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Cyberfab presents
its first wireless Bluetooth enabled Glucometer.
After having developed wireless electrocardiogram, blood
pressure, and other physiological data acquisition and
transmission modules, Cyberfab enters the field of chronic
disease management with its first Bluetooth enabled glucometer.
Diabetes patients can now wirelessly send the data from
a glucometer to a distant server without using a PC, and
update personal web pages in order to better monitor their
glucose levels with the help of healthcare professionals.
Several studies or pilot projects have already demonstrated
the benefits of such personalized monitoring on the participants’ health.
But, until now, in many cases the glucometers either had
to be physically connected to the communicating devices
or the data transmission technology was infrared therefore
requiring precise alignment of the glucometer and the communication
device. This clearly dramatically reduced the mobility
of the patients. With Cyberfab add-on device compatible
with a large installed base of commercially available glucometers,
diabetics can now very simply control the glucometer and
their Bluetooth enabled communication devices to send or
retrieve information. When using a PDA, users can also
send the data and therefore enhance their medical diaries
with text, images (e.g.; feet or eye) and voice memos.
This Cyberfab product opens the way to communication between
glucometers and insulin pumps, and pharmaceutical companies
now have the capability to add quantitative data to qualitative
information for clinical studies.
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According to IDC, 80% of all new mobile phones and 70%
of all PDAs are expected to come equipped with Bluetooth
access in 2006, compared with only 2.7% of phones and
1.1% of handhelds in 2002 and 18 % in 2004. In Q3 2003,
total Bluetooth product shipments worldwide exceeded
1 million units per week and exactly a year later that
figure had climbed to 3 million chips/week. CSR (Cambridge
Silicon radio) has shipped 50 million Bluetooth chips
since its foundation.
In September 2003, the FDA approved the first Bluetooth
system for medical purposes. (http://www.rnpalm.com/fda_approves_bluetooth_med_system.htm)
By providing various means of transmitting or storing
the information using current mobile devices, our solution
is targeted at several markets that are categorized below:
Bluetooth is very important for wireless/wireline phone
data convergence. Project Bluephone from British Telecom
(BT) will allow people to make fixed and mobile calls
from the same handset. The company will launch trials
of its Bluephone device in December 04 and is aiming
to launch the device spring 2005. In a statement, BT
said that preliminary testing of Bluephone by Motorola
shows "very promising results." The device
uses Bluetooth to connect to telecom infrastructure and
the device has been shown to provide coverage in excess
of 20 metres inside buildings and over 60 metres in free
air.
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Outside a user’s normal location:
communicating via a PDA and a Bluetooth mobile phone,
a PDA and
a WiFi access point or a smartphone. Uses: detection
of heart
arrhythmias, monitoring of chronic disease: diabetes,
congestive heart failure, and asthma.
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Doctor’s
office: Viewing and storing: examination files,
physiological sound and wave recordings
(blood pressure, ECG, etc), lab results, images, recording
voice memos etc.
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In-hospital: Using Bluetooth or WiFi
access points. Application: Point Of Care bi- directional
wireless
communication with hospital databases for nurses and
doctors. One future application for the operating room
would be to transmit and display physiological information
of a patient onto a flexible display that is located
on the patient’s surgical gown or on the surgeon’s
wrist.
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