First Internet-Connected Pacemaker Goes Live

The Register is reporting that a New York woman has become the first person to have her pacemaker wirelessly connected to the internet for full-time monitoring. "The device contains a radio transmitter which connects to receiving equipment in New Yorker Carol Kasyjanski's home, using a very low-power signal around 400MHz, to report on the condition of her heart. Any problems are instantly reported to the doctor, and regular checkups can be done by remotely interrogating the home-based equipment — the pacemaker itself doesn't have an IP address, fun as that would be."

All your pacemaker...

[Anonymous Coward]

...are belong to us.

Seriously, though...are we just one step away from remote-controlled heartplugs [youtube.com]? Dune fans...er...rejoice?

Warning: mild gore in link.

regular checkups?

[ksheff]

That's assuming that someone sets up a scheduler to actually do these checkups. When my Dad has his pacemaker put in, he was supposed to go back to the hospital every few months to have the data the device was collecting downloaded and the battery checked. He had it for at least a year or two and it was never checked. Someone at the hospital forgot to enter it into a database. He had a checkup with his cardiologist during that time too and the doctor never asked about it.

There must be something I'm missing

[dachshund]

This is by no means the first "wirelessly-monitored" pacemaker. Pacemakers and ICDs have been linked to home monitoring equipment for several years, and that equipment routinely communicates with a central monitoring station (usually via a modem).

Now, if the pacemaker itself was doing the communicating directly (say over any Wifi or cellular network) that would be pretty amazing. But they point out that the pacemaker doesn't have an IP address, and it's only communicating with equipment in the patient's home. That sounds a lot like existing technology, except perhaps that the final link (home monitoring device -> monitoring station) is being performed via IP rather than a phone line. That's nice, but certainly not very exciting. And why does it require a whole new pacemaker to make this upgrade?

Clearly there's something to this article that I'm not seeing...

Aside from all the jokes

[east coast]

I think this is great.

It brings me to my own situation: I recently got a CPAP machine with a smartcard for data storage. Unfortunately the card reader is about 130 dollars online and it requires a proprietary software. If my MD wants to see the data he needs for me to remove the card and send it in.

Wouldn't it be great to have these kinds of home devices just "phone it in"? Real data that my MD can look over at his discretion as well as having a copy of it available to me for my own edification. It could be set up to red flag certain data that, because it could be detected as it happens, could prevent minor issues from becoming major issues. This is the kind of technology that is cheap to employ, automated systems could look for abnormalities and could lead to saving lives as well as curbing the cost of health care by making sure that small issues don't become major issues.

More and more people are doing home monitoring of medical conditions without being able to make sense of all the data. This is a great resource and one I can agree to using stimulus money for to take to the next level.

Re:N*ggers (You love that word just admit it)

[Anonymous Coward]

they dont act like equals but they wanna be treated like equals (FACT). they dont even want to speak proper english

wanna? dont? (no apostrophe)

You can't speak English properly!