Health-Related Quality of Life Tracking for Post-Battle Wellness Management

There is a recognized need to monitor the medical condition (i.e., physical and mental health) of soldiers and veterans recovering from battle-related injuries to detect problems with their recuperation. In particular, a low-cost, noninvasive "trip-wire" system is required that functions as a safety net, detecting when assistance or intervention is needed and issuing advisories to health care providers concerning significant changes in important medical indicators, such as decreases in mobility. These capabilities are important to all recovering soldiers and veterans, especially those who live alone. The classic and most accepted method for assessing the physical and mental health condition of an individual is administration of a psychometric health survey (questionnaire) to evaluate their health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Barron Associates and the University of Virginia Health System propose developing the QualTrak system, a novel, low-cost, unobtrusive, and automated method for monitoring, evaluating, and reporting changes (both negative and positive) in Soldiers' HRQOL. The basic concept will be rigorously demonstrated in the Phase I effort by statistically testing QualTrak's predictive utility against the validated Short Form-36 (SF-36) Health Survey (Version 2.0).