Medical Monitor: FSA Eligibility

What are medical monitors?

Medical monitors are electronic medical devices that consist of an array of sensors, displays, and networking links. They might also include wireless communication capabilities to deliver their information to another computer, or offsite. Medical monitors are used to track biological measurements of a patient such as their heart rate, breath rate, blood pressure, etc.

Medical monitors traditionally always had a visual display so that an attending medical doctor or nurse could read the appropriate data quickly to monitor a patient's health. Some medical monitors have audio alerts which respond to a measurement becoming dangerously high or low, which would indicate an emergency situation requiring immediate medical attention. Modern medical monitors might have visual displays or multiple visual displays for a single set of sensors, they might have audio alerts or network capability that incorporates medical evaluation from outside of the patient's room or even off-site. This technique is called ambulatory telemetry (National Center for Biotechnology Information).

Subsequent developments in medical monitoring involve digital monitoring which is networked into the currently emergent hospital electronic health record systems, which would chart patient data automatically and reduce human error in making these recordings.

There are also new mobile appliances, some which are carried as implants beneath the skin, which are wirelessly connected as well for even more types of medical monitoring and data collection.

Medical monitoring is typically used in daily applications such as blood glucose monitoring, stress monitoring, serotonin monitoring, blood based nutrition monitoring, epilepsy monitoring and toxicity monitoring (WebMD).

The Over-the-Counter (OTC) purchase of medical monitors for these purposes and all others are considered eligible for reimbursement with a consumer-directed healthcare plan.