Of all the directions car technology could take, we have to say, medical monitoring wouldn’t have made our top ten list.
But we get it, if you have a heart condition, your next vehicle could be a Ford.
The auto maker developed a heart rate monitoring seat with electrode sensing technology that can check the driver’s heart activity.
It was developed with a German university and is still in the research phase. But Ford, says it “could prove to be a hugely important breakthrough for Ford drivers.”
“As always in medicine, the earlier a condition is detected the easier it is to treat and this technology even has the potential to be instrumental in diagnosing conditions drivers were previously unaware they had,” said a Ford research official.
As you drive, the data from your seat could be analyzed by a computer in the car or it could be analyzed off board by medical experts.
The technology makes sense as the U.S. population is aging, says Ford. The number of Americans 65 and older is projected to more than double by 2050, reaching some 88.5 million. The trend is similar in Europe.
Old folks are going to need medical monitoring. “The car is an obvious choice; it’s a place where occupants spend long periods sitting in a rather calm position and a place that’s increasingly less physically demanding, making it the ideal environment to measure heart activity,” said RWTH Aachen University Professor Steffen Leonhardt.
In testing, the seat was able to get up to 98 percent accurate readings.
Source: Ford
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