Assume you are a doctor and have a patient which has a heart condition. The individual is presently at a friend’s residence and is having issues. Your Android cell phone notifies you of the potential problem. You open up the alert and are capable of seeing in real-time your patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and other vital statistics that will help you establish next steps. You decide that your patient is in distress and call for an ambulance with the touch of a button and phone your patient. Your patient’s location can also be known because of the GPS in their smartphone.
This example is quickly becoming a reality with a recent improvement in technology: Bluetooth Health Data Profile (HDP). Bluetooth HDP is really a new layer overlaid on the Bluetooth protocol stack that specifies a standard set of instructions for healthcare devices. The Bluetooth HDP equipment would safely connect and send out data to a smartphone or other receivers. The information can then be transmitted to a primary health management application used by the physicians, nurses, homecare providers, etc.
The truth is there are large numbers of medical products which are currently Bluetooth enabled. Yet, until recently there has not been a standard set of instructions to exchange data. This means that each device requires a unique proprietary application to communicate with. Bluetooth HDP devices will be able to interact with applications developed to support the new standard. One huge benefit to consumers is the opportunity to purchase a heart monitor from one vendor and a blood oxygen meter from yet another. Each of these devices are able to communicate with your health care providers chosen health management system. This is excellent for the customer because it gives us options and won’t lock us into a single vendor’s system. We will be able to pick the best of breed hardware and software as well as purchase at competitive prices.
Why do we need a standard ? Here is an example. What if the web failed to use a standard set of protocols and technology to show webpages? This would mean you would require a particular browser to view each website. One web browser, like Firefox, may or may not operate with that one website. Because of standards we can use a single browser to surf the web.
Medical device makers and health management software developers will be the largest consumers of this technology. Given that we have a growing aging society, healthcare companies need to identify better solutions to provide quality care to their consumers and scale with the growing number of cases. But nevertheless, there are others that can also take advantage of this technology. As an example, aerobic exercise equipment producers could possibly use Bluetooth HDP to get data from a heart monitor worn by the consumer and send it to the home treadmill they are running on. The speed of the cardio equipment could be increased or diminished based on data received from the heart monitor and in accordance with to the routine type. The heart monitor may also be used on any cardio equipment at any other gym as long as it is a Bluetooth HDP enabled piece of equipment.
An example of a device that supports Bluetooth HDP is the HUAWEI MediaPad. However, review a few Android Tablet Reviews, and information on other devices to find the right solution for you.