Heard on NPR: Networked Implantable Medical Devices

Driving home the other evening listening to a wide-ranging NPR “Fresh Air” interview about healthcare, I caught mention of the phrase “networked implantable medical devices”, which the interviewee described as implantable medical sensors that can monitor and wirelessly upload patient data to a remote and secure website for real-time review by a doctor. I think that this was the interview (http://tinyurl.com/colun4); unfortunately there’s no transcript.

Apparently implantable medical devices, or IMDs, can be used for everything from monitoring one’s heart (and defibrillating it when one’s heartbeat gets out of wack) to monitoring glucose levels for diabetics.

Remote sensor technology is pretty amazing. About a year ago I saw this company Sensorlogic present at an internal technology strategy meeting and was really impressed with their examples of how remote sensor technology could enable trackability and reduce cost-to-serve in industries from hog-farming to retail gas stations. And apparently now they can help you to “track Grandma” too. (http://tinyurl.com/dmekv6).

But back to those networked IMDs. Thinking about it a few steps out, the possibilities and implications could really be fantastic for managing one’s own health. What if you were diabetic, and a networked IMD communicated with your PDA to alert you when your blood-sugar level got too low, in addition to uploading your information on a regular basis to a website that could be accessed by you and your doctor. Apparently MicroChips, Inc. has something like this in the works: http://tinyurl.com/dkl6sq.

But should such devices really take off, the implications for personal privacy, security, and even things such as competition in professional sports could be quite staggering. According to some Googling I did, researchers at Medical Device Security Center (funded in part by Harvard) have already figured out a way to hack some of these things (http://www.secure-medicine.org/) and are publishing papers on the subject.

Of course, people have been wearing externalized networked devices of the fitness and entertainment variety for some time: heart rate monitors, Nike+, cell phones, and PDAs. But the idea and versatility of implantable devices that work with wider-ranger networks and are able to write personal health data in near real time for viewing via the secure web (and any device, mobile or fixed, that can access the web) really changes things.

What if networked IMDs become more specialized, and can be used to monitor heart rate, blood oxygen level, or other indicators of athletic performance? Might professional sports coaches use this technology – via web or PDA interface – real-time to more effectively manage the performance of individual athletes – so they’d know when a player is fatigued, or operating at peak performance, or needs to recharge, and how.

Definitely a space to keep checking in on.