NASA working on medical histories via Web

CLEVELAND - A monitoring system designed to follow experiments on the international space station could be transformed to allow doctors access to a patient's entire medical history over the Internet.

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic are partnering with computer experts at Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center to develop the system. They believe it could reduce medical mistakes that kill tens of thousands of hospital patients every year and injure more than a million.

"The idea is essentially that every medical device, in theory, could jack into an Internet receptacle," said Dr. Roger Macklis of the Clinic.

Each device would contain a computer chip to record everything that is happening with a patient, from bedside monitor readings to lab test results to medication information.

All the information would be sent to a continually updated database that any of the patient's caregivers could tap into from any location around the world that has Internet access.

The Clinic will apply for more than $1 million in federal grant money to develop the project. If the money comes through, the system could be in place within two years, Macklis said.

Computer scientists at NASA Glenn developed the technology in 1996. The data would be shielded from Internet voyeurs by the same encryption system that government agencies use.

NASA is looking at many other applications for the technology, including monitoring the health of astronauts in space, said David York, a software engineer who led the NASA Glenn team.