3 ms·

I was thinking about this the other (past few months) Getting into _that_ industry, I mean. I was wondering specifically if it might be possible to get some e

I was thinking about this the other (past few months) Getting into _that_ industry, I mean. I was wondering specifically if it might be possible to get some existing medical devices to communicate via bluetooth with a central server; to build an adapter so everything that sent out a vital signal was logged on disc and remotely accessible in real time. I was in a hospital recently, and the vital signs were logged on paper, and abnormalities were signaled by a loud alarm, to be audible at the nearby nurses station. But I don't know how I can 'weekend hack' this sort of thing. Perhaps I can grab some medical surplus, a bluetooth adapter and start hacking?

ihnorton 14y ago
Getting access to devices is definitely a big hurdle, but there are people working in this area already. Maybe you could contribute to framework engineering in collaboration with groups who can get (or reverse engineer, more likely) communication protocols on specific devices. Here are a few links to get started: http://www.mdpnp.org/ http://www.mdpnp.org/ http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2012/medcomm.php http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2012/medcomm.php (google the speakers and organizers) http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1525&context=cis_papers http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1525... OpenIGTLink is working on something similar for surgical navigation (http://openigtlink.org http://openigtlink.org). (See this comment for some more general suggestions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089663 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089663 )
- jisaacstone 14y ago
  fantastic! thanks