In a demonstration of pure ingenuity and creativeness, a new application has hit both the Android Market and Apple App Store that can measure your heart rate simply by you just placing a finger over your camera’s sensor for around 10 seconds. It’s called “Instant Heart Rate“. How exactly does it work? Your blood changes color depending on how oxygenated it is, and the app measures the changes in the color of the blood flowing through your finger, resulting in a number that’s reported as being highly accurate. The usefulness of this may be limited since pulse should be measured over a long span of time, such as when an athlete is training, but still, it’s neat and quite innovative.
How our mobile phones will be tied to our health is something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot lately. Since my father died of colon cancer two years ago I’ve started taking better care of my body. I’m not a health freak, seeing as how I get wasted just about every weekend and smoke about a pack a week, but I am eating better now than I was previously, plus I’m exercising. If all of the information about my body can be transmitted to a cluster of computers that can detect abnormalities then I’m in a better position to treat what ails me. In Japan they already have toilets that have all kinds of sensors inside, including one that analyzes your fecal matter and can provide rich reports to physicians to better do their jobs when trying to diagnose you.
This application is probably one you’ll install, try once, show off to a friend or two, and then forget it’s even on your phone. Still, it shows our future and how instead of sitting in a waiting room, wasting our time, we can just launch an app and check up on ourselves. Anywhere, anytime.