Bio-behavioral monitoring: a method for remote health measurement

The treatment of chronic disease has been severely limited by the failure to develop a technology of self-measurement. To examine and validate remotely acquired data from ambulatory patients, 13 cirrhotic subjects were asked to make daily measurements of medically and behaviorally significant variables. Subjects transmitted data for six months on variables such as weight, alcohol consumption, medications, hours worked, liquid consumed and general activity, complying with 90.4% (10,078) of the requests for data. Highly significant relationships were found between patients' reports and criterion measures of weight data and alcohol consumption. Significant negative relationships between hours worked and alcohol consumption were found for several patients (P less than 0.001). The results suggest that ambulatory patients can systematically measure and communicate medically and behaviorally significant information.