As each baby develops, its Angel will track the progress it makes. Paediatric visits happen at around two weeks and six weeks. The baby's height and weight will be measured and it will be immunised against common childhood diseases. Its Angel will take note of all this. Some of the information will have to be keyed in manually from a desktop or a handheld computer, or scanned in from handwritten notes, but all lab data will be transferred electronically.
Parents can add additional observations about minor illnesses or peculiar behaviours.
By the time the children are two or three years old, their Angels will contain a large amount of information. And just like a paediatrician, they will be able to use this data to flag up any potential problems. Preliminary work by one of Szolovits's graduate students, for example, has already shown that a computer can do just as well as a doctor at picking up growth abnormalities. Here's how an Angel might look after her. Having been told about Christa's condition, her Angel downloads pages of information on what to expect, how to manage the illness and what some of the latest research is.