Possible Implementations Future Disease Management systems will be improved by these connection technologies, especially with home-monitoring devices, such as blood glucose monitors. This will help prove the clinical and business cases for Web-based disease management for hospitals, insurance companies, HMO's, and physicians and nurses who make the decisions with their accompanying consequences. The real benefit of Web-based disease management is the chance to create a community information platform, a multifaceted virtual world where health plans can disseminate policy information and authorize claims, where clinicians can get plan information and peer advice, and where patients can have their weight, blood pressure and other critical personal data monitored daily. This begins the process of patient empowerment. These network-enable devices can push relevant information about diseases toward individual patients, rather than forcing them to surf the Web and become inundated with data.

Anything Can Be a JINI Device