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diagnostics
This page considers connectivity and home diagnostic technologies,
such as the internet toilet and blood pressure measurement
tools.
It covers -
introduction
As the preceding pages noted, connecting a device - any
device - to the net is a trivial task. Challenges instead
centre on what is required to endow that device with appropriate
sentience and mechanisms for making sense of information
that it gathers or providing commands for action that
changes its environment.
The information it gathers may, in principle relate directly
to a person and the environment it modifies may be a person
(for example by dispensing medication or merely summoning
help). One enthusiast thus commented that from a connectivity
perspective there is
not
much difference in using the net to mind mom or manage
the microwave and the defrost function in mom's fridge:
just meters, servos and bandwidth
assays
There have been recurrent proposals for an 'internet toilet'
with different attributes.
Microsoft attracted criticism over inability to decide
whether its iLoo media release was serious, an internal
joke that went feral or a publicity stunt that went wrong.
Engineering students and home show promoters desperate
for media coverage have spruiked an internet toilet comprising
a monitor adjacent to the throne (providing "up-to-the-minute
information on products, stocks and shares and lottery
results") and a printer that would use a standard
toilet roll for hardcopy.
More serious proposals have had an assay function, with
the toilet being used as a device that would analyse the
user's waste for a variety of ailments or otherwise conduct
health tests, with data being transmitted to the user's
personal physician or health centre. As with the internet
fridge, there have been more media releases and newspaper
or magazine column inches than product rollouts.
In 2002 Japanese manufacturer Toto announced the WellyouII,
a toilet that featured automatic measurement of the user's
urine sugar levels by inviting the person to provide a
sample for collection via a retractable mechanical arm.
Analysis was apparently to be done on site, with the user
being alerted at that location and thereby prompted to
consult a doctor.Toto claimed that
With
an eye to our demographic change, we are setting out
to make the toilet a space for the early discovery of
disease.
Electronics conglomerate Matsushita sought to position
itself in the telehealth market by foreshadowing more
ambitious devices. A spokesperson announced
You
may think a toilet is just a toilet, but we would like
to make a toilet a home health measuring center. We
are going to install in a toilet devices to measure
weight, fat, blood pressure, heart beat, urine sugar,
albumin and blood in urine.
Matsushita
envisaged that data would be provided to a doctor via
an inbuilt mobile phone, claiming "We will have this
within five years or so".
next page (ideology
of the internet fridge)
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