When recorded glucose levels generate highpriority alerts, physicians or other health-care
providers initiate direct contact with the patient.
An ordinary phone call over the cellular phone
network is one way to support direct contact.
Because any client-side device used with the
RTGM system must be fully Internet-capable,
an Internet telephony application, such as
Skype, is another possible way of supporting
synchronous voice or video communication
with the patient. Should Skype or a similar
Internet telephony application be used with the
RTGM system? Why or why not? If such an
application is used, should it support video? Why
or why not?
Data mining is an increasingly important technique for medical research. The ability to scan
medical records of large numbers of patients over
extended time periods enables researchers to better
evaluate the effectiveness of drugs and therapies,
more accurately connect disease risk levels to specific patient characteristics, and identify patterns of
transmission or occurrence, progression, and treatment response for rare diseases and conditions.
What types of medical research might be enabled or
better supported by the data collected by the
RTGM system? Would your answer change if the
database were extended to include additional
information that might be gathered from the
patient’s mobile phone (e.g., location information
when each glucose level was captured, size and
content of the patient’s contact list, call history, and
the volume of text messages and Internet browsing
activity)?