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THE HYPE BEHIND THE HYPERNET

Text: DON TAPSCOTT

I used to set my watch to CBC Radio when I was a teenager. The network broadcast daily the National Research Council’s time signal. A long beep following 10 seconds of silence indicated precisely the top of the hour. Amazingly, they still provide the service. But I no longer set my watch to it.

Today I use the super-accurate clock in my computer. Every few hours it synchronizes via the Internet to the U.S. Naval Observatory atomic time clock in Washington. In turn, a number of other devices, such as my digital voice recorder, synchronize their clocks from the computer. Thanks to the Internet, everything is happily coordinated to the nanosecond without my lifting a finger. Better yet, the service is free.

Even though most of yesterday’s high-flying dot-coms became dot bombs, advances in information and communication technology are accelerating. Transistors shrink, processor power doubles and redoubles, chips plunge in cost and Internet bandwidth expands.

IF YOU THINK THE INTERNET IS SIMPLY A DATA PIPE CONNECTING DESKTOP COMPUTERS, YOU’RE MISSING THE BIGGER PICTURE.

Mobile computing devices, broadband access, wireless networks and computing power embedded in everything from bicycles to factory tools are converging into a vast global network – a Hypernet. If you could hear the Internet traffic in your home today, it would likely be a murmur coming from the computer in the den. Tomorrow it will be a dull roar emanating from practically every device in the house, including light bulbs and hot water taps. Once homes (and offices, factories, schools and hospitals) are totally connected, what will all these devices talk about? Virtually everything under the sun, including your health.

Your tiny wireless heart monitor will connect with your blood pressure analyzer, your wireless weigh scale will talk to your PDA or cellphone, and all of these gadgets will consult your doctor via the Internet. Your refrigerator, oven, microwave and toaster may even supply data about your food inputs. When the Internet buzz started happening in the mid-1990s, the early talk about health care benefits focused on telemedicine. Rural health care providers would be able to tap into big city expertise, with specialists examining X-rays or EKG results sent to them over the Web.

Now we can see the benefits to health care will be much broader and more profound. Consider the costly field of clinical studies. Bringing a drug or medical device from research to market can take as long as seven to 10 years and cost half a billion dollars. But now, instead of the traditional error-prone paper-based diaries of symptoms kept by patients, drug companies are using electronic diaries. The devices prompt the patient to take the medicine, retrieve data from measurement tools in the patient’s home, ask questions that are customized to the patient’s individual symptoms and submit the data over the Net. It’s faster, cheaper and more reliable.

Congestive heart failure is the most frequent cause of hospitalization for people over 65. After discharge, almost half of these patients are readmitted to hospital within 45 days. Often it’s their own fault. They don’t follow their doctor’s instructions. They don’t eat properly or take their medicine. They need to be closely monitored but don’t warrant the cost of a hospital room.

One solution already installed in many patients’ homes is the wireless weigh scale, blood pressure measurer and heart rhythm monitor. Data is continuously forwarded to the hospital, with unusual data triggering a visit from a health care worker. Such devices make at-home care a reality. As Internet bandwidth grows, these gadgets will become increasingly sophisticated, offering improved monitoring and diagnostic functions via text, still images, video and audio. Remote sensors will detect patterns in sleep, and control systems such as light and heat, keeping patients as comfortable as possible.

All this technology will help individuals to better understand their own state of health and to spot symptoms earlier. Rather than annual checkups or visits to the doctor when something goes wrong, individuals will have an ongoing digitally enabled dialogue with their health care providers. One day, the Hypernet will keep the doctor away.