[It wasn't so many years ago that your temperature and pulse were virtually the only aspects of your health you could check without paying a visit to the doctor. (Of course, it was always possible to calculate how tragically overweight you were in the privacy of your own home.) But a proliferation of do-it-yourself health-care products has changed all that, transforming millions of homes into virtual laboratories. Using largely inexpensive kits bought over the counter at pharmacies, consumers can now test themselves for glucose level, blood in the stool, urinary tract infections, blood pressure, pregnancy and, in an imminent new option, cholesterol level.] There's a very important shift of medical technology out of the hospital and into the home, ... What's happening is people are beginning to realize that lay people not only are recipients of health care but they can become providers. Tom Ferguson