My friend Barbara Duck (of The Medical Quack) would be happy to hear that I found some IT medical gear while in Redmond with Microsoft. As I was in between meetings going from Building 113 to Building 92 I came across one of the Health/Lifestyle room’s setup for MS staff.
Not hugely innovative, or unique to MS, it was still nice to see touch technology in the wild and in use in this environment. Both machines can take your Vital Signs and both designed to feedback your state of health. You can sit on and stick your arm in both machines; the white one primarily designed around diabetes identification and prevention, and the second for blood pressure.
Touch computing focused on Diabetes
Both come with a nice array of disclaimers ensuring people that these provide good guidance, but never designed to replace your GP. You need to visit each device often and take an average of your results to get the highest level of accuracy, so ultimately the results are based on your efforts too.
I like how the white one had built-in sensors on the handgrips and how both offered touchscreen technologies to avoid the use of keyboards and increase the amount of personal (self-serve) health!
Blood pressure machine with touchscreen
