Thirty-one-year-old Viviana Altieri, a project manager at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, considers herself a healthy woman. But, she said, that hasn't always been the case.

After working in Europe for two years, she returned to the United States in June. "My life then became 16 hours in the office every day, late meals-usually pizza or other catered food-and no time for any physical activity," she said. She committed herself to putting balance back into her life.

She joined the medical center in September to help guide the research collaboration between the center and a company called BodyMedia. At the same time, she began participating in an integrative program combining concepts of wellness with technology in which the BodyMedia SenseWear Pro Armband was used. "I realized I could fix my stress, poor nutrition habits and lack of exercise by being involved," she said.

The armband is the brainchild of Astro Teller, a scientist, novelist and the grandson of noted physicist Edward Teller (best known for his work on the hydrogen bomb) and CEO of BodyMedia Inc., a Pittsburgh-based company he and three others founded in 1999.

As a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University completing his dissertation in artificial intelligence-the ability of a computer or other machine to perform activities usually thought to require intelligence-Teller dreamed of using his expertise to help people live balanced, healthy lives. So he teamed up with three colleagues who specialized in wearable computing to develop a device that would allow for the collection of basic physiological data during typical daily activities.

The result was the SenseWear armband, a personal body monitoring apparatus rolled out last summer by BodyMedia.

The armband, which Teller calls "a smaller, more conformed version of an arm radio," is a 3-ounce, splash-resistant wireless body monitor worn on the back of the right tricep. It contains a computer, memory and sensors that continuously monitor certain physiological data-body motion, skin temperature, heart rate, evaporative heat loss and the amount of heat being dissipated by the body. In conjunction with simple body measurements such as gender, age, height and weight, the armband allows for accurate calculations of energy expenditure across a range of daily activities.

"The body radiates information every second, even every one-hundredth of a second," Teller said. "The armband 'watches' a person [usually a research subject] in real time and collects this data."

Despite the limited scope, Teller said some nurses are involved in BodyMedia technology research opportunities. He said the company is working with a nurse at a local metropolitan hospital to help her get a protocol approved to use SenseWear as part of a study she is conducting on treatments for people with congestive heart failure.

Teller sees the products being used in the future by nurses to help patients comply with lifestyle changes. "The most powerful point of intersection for nurses and the SenseWear armband will be in those areas of adherence, such as exercise and sleep, where BodyMedia can provide much more objective, quantitative and accurate information than is currently available," he said. "There will certainly be others as BodyMedia develops as a company."

Because it operates on a lithium-ion battery, the armband can be worn continuously up to three days without recharging. Its data can be uploaded wirelessly to a personal computer equipped with the Java-based InnerView software for manipulation and analysis by researchers. "The data can be presented, for example, in average values, maximums and minimums or standard deviations," Teller said.

The armband made Altieri acutely aware of her lifestyle habits and prodded her to adopt healthier ones. As she wore it to collect information on her daily energy expenditure, she also started to record her food intake every day and began a three-day-a-week exercise program. She used the armband's 'time-stamp' feature to log when she started and finished her workouts or to remind herself to perform certain tasks, such as when to drink water during the course of the day.

"In less than no time, I was diligently entering my information every day and getting more and more motivated as I was seeing my progress, not only on how my clothes were fitting, but also on my mood and my final goal of living a more balanced life," she said. "What's nice about the armband is that you can check your information at home, at work, as many times as you want. You can also review your previous data and compare where you started with where you're at."

As she began to see results, Altieri became more motivated to reach her ultimate goal of a balanced life, adding yoga and meditation to her routine. The unobtrusive armband has become part of her everyday routine. The only times she removes it are to shower, upload the data to her computer and recharge the battery.

"I just turned 31 in December," Altieri said, "and I can truly say that my healthy life didn't start until my thirties!"