The blue box is a biomedical measurement device designed to capture customized personal data through non-invasive monitoring, perform web-based analysis and interpretation of the data, and provide guided intervention when individuals exceed their own normal range.

The initial project, now in development with our partners, Rice University, Technology for All, and Indus Instruments, is an affordable personalized chronic heart failure management system based upon wireless biomedical sensor networks. A medical anthropology study, directed by Jerome Crowder, PhD, will help ensure that the sensors integrate easily into people's lives. In 2008, Dr. Dacso, Ed Knightly, PhD, Lin Zhon, PhD, and Technology for All received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation for this project.

Blue Boxes are currently in initial testing for the management of diabetes and asthma. Prototypes are in development for monitoring of aortic aneurysm and hypertension.

Key components of the Blue Boxes are the concept of "personal normal" and the use of info-gap decision theory to interpret the patient's data in a meaningful way. A "personal normal" is a value that reflects the normal situation for that particular patient (which may not be the "norm" for any other person, or the one from the medical literature). However, deviation from this personalized normal, derived from the patient him or herself, over time, is a far better indicator of the patient's true condition than any "standardized" normal could ever be. Thus, the patient and his or her physician are able to tailor treatment to a degree that has never before been achieved.