KEY POINTS:
Ever wondered how unhealthy that diet is? The lack of exercise? Thesmoking? And how it all could beputting you at risk of heart disease?
Wonder no longer: a new device, invented in New Zealand, can tell your likelihood of having a heart attack in 10 years.
By measuring a person's blood pressure, and combining it with manually entered personal details such as blood sugar levels, smoking habits and weight, the device and its associated software give the reading as a percentage.
It is a unique feature for a blood pressure monitor, and helped to win its developer, Professor Olaf Diegel of Auckland University of Technology, the top science and health prize at this week's Bayer Innovators Award.
The concept, design and production for the monitor took just six months, Professor Diegel said yesterday.
The idea came from Taiwanese company Health and Life, but the rest of the project took place in New Zealand.
Professor Diegel designed the unique software package and said the plan was to encourage people to take better care of themselves.
But making sure people used it frequently, therefore allowing an accurate trend to develop in their readings, was always the challenge with medical devices, he said.
The design of the monitor means it looks more like a modern desktop appliance than a medical device.
Called Activa Xrystal, it is available only online from the Activa website. It costs about $170.
