or the direct result of a failure in the oxygen supply accordingly it is important for the healthcare professional to be able to determine rapidly when a potentially hazardous medical condition is determined in order to take prompt remedial action the present invention is designed specifically to monitor the medical equipment directly to determine its operational characteristics within certain predetermined parameters operational characteristics outside these parameters are sensed as an alarm condition and this alarm condition is automatically transmitted over a telephone line to a remote location illustrative of the need for this type of monitoring capability is the well known fact that commercially available oxygen concentrator equipment undergoes a gradual degradation in its performance characteristics over time in particular the inlet filter beds of the oxygen concentrator become occluded with dust during operation so that there is a long term decline in the percentage of oxygen delivered to the patient regrettably this decline is so slow that no perceptible change is apparent in the patient until the patient is in noticeable distress unfortunately the oxygen concentrator continues to deliver a flow of what appears to be oxygen enriched gas but that is essentially room air with little or no oxygen enrichment without any indication of equipment failure it is presently unknown how many patients have died prematurely as a result of this type of equipment failure another issue of growing significance is the misuse of oxygen whether too little is delivered to the patient as discussed above or whether too much oxygen is being delivered to the patient ordinarily one thinks of oxygen as a very beneficial although benign gas so that 34 the more oxygen the patient received the better 34 unfortunately there is a certain class of respiratory care patient for whom extra oxygen is a lethal.