Call waiting, what's that? 3/25

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! Watch Bell Telephone demonstrate the dialing card, touch-tone phone, and call waiting. Keep your eyes peeled for the prototype pager; it’s as big as a book. (If for some reason the Google vid doesn't play for you, click here.)



I can’t wait for the future.

Well, maybe I can. I’ve been thinking about telemedicine and the emerging technology of Intelligent Biomedical Clothing. Simply put, your clothes have sensors which tell your “health care provider” how you are doing.

Article.

It sounds kind of neat for sick people. If your temperature or blood pressure falls the medics can be alerted and get to you before you even realize you are about to fall gravely ill. But really, over time do you think it will end with sick people? Wouldn’t athletes begin wearing these? Would schools issue these to your kids so you know how they are at all times?

Would your insurance require these? That scares me.

“Biomedical fashion (rather than clothes) offers a unique opportunity to seamlessly integrate health care into the daily lives of citizens.”

Imagine that your insurance carrier know how much wine you had at dinner, how cold it was when you were outside for hours, or even if you aren’t getting enough exercise? Would your shirt alert you to grab a jacket before you stay outside any longer or else flu medication won’t be covered?

Think about exercise. Would State Farm decide that a person your age and weight should be doing X amount of cardio a week and penalize you at the doctors office on the co pay if you didn’t do enough?

The Discovery Channel ran a show a couple months back and one thing they theorized about things in “2057” is that just about everything will be wireless somehow. In their example your toilet, toothbrush, clothes, just about any major appliance were all integrated into a network. The chilling byproduct of this is that your toilet and toothbrush will let your insurance company know that you were out drinking and your BA is still above the legal limit in the morning. Should you injure yourself now, you won’t be covered or covered as well as when you are sober.

That’s a pretty dire prediction.

I’m all for keeping sick patients alive and on the road to discover while letting them get out of the hospitals through the use of these “Smart Clothes” but I really hope that we never surrender that much of our lives over to the insurance companies. I like keeping people safe, but I detest the idea of a “nanny state” becoming THAT invasive. It’s bad enough that people can’t smoke in bars and other trivial matters nowadays, but imagine if having a cigarette voided your health coverage – instantly.

I know, take the tinfoil hat off, dude. Americans would never let that happen here. It’s too far-fetched that it would ever happen.

I’m just saying that there are plenty of great things to be done with telemedicine these days but we should be mindful of how invasive it becomes. Watch the Bell Telephone movie again. That kind of thing blew people away in the early 60s and we take all of it for granted (even think some of it as obsolete). Imagine what we will have in 40 years…