$60m Australian e-health initiative

Federal Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, called for proposals to deliver innovative digital services for regional, rural and remote Australia. "The $60 million Digital Regions Initiative will fund projects that deliver high-quality digital applications for education, health and emergency services supported by the National Broadband Network," Senator Conroy said.

At the Minister's address at the National E-Health Conference, he noted the healthcare sector is expected to be one of the major new employment and income drivers in the emerging digital economy.

According to IBM and Access Economics, the adoption of smart technologies in health, as well as electricity, irrigation, transport and high-speed broadband, will add more than 70,000 jobs to the Australian economy in 2014 alone.

Meanwhile, National ICT Australia, our world-class ICT research facility and PhD program, is also leading innovation in the e-health field.

One project of particular interest is the Human Performance Monitoring project, which could deliver some serious benefits for the way we understand the human body.

The system uses wearable and implantable devices connected by wireless and backed by smart processors to assess physical performance.

Information such as heart rate and breathing is captured and analysed instantly, helping doctors to identify patterns.

Senator Conroy invited "innovators who understand the transformative potential of digital technologies" to proposals forward.

The full press release is available, along with the Minister's speech and a news report covering the announcement.

Summer scholar projects: deadline August 31

We've had several applications for the ANU-NICTA research summer scholarship projects for (Australian) summer 2009-10. The projects range from developing wireless models for radio propagation around the human body, to correlating perceived effort with physical data, to developing a robot Foosball player. Applications close August 31. If you are interested in developing your own project, contact Leif Hanlen @ NICTA.

Wireless internet connects to human heart

The "internet of things" has grown to include the first internet-connected (wireless) pacemaker. The device sends updates to a server daily, to give a remote clinician information on the patient's well-being. The original article can be found here and is transposed below. The article suggests that other wireless implants - such as glucose meters for diabetic management - are likely in the near future.

The pacemaker may eventually be an application of the upcoming IEEE 802.15.6 standard.

The daily tech has also taken up the story: New York woman gets world first wireless pacemaker.

'The Internet of Things' now includes a human heart

With the news that an American woman has received a pacemaker with a wireless connection to the Internet, the so-called “Internet of Things” has taken on a new dimension.

Reuters reported this week that a 61-year-old woman became the first American recipient of the pacemaker, which was approved by the FDA just last month and allows the doctor to monitor how her heart is doing. At least once a day, a server will communicate with the pacemaker over the Internet and get an update. If there is anything unusual, the server can contact the doctor and patient, literally calling the doc on the phone in the middle of the night, if necessary.

The Reuters article quotes the doctor as saying that in the future, wireless devices could monitor high blood pressure, glucose levels or heart failure.

The technology is part of a much broader trend of reaching out to objects in the physical world to bring them into the Internet, so to speak, to build an “Internet of Things.” RFID, short-range wireless technologies and sensor networks are enabling this to happen as they become more commonly used. IPv6, with its greatly expanded address space, allows for many more devices to connect to the Internet.

If all things are connected, all things can be tracked. The earliest applications have centered around tracking shipments in a supply chain, but if the tracking devices are left in objects when they are in use, that could be extremely powerful.

It’s a little scary to think of connecting one’s heart to the Internet. I know the connection is being used in a very narrow way, but if it were at all possible for hackers to tamper with the pacemaker, they probably would, given what we know about what some are capable of.

In the papers

Human Performance Improvement was in the Canberra Times today, with a wonderful half-page article written by Nyssa Skilton, (photo by Karleen Williams). The technology shown is our sensor glove, which can record motion of the hand. David Rodda (the research engineer, on the right) shown is one of the two engineers who actually did all the hardware development, debugging and coding of the system based on original hand-drawings of the system. That's me foolishly holding the ball on the left.

Human Performance Improvement @ NICTA TechFest

Next week is TechFest at NICTA - so we're off to Sydney.


We'll be showing how the human body creates havoc for a radio connection with our wireless radio jacket: it's bright green (of course) and has small radio transceivers in pockets. The transceivers are used as part of our radio modeling work for the IEEE 802.15.6 standards, but we bring them out with a demo which shows the radio strength as a bubble moving between the sensors. Dance around and watch the bubbles react.

Last year we had a similar demo (it wasn't wireless then) which used sound pitch to mimic the radio strength, but we figured this year we'd lower the noise factor.


We'll also be demo-ing the sensor glove - which is a glove with inertial sensors and a bluetooth connection. The work we do with this is related to modeling human movement, and demonstrating the data requirements for raw signal processing: we don't build micro-sensors.

For the demo we're encouraging everyone to try playing a virtual piano.