IDEA 1: Personal Sensors & Wireless Communication Devices

I just saw a show on TV (The New Inventors) where this guy had invented a worn, wireless communication device that could sense if you were having a heart attack and then message (SMS) your friends, family or even emergency services alerting them of your condition. Great invention! It's basically an ECG sensor connected to a mobile phone (they connected the sensor via bluetooth).


Pretty simple idea (from a software engineering point of view):

• Get a bunch of sensors that are bluetooth enabled (or communicate by some other method).
• Develop some algorithms that make decisions about your status based on the inputs from your sensors.
• Generate alerts when the sensors indicate a certain scenario.
• Communicate these alerts with others via some wireless COM protocol (SMS, GSM, 3G, TCP/IP etc etc etc...).
  

It got me thinking (and I'm sure I'm not the only person who's thought about this)... This concept could be applied to so many things:

1. Do the same thing but for diabetics or eppeleptics (there's gotta be a bunch more).
   
2. Person A works in a potentially hazardrous environment. They may be exposed to certain gasses, temperatures etc. Why not monitor these remotely using a bunch of worn sensors that communicate back to a monitor station via some sort of wireless communication protocol. Alerts can be generated (either at the device or at the monitor station) and relevant people can be alerted.

Even better if you coupled this with a positioning device (GPS or some sort of local positioning system) then the alert could be coupled with the exact location of the person wearing the sensors!

I think I'll develop a desktop prototype and get back to you all.

PTX 0.2
- Over