Wearable radio devices to transform home health monitoring

Telemedicine is hardly a new discipline - for more than a decade, hospitals and doctors have been keeping tabs on patients in their homes using devices from companies such as Philips and CardioCom, connected to POTS lines via dialup modems or, more recently, broadband connections, to do daily checkups on chronically ill patients. With the advent of new radio devices that are small enough to be worn by patients and capable of providing real-time diagnostic information, a new category of telemedicine is emerging. Doctors and hospitals will be able to have a constant stream of diagnostic information about patients with heart problems, diabetes, blood disorders and much more. The health care and technology industries are gearing up to see this technology widely deployed, even as business models for how it all happens are still developing.