I’m Now a Thing on the Internet of Things

When Carl Bergman isn't rooting for the Washington Nationals or searching for a Steeler bar, he’s Managing Partner of EHRSelector.com, a free service for matching users and EHRs. For the last dozen years, he’s concentrated on EHR consulting and writing. He spent the 80s and 90s as an itinerant project manger doing his small part for the dot com bubble. Prior to that, Bergman served a ten year stretch in the District of Columbia government as a policy and fiscal analyst.

Thanks to a Biotronik Eluna 8 DR-T pacemaker that sits below my clavicle, I’m now a thing on the internet of things. What my new gizmo does, other than keeping me ticking, is collect data and send it to a cell device sitting on my nightstand. Once a day, the cell uploads my data to Biotronik’s Home Monitoring website, where my cardiologist can see what’s going on. If something needs prompt attention, the system sends alerts. 

Now, this is a one way system. My cardiologist can’t program my pacemaker via the net. To do that requires being near Biotronik’s Renamic inductive system. That means I can’t be hacked like Yahoo email. The pacemaker collects and sends two kinds of data. The pacemaker collects and sends two kinds of data. The first set shows the unit’s functioning and tells a cardiologist how the unit is programmed and predicts its battery life, etc. The second set measures heart functioning. For example, the system generates a continuous EKG...