Full disclosure: When I’m not digging into the cloud market for The VAR Guy, I play a lot of video games. That said, Kotaku, a game hobbyist blog, was the last place I ever expected to hit on what could be the next big trend for Microsoft partners serving the health care vertical: Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console. Sure, this requires some explanation. So here we go.
As it is, I use my Xbox to stream all kinds of media from my computer to my television across the local network, and I know that fellow blogger Dave Courbanou has one that’s he’s hacked to do nothing but. Microsoft Research wants to put those capabilities to work in hospitals, using them as low-cost, high-power terminals to push patients’ health data to their in-room displays.
Moreover, the upcoming Project Natal hands-free motion control accessory for the Xbox 360 would give patients the ability to access hospital services and maybe even browse the web from their bed.
The full story at Yahoo News also mentions that Microsoft is looking to connect Windows Mobile phones with Microsoft’s HealthVault product by helping patients log their own statistics like miles jogged using the phone’s accelerometer or the camera to snap pictures of meals and calculate the calorie intake.
Does XBox really have a future in the health care vertical? Game on — or game over?
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