Home Health Monitoring Center

What if your treadmill could connect through your home network to your PC and the internet? And what if there were attachments you could buy to check in addition to your heart rate, your blood sugar, blood pressure, weight, etc.? And what if the interactive software prompted you to enter in some body measurements and answer some questions about how you feel and other health risks?

As an integrated health monitoring system, this machine could:

1. Keep records on your PC of your blood sugar, blood pressure, exercise routine, weight gain/loss and other factors

2. Allow you to do some sort of stress test to gauge your cardiovascular fitness level

3. Give you real progress updates on your workout and suggestions for modifying it.

4. Alert you to contact your doctor if certain factors look out of the ordinary

5. Provide you with records of all the above to take to your doctor (save time and the cost of having them run the same tests!!!)

The concept here is to use the power of your home PC and an internet connection to keep accurate records of your health and exercise routine and through the internet, provide you with real-time relevant advice and guidance based on your personalized stats. It is a known fact that when these results are made more visible, maybe even monitored weekly by your doctor, you will tend to be much more conscientious about taking your health seriously and keep to the program.

The point is that this kind of home-based diagnostic device, or at least record keeping device, would be a great thing for everyone, especially for seniors and people who are on some sort of therapeutic program. It would also, incidentally, be useful for a caregiver (child or a friend) to have access to this information (with permission) through an internet connection so they can see that their mother or aunt is keeping up with her routine.

I know that various types of monitoring devices already exist as very high-priced medical devices prescribed by doctors and either rented or purchased through health insurance, Medicare, etc.

What should be happening is that consumer products companies should be working on less expensive alternatives that people could buy just because they want to keep better track of their health, or the health of their parents. They could even have internet diagnostic tests to make sure that the machines are working correctly and calibrated.