The easiest way to prevent wrist strain while working at a computer is to keep your hands moving, and varying their position throughout the day. But as a blogger I can attest to the fact that the hours can easily slip away without you realizing you haven’t moved an inch. And before you know it you’re left with sore wrists, that only gets worse over time. And this is what the Engage Keyboard from Smartfish Technologies is designed to address.
The keyboard is split down the middle, and both the right and left sides are able to subtly shift up and down and left to right thanks to a set of whisper-quiet electric motors working inside. The movement is barely noticeable while you’re working away, but it’s apparently enough of a difference in position to prevent your wrists from feeling sore after working all day. By default the keyboard automagically makes its adjustments every hour, but it will also monitor your typing patterns and adjust it more frequently if you’re furiously typing away. Available now for $149.95.
A month or so ago we brought you a clever app called Pulse Phone that uses the iPhone’s camera and flash to measure your heart rate via your index finger. We found it worked well most of the time, but we wouldn’t consider it anything more than a party trick. In other words, you probably won’t be seeing it used in hospitals across the country anytime soon.
The iPhonECG however is a different story. It uses a slim, low-power sleeve with a couple of electrodes on the back to provide clinical-quality cardiac event readings. You can either hold it in your hands to get a reading of your pulse, or place it on your chest which makes it useful when dealing with a patient who can’t hold it themselves. The sleeve also works wirelessly with the iPhone 4, most likely via Bluetooth, and since it looks like it doesn’t attach to the dock connector I suspect you could get a reading even if you weren’t using it as a sleeve. The iPhonECG will be officially shown at CES next week, and we’ll do our best to hunt it down and get a hands-on.
A few years ago Microsoft Research showed off a prototype camera called the SenseCam which took a unique approach to photography. Instead of pulling out your camera to snap a random moment for posterity, the SenseCam is worn hanging from your neck all day and thanks to light, infrared (body heat) and other sensors, the camera’s fish eye lens continually snaps photos of your life. And a built-in intervalometer can even keep it capturing life’s little moments every 30 seconds, no matter how boring or mundane they may be.
The SenseCam was never available as an actual purchasable product from Microsoft, but a UK-based company called Vicon Motion Systems has licensed the technology for their Vicon Revue, which is essentially the exact same thing. Besides the obvious uses for creating documentaries and not-so-interesting YouTube time lapse videos, Vicon Motion Systems seems to be marketing the Revue as a useful tool for those suffering from memory impairment conditions like Alzheimer’s.
The included Revue Desktop software allows you to organize and annotate photos at the end of the day, though that could be a heck of a lot of work given the Revue’s battery is good for 12 continuous hours. And if you think it looks like a fun way to capture your life, the ~$775 (£500) price tag seems to be discouraging people from ordering one for just novelty use.
I’m no doctor, but I don’t think the best time to measure one’s blood pressure is while using a PC. But that’s exactly what a company called CalHealth wants you to do with their MDMouse which features a miniature flip-out finger cuff that auto-inflates to accurately measure a user’s blood pressure. The sphygmomanometer mouse, which was probably tossed around as a name option before they settled on MDMouse, comes with its own software too which not only records the blood pressure readings, but allows you to analyze the collected data over time. The readings can even be exported to a format that’s hospital system friendly if you’d prefer a bona fide doctor to look over your readings.
As for availability? Well the website boasts that “CalHealth anticipates having our first MDMouse product available for purchase during the third quarter of 2008″ which means they kind of missed their target. But according to Medgadget the MDMouse should be hitting the market in the next few months.
Instead of using a long pointy needle to deliver medication, which can be quite painful at times, the PharmaJet uses a high-speed liquid jet that literally blasts the medicine through your skin in less than 1/3 of a second. While the technology isn’t necessarily new, the PharmaJet improves on older designs with a sterile, single-use syringe and a spring-powered mechanism that requires no external power source besides the muscle needed to re-load it.
And since pain is a subjective feeling, the PharmaJet isn’t billed as being completely ‘pain-free’, but according to the company’s founder it feels like the equivalent of a tiny rubber band snapping against your skin. The injector, which can be reused thousands of times, currently costs about $100 while the single-use syringes run somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 cents to $1, probably closer to the latter. So they’re more expensive than traditional needles at the moment, but as production and use increases it could end up being a viable and even more cost-effective alternative to being stabbed in the arm.
It sounds like the type of device you’d see shilled on late-night TV or in the back pages of Popular Science, but the CoolSculpting system from ZELTIQ has just been approved by the FDA and could soon be a service offered by your local rhinoplastic surgeon. In essence the device kills fat cells under the skin by freezing them without damaging the skin itself, and once ‘dead’ the frostbitten fatty adipose tissue will then naturally be removed from the body VIA its metabolic processes.
With the CoolSculpting procedure, a specially designed cooling applicator is applied to the desired area of fat reduction to extract energy (cooling) from the underlying fat tissue without damage to other tissues. The applicator cup uses a gentle vacuum pressure to draw the tissue between the cooling panels. During the procedure, the applicator delivers precisely controlled cooling conditions that have been proven to target and eliminate fat cells in specific areas of the body. When fat cells are exposed to precise cooling, they trigger a process of natural removal that gradually reduces the thickness of the fat layer.
The ZELTIQ system controls the rate of energy extraction or cooling during the procedure. The result is a reduction in fat bulges that is visible in most patients in two to four months. The fat cells in the treated area are gradually eliminated through the body’s normal metabolic processes, similar to how fat from food is eliminated.
It’s not designed for serious weightloss, but it seems like a relatively painless way to reduce those love handles you’ve been trying to hide all Summer.
In the event of an emergency would you be prepared to properly perform CPR on someone? The answer from most people would probably be a guilty “no” even if they’ve had training in the past. No one wants to be responsible for someone losing their life because they didn’t perform CPR properly, so first and foremost the PocketCPR provides confidence when it comes to administering the life saving act. Using audio and visual instructions, the device walks a user through the preliminary stages including checking responsiveness and calling for help, and while performing CPR it uses an accelerometer to measure the rate and depth of chest compressions to ensure they’re being done properly and at the correct intervals (using an audible metronome) for optimal effectiveness.
The PocketCPR device is approved by the FDA and is available now as an ‘over-the-counter’ rescue device for $149. However, a lot of us already carry an accelerometer-equipped device every day in the form of our iPhones, so an app version of PocketCPR is now available for just $3.99. It’s not approved by the FDA just yet for use in an actual emergency, which is why the on-screen instructions bear the ‘TRAINING USE ONLY’ warning, but it seems to provide the exact same functionality as the dedicated device turning your iPhone into an effective tool for learning the life saving procedure.
Once again the bar has been raised when it comes to smartphone functionality, but the lastest salvo doesn’t come from the Apple, HTC or even RIM camps, but from a German company whose H’andy sana 2010 phone includes a built-in heart rate monitor. Targeted towards persons with cardiovascular disease who should be having an ECG more frequently than others, the phone simply requires the user to press two fingers against its edge for 30 seconds for a heart rate reading to be taken. The data can then be sent to a hospital or doctor for interpretation. Not only does it save a patient from having to make frequent trips to a hospital or medical facility, but there’s a greater chance of catching a problem or complication before it becomes a serious life threatening issue.
As for the phone, well it’s your standard touchscreen affair with a 320×240 pixel display, a 1.3 megapixel camera, a microSD card slot facilitating its multimedia capabilities like MP3 & video playback and most importantly, a heart-shaped icon on what I assume is the home button. Certainly makes the rounded square on the iPhone’s home button seem downright cold! And while I’ve no idea where you can get one, or if you have to buy it outright or can get it subsidized through a carrier, the H’andy sana 210 is supposed to be available starting this month.
As if having to prick your finger on a daily basis to test your blood sugar wasn’t enough, to properly manage your diabetes you also need to double as an accountant or a bookkeeper to monitor your results over time. Thankfully companies like Bayer are aware that it’s not always the easiest thing to stay on top of, so they’ve created the Contour USB Meter which looks like your standard blood sugar tester, except for the addition of a USB connector on one end.
The Contour is able to store 2,000 results, organized and displayed on the color screen by the exact date and time they were recorded, but when it gets full, or at any time actually, you can upload them to Bayer’s Glucofacts Deluxe diabetes management software which provides provides numerous ways to analyze, sort and view the data. While the meter usually sells for about $75 including 25 test strips, it looks like Walgreens has it on sale for just $39.99 right now.
Related Tags: CES2011, Health, Medical
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