[goodells]

Paramedic here - I could see this being useful in the emergency medicine world, if it ever gets to market. Lots of cool things are starting to get included in our cardiac monitors (LifePak 15, Zoll X Series, etc.). And guess what ... almost every single patient already gets 4-10 stickers put on them :).

Recent-ish advancements in tech here have made it possible to continuously measure the amount of exhaled CO2 from a patient's breath, transmit EKGs wirelessly for review by a physician in a hospital, and automatically cycle a blood pressure cuff at any interval we want. All in a patient's living room with equipment carried in one hand. In the very near future these devices will widely incorporate video laryngoscopy using their screens to assist in endotracheal intubations. Video laryngoscopes are already everywhere in the field, but they use their own screen/tablet and require extra work to get recordings out of for documentation purposes.

Ultrasound (the traditional kind - nothing like this article's stickers) is already on board some ambulances. Mostly used for locating deeper veins on people that are otherwise tough/impossible to get IV access on, checking for pneumothorax, or verifying death by confirming there's no heart wall movement.

It's not out of the realm of possibility for the cardiac monitors to gobble up the ultrasound functionality next, and incorporate that into the EKG lead stickers.

[fuckstick]

> Recent-ish advancements in tech here have made it possible to continuously measure the amount of exhaled CO2 from a patient's breath, transmit EKGs wirelessly for review by a physician in a hospital, and automatically cycle a blood pressure cuff at any interval we want.

None of these things mentioned require any recent tech advances. This could literally be done in the 80s.

It’s more a testament to how slow meaningful progress has been made in healthcare tech for economic, political and scientific reasons - the non cynical aspect is that for a lot of the cost involved the benefits in outcomes are not necessarily there.

[Teever]

I agree with you in principle but I think you're missing the magic that makes this all possible.

That magic is the cheap and ubiquitous GSM wireless network which is something that wasn't possible in the 80s.

I agree that we should have cheaper innovations in medicine, that we're held back by entrenched interests, and that we could have had cheaper elecommuncation network access a decade or so ago, but some of this simply wasn't possible in the time frame that you're talking about.

[Aeolun]

> verifying death by confirming there's no heart wall movement

Is that something you can use for verifying death? It was my impression that people can still be revived in that state (not easily, but…). Is this just popular misconceptions speaking?

[judge2020]

> people can still be revived in that state

Yes, via the American Heart Association:

> Conclusion: Resuscitation efforts to achieve ROSC, contributing to neurologically intact survival, are needed for at least 38.5 minutes in patients with witnessed OHCA.

OHCA: Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circ.128.suppl_2...