What Your Underwear Says About You
from the potty-talk dept
Well, if you're not going to shove an ID chip under your skin how about sticking some sensors in your underwear? Researchers at Nokia, Vodafone and Philips (among others) are working on medical sensor equipment that can be woven into underwear, and can monitor a wearer's health and even warn them if they might be having a stroke. The idea is to make the sensor as unobtrusive as possible, but still have it so that it's always being worn (well, one would hope not always -- just don't have a stroke in the shower). Other possible uses would be to monitor your weight and exercise patterns and your general medical health. I imagine this would go well with the high tech toilet that monitors your health and emails your doctor with information as well. Hell, why not combine them. Let your underwear talk with your toilet via bluetooth or something.
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HIPPAA?
This technology will create lots of ethical complexities for medical researchers, to be sure. For right now, even if we are working with anonymous tissue samples or anonymized clinical data, we still have to go through elaborate rituals of university and government approval. If such data can be accessed remotely, it will create lots of new ambiguities.
p.s. I asked the speaker what are the ethical guidelines if one wanted to mix anonymous sperm and egg cells on a petri dish, to study conception. The answer: it's complicated.
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no way
Me thinks there be privacy issues...
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Only if...
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Re: Only if...
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Another sense of "always on"
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Re: Another sense of
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Once more...
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