Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Home alone (09 Jun 2005) At IBM's research lab in Zurich, researchers are working on a mobile-health toolkit to link medical devices with wireless networks. Called mHealth, the kit could, for example, work with Bang & Olufsen's Helping Hand so that a forgotten pill triggers a mobile-phone call. HP, meanwhile, is working on wearable wireless sensors, the size of sticking plasters, that could be used for remote monitoring of heart activity and other information. The idea behind all of these monitoring systems is to allow old people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible, even when they are being treated for chronic illnesses, rather than moving into a nursing home. Another category of devices monitor non-medical activities: Has Mum got up today? Did Dad have any breakfast? Lance Larivee, who works in the software industry and lives in Portland, Oregon, is testing a new system from Lusora, a start-up based in San Francisco. The Lusora Intelligent Sensory Architecture (LISA), which will go on sale later this year, is a collection of wireless devices including a wearable panic alarm and various monitoring devices that are placed around the home and detect motion, sound and temperature. Data from these devices can be accessed securely via the internet. So Mr Larivee can, for example, check online to see if his 87-year-old grandmother—who lives alone in Los Altos, California—has opened the refrigerator yet today. Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4031139 Read 73 more articles from Economist sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Keynote speech given at the Broadcast Content Management Conference BY Ashley Highfield     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy