Abstract: A system for remotely monitoring asthma severity includes a remotely located asthma monitoring station for administering a patient self-test and for gathering test data and relevant patient information indicative of asthmatic symptoms, and a central processing facility for receiving the test data and patient information from the remote monitoring station, determining whether the test data is valid, analyzing valid test data to generate test results and an appropriate response message to the monitoring station, storing the test results in a central data repository, and disseminating the test results and response message in a timely manner as required. The monitoring system also includes a remotely located diagnosis/evaluation station for displaying the test results, response messages and other patient information.

Abstract: A method for automatically monitoring a system to detect malfunctions, wherein said system generates messages based upon selected data, comprising the steps of receiving messages generated by said system, counting said messages over statistically significant time periods to form message subgroups including selected numbers of messages, comparing the number of messages in each of said subgroups with predefined limits for that subgroup to determine whether said number of messages in that subgroup is statistically unusual, and generating an alert signal whenever a statistically unusual number of messages is detected.