The World of Always-On is a phrase I coined at Corante to describe WiFi as an applications platform.
The idea was that on-chip sensors would report back over a wireless network to a larger program on a PC, which would direct their actuators and in turn, report back to users over the Internet. In addition to medical applications, I saw inventory, home automation and entertainment applications.
I called it the next big boom.
Some of that is starting to happen, often based on cellular technologies rather than WiFi, because cellular is ubiquitous, the amount of data going over the Internet is fairly small, and the cost is tiny compared to the underlying application value.
Long story shorter, please. Techdirt has a story up right now about a new twist on the medical application of AlwaysOn, a chip that would actually control the delivery of medicine. The headline, Quick, I Need Some WiFi To Take My Medicine.
For some reason, Techdirt is completely taken aback by this, and completely misunderstands the story. (This I find funny, because another of their latest stories attacks the trade press for being stupid.) They worry about on-chip viruses (the program is pre-loaded and can’t be changed), they worry about hackers, they worry-worry-worry.
In fact, if this system is to get to the market, it’s going to go into hospitals first. (That’s why the WiFi — most hospitals today live in WiFi clouds.) The WiFi link would be able to monitor the system and allow human override. As one commenter noted, "Many promising anti-cancer drugs, heart drugs, etc. have not been
marketable because the regimen is too complicated. Other drugs are
great when injected intravenously, but nobody wants to go to the clinic
to get shots every day."
While my own initial forays into the World of Always-On were a bit
out-there and generalized, especially on the medical front, it is
gratifying to see that I wasn’t crazy, and that real medical
applications for Always-On are coming.
Albeit slowly, albeit under
heavy regulation, but they are coming. Once proven, the trickle will
become a deluge.
That’s the real story here.
