New Healthy Living Technologies

What’s the Latest Development?

A recent Health 2.0 conference brought to light new gadgets that take advantage of cutting-edge technology to make living a healthy life a little easier. Among the more inventive products were the Lumoback, a band-aid sized sensor that, when affixed to your back, vibrates slightly when your posture deteriorates. It connects wirelessly to a smartphone app that tracks your posture over time. Another device which straps to the lower leg of the elderly patients keeps data that may be used to predict if that person is at risk to fall down. 

What’s the Big Idea?

Several software innovations also made a splash at the conference. Caslight is a program that does for healthcare what many sites already do for consumer products: Compare prices. “The cost of common diagnostic tests and medical procedures can vary widely; a cholesterol test in the same city might cost from $11 to $150, for example. These costs are typically opaque to the consumer.” Another program digitizes the Alcoholics Anonymous network so that members of its community will be alerted if another is suffering from emotional stress.