GigaOM » wireless-communications

AT&T wants to be your unlikely ally against asthma

Ki Mae Heussner — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:47:00 +0000

In the not-so distant future, AT&T’s network might not just let you read emails and surf the web – it might actually help you avoid an asthma attack.

This week at the mHealth Summit in Washington, DC, the wireless communications giant said researchers at AT&T Labs are working on a wireless asthma sensor that scans the air for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that may exacerbate asthma symptoms and then alerts patients via smartphone and other devices.

Developed through its AT&T ForHealth Initiative, which it launched in 2010 to develop wireless, cloud-based and networking services for the healthcare industry, the sensor, called Asthma Trigger, is powered by AT&T’s network but was created in partnership with a manufacturer.

According to MedGadget, the device itself leverages the Actuarius gateway cloud platform and uses a ZigBee wireless-equipped, battery-operated microcomputer. When it senses high levels of VOCs, it can feed the air quality data through AT&T’s healthcare information data exchange platform, which then enables patients to receive alerts on smartphones, tablets and computers.

AT&T’s device, which is still in development, isn’t the only interesting innovation for asthmatics. Others include GPS and WiFi-equipped inhalers that can help physicians track their patients’ usage and epidemiologists monitor broader trends, as well as an asthma monitoring “Wheezometer” that analyzes a patient’s breath sounds and transmits the data to physicians and caregivers.

In an interview with MedGadget, AT&T Labs researcher Bob Miller said his team decided to tackle asthma when they realized that the chronic respiratory condition is on the rise – according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, 25 million Americans have asthma and 27,000 adults miss work daily because of it.

But as data and IT solutions move deeper into the healthcare industry, devices like the Asthma Trigger can help AT&T establish a foothold in a growing multi-billion-dollar market.

Miller told MedGadget:

“As healthcare becomes increasingly data-driven thanks to a new generation of inexpensive sensors, communication capabilities will play an important role in transmitting this data to where it’s needed—to doctors, hospitals, researchers. AT&T Research is laying the groundwork now for a complete medical communications infrastructure, not just for an asthma device but for a whole host of sensor-based medical devices.”

Earlier this year, at a major health IT conference, AT&T’s assistant vice president for ForHealth Randall Porter told MedHealthWorld that AT&T is motivated not only by profit but by its own position as a self-insured employer. Each year, he said, it spends $5.5 billion to cover its 1.2 million employees.

The ForHealth initiative encompasses a range of projects, including cloud-based solutions for medical imaging and information management, telehealth and an online community for secure messaging and information exchange between patients, doctors, payers and providers.

As we’ve written about before, healthcare is in the early days of a massive change, as mobile technology, more open data, connected devices and cloud computing upend legacy systems and boost patient engagement. Plenty of new startups, funded by a flood of venture capital money, are taking on many of the same areas addressed by ForHealth. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how AT&T competes with (and maybe even buys) some of those upstarts.

Image by Peter Nadolski via Shutterstock.

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Reports: Syria is cut off from the internet and how it may have happened

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:30:13 +0000

Updated: Syria is cut off from the Internet, according to The Renesys blog and other media sites citing Syrian rebels, bringing about an isolation that many feared was coming to the country. The country is engaged in a citizen-led insurgency against the existing government, which was sparked after Syrian President Bashar Assad brutally cracked down on protesters.

The Renesys blog entry is short, and promises updates. From the Renesys blog:

Starting at 10:26 UTC (12:26pm in Damascus), Syria’s international Internet connectivity shut down. In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria’s IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet.

Cutting off entire countries form the global Internet has become a strategy employed by some governments in times of civil unrest — and underscores many of the weak points of the Internet itself. Both Libya, Iran and Egypt pulled much of their connections to the web world offline in the last two years. We explained how Egypt took the country offline in this post:

The OpenNet Initiative has outlined two methods by which most nations could enact such shutdowns. Essentially, officials can either close down the routers which direct traffic over the border — hermetically sealing the country from outsiders — or go further down the chain and switch off routers at individual ISPs to prevent access for most users inside.

At the time Egypt took the second route to take the country offline, a process made easier by the fact that their were few ISPs to contact. It’s unclear how Syria disconnected its citizens. Some news reports say insurgents are communicating still via satellite phones, but the lost of IP addresses means no IP services can find their way to end users within the country. When a packet destined for a Syrian IP address is sent, it simply can’t find out where it’s supposed to go.

Update: Here’s what that drop off in traffic looks like, courtesy of Akamai.

This is one reason that technologies such as OpenBTS, Commotion, the Serval Project and other technologies to build out open source communications networks are important. While those may not ensure that people in Syria can talk to the outside world unless they have a satellite backhaul, they could still communicate with one another independently of the local ISPs.

Photo courtesy of 2lights.net / Shutterstock.com“>Shutterstock user 2lights.net.

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Can Nissan Quell EV Anxiety with Technology?

Pedro Hernandez — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:00:46 +0000

Are you ready to trade the gas pump for a power cord? Over the next few years, drivers will have to contend with that question when a handful of new electric cars take to the road.

Nissan’s as-yet unnamed electric vehicle (EV), which the automaker plans to debut this weekend in Japan, is already aiming to make it easier for consumers to answer “yes.”

The car will begin populating U.S. fleets in 2010, but general availability isn’t expected until sometime in 2012. While its design is still under (slowly retreating) wraps, statements made by the company are already revealing Nissan’s plans to leverage technologies like GPS, wireless communications and the Internet to win over EV skeptics — not an easy task. That’s where EV-IT comes in.

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