Tag: medicine

Categories
Health and Wellness Robots/Drones

Pillo lets you rest easy about taking your pills

Forgetting to take one’s pills can lead to major health problems, especially when those medications are for life-threatening health issues including heart disease.

patent-claimedPillo is a connected pill-dispensing robot that recognizes individuals in the family and helps people of all ages to better manage their health. In addition to dispensing medication, it can answer users’ health and wellness questions and connect a person directly with healthcare professionals. Because Pillo has been designed to be intelligent, its functionalities grow as it learns about the user and his or her family.

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Categories
Kids/Babies Wearables

Baby Check checks on your baby’s health so you can rest easy

When someone is sick, they tell the doctor what’s wrong. Babies, however, can’t communicate except through crying. So when there’s a problem, it can be hard to tell right away whether it warrants a visit to the doctor or not.

Baby Check is a wearable for babies. Like many adult wearables, it keeps an eye on health by monitoring temperature, sleep, position and medicine administration. It stays on the arm and is made from safe materials meaning that it’s fine for baby to wear all day and night. The information detected by the armband syncs up with an accompanying Android/iOS app. It tracks data over time and allows for high temperature alarms to be set so that parents know exactly when their baby’s fever spikes. Baby Check runs on a rechargeable battery with a life of about one year.

All in all, Baby Check appears to be another great product for helicopter parents, much like the Fever Smart. While temperatures and sleep patterns aren’t essential for parents to keep super close track of, there’s value in being able to keep tabs on sleeping positions as babies aren’t supposed to sleep on their stomachs. Parents can donate $50 for their own with delivery in June 2015. Baby Check is hoping to raise $35,000 in funding on Kickstarter by April 1.

Categories
Cell Phone Accessories Health and Wellness

Vitastiq smartphone pen measures vitamin, mineral levels

Keeping our minds and bodies in check in our modern times of lazy food ordering and Uber rides is a pickle. Wearables have made it so most can have access to their basic physical vitals, but when it comes the levels of other harder to measures traits, people are out of luck unless they head to a doctor and pay the associated fees with the visit.

Among other techniques, doctors currently use expensive EAV, or electroacupuncture according to Voll devices, to check up on the body. The Vitastiq is looking to make the action of checking a person’s vitamin and mineral levels a routine one by using an iOS or Android smartphone as the brains behind an attachable, stainless steel pen.

Connected to a smartphone, the pen can gather information from specific acupuncture parts on the body whose electrical levels can be analyzed to let users know where they are with the vitamin and mineral levels. This gives them clear guidance as to how to act on it, and keeps bodies healthier in the long run. The device can be had for $99 and is expected to ship in March 2015 provided it reaches its $49,000 campaign goal.

Vitastiq can be a promising device, but that depends how much the users confide in the alternative realm of acupuncture and energy medicine. Studies show that EAV devices do exhibit effectiveness in analyzing vitamin and mineral levels, but for some that just might not be enough to sway them.

Categories
Fitness

STABALLIZER exercise sphere helps with lifting, balancing and gaming

Everyone’s still talking about the core. A’core’ding to fitness professionals, a strong core helps the rest of your muscles perform at an optimal level as well as improves your posture. There are lots of workouts that target the core and most involve balance.

The STABALLIZER is a eight-in-one fitness device. All clammed up, it looks like a simple medicine ball. However, it breaks apart and can be used for destabilized push ups, as free weights, a balance device, footweights, a kettle ball, plank handles and an AB roller handle. With the STABALLIZER, fitness buffs can engage in planks, squats, lifting, pushups, crunches and more. Additional handles and straps secure the ball to your hands for added comfort.

Interestingly enough, STABALLIZER is meant to be used with your smartphone or tablet. The campaign shows a woman planking with her hands on the half ball. On the flat surface rests her tablet showing a tilting game. Using her strength and precision, she can play the game and have fun while planking at the same time, challenging herself to last the length of the game.

At a first glance this seems like just any other fitness product. However, its compatibility with tablets and smartphones make it a little bit more interesting. While the name is still in typical all caps, yelling at us to buy the product, it offers more than just beefier muscles. This is an entirely new way to integrate technology into our workouts. One goes for $220 for delivery in September 2015 with higher tiers offering more accoutrement. STABALLIZER is hoping to raise an ambitious $200,000 on Kickstarter.

Categories
Connected Objects Health and Wellness

Memo Box reminds those who forget to take their meds

Taking medicine consistently and on time can seem pretty easy, but even after a few days most people will start changing times or forgetting altogether. For the elderly and those close to them, most medicine has to be taken for the rest of their lives so the risk of forgetting is compounded. The seven day pill box is the classic tool to manage this all but its design has remained firmly rooted in the past.

TinyLogics has designed Memo Box to be the 21st century version of the seven day pill box. This connected medicine box not only reminds users to take their medication, but will also alert others in your circle to whether or not they have and does so all without a ridiculous amount of tech. The Memo Box is simple in that it only uses a sensor tracking when it is opened as the basis to remind users of missed doses and prevent double dosage. Such little technology doesn’t get in the way of its smarts, though. Intelligent reminders leave users alone when they’re on schedule, while the Memo Box itself learns from a user’s habits and shifts dosing schedules according to its record of openings. It’ll even cry for help when left behind by sending users a message! A Memo Box is currently sporting a special backer price of £28 (~$45) with an estimated delivery date of May 2015. The campaign has a funding goal of £30,000 (~$47,000).

The Memo Box is versatile in that in can hold pills, other smaller medicine boxes, and even inhalers if you get the premium version. It’s attractive in its simplicity and stretch goals tease other colors like navy and pink. A similar product is the Amiko which is wearable and includes much more tech at a predictably higher price point. Any tech at all can confound someone unfamiliar with it so as much as Memo Box does does to innovate in this space, accessibility will remain key and will ultimately be the deciding factor. With their simplicity, they’re heading in the right direction.

Categories
Cooking Sensors/IoT

SCiO spectrometer sniffs out the composition of food and fauna

SCiOIn science fiction, the idea of a handheld analyzer that can report on details of an environment, creature, or substance have been around for decades. SCiO, a pocket spectrometer and molecular sensor that works with the cloud, is bringing those ideas to life. With a flexible development environment, SCiO ships with apps for scanning food, medicine, and plants, but more functions may arise over time. In terms of food scanning, the SCiO is reminiscent of what was promised by the TellSpec, though hopefully this project is more on the level, without the tricky editing and the production backpedaling. SCiO is available for $179 and will ship out by the end of the year.