Fortunately, Ferrell found out that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was supporting development of a “personal status monitor” for soldiers. So he wrote a proposal, and by early 1996, the funds started rolling in. A year later a team from ORNL, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK), and the University of Virginia had developed a temperature-measuring telesensor chip.
The chip, which is about one-eighth the size of a postage stamp, uses bipolar transistors whose electronic properties are sensitive to temperature. It can be attached to a finger or placed in an ear. There it can measure body temperature and transmit a reading when queried by a receiver in a remote intelligence monitor.
Although developed for military uses, the temperature chip could be useful at home or in the hospital. For example, a chip could warn of a spike in body temperature that might lead to a seizure in a child or brain damage in a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy. By heeding the instant information and making the appropriate response, such as taking a pill, patients can avert a health crisis.
Wireless monitors could vastly improve decision making by medics in the military. On the battlefield, some soldiers are mortally wounded, some are badly injured but conscious, and others are hurt yet are able (usually with treatment) to resume fighting. While under fire, medics must decide quickly which wounded soldiers must be treated first to get them back on their feet and ready to fight. Medics also must determine which wounded soldiers can be saved from death by rapid treatment and transport to a hospital.
Website: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/meas_tech/hi-tech.htm
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