Imagine the case where your doctor has prescribed you to take e.g. blood pressure measurements at home regularly for some time period. You should write down all the measurement results and bring the result log to the doctor after monitoring period.

Ok, you take the measurements and write them down. Few times you perhaps forgot to write measurement down and you write it down later trying to remember what the measurement result was. Then you take them to your doctor. Doctor looks results and perhaps types them into clinic information system and then gives you a feedback.

So, what’s the point here? This is just normal routine to do.

I would like to introduce alternative way to do this using today’s smart phones.

In my opinion, the combination of self-monitoring devices with mobile technology offers several advantages in comparison with traditional monitoring methods. In personal health monitoring with smart phones accurate measurement results are available to health care professionals in almost real time regardless of your location. Your personal treatment can be monitored and quickly adapted to a change in health status. Furthermore, by being able to follow the progress of your own treatment, you are more motivated to follow the prescribed therapy.

Smart phones can offer mobile solutions to collect measurements results automatically and wirelessly from the measuring devices and seamlessly transfer the collected data to the healthcare personnel for further analysis. Since smart phones today have well enough storage and processing capabilities they can be used to collect, store and transfer information from different measuring devices at a same time. For example, a blood pressure monitor, a weighing scale and a glucometer can be used to collect and register key information in diabetes care.

Results from different measurement devices are linked together and immediately forwarded by using mobile networks like GPRS and 3G to the healthcare provider, where they are available for review. Following the analysis, the healthcare professionals can send feedback back to your mobile phone. As a result, you not only remain informed about your health status via the information displayed on your mobile, but you can also quickly adapt your treatment, diet or exercise programme in response to the medical advice you receive from your healthcare provider.

In addition to this, you can even view the results on a list or have them displayed in a clear graphical form directly on the screen of the mobile device. This gives you an immediate overview of your treatment progress.

Sounds quite far fetched? Not really, this is actually reality today and the presented eHealthMonitor application exists commercially for the Series40, Series60 and Series80 devices.