Internet Health Monitors for Outcomes of Chronic Illness

Chronic illness is a dominant feature of healthcare. Its dominance will increase as the historically large baby boomer population reaches retirement age in 10 years. There is no current infrastructure to provide care at this scale. We propose a model for a scalable infrastructure that will continuously monitor health status. The model is based upon outcomes measures, which are dynamic versions of standardized questionnaires. To handle chronic conditions, customized interactions are administered via computer directly in patients' homes. The standard protocols of the Internet make it possible, for the first time, to reach large populations with daily interactions that record health status. Future technology will enable databases to be effectively searched across interactions from many different patients. The offloading of routine patient interactions to Internet health monitors has significant potential to increase quality and decrease costs.