lopment of a new category of products in the personal healthcare area. When worn continuously by the patient, the wireless monitoring system can store up to three months of body signal data, such as heart-rate information, in 64 MB of internal memory, thus providing clinicians with a continuous history over an extended period of time to assist in an accurate diagnosis. As the system is worn, advanced analysis algorithms, executed on the system's ultra-low power consumption digital signal processor (DSP), continuously monitor and record any abnormal signal. If a potentially serious health con- dition is detected, the system can trigger local alarms or wirelessly link with mobile phone or public switched telephone networks to summon immediate help. All the system's active electronics are incorporated into an ultra-slim module that slips into a dedicated pocket sewn into the garment. After the module has been removed, the garment-still containing the built-in dry electrodes-can be laundered. Dry electrode technology was designed as a practical, long-term-wearable, alternative to conventional gel-based electro- cardiogram pickups. The technology was originally developed by NASA sci- entists in the early 1960s to monitor astronaut heart activity on multi-day missions. Due to the dry-electrodes' difficulty to harness ultra-low voltages and several other tricky design issues, it was not until the mid-1990s that the tech- nology became commercially viable. Philips claims that the new system fits well into its vision of "Ambient Intelligence." The company's strategy is based on technologies that disappear into the fabric of their surroundings to improve the quality of users' lives-in this case, personal health-care. Chapter The Future is Fiber Optical Technologies Photonics is increasingly being identified as a key enabling technology in the construction of a global communications network. Its potential in advancing information systems and image-processing technologies is expected to stimu- late photonics-based research a