Talk given to graduate students of the Heath, Technology & Engineering program at USC on 6 Mar 2013. Covers some basics of Internet of Things (IoT), some example healthcare-related IoT device, and how IoT can change how we approach healthcare.
17. IoT and Healthcare
■ Disruption through Pervasive Data Collection
■ Disruption through Doctor-Patient Disintermediation
■ Disruption through Rapid Product Design
How is IoT changing healthcare?
19. Environmental Monitoring
Safecast Radiation Maps of Fukushima
■ Decentralized groups build
datasets needed for
analyzing health impacts
■ Part of the “Citizen
Science” movement
– anyone can join
■ Qualified sensors and
processes ensure data
quality
20. Personal Environmental
Monitoring
■ Air quality monitor:
temp, humidity, CO, NO2,
■ Body monitor:
heart rate, breathing
rate, activity level, core
temp
■ Measures body response
to environmental
conditions
■ Logs to cloud for
aggregate analysis
AirCasting w/ BioHarness
21. Patient Monitoring
An example: FDA approved Proteus “digital pill”
■ Ingestible or wearable
sensors allow 24/7 data
collection
■ Track drug dosage over
time, compliance, vitals
■ Data uploaded to cloud
service for inspection by
doctors
22. Patient Self-Monitoring
An example: Fitbit
■ Small sensor measures
movement gait & speed,
sleep patterns
■ Turns data collection into
game w/others
■ Upload historical data to the
cloud for future reference
■ New apps use sensor in
new ways
24. ■ Direct, distributed medical care at home, at work
■ Information flows from doctor to patient,
complements data flow from patient
■ Not too many examples of this yet,
compared to data collection
■ So instead let’s look at one example in detail
Disintermediation
25. Example: GlowCaps
■ Cloud-connected pill
bottles
■ Log when drugs are taken
■ Reminders when not taken
■ “Press for Refill”
■ Uses cell network so no
setup required
28. Rapid Product Design
■ Three main areas of product
design:
■ Software (“apps”)
— everyone does this
■ Electronics
— Arduino or similar
■ Enclosure / Mechanical
— 3D printers
}
Expertise for all
three found in
garages &
hackerspaces
29. Arduino
■ A microcontroller board
■ A collection of add-ons
(code & hardware)
■ An open source
application for Mac /
Windows / Linux
■ A community
What is it?
30. Arduino
But most importantly, Arduino is:
an open, community-focused way of
encouraging rapid-prototyping
What is it?
“What’s the quickest way to
solve this problem?”
not:
“What’s the cheapest / smallest / most
efficient way to solve this problem?”
40. Arduino as a
Hardware Lingua Franca
■ No need to know the details
for the common-case or to
hack perturbations
■ Use it as a way of describing
product topologies
■ If new tech exists, likely an
Arduino example for it
41. Challenges for
IoT & Healthcare
■ Ownership of data
■ Data retention policies
■ Data transmission security
■ Longevity of startups creating health-critical applications
■ Safety of prototype devices
49. Arduino + Hackerspaces
= Try Out Things Fast
■ Arduino provides a huge standardized repository
of extant code and hardware
■ Hackerspaces provide tools, expertise, & friends
to help out
■ Using both you can rapidly iterate new ideas
■ Rapid iteration necessary to experiment with
latest Internet of Things technology
Notes de l'éditeur
Occasionally I write for Make magazine, the standard-bearer of this new “Maker movement” that includes Arduino. Several years ago I wrote the book on hacking the Roomba robotic vacuum. It was called “Hacking Roomba”. And in 2009 I cofounded CrashSpace, the first hackerspace in Los Angeles.
I’ve been involved in the Arduino community since 2006, and have produced a set of instructional material and Arduino-targeted hacking products. Spooky Arduino has been translated into six other languages and the designs of ScrewShield and the Wiichuck adapter are licensed to several electronics manufacturers.
But what I mostly focus on is my company ThingM. ThingM is a ubiquitous computing / Internet of Things device studio, an R&D lab, and a micro-OEM.
ThingM primarily designs a range of RGB LEDs with attached controllers.
Here’s two examples of our research.
WineM is a wine rack that knows what wine you have and illuminates the wine to indicate queries you give the wine rack (“show me the cabernets”, “what should I drink with this meal?”)
Glowpull is a drawer pull that illuminate right before you grab it. It was an exploration of “jewelry for the home”.
We’re most famous for our range of “Smart LED” BlinkM products.
They’re sort of a fundamental atom of ubiquitous computing, combining an RGB LED with a tiny microprocessor. The microprocessor encapsulates knowledge about color theory and how to drive LEDs.
Over the last year, we’ve had two successful Kickstarter campaigns for blink(1), a USB notification light that turns information on the Net or your computer into a multicolored light. We’ve sold over 10,000 blink(1)s and have seen some awesome uses of it we never imagined.
We’ve been thinking about what is now called Internet of Things for several years. We’ve been investigating imbuing everyday objects with computation. How does that change those objects? How does it change our relationship to them?
Only in the last few years have we been able to explore some of these questions in detail.
Before the “Internet of Things” became a buzzword, we have glimmers of this perception -> computation -> networking cycle.
Package tracking seems mundane but we now get near real-time updates of package trajectory. We can instill exception logic when a package deviates from its planned course.
Some cars automatically adjust their seats, mirrors, and other driver environment based on which keyfob has activated the car. Your car knows you and communicates to your seat.
Now that we all carry a high-bandwidth network gateway and high-resolution UI controller, our conception of IoT includes our smartphones as the spyglass and mediator into the secret life of machines.
The Egg Minder tells you when your eggs are due to go bad and when to buy more.
Attach Tile to important losable things and anyone with the Tile app will help find it.
Nest is a thermostat that learns your behavior, adjusts for energy price changes.
Egg Minder: http://www.quirky.com/shop/619-Egg-Minder-Smart-Egg-Tray
Nest Thermostat: https://nest.com/
Tile: http://www.thetileapp.com/
from Moore, 2003, and Kuniavsky “Smart Things”
How is this becoming possible and where is it going? It’s helpful to look at Moore’s Law. This is the version of the graph we’re used to seeing. “Every 18 months we see a doubling in chip performance”.
But there’s another way to look at it.
from Moore, 2003, and Kuniavsky “Smart Things”
Inverted, we see the per-transistor cost is dropping at the same rate. A given unit of computation is getting cheaper and cheaper.
We’re at the beginning of being able to think of computation as an additional material, rather than a fundamental aspect of a product.
And the particular microcontroller on the right is the same type that’s used in Arduino.
I am not a healthcare professional. But I do see trends in technology that are affecting all endeavors, including healthcare. Here’s the three biggest ones I think.
I’m going to be talking mostly from a products point of view, showing items I’m familiar with.
Getting good data on patients is critical to providing good care. There are many new IoT-based tools that allow data on groups and individuals.
Several people didn’t think the Japanese governments’ radiation data collection techniques were sound. So an open source effort was founded to log radiation amounts all across Japan (and the world). And they found the radiation was traveling in ways not predicted.
http://blog.safecast.org/maps/
http://blog.safecast.org/2013/03/the-bgeigie-nano-kit/
The AirCasting project is very much in prototype form, but already small enough and useful enough to be interesting.
http://aircasting.org/
http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/05/09/diy-air-quality-sensing-from-habitatmap-and-sonoma-tech/
Proteus “digital pill” http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/technology/startups/ingestible-sensor-proteus/
Also see the ingestible “pill camera” for non-invasive endoscopy.
Go into any Apple Store and see tons of “quantified self” devices that trick people into logging biometric data about themselves. :-)
How to get more direct connection from doctor to patient without overloading either with extra visits?
GlowCaps - http://www.glowcaps.com/
Also see: http://mobihealthnews.com/20795/slideshow-8-pillboxes-that-connect-to-your-phone/
Here’s some ways people are creating new IoT products quickly
In my experience there are three areas to worry about when designing a product. The first, software/apps, is very well understood now and you probably know someone who can help with this. I will ignore this
The second, electronics hardware, used to be quite difficult, but thanks to easy-to-use tools like Arduino, can be prototyped by novices. Finally, making quality mechanicals and enclosures used to be in the realm of engineering experts, but now 3D printers are everywhere and are driven by simple 3D applications.
So how does IoT fit in with Arduino? Arduino at its basic is a computer board with the same raw power as high-end CPUs of a few decades ago.
The Arduino board is small enough to be embedded into most everyday objects and highly expandable with an ever-growing library of example code and plug-n-play add-on hardware.
But most importantly, because it’s open source, a community has grown around it
But all this Arduino stuff can get a bit confounding. And building a robust prototype requires tooling.
This is where a hackerspace can help. Hackerspaces are generally communities of inventors and entrepreneurs who found out they benefit from having a common place to house their tools. And then they open the doors to newcomers so everyone is exposed to new ideas.
I’m going to use CrashSpace as an example here, because it’s what I’m familiar with. Other hackerspaces are similar.
At CrashSpace we have the standard compliment of tools you’ll find at a hackerspace: laser cutter, 3d printers, drill presses, mills, grinders, bandsaws, oscilloscopes, soldering stations, and so on. And people who know how to use them all.
Like other hackerspaces, CrashSpace members run the professional gamut. Toy inventors, CG animators, aerospace engineers, artists, MBAs, students, teachers, and more. If there’s something you don’t know, just ask and chances are someone is an expert in the field.
And that’s not even counting the regular workshops and classes.
You might even get help building your project.
photo courtesy Sean Bonner : http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanbonner/5168215163/