Wearable Tech’s Role in the Healthcare Industry

As wearable technology becomes smarter, faster and more connected, it offers exciting new applications in the healthcare industry. According to a report by Gartner, the wearable electronic devices market will grow to $50 billion by 2021. While used in many industries, however, it’s making a particularly strong impact in this one more than others.

Sleep Monitoring

Fitbit, maker of popular fitness tracking wrist wearables, recently announced plans to develop a wearable sleep monitoring device. Known as the Ionic smartwatch, it gathers data on the individual’s sleep patterns to better diagnose sleep apnea. Statistics show that more than 18 million people in the United States suffer from sleep apnea. Characterized by spontaneous, temporary moments during which an individual stops breathing while sleeping, Fitbit says its upcoming Ionic smartwatch could help doctors provide customized treatment solutions for patents.

Automatic Insulin Injectors

In 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the world’s first automatic insulin-injection device, the Medtronic MiniMed 670G. Intended for use by people with type 1 diabetes, it simplifies the otherwise tedious process of taking insulin shots. When worn, the MiniMed 670G monitors the individual’s glucose, and when necessary, injects the appropriate amount of insulin into the body via a catheter.

Patient Monitoring Devices

Wearable technology has also revolutionized the way in which healthcare workers monitor patients’ vitals. In hospitals, nurses typically check on patients every four to eight hours to obtain blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration rate and temperature. This time-consuming and laborious task, however, is now being simplified thanks to patient monitoring devices. These devices automatically collect vitals on patients, sending that data to a nurse or healthcare worker.

Things to Consider When Choosing Wearable Medical Devices

Not all wearable medical devices are the same, and it’s important for doctors and healthcare workers to choose the right type. Comfort and ease of use plays a key role in whether a patient will actually wear a medical device. If it’s bulky and cumbersome, the patient may remove it. Some manufacturers have acknowledged this issue by developing thin patch-like devices that are worn directly on the skin and under the patient’s clothing.

Data security should also be considered when choosing wearable medical devices. In the United States, doctors must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which requires the implementation of certain security measures to protect patients’ data.

Wearable electronics open the doors to new opportunities for doctors and patients alike. With the technology continuing to evolve, who know what type devices will be available in the near future.

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How Water Pumps Could Provide Clean Energy

As the human population of the Earth increases by 83 million per year, the necessity of switching to clean, renewable sources of energy becomes ever more urgent. With fresh water arguably the most vital resource of all, desalination of seawater is necessary to meet growing demand.

Given that desalination is an energy-intensive process, how can we produce fresh water with inexpensive, clean, renewable energy?

Wave-Powered Water Pumps

Atmocean is a company that is developing a clean-energy system to pump seawater into desalination plants in the cleanest way possible: by harnessing the energy of ocean waves.

Atmocean’s Wave Rider system utilizes a buoy that rises and falls with the passage of waves. As described in Popular Mechanics, “At the base of the buoy is an integrated cylinder attached to a piston rod. It begins to rise and fall with the waves, collecting and pushing water all the way back to shore through a 10-inch wide pressurized hose—all without an external energy source.”

Christopher White, Chief Operating Officer of Atmocean, says: “With pressurized seawater arriving on shore, we can input it into a desalination facility without the need for grid-tied electricity or costly fossil fuels to run generators.”

The cost of pumping water into the plants is the most energy-intensive part of the desalination process. Wave-driven water pumps could provide an expensive source of clean energy for drinking water.

The Wave Rider Potential

According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the potential for tidal and wave power is on average a thousand times greater than for wind power. The US continental shelf alone can provide 1170 terawatt-hours of wave energy per year, which is equal to 3.2 terawatt-hours per day.

What is this in terms of drinking water? According to AMTA, the desalination plant in Perth, Australia produces a thousand gallons of water for every 1.3 kilowatt-hours of energy, or enough water for ten people at US consumption levels. In other words, 3.2 terawatts per day is enough energy to produce fresh water for more than 25 billion people — three times the current population of the planet.

With all the coastlines of the world taken into account, Atmocean’s Wave Rider concept means that low-tech water pumps could provide more than enough clean energy to power global desalination needs for an increasingly thirsty world, for generations to come.

Originally posted on AdamBellefontaine.org

Green Energy: What is It and How does It Work?

With the global population now exceeding 7.6 billion, there’s a newfound interest in environmentally friendly technologies. Also known as green technology, it seeks to preserve the environment by mitigating the effects of human activity. Here are some of the leading green technologies that are changing the world.

Solar Power

Solar power is a green technology that’s characterized by the use of photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert sunlight into electricity. There are different types of PV cells, including monocrystalline and polycrystalline, but they all work in the same manner: when sunlight strikes the PV cell, it separates the contained electrons from their paired atoms, thus creating electricity. This electricity is transmitted to an inverted when it’s converted into alternating current (AC).

Unlike traditional sources of power like coal-burning power plants, solar power is completely green. It doesn’t produce carbon emissions, nor does it pollute the air with particulate matter.

Wind Power

Another example of green technology is wind power, which uses wind to spin the blades of tall turbines while subsequently turning a generator and creating electricity. Like solar power, wind power is clean and safe for the environment. However, wind power is typically generated on a utility scale whereas solar power is generated on both a utility and residential scale.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the United States produces enough electricity from wind turbines to power 25 million homes. Utility companies often create large installations of wind turbines, known as wind farms, on open terrain. The power generated from these wind farms is funneled into the company’s power grid and distributed to its customers.

Electric Vehicles

Combustion vehicles are responsible for 75 percent of all carbon monoxide pollution in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Electric vehicles, however, help to reduce carbon emissions and create a greener planet.

With traditional combustion vehicles, power is created by burning a mixture of fuel and air. While effective at creating power, this creates harmful byproducts in the form of carbon emissions. Electric vehicles are powered from rechargeable batteries. Therefore, they don’t produce carbon emissions. And since they don’t consume fuel, electric vehicles are also cheaper to operate and maintain than combustion vehicles.

Of course, there are countless other green technologies. Any environmentally friendly tool or device is essentially a green technology.

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