Health tech

When the Country Fire Authority in Victoria, Australia, noticed that its firefighters were showing signs of heat stress even when their ear thermometer probes were reading normal temperatures, they decided it was time to find a better gauge in the hopes of preventing heat-related illnesses.

So they tested a smart pill on 50 firefighters evacuating 20 people from a burning medical center, and have already used the readings to change firefighter work patterns, including how long they're exposed to blazes, according to the Australian Associated Press.… Read more

There are many ways of discovering just how bad the flu is in your area. You and all your friends and co-workers could get sick. You could hear about it on the local news. Or you could check Esri's social-media flu map tracking tweets, YouTube videos, and Flickr photos having to do with Flu Invasion 2013.

The nice part of the Esri map is you can check it from the sterile safety of your own home where you've locked yourself up in a hermetically sealed environment with weeks worth of Spam and Top Ramen to tide you over until flu season subsides.… Read more

Some 10 million people around the world seek treatment for head trauma every year, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) is predicted to become the world's third leading cause of death and disability by 2020.

The Infrascanner Model 2000, a portable intracranial hematoma detector, just may put a dent in the death rate if it helps to quickly spot potential brain bleeds in TBI victims.

The handheld device, recently approved for both military and civilian use by the FDA, uses near-infrared (NIR) tech on eight different points of the brain. Because there is a higher concentration of hemoglobin in a … Read more

We've seen fitness trackers before, but here's one with impressive smarts. The Amiigo can automatically identify more than 100 activities with custom algorithms.

Amiigo is a waterproof bracelet and shoe clip that not only counts how many bicep curls or golf swings you do, but monitors your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, skin temperature, activity level, and the number of calories burned, according to the gadget's crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

Sensors and machine-learning algorithms identify the exercise you're performing, and store the data in the device before uploading it to your mobile device. The tech can discriminate between running on the treadmill, for instance, and exercising on an elliptical machine. … Read more

Meet the "apparatus for treating obesity by extracting food." That's what Dean Kamen's stomach pump is called in a recently granted U.S. patent, and it looks a lot less fun than Kamen's most famous invention, the Segway.

The good part is you can eat anything you like. The bad part is you have to get a tube put into your stomach and then suck the food out with a gadget called the AspireAssist.

Kamen and a team of physicians developed the pump as an obesity treatment that's reversible and, as they describe it, "minimally invasive." … Read more

Without the aid of a timer, how likely are you to brush your teeth for the recommended two minutes?

Not very, according to the folks behind a new smart toothbrush, the Beam Brush. They say the average person spends only 46 seconds brushing their teeth, but that a simple timer makes them 50 percent more likely to reach the two-minute mark.

So their Bluetooth-enabled brush, which debuted a year ago at CES, got FDA approval in June, and became available as of last week for $49.99, includes not only a sensor to track frequency and duration of brushing but also a timer that can play the user's music of choice for two minutes.… Read more

Mirror, mirror on the wall, will drinking affect my looks at all?

The very week that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a survey on drinking patterns among U.S. females (notably that 1 in 5 high school girls and 1 in 8 women report binge drinking), the Scottish government launched its Drop a Glass Size campaign, complete with app, in an attempt to get people to drink a little less every day.

The free Drinking Mirror app, for iPhone and Android devices, has users take or upload existing photos of themselves and watch their faces age over the course of 10 years based on their current rates of alcohol consumption.

The developers fully admit that they are playing the vanity card -- and targeting women in particular.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--We've seen more than a few innovative, stylish keyboards at CES this year, but few can claim to be pieces of furniture.

Meet uChair, the keyboard that lets you type in true comfort. It's basically a recliner with a split keyboard embedded in the armrests.

You sit back, adjust the headrest, pull up a screen, laptop, or tablet attached to an articulated bracket, and get to work. Or fall asleep, depending on how comfy you find it. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The last time we caught up with Valencell, the company was hoping its PerformTek fitness-monitoring sensor technology would be available to consumers last fall. It's taken a little longer than expected, but the tech has been licensed to Iriver and will be available in March in the form of the $199 Iriver On earbuds.

As we've seen at CES this year, everybody and their grandmother has developed some sort of wearable fitness technology. What sets the Iriver On apart is that it's integrated with a device you already wear while exercising: earbuds. There's no bracelet to wear or dongle to clip on; you just monitor your heart rate, distance, cadence, speed, and calories burned while you rock out.… Read more