Call them toys or call them training tools, electronic fitness monitors can offer intriguing insight into everything from the rate at which your heart beats to the number of steps you take or calories you expend over the course of the day.
Typically they're not cheap, though. Take, for instance, Nike's $150 FuelBand, or Fitbit brand monitors costing $55 to $99 that can track your activity or sleep.
Now, electrical engineering students and faculty at Oregon State University hope to give such gizmos a run for their money. They've developed, are patenting and planning to take to market technology that can monitor vital signs with sensors so miniscule and inexpensive they could fit on a small adhesive bandage, cost less than 25 cents and be disposable.
In collaboration with private industry, they expect to move the sensor-packed microchip, the size and thickness of a postage stamp, into the consumer marketplace, perhaps by mid 2013.
Plus, they'll pursue U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval so the system could one day be used in everyday medical care.
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