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By Greg Bartlett

GPS tracking has proven to be useful to many different people in many different walks of life. The uses that have been discovered for GPS tracking are surprisingly numerous and diverse. GPS tracking has been used by sports professionals and enthusiasts, farmers, athletes – in even extreme sports, and medical professionals. Medical practitioners are discovering increasing numbers of uses for GPS tracking. GPS tracking is being used in the medical field to help in the treatments against asthma, dementia, and Alzheimer’s, to name a few things. Treatments against peripheral artery disease (PAD) have also been advanced through GPS tracking. People suffering from PAD are limited in how much they can walk because of blockage in arteries in their legs. As of August 2009, medical professionals have reported that they have found GPS tracking to be useful in helping people suffering from PAD.

GPS tracking uses the United State Air Force’s Global Positioning System (GPS) to monitor the location and speed of any given person or object. Development of GPS began during the World War II and has, since then, been made available to the general public. A receiver in a GPS device communicates with satellites in the Global Positioning System. These satellites, in turn, provide the navigation coordinates of the receiver in the GPS device. Thus the precise location and speed of any given person, animal, or inanimate object (such as a car) at any given time can be calculated and recorded. GPS navigation is popularly used by travelers to map a route; GPS tracking, on the other hand, is used to monitor and record a “route” some person or animal is making.

With respect to addressing PAD, a GPS device is helpful because it enables a doctor to accurately monitor the distances that a patient can walk before he or she experiences the adverse, painful side-effects of walking overly much as a person with PAD. By a GPS device’s monitoring and recording the patient’s walking abilities, doctors have become better able to more accurately treat their PAD patients. GPS tracking, as of August 2009, continues to be used to advance the medical treatments of numerous individuals, including PAD patients. With many new developments in medical technology and telemedicine already underway, the opportunities of helping meet medical needs using GPS tracking seems to only be becoming more and more exciting for those in all walks of life who are touched by medicine.