Category: Digital Health, Wearable technology and Devices

We think of digital health in terms of devices or phones that are meant to track a measure of the body or our health. However, there have been several portable tools and toys that are being made that enable you to monitor what you eat and what you consume. The device list with many fluorescent…

There have been various models of sharing of health data, maintaining privacy and still maintaining HIPAA regulations. Big companies have tried to bring it all under their umbrella including Google, Apple and Amazon. However, this has not led to much success. The winner’s in this competition has usually being the software companies that offer Electronic…

We develop run clinical trials with different devices including our own prototypes and many of our clients seem lost with the number of things that need to be planned. Eventually, we help them through the various phases and only now have some of them begun to get data from their studies and analyze the data.…

Range: First, since the accelerometer measures acceleration, it is important that the range of the accelerometer should be well within the range of the activity that we need to measure. What is the range of human acceleration? As the last article pointed out, the fastest runner in the world can generate nearly 1g whereas a…

Accelerometers are used very often in digital health devices. Let us try to understand them better but before that lets understand acceleration since that is what they measure. Acceleration:Let’s consider a runner in a 100m dash like the fast runner, Usain Bolt. He can rapidly accelerate from zero to nearly 27 miles per hour which…

Many studies in digital health use accelerometers that are worn on the wrist to track activity of the person. This activity is measured through the day and then a score is computed for the person to express their score: activity to sedentary ratio. In consumer world, this is expressed as some measure – say the…

Sensing chemicals or metabolites in human body is difficult and new technologies are requiredSeveral sensors exist for measuring specific compounds in body fluids in vitro and in vivo. The common ones to sense glucose and lactate use and enzyme that is coupled to some electronic moiety that then generates a signal. This signal is then…

Typical heaters are made very simple with a resistance that generates heat but can be complex to control. For example, see the design picture for a temperature controlled fan. There has to be a sensing element which needs to send an input to the control processor or element which in turns needs to regulate the…

  There are several problems in treating cancer. Among the most vexing is to figure out exactly the type of tumor so that you can come up with a very specific therapy. If you cannot get access to the cancer through some simple measures then the physicians only choice is to look at it through…

  What is the value of simplicity? Take the Apple store as an example. Not too many places to sit and browse but just simple table in the center and then devices off to the side. Of course there is the glass front which enables everything to be seen. But imagine creating a medical device…