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Connected Health » Apps, Health Gadgets, Professional healthcare products » CES 2012 – Qualcomm to champion health, medical and fitness gadgets – AliveCor and Sotera Wireless

CES 2012 – Qualcomm to champion health, medical and fitness gadgets – AliveCor and Sotera Wireless

Qualcomm is one of the world’s leading tech companies and has an enormous business built on manufacturing the chips for mobile phones. It is also highly entrepreneurial and is often at the cutting edge of innovative new applications and features for mobile phones and gadgets.

So no surprises then that it is championing medical and health gadgets. At a keynote at CES Chairman and CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs teamed up with Dr. Eric Topol, the chief academic officer of Scripps Health to highlight some forthcoming gadgets and apps.

You can read a longer transcript of the speech here, but here’s a summary of what was said.

Dr. Jacobs said a priority for Qualcomm is pushing mobile self-diagnosis devices, which he argued would mean people could get more accurate assessments of their health than they necessarily would from their doctors.

Dr. Topol, who is the author of a new book The Creative Destruction of Medicine, showed a prototype of a hand-held, clip-on smartphone electrocardiogram (EKG) reader, made by Qualcomm-funded AliveCor. Apparently, Dr. Topol who is currently trialling the Alive Core device in the real world, was able to use it to quickly diagnose that an airplane passenger having chest pains was having a heart attack, and not just indigestion. The airplane made an emergency landing, allowing the man’s life to be saved.

He also showed a device from Sotera called Visi Wireless, which he billed as an “ICU on the wrist,” that monitors you vital signs in a non-intrusive way. Apparently if you are heading for a heart attack it could send out a text message to you (or anyone else for that matter) so you can take evasive action quickly.

More (and pics too) from Daily Tech

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One Response to "CES 2012 – Qualcomm to champion health, medical and fitness gadgets – AliveCor and Sotera Wireless"

  1. […] called AliveCor iPhone ECG, and being billed as “the app that could save your life.” All you do is hold your hands […]

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