I just caught sight of a promising new development going on in a graduate lab at MIT.

When the tools described below are fully integrated into simple virtual meeting interfaces, we really will have many more choices about how we give and receive healthcare support services, won’t we? How utterly exciting!

MIT Team Developing Tool To Monitor Vital Signs Through Camera

A device under development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could monitor changes in a person’s vital signs through a low-cost camera, the Boston Globe’s “White Coat Notes” reports (Johnson, “White Coat Notes,” Boston Globe, 10/5).

Researchers led by MIT graduate student Ming-Zher Poh used public-domain software to identify facial positions and to deconstruct the information into red, green and blue portions of video images.

The device then determines an individual’s pulse by tracking small changes in how light reflects off their face as blood flows under the skin.

The tool could be embedded into a mirror or integrated with a Web-based camera.

In May, researchers published initial results from the project in the journal Optics Express.

Early results found that the MIT device identified pulses accurately within three beats per minute, even when up to three people stood in front of the camera and when test subjects moved (Armstrong Moore, CNET News, 10/5).

The team currently is working on refining the device to take other measurements, such as:

* Blood pressure;

* Oxygen saturation; and

* Respiration rate (“White Coat Notes,” Boston Globe, 10/5).

According to Poh, the device’s noninvasive design could make it useful for several purposes, such as monitoring newborn infants or burn victims.

In addition, the device could be used for telemedicine-based health screenings or remote patient monitoring (MIT release, 10/4).

So, what d’you think about them apples?

Connectedness by Ayesha Hilton

Cutting the Chord (Click here for video.)

When you’re sick, you’re sick. And for many people being sick brings with it a powerful desire to be in close touch with your doctor until you feel well.

If YOU don’t have that desire – or maybe especially because you don’t – your family members are likely to have it twice as bad FOR YOU.

Well, mobile medical technologies are poised to make a much stronger link between you and your healthcare providers lot more possible than you might ever have imagined. Wireless healthcare devices and systems can make it downright simple for you to be monitored in all kinds of ways from well outside the walls of doctor’s offices and hospitals.

In case you missed it, this tight, meaty conversation  took place on August 28, 2009, on CNBC, between Hewlett Packard’s Executive VP of the Personal Systems Group, Todd Bradley, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, and Dr. Eric Topol, Scripps Health Chief Academic Officer. The focus is wireless healthcare and mobile medicine initiatives that the big boys have been readying for market even while the economy has been languishing.

So, how would you like to be feeling better connected to your healthcare team? And in what ways?

Dreaming is about to be believing… Take a look:  Cutting the Chord (Click here for video.)