A system for monitoring medical activity of a patient comprises having a patient-held medical activity input device 22 (e.g. mobile telephone) into which patient specific data associated with the medical activity is input (e.g. administration of a drug(s), measurement of a physical metric such as blood pressure, blood sugar reading), and stored in a patient record, where the patient record is monitored to determine whether a significant event occurs, and an alert is generated in response to the detection of a significant event such as failure to take medicine. The alert may be sent directly to a doctor or other medical professional. A patient specific container (Figs 3-8) may be provided to house the medical activity input device. The patient specific container may be a patient bag adapted to hold patient necessities. The system may also include a patient identity device containing patient display information. Embodiments of the invention are particularly applicable to the remote monitoring of the medical activity of a patient following a care plan for a chronic illness. One application of the invention is the monitoring of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease (COPD).
