Institute For The Future

Your heart rate monitor watch will soon be obsolete . . .

I was cruising for something to blog about when I came across this headline: "DIY pervasive health monitor keeps tabs on your vitals." Do-it-yourself health? Persuasive technology? Six months ago, I wouldn't have had any idea of what those terms meant (nor would you have ever found me blogging). But I have learned a lot during my relatively short tenure at IFTF, and now I can recognize a Health Horizons blog-worthy story when I see one.

It turns out that the innovative folks at the Berkeley Institute of Design have developed a "pervasive health monitoring system." The device involves a TI microcontroller, a Bluetooth interface, audio amplifier, and a trio of low power "instrumentation amplifiers," which creates an apparatus that can communicate wirelessly with your Windows Mobile-based handset (and PC, too). The device records ECG (heart rhythms), EMG (muscle tension), GSR (skin resistance), body temperature and movement information. To learn more about the prototype, which is graduate student Reza Naima's thesis project, you can watch a short video here, or read a few technical details here.