In the near future, it should become increasingly common for patients to collect personal healthcare data with a specialized device and shunt it easily to a server or website. Such tools, which collect data such as blood pressure or blood glucose monitor readings, have been in the works for years, but it's looking like they'll become far more of a mainstream proposition in the next year or two. The growth in their use is being fueled, in part, by the realization that such tools may very well help reduce the skyrocketing cost of caring for chronically-ill patients. While such devices can cost several hundred dollars, some should be priced more in the $200 to $300 range, making them a good prospect for large-scale consumer adoption.

Some emerging tools focus on monitoring patient medical data and automatically routing it to providers. Intel's Health Guide, for example, offers both an in-home patient self-management device and an online interface that doctors can access to monitor and manage a patient's condition. Health Guide collects data from wired and wireless medical devices, then displays the data for the patient, as well as sending the information to a server for access by providers. Health Guide should become commercially available within the next several months.

San Jose, CA-based Zume Life Inc. has taken another tack, creating an iPod-sized device that reminds patients to take their medications and records their compliance. It also lets patients beam the data to a companion web page accessible to the patient's doctor.

While it isn't pitching a device, Microsoft has clearly gotten on board with this trend, too. The company is working to integrate not only standard clinical data, but also home-health and fitness-device data such as heart rates, into its HealthVault PHR. Health Vault can add data from 50 devices in total, including blood-pressure machines and the American Heart Association's blood-pressure manager.

To learn more about this trend:
- read this Wall Street Journal article (sub. req.)

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