Cebit: Health monitoring comes to the iPhone
- — 03 March, 2009 04:40
Heart patients will be able to check their electrocardiogram on an iPhone, using a new system demonstrated by Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.
The system consists of a measuring device, which sends the results to a central server using GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). The server can then forward the results in real-time to, for example, an iPhone.
The server is used to enable more people to access the data, including patients and their doctors, according to Victor Grogger, head of solution development at T-Systems Austria. They would both log in with a user name and password to get access to the data.
T-Systems also demonstrated a system for measuring blood sugar levels using a Nokia 6131 equipped with support for NFC (Near Field Communications).
NFC is a wireless communication technology with a range of a few inches, and it is considered easy to use and quick to set up. It's mostly talked about as a technology to enable payments using the mobile phone
However, in this case the technology is used to send results from the measuring device via the phone to a server. The user pushes a button on the measuring device, holds the phone up to it and the results are automatically sent.
As the cost goes up hospitals and doctors will increasingly have to rely on products like these to make health care more efficient, according to Grogger.
