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Contact geometry, orientation, and placement in the insulator can
improve signal integrity performance and life cycle
access to healthcare services to
poor, underserved communities,
the disabled, and the mobility
challenged.
Beyond improving the lives of those
with diagnosed diseases, wearables
can be used for preventative
medicine. The next generation of
fitness and health trackers may not
just monitor your physical activity,
but signs of impending illness to
help you fend off serious health
issues before they occur.
Smarter Healthcare with
Bluetooth Low Energy
The most important wireless
protocol for medical wearables to
have today is indisputably Bluetooth
Smart, also known as Bluetooth Low
Energy.
Despite its name, Bluetooth Smart
is quite different from regular
Bluetooth. Whereas Bluetooth
classic was designed to stream
data to and from peripherals such
as headphones, microphones
or keyboards, Bluetooth Smart
was designed to be an extremely
power-efficient
protocol
for
transmitting short bursts of data
from battery powered devices
used in metering, monitoring, and
sensing applications. That makes
it the perfect wireless protocol for
wearable medical devices.
Bluetooth Smart uses a different
physical and link layer than
Bluetooth Classic, but as part of the
Bluetooth standard, all smartphones
compatible with Bluetooth 4.0
and up are also compatible with
Bluetooth Smart.
Bluetooth Smart also allows medical
wearables to take advantage of the
cellular connectivity, GPS location
awareness, and powerful processing
capabilities of a smartphone to
supplement the device's own
capabilities.
A wearable health monitor can, for
instance, share sensor data with a
smartphone over Bluetooth Smart.
The user can then open up the
device's healthcare app and view
his vital signs. The user's raw health
data could also be cross checked
against an online database to alert
them of signs they are at risk of
preventable diseases. That same
data could be easily shared with
caregivers or loved ones.
As a wireless protocol, Bluetooth
Smart has been designed to be
optimized for the short, bursty
messages characteristic of IoT and
wearable devices. Connections can
be opened and closed extremely
quickly, and message transmission
times are short. While Bluetooth
Classic connections take hundreds
of milliseconds or more, Bluetooth
Smart devices can establish a
Medical Devices
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New-Tech Magazine Europe l 43