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GPS continues is march into ubiquity with the integration of positioning technology into objects as innocuous as asthma inhalers.

Back in 1995, I worked a one-year internship at St. James University Hospital – one of Europe’s largest teaching hospitals – developing clinical software for neonatal infants and asthmatic children. In developing tools to help kids record asthmatic episodes, I was struck by the range of innocent causative factors – banana skins, carpeted flooring, upholstery – that could trigger an attack.

Our work largely focussed on recording patient histories after the fact – but what David Van Sickle’s experimental GPS-enabled inhalers allow, is for patients to capture the circumstances of their episode, at the time of occurence.

It isn’t difficult to see beyond this device to a point where using an inhaler could alert nearby first responders or family members in case of real distress, requiring medical assistance. Indeed, Apple’s recent preview of its iPhone 3.0 software was explicit in illustrating how the iPhone and iPod touch devices could control attached peripherals, notably Johnson & Johnson’s LifeScan glucose monitoring peripheral.

Both LifeScan and the inhaler represent two approaches to connected healthcare devices – LifeScan embeds itself within an existing communication platform and the inhaler embeds communication capability into the fabric of the device.

Read more at Cnet’s Disease detective plans GPS-enabled asthma inhaler.