A new piece of medical equipment is being tested right now called the Pedisedate. Basically, it is a headset that is placed on a child before they are admitted to surgery. The device connects to a Game Boy or portable CD player (yup, not a Nintendo DS or iPod — apparently the Pedisedate also transports you to 1996) and a snorkel-like piece swings forward and is placed over the child’s nose. As the kid plays videogames or listens to music, nitrous oxide, an anesthetic gas, is emitted through the snorkel and puts the child to sleep.
This connects with a regular 3.5mm jack which means that it could easily be connected to anything, including a DS.
I wonder if there’s something about it having to pass some special testing to qualify as a medical device? DS has wifi, right? Which means that with a DS, there is a pathway to “hack” into it without physical access. (I know, not really, but I would understand why you wouldn’t want to wifi-enable a device that anaesthesizes children.)
Its probably not possible to access the anaestesia device via an analog audio jack. The anastesia control and the device are completely separate.
It’s probably more that a DS wouldn’t be allowed in the room for to it’s wireless communications and not for having reasons just for pollution of the radiowaves in the area. So a Gameboy sufficed and Nintendo at the time probably had a load of stock in a warehouse that they could donate.
As if Nintendo would donate anything. The probable reason for using a Gameboy instead of a DS is that Nintendo wanted too much for licencing the use of the DS.
I was looking at the picture and the headset and device were both the same purple, which made me think it was “all one thing.”