Tech Challenge: Cheap Home Health Monitoring Kit and App
This is a challenge I posted three years ago last February, and it’s still standing - I didn’t think it would last this long, so here it is again. If there’s money to be made selling run trackers and sports gimmicks, there’s certainly more to be made on the home medical front.
A couple of weeks back I wrote a post about how we are entering the age of the cheap sensor and as example used some medical devices that could be incorporated into a home medical app.
I’ve decided to turn that into a challenge, so here is is:
Create a device and application for home use that contains the following sensors and which creates an ongoing Data Base and dashboard of measurements for under $70.00:
1. Blood pressure cuff
2. Pulse Oximeter
3. Thermometer
4. Scale
All of the devices above are available separately, and there is some high quality gear out there there, like fingertip Pulse oximeters or the Blood Pressure device from Omron that I use. I see very little reason that all of these sensors could not be combined, built into a single chip inside the BP device or scale and either wifi or USB network to it.
All four of these are important health measures that your physician is going to collect at every visit, but why shouldn’t you have a history of these measures taken daily at home? It takes several visits to your doctor before they can build a true history of these measures, and see the real patterns you are in.
This could revolutionize health care by enabling you to detect things going wrong much earlier. It could aid your physician in diagnosis and detection, and further if we anonymize the data and load it XML to a national Database, then we collect important health data for everyone.
Whoever creates this kit first is going to leapfrog competitors, and open a new home health market that is worth millions with the first wave of health concious baby boomers just beginning to retire.
This is just the start - there could be EEG attachments, blood sugar meters, etc. etc. etc.
Specs / Design
The moving parts (scale tensor, air pump for the BP cuff) should be housed in the base. A collapsible or telescoping rod could hold a display at eye height, and should have hangers for the BP cuff and other leads. The Display should be large print LCD or LED, and the cable from base to display should be USB/Air hose or other RS-232/air hose. The base should talk to the home medical app via either wireless or SDHC or other type of mem stick or chip port.
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