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A local company is using the same Bluetooth technology found in cell phones and computers in an effort to make health care more accessible at a lower cost.

Polymap Wireless is integrating Bluetooth — a short-range wireless communications technology — into medical devices to monitor patients with chronic diseases.

Polymap's Polytel system is made up of a miniature circuit board that is installed within a medical device and an access point that transmits the medical information securely across the Internet. The circuit board transmits the information to the access point using Bluetooth technology.

The company's systems are most commonly integrated into scales, blood-pressure meters and glucose meters.

This means patients suffering from diabetes can test their blood using a glucose meter and have the information sent to doctors or family members without leaving home or dealing with a complex device.

But Polymap itself doesn't monitor any patients. The company's device sends information via the Internet to medical professionals or family members.

Polymap is filling a medical need for remote monitoring that is going to expand rapidly in the coming years, said Pierre Landau, the company's president.

"This market is so incredibly unserved and unpenetrated that there's going to be an explosion," Landau said.

There will not be enough doctors to serve people with chronic diseases, so any kind of solution that allows patient care to take place from home is an absolute must, Landau said.

Landau cited the high cost of treating a chronic patient in a hospital setting and high rates of readmission of unmonitored patients. Therefore, it makes more sense to monitor people from home and reduce the high number of chronic patients being readmitted to hospitals, he said.

But the company doesn't just sell its devices in the United States. The company has sold a few thousand devices internationally, including in Canada, Norway and the West Indies, Landau said.

Currently, the company is selling many devices in Canada.

"The health-care system is not currently sustainable and that's why we need ways for people to manage their own health," said Colin McAllister, the principal of Perspect Management Consulting, a company that helped bring one of the companies that brought Polymap's monitoring technology devices to Canada.

Polymap's systems are made in Silicon Valley, but the company is looking for a high-tech Tucson firm to manufacture its products, Landau said.

In July, Canadian telecommunications company SaskTel and Paris-based telecommunication company Alcatel-Lucent launched a service that transmits secure daily blood-glucose and blood-pressure readings taken by Polymap's devices.

Even with the troubled economy and problems finding financing, Landau foresees a bright future for his company.

The critical problem of diabetes will spark the largest growth in the short term, Landau said.

"My philosophy is to make things so simple that people aren't aware they are being used," Landau said. "So this is all about keeping people healthy by making them follow doctors' orders — the easier you make that, the more likely it will work."