X-Message-Number: 5580
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 17:28:00 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Strout <>
Subject: autoalert systems

Mike Darwin's post yesterday (a reply to a message which I apparently 
missed) underscored the risk of patients dying without being found.  
Apparently, pulse monitors have been suggested, but these are difficult 
to implement because they tend to have false alarms.

A simpler device, which would appeal only to cryonicists, would be one 
that simply measures body temperature (say, at the inside of the wrist).  
It would also have a pressure sensor so it can tell when it's being 
worn.  Being worn + cold skin = holler loud.  By the time the patient's 
body has started to cool, of course, they will have been dead for what -- 
ten or twenty minutes?  But this is preferable to several days.  Of 
course, it has all the difficulties with compliane & interference that 
plague any transmitter system.

Here's another idea, if 24-hour notice is any use: define some task which 
the user must perform every day.  Pressing a button, or logging in to a 
computer (which many of us do daily anyway).  If this task is not 
performed one day, the cryonics organization is notified and starts 
making phone calls to see what's up.  Very simple, but would up to 24 
hours response time be any help?

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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