Researchers in South Korea have successfully transmitted data at broadband speeds between two points on a person’s arm using the body itself as a conduit. The technology is very energy efficient when compared to alternatives like wireless data transfer, and therefore may lend itself to health applications:
It is difficult to monitor vital signs, such as blood sugar and electrical activity of the heart, in a person going about their everyday lives because it means either covering them in snaking wires connected to a recording device, or using wireless transmission.
“If we use wireless for each of these vital signs we would need many batteries,” says study co-author Sang-Hoon Lee of Korea University in Seoul. A network transmitting through the skin would cut energy needs by roughly 90 per cent, he says.
Future versions of the technology could be implanted beneath the skin for long-term monitoring purposes.