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Today's the radio program Morning Edition had a segment on a new company called Lifesytle systems (? or something like that). They market a device cum service for people at risk with High BP, Diabetes etc. The device measures their BP and heart rate and then they call a modem line via the telephone and press a button on the device to send their data to the Lifesytle system. This is a hige centralized computer that has an entry for each person and acceptable lo/high values for each of the data points (heart rate, BP) sent. These thresholds are set by the patient's doctor/nurse etc. And the computer checks to see if the readings are in the normal range- if not, it automatically pages the patient's nurse and she calls him/her back in a few minutes to discuss the results. it also faxes these reports to the doctor/nurse etc. They talked of this for people like Ivan- who don't have someone living with them. The nurse also calls the patient once a week to talk to them, check to see if they are taking their meds properly etc. And the pitch was that this saves visits to the ER and extended emergency hospitalization- which is more expensive for insurance companies to cover than a subscription to this service. I thought this was a great idea! abi