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/ | `------------------------------------------------------------------' Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5580