A new clinical trial named The Clepsydra Study yesterday announced its first inclusion.  The study will investigate clinical utility of the enhanced data collection possibilities in current generation pacemakers and ICDs.  Using additional sensors now present in some devices, study subjects behavior will be monitored to aid medical care givers who will examine the logged data for trends and patterns.  In addition to the obvious EKG data, accelerometer data and ventilation will be examined.

From a research perspective the following thoughts and questions popped into my head while reading the article:

1: What are the power implications of this increased level of sensing and logging?

2: I love the fact that we are getting closer to lifelogging, but I hope some thought has been given to privacy.  Every time we enhance the sensory and storage capacity of medical devices we should also enhance user knowledge and control over the personal data these devices record.

3: Are some of the analysis algorithms running on the implanted device?  Or will the analysis be run on raw sensor data on the care giver’s computer?

4: With such sophisticated features, are there software update mechanisms?  If so how are they validated?

More info: Business Wire article

As many of my readers know, I’m fascinated by implantable medical devices.  Frankly, my artistic alter-ego is a futurist, and esthetically I love the prospect of our society increasingly turning to cyborg-ism as our concept of normative health expands ever towards having the health of a younger person at an older age.

Today’s IMD news is that there is a new executive VP heading  Medtronic’s cardiology section.  Michael Coyle formerly of rival St. Jude Medical (which also produces pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators) will take the helm.

From the geek angle, I wonder what – if any – change this will mean in their R&D labs.  Medtronic has always been a wonderful company to interact with as a researcher, they even sent a representative to this year’s new ACM workshop on health security SPIMACS.  I’m hoping that the new management will continue working well with external researchers who work with their products.

More info: Press Release

Newspaper article: http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_13913830

Proximity-based Access Control for Implantable Medical Devices Kasper Bonne Rasmussen, Claude Castelluccia, Thomas S. Heydt- Benjamin and Srdjan Capkun 16th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), November 2009

For information on my recent collaborative work on defibrillator and pacemaker security please see the New York Times article on our work, or our official FAQ