Applying Nokia’s Haptic Patch Patent to Diabetes Tech

 

Nokia haptic patch examples

Credit - Nokia

Nokia has recently applied for a patent on a patch you can apply to your skin that will vibrate when you get a call or text. In addition to this haptic patch, this patent also covers using ferromagnetic ink in a tattoo, which would cause the tattoo to vibrate in response to electromagnetic signals sent from your phone or other device. This got me thinking; could this technology be applied to diabetes tech? Yes, it can! Below are a few applications for this technology that could make “diabeetus life” easier to deal with.

  1. You could sync this patch/tattoo with a continuous glucose meter. Then, it could be set to vibrate when your blood sugar was either too low or too high. Since this haptic patch can be set to emit different vibration patterns, distinct patterns could be used to easily differentiate between low or high blood sugar levels. As a bonus, depending on placement of the patch, this could be hidden underneath clothing so it’s not on display for everyone to see.
  2. If linked to an insulin pump, the patch could serve multiple functions, possibly vibrating to remind you to check your sugar after eating, or when boluses are done. In addition to the various vibration patterns mentioned above, bolus notifications (the end of a square wave bolus, or parts of a dual wave blous) could be easily transmitted.
  3. Finally, it would be great to see this patent combined with another recent development involving a nanosensor tattoo that can be used to monitor blood sugar. Ideally, these two sensors could be incorporated into a single diabetic tattoo, which means you could take blood sugar readings and get feedback from a single sensor on your body.

These are just first thoughts, and I’m really looking forward to what these engineers and scientists come up with as they move forward with practical applications of these ideas.

What do you think; did I miss something? Can you think of another way to use these patents to make living with diabetes easier?

Follow Friday – 3.16.12 – Serendipitous Meetings Edition

This past week was the annual South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference here in Austin. I was fortunate enough to attend for the first time this year, and had a very strange yet awesome series of serendipitous meetings with some folks I greatly respect and admire. All of these guys are awesome people to know, so I thought I’d share that with the rest of the class today. With that in mind, I give you this weeks #followfriday post, the serendipitous edition.

  • Bruce Sterling (@bruces) – Futurist, author, aesthetic design critic, visitor from another plane of existence; If you don’t know who Bruce Sterling is, go Google him……I’ll wait. When he sat directly in front of me in one of the SXSWi panels, I had just intended to say hi and a quick thank you; we ended up having a 20 minute conversation that was the highlight of my week.
  • Julien Smith (@julien) – Co-Author of Trust Agents and singular author of The Flinch, Julien is one of those guys who just “gets it” and pushes others to do the same. His writing constantly pushes and challenges me, and I have a few of his posts bookmarked to read on a regular basis (my favorite being The Complete Guide to Not Giving a F%^k). I ran into Julien randomly on the street near the festivities, and he took time to stop and talk for a few minutes, even going so far as to ask me to tweet at him to make sure he remembered the meeting.

These next three guys were part of the Wall-E or Terminator: Predicting the Rise of AI panel. They were having an informal meet up on Tuesday night, and couldn’t have been nicer or more inviting to some random nerd they’d never met before. We ended up hanging out late into the night talking about science, science fiction, and all things nerd, which was an awesome way to wrap up the conference.

  • Daniel Wilson (@danielwilsonpdx) – Roboticist, author of Robopocalypse, and one mean foosball player. He had my favorite quote from the sessions; When asked about the likelihood of the singularity happening, his response was “It’s probably won’t happen; I’ve worked on creating robots, and it’s hard!“
  • Chris Robson (@paramktg) – Co-creator of WebCriteria (proto-Coremetrics), one of the founders of Parametric Marketing and all around nice guy. It was really awesome to find someone I could talk with about web analytics AND fringe science.
  • William Hertling (@hertling) – Author of Avogadro Corp and developer/web strategist for HP, William was the 3rd AI panelist. His take on the singularity was, if it happens, it will probably be crowdsourced, and in general the future of AI will have to be a group effort to succeed.

Skype Time with A. Lee Martinez

So something really cool happened this week; in the midst of all the SXSWi craziness, I saw a tweet from A. Lee Martinez offering a Skype chat with him in exchange for tweeting a picture with his latest book, Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain. This was an offer I couldn’t pass up, so I posted this mugshot-esque picture.

grumpyhawk

Apparently, my looking vaguely like a serial killer (see above) wasn’t a deterrent, and we setup a time to chat. I got to ask a few questions, and learn that he is quite a funny guy. While I didn’t think far enough ahead to record things or take amazing notes, I did jot down some highlights below.

On having these Skype calls…
The first thing I asked about was why even have these Skype chats; 5 years ago, it would’ve been next to impossible to ring up one of your favorite authors like this, but now it’s possible to reach out to your fans and make something like this happen. His reasons for having these calls were just to try something new to get people excited about him and his work. I think this is a great idea; I love to see authors and creative types using these newer forms of communication to reach out and connect with their fans.

On world building…
For those of you that follow Mr. Martinez, you’ll remember that, leading up to the release of his most recent book, he wrote a series of blog posts that went into some more detail about the backstory and universe that Emperor Mollusk takes place in. When I asked how much world building he does for each book, he responded that, while he knows where things are going, he doesn’t spend a ton of time world building in advance of writing a book, but rather creates as he goes.

On Character Types…
He’s written a variety of characters/worlds (monster hunters, witches, vampires, robots, gods, and most recently a pulp villain-type character. When I asked him if there was any character type he’s always wanted to write, he said he typically doesn’t think that far ahead, but tends to write what he’s inspired by at the time.

On Being a Writer…
We did talk a bit about authors and writing, and he’s got a great take on the subject. When I mentioned something about the “gift of writing”, he responded,

“people have this idea that writing is this special talent; that what you do is go into a cornfield at night, and you chant, and then you have a book. Anyone can have a great idea for a book; it’s the actual sitting down and writing that’s the hard part.”

I’d argue that he’s more talented than most, but that’s a discussion for another time.

We chatted for about 20 minutes, but like I said, I didn’t take detailed notes; I sat back and enjoyed the conversation. I’d like to say thanks again to  A. Lee Martinez again for taking time out of his schedule to do this; he’s made me an even bigger fan than I was before. And, if you’ve not read any of his books, might I suggest you go pick up Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain. NOW.

Follow Friday 2.10.12 – Long Time, No See Edition

Alright, it’s admittedly been quite a while since anything new has shown up on this site (other than my endless theme tinkering), but that needs to change. In the interest of starting to post/write again, I give you this week’s #FollowFriday post. For those of you that don’t know/need a refresher, Follow Friday is a day to promote other people you should be following on twitter; however, most of the time it’s a jumbled mess of hashtags and usernames, with absolutely no context around WHY I should be following these people. In the interest of providing said context, i bring you the Follow Friday blog post (idea stolen shamelessly from Chris Brogan).

#letsreadthis

#letsreadthis is a small twitter book club that just sorta fell together about a month ago. We recently read Sandman Slim, and are currently working on Cory Doctorow’s For The Win.

@Wolven – I haven’t followed him for long, and I’m kicking myself for that. If nothing else he’s made me realize that “what would my science fiction self do?” is a question I should be asking myself on an almost daily basis.

@jdaysy – Fellow web analytics and science fiction nerd, and prolific tweeter. One of the few people on twitter I have now officially met in real life.

Authors/Creators

@doctorow – Speaking of Cory Doctorow, if you aren’t following this author and one of the main contributors at boingboing, you should be. His insights into digital rights and the future alone are worth your time and effort, and he writes some amazingly good books as well.

@adampknave – Comic book writer, prose author, blogger, and all around good dude. I find myself laughing out loud (literally, not some damn emoticon) at least once a day at the the things he says.

@jeffnoon – I recently discovered that Mr. Noon is on twitter now. If you’ve never read Vurt, Pollen, or Automated Alice, stop what you’re doing, and go read them. NOW. I read this books in my early teens, and they probably explain why I have the taste in books that I do today. His micro fiction “spores” (mini, 140 character stories) are a thing of beauty.

That’s all for this week.

New Islet Cell Transplant Technique Brings New Hope For a Cure

While we may not have our jetpacks, there are other indications that we may be living in the future. New Zealand based Living Cell Technologies has developed a new islet-cell transplant technique, which in early tests has shown a lower transplant rejection rate. While it does utilize islet cells from pigs, this particular xenotransplant (isn’t that a fun word) involves wrapping said pig islet cells in alginate (a seaweed derivative.) As a side benefit, because the islet cells are insulated from a diabetic’s immune system, the standard immunosuppressant drugs are not needed post-implantation.

While this is still in early, early test trials, the results seem promising. From New Scientist:

In Russian trials, eight people with type 1 diabetes received the treatment in June 2007, while continuing to have daily injections of insulin. After a year, six showed improved blood glucose control and were able to lower their daily dose of insulin. Two of them stopped injections entirely for eight months. One person left the trial and another showed no improvement, which LCT believes was due to problems inserting the cells into the pancreas.

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