Body 2.0 — Continuous Monitoring of the Human Body

Singularity Hub has a story about the development of technology that will some day allow for the constant, real-time monitoring of your medical status, and they take a look at current technological advances to that end. Quoting: "Did you ever stop to think how silly and also how dangerous it is to live our lives with absolutely no monitoring of our body's medical status? Years from now people will look back and find it unbelievable that heart attacks, strokes, hormone imbalances, sugar levels, and hundreds of other bodily vital signs and malfunctions were not being continuously anticipated and monitored by medical implants. ... The huge amounts of data that would be accumulated from hundreds of thousands of continuously monitored people would be nothing short of a revolution for medical research and analysis. This data could be harvested to understand the minute by minute changes in body chemistry that occur in response to medication, stress, infection, and so on. As an example, the daily fluctuations in hormone levels of hundreds of thousands of individuals could be tracked and charted 24/7 to determine a baseline from which abnormalities and patterns could be extracted. The possibilities are enormous."

Re:No

[kraemate]

Its not just about real-time monitoring but also collecting data.
Knowing the complete medical history will enable far diagnosis.
Everybody is different and this data will stop doctors from generalizations and treat patients based on their past data and actual deviations from /your/ average.

Re:No

[__aaclcg7560]

According to my family history, if you drink and/or smoke, you die young from liver and cancer disease. If you live a healthy lifestyle, you die of "natural causes" in your early 90s. Taking responsibility for my own health was the best decision in my young life.

Re:No

[Skal Tura]

ROFLMAO! X)

Utopistic

But that shows one important question: Why do we keep paying immensively high taxes (atleast here in Finland), yet are unable to get something as important as proper medical care?

Here, high taxes is often defended with medical care, yet it's totally crap, if you get doctor's appointment, they have less than 5minutes for you, and basicly rolls a dice to make a diagnosis, and gives you random medication.

Or more recent incident was that i were getting wisdom tooth removed, i got the appointment in several hours as emergency (the tooth cracked) and the operation was fast and painless, they pumped me so full of dope!

However: They did not warn me not to drive my car, NOR did warn about the immense pain i would be suffering from a few hours late. Thank god my friend happened to have red triangle painmeds, but even with them the pain got so hard through that my knees went soft everytime it struck through an very high dose of that red triangle pain med.

No warning, no prescriptions or anything, that really sucked ... 2 days of agony even with those meds, which were so powerfull that almost everytime after taking one i fell asleep.

Not thinking things through

[mbone]

The possibilities are enormous.

Indeed. Maybe in 2050 our descendants will read

People look back and find it unbelievable that just a few short years ago hundreds of bodily vital signs were not continuously anticipated and monitored by medical implants for the majority of the populace. ... The huge amounts of data that are accumulated from millions of continuously monitored people are nothing short of a revolution for the control of the population and the detection of doubt and hostility to the thoughts of our beloved leader.

I envisioned it more like this -background monitor

[spineboy]

So when you urinate in the morning, the toilet might check for excessive proteins to look for kidney damage, or myeloma, or see if there is sugar (diabetes). It might also check the toilet for blood to see if you have a bleed from a colon tumor, or ulcer.
Maybe a little chip to monitor blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides.

Or better yet, heart rate, oxygenation, and BP levels, to monitor your exercise tolerance - to see if you are fit. It would automatically upload it to your house computer. You could also check on your baby - uh oh junior has a fever - 103 - yikes let's go to the doctor.

This would be best if it were for preventative measures

Re:No

[pthreadunixman]

Heisenberg was specifically talking about being unable measure position and momentum precisely at the same time at the quantum level. For some reason, it has been turned into some meta-physical philosophical concept that I find annoying. Yes. We can measure body temperature without causing people to spontaneously catch on fire. Yes. We can measure the temperature of the Earth without it causing it to explode. No. We can't measure the spin of an electron and know it's exact position at the same time.

Re:Our body has a monitoring system built in

[Eil]

I know I may sound heretical on a geek board, but I would consider that skill more vital to many people than calculus.

Fun game:

Ask your friends what the current stats are on their WoW character. Strength, agility, stamina, intelligence, etc.

Then ask them what their resting heart rate is. (Them, not the character.)

Re:No

[yndrd1984]

Clearly totally private healthcare as implemented in the USA does not work.

Just to be clear, we don't have totally private healthcare here. The government covers about 40% of us, most of the rest get coverage through work, and only a small fraction actually buy health insurance on its own. This allows us to enjoy healthcare as unequally distributed as a full-blown free market system, as bureaucratic and unresponsive as any large government system, and as expensive as both put together.

Re:No

[achurch]

Japan already has mandatory diets for those with BMI>30.

Not quite true. The relevant law mandates metabolic syndrome checks for people aged 40-74 [e-gov.go.jp], and it catches [e-gov.go.jp] people with (1) waist size >= 85cm (90cm for women) or BMI >= 25 and (2) high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or high blood sugar. Supposedly there's a financial penalty for not taking the exam, or for not following the directions (diet, etc.) you're given, but I haven't been able to find any specific mention of such.

Re:Our body has a monitoring system built in

[slash.dt]

You would be amazed how well many diabetics can tell their sugar level at any given moment. It doesn't take more than a month of measuring to learn that.

And you would also be amazed at how often people whose life depends on knowing their glucose levels get it wrong. I'm pretty good at estimating mine on the low (immediate danger) side, but not so good as estimating when my blood glucose is high (long term danger)side.

I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention continous blood glucose monitors which are already readily available - ok, you only implant them for 3-7 days at a time but that will get better. So instead of all the vapourware being mentioned in the article they could have talked about a product which is already here.

Re:No

[An Onerous Coward]

"Spanking" only describes the location of the blows. That is to say, you can't spank a child's face, but you can spank the butt until it bleeds. It doesn't adequately describe force, duration, what implements were used.

Therefore, to me, "spanking" should not be legal or illegal. But leaving bruises, or welts that last more than, say, an hour, probably should be.