The iDialyspod

197.3     188.6     114/51 77     86/40 70

I entrust my life 5 nights a week to a 20,000 Dollar machine that uses a 10inch resistive touch screen and has a stuck pixel. The resolution on this screen is lower than the original iPod Touch, much lower than my iPhone 4. Did I mention it's resistive. To those who are not a complete geek like I, a resistive touch screen is one that you must apply pressure to in order for it to detect input. The other, and generally much better is a capacitive, these screens do not require pressure, they detect something touching it by detecting conductivity. I'm not sure of what OS it uses, but unless it's using something custom it could only be either a flavor of Linux or Windows CE/Embedded. No blue screens yet. The interface includes a "sleep" button which I can press when I want to sleep. No, it doesn't put me to sleep, it turns all the pixels on the screen black. Thats right, the pixels are still on, it doesn't actually turn the screen off, or even the side lighting (no back lighting) it turns them black and keeps the side lighting on. Again, 20,000 dollars and they can't figure out how to turn off a touch screen and have it wake up when being touched again?

There is no internet connectivity, which I was surprised about, I would think being able to constantly send my vitals to the dialysis unit would be a no brainer, but no, not even a a dial up modem. No USB ports either, it does have RS232 port though, it's used for programing it, so that is really it's only input besides the front control panel. It also doesn't have an actual power back up, nope no built in UPS and it cannot be plugged into one either. It does have a 9v battery -you know the kind of battery that goes in your alarm clock, that will alarm if the power goes out. I would then have to manually remove the battery to stop the alarm and then pump my blood back into me by hand. I guess it goes without saying that it has no multimedia features, no ipod dock to be found.

If I designed this thing the first think I would ad is connectivity, 3G at least, if not 4G, all the 802.11 standards, Gigabit ethernet, bluetooth, USB, USB, USB. I want to be able to plug a USB drive in this thing and download my treatment details, or connect a printer and print them, or simply send them over the internet. Higher resolution and larger capacitive touchscreen that when I say sleep, it actually turns off the backlighting (no side lighting here) and the pixels. I'd ad media functionality, if I'm going to be connected to this thing for 7 hours a day I want to be entertained that means the USB ports can be used for external storage. If a fridge can do it, this should be able too. Some sort of backup power, I don't want to have to manually pump my blood back to me, my mother's VCR had backup power. Some interface options, the current one is really drab. Thats it for now, maybe I'll send my suggestions for Fresenius see what they have too say.

Owen