen. It’s a small piece of hardware that turns your phone into an ECG.
The Heart Chamber Orchestra is a stirring audiovisual project, involving an orchestra that generates its own musical score (and accompanying visuals) in real time. The catch? The source of the music is the heartbeats of the orchestra’s own members.
At first glance, this looked to be one of the coolest watches ever. Modeled after a heart monitor, it looks like it would display your heartbeat in real time. Key word being looks.
Some of the same kind of health telemetry that the French army may be using could be yours in the new VitalJacket product. It’s a smart T-shirt with a built-in electrocardiogram monitor, designed for both medical diagnostics and sports fitness uses. It’s supposed to be less awkward than conventional devices, as well as more comfortable. The HWM200 version sends data on the wearer’s heart over a Bluetooth link to a phone or PDA, allowing real-time monitoring. The 100 version stores it on an SD card for later analysis on a PC and allows the wearer to define heart rate limits which trigger a vibration alarm in the shirt. Both editions are available for pre-order for around US$635. [Vitaljacket via Talk2myshirt]
DRE, the Louisville medical tech company, has just unleashed the world’s smallest ECG system. The compact device consists of the obligatory 12 leads and a small attachment that carries the necessary software for ECG interpretation. The Universal ECG hooks directly up to desktop PCs, laptops or Pocket PCs running Windows XP or 2000.
Most of us would never need an electrocardiogram embedded into our mobile phones to monitor our hearts, but most of us aren’t recovering from a heart attack. For those people that are, this Swedish invention that turns any old mobile into a monitor that can automatically call a doctor or the hospital if your heart explodes is something they’d pay loads and loads of Swedish kronas for. Or meatballs. We think they’re pretty much interchangeable. [The Inquirer]
Designed to help previous heart attack victims regain confident mobility, this unnamed prototype heart monitor takes frequent electrocardiogram readings and uploads them to a customized cellphone via Bluetooth. The phone is equipped with an ECG analyzer that watches for signs of impending heart failure. If your ticker stops ticking, your ECG is sent in an SMS text to your local hospital along with a cry for help. But can the paramedics find you in time?
