Daily Archives: July 16, 2015

The 3 Elements The Internet Of Things Needs To Fulfil Real Value

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Consider the following example.
You are going to hospital for a hip operation. The chances are, very soon, your surgeon will be wearing a pair of Google Glasses Enterprise Edition (or something similar) and the replacement joint will have been 3D printed with embedded sensors in-situ following a 3D scan and X-ray. Everything conducted during surgery itself will be transmitted directly to your EHR (Electronic Health Records) in real-time via the wearable device(s) your surgeon has. The sensors in the 3D printed hip joint are already recording your vital signs, again in real-time.
You leave the hospital, and are given a recovery plan together with another wearable device, much like a JawboneUP wristband. The sensors in your hip are now connected to the wristband which also monitors your movements, and that data is transmitted to your patient records for your local GP who can observe how your recovery is going in line with the recovery plan. Your wristband also ‘reminds’ you when it’s time to take your meds, and via RFID/ Near Field Comms will warn you if you’re about to reach for the wrong bottle.
All that data is constantly fed to the GP who can alter your recovery plan in line with your progress, or even combine it with other patients who have been through a similar procedure and adjust automatically, in real-time, according to trends which may benefit you even more.
Your medical insurance and future premiums will also be adjusted according to how your recovery is going, whether you stick or deviate to your planned convalescence.
Now we get into deeper connected territory.
Your utilities company could be made aware of your situation, and via your patient wristband and interface to your smart home, adjust your electricity and gas plan in line with your limited mobility. No point having a smart home and a dumb utilities provider. Smart thermostats, smart lights, smart household appliances all can switch on and off and learn your patterns as you recover. Your wristband could switch off the TV for example if you take a snooze on the couch by monitoring your inactivity.
As you recover, you become more mobile. Your connected car transmits it’s location as you drive, anything ‘smart’ that is geofenced becomes activated as you draw near, again switching on the heating at the right temperature in advance before you reach home. In fact, your car may not even allow you to drive at all because the associated triggers in your recovery haven’t been set to allow you to, so it drives you instead.
Your house and smart possessions will be collectively more intelligent than you by 2020, but the experience will become hyper-personalized.
In the above lifestyle example, consider the industries that were actually connected by it all:
Medical
Pharma
Insurance
Consumer Wearables and Homeware
Utilities
Automotive
The data itself is the key to unlocking a number of benefits, and how we act on that data.

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Plutonium Propels Spacecraft To A Close Encounter With Pluto

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Having the same namesake as the planet it helped to explore, the radionuclide plutonium-238 powered NASA?s New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto on Tuesday, visiting the last planet in our Solar System proper. Pu-238 will now take the spacecraft out into the Kuiper Belt where thousands of small planets slowly circle the Sun. The mission was possible only because Pu-238 generates continuous power out where solar energy is too weak, chemical energy is too heavy, and batteries and fuel cells are too short-lived to be of use.

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