Bluetooth health monitoring lets you upload your vital stats to your doctor from home

This type of exercise monitoring has already been successfully tested on a runner in the Gold Coast marathon.

Microsoft Australia have been testing an interesting application of the technology to assist athletes in training as well - a system by which the heart rate/activity monitor communicates with an MP3 player. "If you're not going hard enough," says Satchwell, "the MP3 player picks a faster song for you next. You tend to match your cadence and effort level to the music. This little gadget uses faster and slower songs to encourage you to keep your heart rate at an ideal level for cardio training, weight loss or whatever you're aiming for. It's quite a clever idea."

Future targets

Satchwell says Alive is continuing to concentrate on medical applications of the equipment. There's no reason, he says, why a broader range of equipment couldn't be commercialised with the technology and made available to consumers. Bathroom scales to plot weight charts, simple consumer machinery to take blood pressure measurements and other monitoring equipment to build a picture of an individual's health changes over time that can be accessed remotely by GPs and other medical staff.

The convenience of local logging and easy uploading is the key to this small medical revolution that could bring preventative healthcare to new levels.