At their May board meeting, the FCC is set to allocate frequencies in the 2360 to 2400 MHz spectrum for short-range, low power medical use. This application is called Medical Body Area Network or MBAN, and will allow doctors to monitor patients wirelessly using teeny transmitters. This morning Chairman Genachowski was joined by representatives from GE and Philips at George Washington University Hospital in DC to talk about MBAN apps.
I caught a small part of the live broadcast on the FCC website. While I was impressed that the presentations from GE and Philips were done using Prezi, even more compelling were the great applications of MBAN technology. In hospitals, it will eventually mean the disappearance of those clumsy, dehumanizing, and infection causing wires.
Instead, bandaid-like sensors will broadcast to receivers, which can then make this bio-data available to doctors down the corridor or in another city.
More intriguingly, patients with, say, a chronic heart condition can wear an MBAN device to transmit EKG to their cell phone, which can then relay it to the hospital. So the next time the patient has a checkup, doctors can review a month’s worth of heart data, rather than a less-meaningful snapshot EKG taken during a medical exam.
The Notice of Proposed Rule Making on this spectrum is now almost 3 years old. As with anything involving the FCC and spectrum, there were filings from lots of parties–the WiFi Alliance and the aeronautics industry to name just two key players.
This is good news for hospitals, medical researchers, and for, I hope, lots of new startups–perhaps some in NY/NJ area?– that will take advantage of this technology.