Over the past two years, AT&T has jumped in on the growing telehealth trend with its Remote Patient Monitoring kit. The service provides patients with various Bluetooth-enabled medical devices — such as blood pressure cuffs and smart scales — that send health data along to their health care providers. Patients can manage all their data measurements on an AT&T-provided tablet, as well as get coaching or advice from their doctors. It's meant to help caregivers monitor patients with chronic conditions in between clinic visits.

Now, after monitoring more than 1,000 patients with this service, AT&T is upgrading its Remote Patient Monitoring Kit by adding a "Bring Your Own Device" feature. Right now, patients have to use a tablet provided by AT&T to keep up with all their data. The BYOD option allows patients to swap in a tablet of their choice. Using the Remote Patient Monitoring app, patients can organize all the health data they've gathered and send it along to a cloud-based caregiver portal. Users can also log in details about how they're feeling or their personalized care plan.

Telehealth and remote patient monitoring have become attractive trends for the medical community these days. The recent boom of internet-connected medical devices are being used to connect doctors and patients outside of the physician's office. It's been shown to reduce readmissions to the hospital and lower health care costs. With remote patient monitoring, however, patients must be actively gathering their health data in order for these systems to work.