Wireless ashma inhaler links patient, doctor

The Vena-enabled inhaler.

(Credit: Cambridge Consultants)

There's now an alternative to the GPS-enabled inhaler for keeping patients connected with health care providers.

Cambridge Consultants on Wednesday brought its "connected patient" concept to life with a low-cost wireless platform that lets medical devices deliver readings to a central monitor located at home, or to an online health record such as Google Health or Microsoft Health Vault.

The idea behind the technology is that patients and their health care support professionals should be connected wirelessly, via the treatment devices. First up: the demo version of Vena-enabled inhalers.

The platform, called Vena, employs two emerging wireless standards, including the Infrared-based IEEE11073 and the Bluetooth Medical Device Profile. Vena embeds the two into a single chip as the combination of them ensures compatibility of data exchanged between different types of devices and the security in the transmitting of medical data.

The demo inhalers connect to an online personal health care application via a smartphone or a computer. ...