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Google Translate Buttons for Health Care Are Coming

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forbes.com

Forbes

Scientist Canan Dagdeviren is an interpreter for a language without words. A beating heart or a dry patch of skin? She knows they're both saying something important, speaking the unique language of the body. It's a lexicon that's completely different from the Turkish and English that Dagdeviren speaks every day – but it's one she believes we need to start translating in earnest.

She wants to count up our brain pulses, watch our temperature change in real time and observe how we breathe. This is different from the health-monitoring tech inside consumer Fitbits and smart watches that can count each step and monitor every heartbeat. And it's not like the sensors inside a typical smartphone that (like some kind of high-tech Santa Claus) see you when you're sleeping and know when you're awake.

Dagdeviren says despite all these new ways we have to keep tabs on our bodies, we still aren't noticing all the tiny, imperceptible and important rhythms happening inside us. So she's building a new laboratory – a place where she hopes to invent the technology that will decode our body's vital messages.

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