http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=affordable-care-act-technology
The Obama administration introduced the ACA in 2010 to move health care away from a fee-for-service model to one that promotes preventative care and overall wellness. Beginning this October the ACA will reinforce this approach by penalizing hospitals with chronic readmission problems by cutting Medicare reimbursement payments to those facilities. This policy initially targets patients suffering from three health conditions—heart failure, pneumonia and heart attack—but penalties will apply to additional conditions beginning in 2015.
Remote health monitoring systems have patients wear sensors that wirelessly collect, store, analyze and transmit health-related data. One of several approaches is the Wearable Wellness System from Italy’s Smartex, essentially an undershirt with embedded sensors and a processor that can monitor heart and respiration rates. Although not as fashionable, the Metria wearable sensor, from Vancive Medical Technologies, a medical division of Avery Dennison, can be adhesively bound to the body to measure heart rate, respiration, sleep duration and activity levels.
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