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One of the most popular types of personal health device is the activity monitor, which is attached to the user’s wrist or waist in order to measure physical activity data such as exercise time/duration and calorie consumption. However, for the purpose of checking the physical conditions, medical staffs may want to check remotely the movement of a patient’s body parts. Given that it has an activity sensor to measure the speed of a user’s movement, an activity monitor can also be used to track the movement of a user’s body part. In this paper, a multipurpose smart activity monitoring system for personalized health services is proposed. The purpose of the system is twofold. The first purpose is to perform easily smart monitoring of a user’s physical activity. The system proposed in this paper is referred to as “smart” because the personal activity monitor can be managed remotely through the management commands issued by the monitoring server. The personal data, device data or programs installed in the personal activity monitor can be updated remotely by the monitoring server or medical staffs, and error reports can be delivered to the server or the medical staffs for personalized health services. To do this, the ISO/IEEE 11073 and OMA DM communication protocols are extended and the protocol transformation between two protocols is performed. The second purpose is to perform convenient motion tracking of a user’s body part in order to monitor the speed of the body part, as well as its tracking path. The system is also referred as “multipurpose” since the activity monitor can be used in motion tracking as well as in activity monitoring. The objects in motion to be tracked remotely by medical staffs can be a human body part. To do this, in addition to the acceleration sensor, a gyro sensor is installed in the personal activity monitor and the movement data captured by the activity monitor is analyzed to show 2-way views of the movement of the body part on which the activity monitor is attached. Then medical staffs can check remotely the physical conditions of the body part in various ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context One of the goals set forth in the National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements, (ODS) 2004-2009 Strategic Plan, is to stimulate research on how dietary supplements can enhance the biomarkers of optimal health and improved performance. One area where dietary supplements offer a potential for improved performance and optimal health is in addressing the progressively declining state of Americans' bone health, a problem set forth in the U.S. Surgeon General's (SG) 2004 Bone Health Report to the Nation. The SG reported that inadequate nutrition, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, poor health literacy among adolescents, and an increasingly aging population, have "...placed America's bone health in jeopardy." To address this problem, the SG issued a "call to action" for the researchers and the healthcare industry to develop programs that can help reverse this trend by developing bone-health programs based on three fundamentals: (I) improved health literacy, (2) increased physical activity and (3) improved nutrition. Objective The objective of this paper was to conduct a meta analysis to assess the extent to which using glyconutritional supplements (GLC) led to improved bone health by maintaining or facilitating increased bone mineral density (BMD). Design, Setting, and Participants All subjects were free-living community-dwelling adults who were recruited for a variety of clinical trials over approximately the same time period, from the same population base, were tested by the same group of technicians using the DEXA technology, and had similar baseline body composition measurements. Interventions Comparisons were made between BMD changes found in participants consuming glyconutritional supplements with expected changes and changes in placebo and control groups, as well as subjects using different dietary supplements in the researcher's database. Main Outcome Measures Measurements were obtained from 1,056 subjects who completed the same beginning and ending BMD test using the same Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) equipment. All data were adjusted to a common 75-day study period. Results Within-group analyses of the group taking glyconutrients revealed that the age, gender and ethnic differences were highly consistent with the differences found by other investigators. In contrast to an expected or predicted decrease in BMD, all five groups increased their BMD during the study period, although, using a repeated measures t test. the within-group change in the CTL and DIS failed to reach statistical significance. The increase in BMD in the GLC was statistically greater (P<0.001) than that found in all groups, a difference magnified when adjusting for baseline differences in BMD. Analysis of a small randomized, placebo-controlled double-blinded five-group pilot study of ˜10 participants per group revealed that while small decreases in BMD were found in the PLA. the three treatment groups showed increased BMD. The GLC group had 0.006 g/cm", 3.2+J annualized change+ although this increase failed to reach statistical significance. It was concluded that supplementation with glyconutrients when combined with a lifestyle behavior modification program could increase bone density. Conclusions These data suggest the intriguing possibility that consumption of glyconutrients with an accompanying behavior modification plan can lead to short-term increases in BMD. In addition to highly consistent within-group differences in age, gender and ethnicity, the increases in BMD found in the GLC were significantly greater than those found in the PLA, CTL and DS groups, in spite of the fact that the GLC group was older and lost more body weight than the other groups--differences that typically decrease BMD. It seems reasonable to conclude that the dietary supplements used in this study can lead to short-term increases in bone densities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports that British Health Secretary John Reid will seek the views of general practitioners on smoking, alcohol, sexual health, obesity and other key issues as part of a public debate leading to publication of a health White Paper in late 2004.