wireless sensors

Smartphones Can Now Run Consumers’ Lives

LAS VEGAS — The smartphone is no longer just a portable computer in your pocket. It has become the remote control for your life.

Want to flip off the living room lights, unlock your front door or get a reading of your blood pressure? All of this can be done through mobile apps that work with accessories embedded with sensors or an Internet connection.

For several years, technology companies have promised the dream of the connected home, the connected body and the connected car. Those connections have proved illusory. But in the last year app-powered accessories have provided the mechanism to actually make the connections. That is partly because smartphones have become the device people never put down. But it is also because wireless sensors have become smaller, cheaper and ubiquitous.

Big companies with strong brands have been heavily promoting the new uses for these gadgets. General Motors advertises its Chevy Malibu Eco with a man showing his parents how he starts the car with a smartphone. A major selling point of the popular Nest thermostat is its ability to turn up the furnace from miles away with a cellphone.

“Now that, increasingly, consumers have a device with them to monitor virtually anything they do with the Internet, why not offer that capability to monitor and remote control?” said Ross Rubin, an analyst at Reticle Research.

The idea of turning off the lights with a smartphone may seem gimmicky, but consumers are warming to applications, said Bill Scheffler, director of business development for the Z-Wave Alliance, a consortium of companies that make connected appliances. The situation resembles the time when power windows started catching on for automobiles, or when television makers started offering remote controls, Mr. Scheffler said.

“It used to be that people would say, ‘Why does anybody want a remote control for a TV if you can get up and change the channel?’ ” he said. “It’s just progress.” Companies like ATT, Black Decker and Honeywell have started selling app-linked products, he said.

At the International Consumer Electronics Show, which has attracted more than 150,000 people here this week, dozens of companies are showing off connected accessories they can hook up to their home appliances to make them work with smartphones, and many are also displaying wearable devices that can help people monitor their health on their phones. Some of these products are being provided by large companies. ATT, the wireless carrier, said that in March it would begin selling a wireless security system called Digital Life that will allow people to use tablets or phones to monitor cameras, alarms and even coffee pots.

If a burglar trips a motion sensor in the house, for example, a user can receive a text message, then call the police. Customers can choose to expand ATT’s wireless service to appliances like lights, door locks, thermostats and security cameras, which can be controlled and monitored through the ATT mobile app.

Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of ATT Mobility, said in an interview that home security was a big opportunity to increase revenue. Only 20 percent of homes have security systems, he said, leaving millions of homeowners as potential buyers.

“I think it dramatically changes how people feel about their home and how secure they feel about being outside the home,” Mr. de la Vega said. “I think it’s an easy sell.” The company has not announced prices for the service.

Ingersoll Rand, which makes industrial products, offers a $300 starter kit and software for people to connect their homes. It includes a lock, a light and a wireless “bridge,” or base station, to connect the devices to the Internet. They can be controlled with a smartphone or tablet app called Nexia Home Intelligence. Customers also must pay at least $9 a month for a subscription; they can choose to buy the appliances and the bridge separately.

Products by several other companies take advantage of a smartphone’s sensors and connection to the Internet to monitor consumers’ health. IHealth sells monitors for people to track their blood pressure with an app. At the electronics show, it introduced a wireless glucose meter, called the Smart Glucometer, that lets people with diabetes determine their blood sugar. A user puts a blood sample on a test strip, pops it into an accessory attached to a smartphone, and an app gives a reading of the blood sugar level.

Adam Lin, general manager of iHealth, declined to say how many products the company had sold, but he said it was in the “six-figure” area. IHealth products have appeared at Apple, Target and Best Buy.

In addition to people who are interested in their health, health insurance providers might embrace monitoring products. Mr. Lin said iHealth was discussing with two insurers whether to provide its products to patients, which would help reduce their doctor visits.

A small start-up, AliveCor, has created an iPhone case that, when grasped, records an accurate electrocardiogram on the iPhone screen via its app. The company has attracted financing from Khosla Ventures, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Nike, Jawbone and Fitbit sell wearable electronic devices for people to track their movements with smartphones. Fitbit, based in San Francisco, sells a pocket pedometer called the Fitbit One, which can track a user’s steps and floors climbed, and also monitors sleep patterns. Its newest product is due in spring, the Fitbit Flex, a step counter and sleep tracker that is worn around the wrist. It synchronizes with a smartphone app to give users updates.

Woody Scal, chief revenue officer of Fitbit, said the company sold its devices in 10,000 retail stores in the United States. Its Fitbit One is the best-selling sports device on Amazon.com. He said one reason that wearable fitness gadgets had become popular was that the sensors had shrunk and battery life had improved. That helps make the products slimmer, more stylish and easier to use.

Mr. Scal said wireless fitness devices were becoming popular because they addressed basic needs for consumers, unlike another trend seen at the show, enormous televisions.

“In the end, I don’t wake up in the morning, look myself in the mirror and ask whether my TV has enough pixels,” he said. “But I do wonder how I’m going to get enough exercise, eat better, sleep well or manage my weight despite all the other things going on in my life.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/technology/smartphones-can-now-run-consumers-lives.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Digital Domain: Wireless Medical Monitoring Might Untether Patients

Suppose, however, that all of a convalescent patient’s electrode patches were consolidated into a single, nearly invisible and weightless version — as thin as a temporary, press-on tattoo. And suppose that a tiny radio transmitter eliminated the need for any wires tethering the patient to monitoring machines.

“Epidermal electronics” — a term coined by researchers who have produced prototype devices at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — may enable constant medical monitoring anywhere.

The devices are part of a growing field, called mHealth, that uses mobile technologies. Simpler forms include smartphone apps for patient education or disease management. More complex ones include wireless sensors to monitor vital signs.

“MHealth is managing conditions continuously, so that they don’t reach a crisis,” says Donald M. Casey, chief executive of the West Wireless Health Institute, a nonprofit research organization in San Diego.

Wireless sensor technology is advancing rapidly. Last year, for example, Corventis, a medical device company based in San Jose, Calif., received Food and Drug Administration approval to market its Nuvant Mobile Cardiac Telemetry System, used to detect arrhythmias. A 2-by-6-inch electronic gizmo on a patient’s chest sends an electrocardiogram to a nearby transmitter, which relays it to a central monitoring center.

“Sensors on everyone, including a 60-year-old watching a football game who doesn’t know he’s at risk for a heart attack, would greatly reduce the chances of a fatal attack,” says Dr. Leslie A. Saxon, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California.

One form of the monitoring will be tested on the football field itself. With a grant from the National Football League, Dr. Saxon will study one unnamed N.F.L. team this fall. Each player will wear a monitoring patch for a week.

Not all mobile monitoring technology can transmit data wirelessly. The patches that Dr. Saxon will use, for example, store their data within; the information will be uploaded when the devices are retrieved at the end of the study. In other cases, the technology has been approved only for hospital settings where a doctor is present. But, looking ahead, the promise of epidermal electronics has excited mHealth advocates.

Mr. Casey singled out the work of the University of Illinois researchers, led by John A. Rogers, an engineering professor and a 2009 MacArthur Fellow. Their work on epidermal electronics was published last month in the journal Science. While the monitor patch made by Corventis weighs 1.8 ounces, the ultrathin one created at Illinois weighs only three-thousandths of an ounce.

“If the technology delivers as promised,” Mr. Casey says, “then we believe that’s when we’ll move from sensors on people diagnosed with a disease to literally everybody.”

Professor Rogers is a co-founder of MC10, an electronics company in Cambridge, Mass., that is aiming to turn the epidermal monitor prototype into a commercial product in 2013. David A. Icke, MC10’s chief executive, said the company’s skinlike device consists of tiny components that are physically separated, like electronic “islands.” They are connected with squiggles he calls “serpentines,” which are designed to bend and absorb strain without breaking. The technology can theoretically be used both inside the body and on the skin.

Electronic monitoring of patients at home could significantly reduce medical costs. A study by the Department of Veterans Affairs and published in 2008 suggests possibilities for savings.

From 2003 to 2007, researchers tracked a large group of patients with serious conditions, including congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Patients who enrolled in a “home telehealth” program were given biometric devices to monitor and record their vital signs. The department said that these patients showed a 25 percent drop in the number of bed days of care and a 19 percent drop in hospital admissions, compared with the time they were not in the program.

In the Veterans Affairs monitoring program, the average cost of $1,600 per patient a year was much lower than the $13,121 spent by the department to provide home-based primary care without the “tele” component. The department also compared the low cost of its telehealth services with the $77,745 per patient a year spent on nursing home care.

DESPITE the promise of big savings, relatively few patients are being monitored with existing technology. Chuck Parker, executive director of Continua Health Alliance, an mHealth industry group, estimates that only 50,000 to 70,000 patients in the United States are monitored today.

One obstacle to wider adoption, Mr. Parker says, is a lack of financial incentives for some major players in health care such as hospitals. Noting that cardiac patients can be monitored at home for a fraction of the cost of occupying a hospital bed, he said hospitals have “some fear about the financial implications” for their own operations.

Chantal Worzala, director of health information technology at the American Hospital Association, took issue with that suggestion. “The vast majority of cardiac patients are over 65 and are covered by Medicare, which pays a fixed amount, regardless of the length of the hospital stay,” she said.

It’s good that everyone seems to agree: health care reimbursements shouldn’t reward maximal use of expensive hospital beds. And, updating Benjamin Franklin’s maxim, we might soon say that thanks to epidermal electronics, three-thousandths of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ad328ba797e2a0404cc018c9417e2c29

Smartphones Can Now Run Consumers’ Lives

Digital Domain: Wireless Medical Monitoring Might Untether Patients

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