What do you think about home healthcare is it pertains to physical rehabilitation?

Intel has a system that remotely monitors patients from the comfort of their home.  Data from the monitoring is sent to qualified medical professionals to make an assessment of the data.  If necessary the medical professional can call Mrs. Jones to get amplifying information or recommend that she go see a doctor.

While the devices in use in this article are not associated with rehabilitation, where is the physical rehabilitation community on this subject?  What if we had a video "game" that patients played and data was collected that could determine whether Mrs. Jones gait was deteriorating and indicative of a fall?


Excepts from the Washington Post Article: Medicare spends more than $12 billion a year on "potentially preventable" repeat hospital admissions, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent agency that advises Congress. And that number, according to the commission, is likely to grow, given that the Census Bureau projects that by 2025 there will be nearly 64 million Americans older than age 65, an increase of more than a third over today's total.

The pilot projects are not designed to have doctors diagnose illnesses remotely or to substitute for hands-on care. Instead, they are intended to allow elderly or infirm patients to get ahead of changes in their chronic conditions that could tip them into a medical emergency.

Read the full article here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/16/AR2009111602900.html