Wireless wearable sensors are going to transform the world of health and medicine by delivering useful data about our bodies to intelligent systems that will watch out for early signs of problems. And that future has become a lot closer, thanks to a new system by MC10. We first covered this company nearly two years ago, and at CES 2016, I got to catch up with their latest developments.
The big news is the BioStamp Research Connect system (BioStampRC for short). At the root of the system is a flexible sensor patch that sticks to a patient’s skin. Coated in silicon, it is comfortable and soft, and is waterproof at depths up to one meter. The device runs up to 36 hours on a charge, and recharges wirelessly simply by placing it on a dock. It connects to a smartphone or tablet using Bluetooth LE. The sensors can detect muscle activity (EMG) and heart activity (ECG), as well as motion (accelerometer and gyroscope). You can apply multiple sensors to a patient to record information from different parts of the body. The BioStampRC sensor is just one part of a larger system, however. The data goes to the cloud with end-to-end encryption and security.
At this point, the system is being positioned for medical research, enabling the remote monitoring of subjects as they go about their daily lives. However, it is easy to see how this technology will be able to reshape healthcare in clinical settings, tracking the health of patients after discharge from the hospital, and even monitoring the health of emergency responders such as firefighters. We are moving rapidly toward having the tools we need to make significant changes in healthcare.
(For information about MC10’s other news from CES 2016, see the article in our sister publication, Wearable Tech Insider, about a project by MC10 and L’Oreal to create a patch to track UV exposure.)
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