Self-measurement of Vital Signs to Prevent and Treat Common Disease Patterns

Demographic change combined with the move to cities of young qualified professionals will lead to a massive shortage of physicians in rural areas. Telemedical approaches, such as self-measuring patients' vital signs at home and transmitting them to the attending physician, could help close this gap in health care. This paper provides an overview of vital signs that can already be measured with commercial devices. These vital signs will be related to common disease patterns in terms of prevention, treatment, medical post-treatment and possible consequences of the disease. The implementation of these mappings is demonstrated in an example project.