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Access to traditional medical facilites is not easy in rural Vermont. And yet several well-known factors make it urgent that these communities get easier access to basic healthcare. Vermont's population is aging. Chronic diseases—cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and lung disease—are the leading cause of mortality in Vermont. Rural areas of the state contain Vermont's oldest populations and poorest health outcomes. 

 The partners in this project are seeking to address these problems by developing self-service health screening technologies that could be accessed in a variety of places common to Vermont rural communities. Places such as town halls, community centers, libraries, schools and general stores.

If the long-term goals of this work can be realized, a person might be able to enter one of those places and gain private, self-service access to primary optometry screenings, balance testing, neuromotor evaluation, pulse measurement, pulmonary testing – and others. 

The concept is meant to extend the now commonplace presence of blood- pressure measurement at drug stores in three ways: 

• a much broader range of functional sensing (without the presence of a medical provider), 

• a link to healthcare delivery systems via telehealth to record data as part of an individual patient's record and prompt provider responses, 

• installation at commonly visited sites centered in rural villages.