Medical breakthroughs, including vaccines, mean that causes of illness have drastically moved away from communicable diseases, such as measles, to non-communicable diseases, such as respiratory illness and cardiovascular complications. This means that the greatest threats to the health of the elderly are increasingly likely to be from these conditions, which require constant monitoring and assessment.
But with this rising demand for around-the-clock monitoring is coupled with a growing scarcity of health care resources, as the aging population increases and for many countries worldwide, cuts are being made to public health systems. For this reason, the global IoT growth market is expected to post a compound aggregate growth rate of 25.2%, reaching US$63.43 billion by 2023. Another study found that the global market for medical devices is expected to exceed US $ 500 billion by 2021.
These devices, though helpful in tracking patients’ symptoms and responses to medication, have another benefit: the ability to detect falls, and alert emergency services if a fall occurs. Falls are the leading cause of death among those 65 and older, as it can cause fractured bones, internal bleeding, and trauma to the brain.
Because elderly patients are in great need of constant monitoring, due to the potentially severe repercussions of non-communicable diseases and falls, it is absolutely necessary for them to have faith in their medical devices. A medical device without a sustained and constantly renewable source of power is of very little use to them, or to the medical care professionals who monitor their geriatric patients.
That worry will soon be put to rest, with Mithras Technology’s development of an energy harvester which powers wearable medical devices from energy generated by your own body. By harvesting energy created from the difference in heat between your internal body temperature and the external environment, this technology will enable all health-monitoring applications worn by the elderly patient to continue without interruption, ensuring round-the-clock monitoring and security.
This technology also relieves responsibility from the elderly patient to be in charge of ensuring his or her medical devices are powered sufficiently, by constantly recharging them. Many elderly patients are forgetful, or suffer from advancing neurological disorders, which makes it difficult for them to remember important tasks, or whether they have engaged in these tasks.
With Mithras Technology, they no longer need to be concerned about battery levels.
