eassure people that their data won't be intercepted by elec- tronic leavesdroppers," says Steve DeCoste, business manager for Philips Medical Systems. Critically ill heart patients usually don't travel much, DeCoste notes, SO there isn't a great demand for portability. "We're not after that diabetic who's 25 years old and still rides his mountain bike," he says. Philips' system, which the company acquired last summer from Agilent Technologies Inc., uses battery-operated wireless measurement devices, such as weight scales and blood-pressure cuffs, that can be placed anywhere in a patient's home. "Since our patients tend to be very sick, it's important for the devices to be easily accessible at a bedside or other convenient location," DeCoste says. The wireless devices allow patients to gather measurements daily-such as weight, blood pressure, pulse, and heart rhythm-that are vital to the ongoing management of congestive heart failure. The data are transmitted to a hub box, which collects the information and automatically sends it via a phone line to a clinician for examination. 1.11.2 Small Clinics/Hospitals Monitoring patients after they have left the hospital is a vital part of follow- up care. Yet many small clinics and hospitals find it difficult to provide ade- quate outpatient support, primarily due to distance and budgetary limitations. A new software package aims to give small institutions the technical means to improve outpatient follow-up by accessing servers located at larger hospi- tals. Using the software, small clinics and hospitals can access and use the data held by larger institutions to better track patients' medical and nutritional care and to set up automated prescription services. Sponsored by EUREKA, the pan-European research and development consortium, the software is focused on nutritional follow-up. The technology ON THE MENU-TELECOM SERVICES can be used to monitor children with diabetes or other illnesses that require careful diet monitoring. For children with diabetes, the software can h