The $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize and $2.25 million Nokia Sensing Challenges are trying to identify the best portable technologies for diagnosing disease - as easily as Dr. McCoy's tricorder of the 23rd Century could. What scientific knowledge could help us to develop it in this age? Detecting metabolites, sensing DNA, imaging the nanoworld of the human body or interaction between matter and energy?...
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GPS shoes can point to where you're going, but how will they know where to go? By consulting the map uploaded via USB and its own GPS receivers, wirelessly communicating with each other. For future models, you could probably set up WiFi to let your shoes download more information, talk with other people's shoes and modify your route on the go. So your footwear might need its footware and own network access, like agent Maxwell Smart's left shoe with a mobile subscription plan. Health management applications will not be limited to smartphones or smart homes. All objects in our lives will gradually become "smarter." Mobile phones can already manage vacuum cleaners and thermostats. Refrigerators can tweet, check Google calendars, download recipes, play tunes and alert us about food spoilage. Mirrors can monitor our weight and exercise. There is still more emphasis these days on technological wizardry than on actual benefits, but systems like Aurametrix are bringing it all together and generating valuable insights. Health is determined by many factors including Behavior (Physical Activity, Eating habits, Tobacco or substance abuse, responsible sexual choices), Mental Health, Injury and Violence, Environmental Quality, Preventative measures such as immunization, and Access to Health Care. Injuries are most likely to be perceived as "accidents" and "acts of fate", but they depend on the same determinants as other health factors: individual behavior, social and physical environment. The likelihood of injuries - unintentional ones and those caused by acts of violence - can be computed from physical location, gene-environment interactions, prior medical history, and physical traits. August 15, 2010: Predicting catastrophic health events "I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours". These were famous words of the almighty computer HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey". Few of us believe too much in software forecasts - be it weather, earthquakes or computer hard disk failures. Yet, we all know that sometimes it works. And such systems are very valuable, assuming they continuously improve.
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