Wednesday, August 10, 2005

CPOD: A Personal "Black Box"

Filed under: Emergency Medicine , Military Medicine , Space Medicine

The Washigton Post reports that NASA is developing a personal health monitor, that is similar to a blackbox found on planes.

NASA describes its device:

It's a compact, portable, wearable device -- a single piece of equipment that gathers a wide variety of vital signs. About the size of a computer mouse, a CPOD is worn around the waist. It's comfortable enough to be worn while sleeping. It's non-invasive. It takes only minutes to don. Importantly, it can track a person's physiologic functioning as they go about their normal routine -- they don't have to be tethered to some stationary device. It can store data for eight-hour periods for later downloading; alternatively, it can send it wirelessly, in real time, to some other device...

The CPOD typically tracks heart performance, blood pressure, respiration, temperature, and blood oxygen levels. Using three tiny accelerometers, it also tracks a person's movements -- it can tell whether they're running, for example, or spinning or tumbling.

And it can be reconfigured. If researchers choose, almost any kind of sensor could be plugged into the device. The CPOD could, for example, keep track of ambient air pressure, or monitor the concentrations of atmospheric gases.

To read more about the device at NASA...

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