Though cybercriminals haven’t yet started hacking pacemakers for kicks, the U.S. Veteran Affairs Department (VA) has launched a new project to ensure connected medical devices are protected.
As reported by NextGov.com, VA has begun fact-finding information on methods to safeguard wirelessly connected medical equipment from malicious cyber attacks.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) isincreasingly used in health applications, more and more connected devices are being employed by health centers and hospitals for patient monitoring and diagnosis.
VA is concerned that the wireless nature of the connectivity allows these devices to bevulnerable to nefarious actors. And so the department is undertaking a “comprehensive, defense-in-depth” initiative that seeks to secure IoT equipment on hospital networks from any malicious attacks.
VA’s interest in bolstering IoT security follows a recent attack on the MedStar Health network in Washington, D.C. which saw its patient records blocked by ransomware.
As more devices become integrated into healthcare facilities, concerns for hospital network security are increasing in tandem. This concern was behind VA’s new cybersecurity strategy launched last fall that focused on securing medical devices and general medical cybersecurity.
VA has set guidelines for the IoT security needs
According to the NextGov report, VA’s requirement for medical IoT security include: automation; scalability to millions of devices; consideration for device time lags; and the capacity to generate reports on protocols, threat indicators and device traffic volume.
And this data integrity issue is one that will grow ever thornier as medical wearables and implantables become more commonplace.
ReadWrite recently wrote that RFID chips, for example, could replace medical alerts bracelets and avoid drug interactions caused by mis-prescribing drugs but “a number of people have told me that the ease of removing an RFID chip (with a scalpel presumably) could result in identity or financial theft. Others raise the issues of hacking and long-term medical complications caused by implants. But regardless of resistance, this technology is here, it is being used successfully for a range of purposes and it will be an integral part of wearables of the future.”
In the era of the quantified self we are able to use a range of trackers and monitors within the Internet of Things (IoT) to assess and monitor our health throughout each day and night. But a small suite of companies like Thync and Fisher Wallace Laboratories have extended this reach to the use of wearables to transform the capabilities of the brain to manage conditions like mild fatigue, depression and insomnia.
The latest device comes from Halo Neuro, a headset called Halo Sport, targeting athletes that resembles headphones and uses what it calls neuro-priming – another term for transcranial direct current stimulation which involves the use of electrical pulses to encourage the brain to form new pathways to increase performance. It’s an approach that comes deeply steeped inscientificresearch. Halo Neuro consists of a team of 20 with impressive credentials, half of which are engineers, the rest doctors and neuroscientists.
I recently spoke to Halo’s co-founder and CEO, Dr. Daniel Chao, about how Halo Sport works and the impetus for the latest wearable.
He explained some of their background research around neuro-priming which involved double-blind, controlled experiments with 1,000 people to determine efficacy and safety:
“A lot of people ask us how we got to the athletic market, certainly not an obvious place for a bunch of neuroscientists to fall into, it was really the data that led us there. In our first year of operation we didn’t think about products or markets, our goal was to generate data from the thousand people and to really let to data drive us to our first market and our first product.
We were informed by the published literature and our own results regarding the stimulation of the motor cortex. Only after generating the data did we start to think who would be interested in a motor cortex stimulator. The motor cortex controls movement so the natural affinity was athletes.
We starting collaborating with different athletic organizations to test our systems in their population of people, firstly college students and then taking it up the chain to professional Olympic athlete level. We continued to see results at that level.”
Halo Sport brings results for U.S. ski team
The results are impressive. On average Halo is shown to increase learning by 50% and overall performance by 10%. The United States Olympic Ski & Snowboard association used Halo and saw a 1.7X increase in performance with their athletes.
Pro athletes everywhere from the NFL‘s combine to MLB teams are using Halo to improve their game. Halo released a limited run of their consumer headsets shipping this fall and they are gearing up to announce a general availability preorder date this fall.
In the first instance the pool of elite athletes seem an odd focus, given the size of the pool – particularly as Chao’s previous business, NeuroPace, developed an FDA-approved implantable brain stimulator for epilepsy.
Dr. Chao explained that the minutiae of improvement in elite sports is why they were the perfect people:
“In elite athletes, 1-2% improvement is huge. For example, we’ve been doing some work with the US Ski Team. I was invited to do the World Championships and noticed that with any of these sports at the highest level, the difference between 1st and 2nd place – let alone 20th – is just a sliver”.
However Neuro Sport is not limited to athletes in their prime but can have benefits to even the amateur or enthusiastic athlete. I was curious to see if Dr. Chao had tested the headset on himself:
“I’ve used it probably 100 times. I’m an avid cyclist, and in my mid 40s, my personal record is very difficult to beat. These days it’s more about treading water than improving. There’s a hill north of San Francisco that is notorious for cycling enthusiasts and I beat my personal best by 15 seconds doing a fairly focused training plan. I was really proud of that.”
Halo is already working with some of the nation’s top hospitals on researching the use of their technology to accelerate the rate of recovery in stroke patients. The U.S. Military has accelerated pilot and sniper training by 50% with neurotechnology similar to Halo Sport. Further down the road, Halo plans to release a model to improve memory and hopefully aid Alzheimer’s patients.
Electronics giant Flex sees wearables becoming a vital part of the company’s success in the future, says CEO Mike McNamara.
A major player in the electronics world and currently one of the largest electronics manufacturers on the planet — with 200,000 employees working across 30 countries in the realm of design, manufacturing, distribution, and aftermarket services – McNamara says says he’s sees wearables moving beyond the small slice of company production where it currently sits.
Wearables, a range of personal electronic devices including smart watches, pedometers, heart rate monitors, smart clothing, and more – only makes up about 1% of Flex’s current business.
That’s a relatively small piece of a $25 billion-per-year pie, but one that McNamara believes is set to become a much bigger part of the long-term electronics industry.
In a recent interview with the South China Morning Post, McNamara said: “There is just so many different use cases for wearables that I think it will continue to grow.”
In case you’re wondering why you haven’t heard much about the Flex brand, it’s because Flex produces components and products for companies that then sell them to consumers.
For example, FitBit is a popular wearable item around the world. Flex would be the company that produces the electronics that go into FitBit’s devices.
“We work very, very hard for wearable technology,” he said. “We try to work on the underlying core process technologies that enables wearables to happen.”
Flex sees wearables booming right now
The wearables business is booming. Over 110 million devices are expected to ship in 2016 which is a projected 38% increase from the previous year. That’s about one new device for every three people living in the United States.
In 2020, market experts expect that number to increase to $237 million.
One of the primary reasons for McNamara’s optimism is the potential for new and interesting applications for wearable technology. We are already seeing professional sports organizations talking to wearable manufacturers about adding wearable technology to their player’s uniform in order to better track and evaluate performance during the game.
Hospitals and other health care facilities are also looking to wearables as a step forward in patient care.
With all this in mind, we can be certain that McNamara isn’t the only CEO placing a bet on the wearables market.
In the growing age of the Internet of Things (IoT), the increased exposure to radiation has become a topic of concern, and more articles are starting to pop up explaining this little understood topic. Recently, Dr. Rajan Pandey discussed these health hazards, especially with wearable devices, beginning with an interesting comparison.
“Back when smoking was accepted for both men and women in the US, a majority of physicians smoked. Yet, there was rising public worry about the risks associated with the use of cigarettes. The marketing response of tobacco companies was to employ the aide of physicians who reportedly saw no problem with the use of cigarettes,” he said. “As these ads, using doctors, continued through the 1950s, executives in the tobacco industry used the physician image to put to rest any concerns the customers might have that their cigarette brands were unsafe.”
Today, he added, “we face this same sort of marketing agenda, in regards to fitness wearables.”
Dr. Pandey states that many of these fitness wearables are untested, unscientific and can cause anxiety. While these wearables are being paraded as the greatest new thing in the health industry, they may actually be imposing great risk.
Q: What are some of the health problems associated with these wearable devices?
Dr. Pandey: Radiation that is released by these gadgets can cause reduced sperm counts, eye irritation, headaches, reduced appetite, nausea, mood swings and sleep disruption.
In this day and age, there is a plethora of IoT gadgets and gizmos, which has become the norm in society. These devices have become so ingrained in the regular lives of people, despite the cost, and these people are surely paying a high price, in more ways than one.
Q: What is considered to be the cause of these wearable devices becoming such a massive health risk to people?
Dr. Pandey: The Electro-Magnetic Radiation (EMR) and radio signals, which are released continuously by these gadgets, have become one of the most toxic forms of pollution and a major health concern. With the constant use of cell phones and electronic devices, which offer near constant connectivity, hazardous toxins are wreaking havoc on the human body slowly and surely. EMR has actually been categorized as a slow poison by some countries.
Q: Aren’t many of these wearable devices designed to improve a person’s health?
Dr. Pandey: Fitness fanatics and beginners alike all use these gadgets geared toward exercise, such as Smart Watches. Cell phones are usually kept by their users in pockets. Even when people aren’t using their devices, the devices are still interacting with towers, and the radiation that is released can be harmful to the area of the body that is close to the phone. All this may lead to interference with heart beat patterns, because the natural electrical pacemakers are disrupted by the radiation emitted from these devices. Keeping a mobile phone in a pants pocket increases the chances of a reduced sperm count. Headaches, irritation to the eyes, reduced appetite, sleep problems and mood swings are all things that a person could suffer from due to overuse of these devices.
Wearables may pose highest risk to children
Dr. Pandey states that children are the ones at risk the most, due to their skulls being thinner, and their still developing nervous systems. And aside from the actual environmental toxins emitted from these IoT wearable devices, there is another danger produced. People are so engrossed in their gadgets, they are not paying attention to the real world. Many accidents are caused by drivers who are texting, or pedestrians who are walking, while simultaneously staring at their phones. This issue has caused many cities across the country to incorporate laws forbidding the use of cell phones while driving.
Q: Is there any research to support the fact that these devices are harmful?
Dr. Pandey: There is existing information from the WHO panel that consisted of 31 scientists from 14 countries, in which the panel deduced that cell phones were “possibly carcinogenic” and the devices could be as toxic as certain pesticides. The WHO panel also recognized that the amount of distance a device is from a person’s head directly correlates with the level of pollution they are exposed to, so it is safer to text than make a phone call, where the phone would be touching a person’s ear.”
Wearable technology won’t be disappearing and will most likely continue to increase. But adults and children alike need to limit the amount of time they spend connected to their devices. Don’t keep these IoT devices near you when you don’t need to. Try to minimize your exposure.
For those deafened by the silence of their wardrobe, a new technology partnership will enableconnected clothes to keep you regularly updated with news from your t-shirt drawer.
As reported by Quartz, London-based Internet of Things (IoT) startup Evrythng forged a deal with clothes-maker Avery Dennison to connect 10 billion pieces of clothing to the internet. The value of the deal was not released.
Smart labels will be attached by Avery Dennison to clothing during its manufacturing process, with the first web-enabled products hitting stores by the summer. Data produced by each unique article of clothing will feed into Evrythng’s platform for analysis.
Unique clothing identifiers could allow consumers to verify the ethical origin of materials in clothes, determine product availability or let aging shoes advise the customer how to recycle that type of footwear. The data could also enable brands to use the platform to enhance loyalty programs.
“The internet of things is still at the margins in the way it hits consumers’ lives; now you have billions of everyday objects with identities in the cloud,” said Evrythng co-founder Andy Hobsbawm.
Avery Dennison makes products for such brands as Hugo Boss, Nike and Under Armor, though the companies would not say which particular brands have signed up for the initiative. However, Avery Dennison suggests that sportswear companies will likely be early adopters of IoT enabled clothes, especially considering firms like Nike are already making smart sneakers.
“We’re noticing sports brands engaging consumers with technology more and more,” says Avery Dennison vice president Deon Stander.
Now clothes provide data, too
Clothing labels have been providing digital information for years through such means as bar codes and QR codes, but that information is on broader classes of products. Meanwhile Evrythng says its technology allows a new IoT approach where each unique piece of clothing produces granular data that can be better mined for actionable information.
Privacy and security issues remain a key concern as more objects and articles of clothing become connected to the internet and produce streams of data. Evrythng says they will incorporate privacy safeguards into its clothing label project that will allow customers to set the level of information they are sharing.
“The more information accessed on the web the better, but like everything else on the internet, there also has to be individual judgement calls about what’s appropriate. Not everyone wants to share everything, and that’s fine,” Hobsbawm says.
The Pebble smartwatch just got a nice update that offers a "do not disturb" mode and better support for notifications and alarms. The update comes just a month after Pebble received a major overhaul for iOS 7 users, including full notification support.
The new update tweaks iOS performance, sending notifications more quickly from iOS to the Pebble. The update also improves how notifications work on the smartwatch. You can now easily choose if you want to receive all notifications on your smartwatch, just phone calls or turn notifications off. This notification control plays well with the biggest feature, a new "do not disturb" mode that lets users set a period of time when notifications will be off. This is great for people who sleep wearing a watch and don't want to be roused by a vibration on their wrist. As someone who sleeps with my Pebble on a nightstand, the vibrations in the middle of the night can still be a nuisance, so this is a great new feature. Pebble also improved its alarm app and now you can create multiple alarms, toggle an alarm to be on or off and edit existing alarms. There's also a new "snooze" alarm, for people who want to put off dealing with their alarm. To update to the latest version of the Pebble firmware, just open the iOS or Android app and click the update button when prompted.
