Magic wand connects medical devices to wifi

Magic wand can connect medical devices to wifi and help doctors keep better tabs on their patients, according to ABC News

Darmouth College have developed Wanda, a device that can read wifi passwords and transfer this information to medical devices wirelessly.

The Wanda device prototype is made from a ruler and two antennas and can acquire a network name and password by being plugged into a wifi router.

To transfer the wifi data to the medical device Wanda is then detached from the router and pointed at a medical device and because the medical device is close to the wand, it can reconstruct the information, but a hacker farther away could not.

Wanda, is part of a multi-university project to develop ways to protect patient confidentiality as health care increasingly moves out of hospitals and doctors' offices and into the home. But beyond safety, simplicity also is a key goal, said doctoral student Tim Pierson, Wanda's creator to ABC News.

Pierson said: “Quite frequently in the computer security business, we invent things that are super-secure but hard to use and people don't understand them: We set out to make something that my parents and in-laws could use."

With Wanda, a doctor could send a patient home with a Wi-Fi-enabled blood pressure cuff and instead of having to type in a passcode to connect the monitor to a home Wi-Fi network, the patient just points Wanda at the device. Once that connection is made, blood pressure readings can be transmitted back to the doctor's office, reported ABC News.

Pierson said: "In a hospital you tend to have trained people who can configure medical devices, set them up and monitor them to make sure they're working.

"If we're going to move into a world where sensors are outside of the hospital, we started wondering what are the challenges to configuring these devices in the home where there is no IT team, or in a small clinic with a couple of doctors and nurses?"

"One of the good things about this system is that the user doesn't even have to know that information. The wand can get it from your Wi-Fi router and impart it on the device.”