A feasibility study for the provision of electronic healthcare tools and services in areas of Greece, Cyprus and Italy

Background: Through this paper, we present the initial steps for the creation of an integrated platform for the provision of a series of eHealth tools and services to both citizens and travelers in isolated areas of thesoutheast Mediterranean, and on board ships travelling across it. The platform was created through an INTERREG IIIB ARCHIMED project called INTERMED. Methods: The support of primary healthcare, home care and the continuous education of physicians are the three major issues that the proposed platform is trying to facilitate. The proposed system is based on state-of-the-art telemedicine systems and is able to provide the following healthcare services: i) Telecollaboration and teleconsultation services between remotely located healthcare providers, ii) telemedicine services in emergencies, iii) home telecare services for "at risk" citizens such as the elderly and patients with chronic diseases, and iv) eLearning services for the continuous training through seminars of both healthcare personnel (physicians, nurses etc) and persons supporting "at risk" citizens. These systems support data transmission over simple phone lines, internet connections, integrated services digital network/digital subscriber lines, satellite links, mobile networks (GPRS/3G), and wireless local area networks. The data corresponds, among others, to voice, vital biosignals, still medical images, video, and data used by eLearning applications. The proposed platform comprises several systems, each supporting different services. These were integrated using a common data storage and exchange scheme in order to achieve system interoperability in terms of software, language and national characteristics. Results: The platform has been installed and evaluated in different rural and urban sites in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. The evaluation was mainly related to technical issues and user satisfaction. The selected sites are, among others, rural health centers, ambulances, homes of "at-risk" citizens, and a ferry. Conclusions: The results proved the functionality and utilization of the platform in various rural places in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. However, further actions are needed to enable the local healthcare systems and the different population groups to be familiarized with, and use in their everyday lives, mature technological solutions for the provision of healthcare services

Emergency TeleOrthoPaedics m-health system for wireless communication links

For the first time, a complete wireless and mobile emergency TeleOrthoPaedics system with field trials and expert opinion is presented. The system enables doctors in a remote area to obtain a second opinion from doctors in the hospital using secured wireless telecommunication networks. Doctors can exchange securely medical images and video as well as other important data, and thus perform remote consultations, fast and accurately using a user friendly interface, via a reliable and secure telemedicine system of low cost. The quality of the transmitted compressed (JPEG2000) images was measured using different metrics and doctors opinions. The results have shown that all metrics were within acceptable limits. The performance of the system was evaluated successfully under different wireless communication links based on real data

Using HSPA to improve the telemedical links on a moving ambulance

As the demand for faster and more effective health care increases, there is a growing need to establish mobile, high-speed communications between a moving ambulance and a consultation point (usually a hospital). The recent addition of HSPA (HSDPA and HSUPA) into the UMTS suite provides higher bandwidth and reduced delays, making this choice ideal for real-time telemedical applications. In this paper, we will describe a set of scenarios that took place in a typical large city area, along with their equivalent results: a moving ambulance was linked with a consultation station using HSPA and several videoconferencing sessions were initiated. Best-case, worst-case and average scenarios were recorded. Furthermore, in areas where the UMTS reception was marginal, a repeater was placed on top of the vehicle to boost up the signal power and thus maintain the higher bandwidth. Finally, treating doctors were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of this system’s outputs, based on a variety of objective and subjective criteria

Mobile consultant: Combining total mobility with constant access

Minimizing the time required for a medical consultant to offer his/her expert opinion, can be viewed as a life-saving procedure. We have designed and tested an integrated system that will allow a medical consultant to freely move either within, or outside the hospital, while still maintaining constant contact with the patients via videoconferencing and high-resolution imaging. The above system is explained in this paper, along with its advantages and its potential limitations. Conclusively, we demonstrate that such a system further increases the mobility of the medical consultant, while improving the healthcare service

Mobile consultant: Combining total mobility with constant access

Minimizing the time required for a medical consultant to offer his/her expert opinion, can be viewed as a life-saving procedure. We have designed and tested an integrated system that will allow a medical consultant to freely move either within, or outside the hospital, while still maintaining constant contact with the patients via videoconferencing and high-resolution imaging. The above system is explained in this paper, along with its advantages and its potential limitations. Conclusively, we demonstrate that such a system further increases the mobility of the medical consultant, while improving the healthcare service

Remotely Supported Prehospital Ultrasound : Real-time Communication for Diagnosis in Remote and Rural Communities

Acknowledgments The research team would like to thank all of our volunteers and reviewers for their time and efforts during this study. The research was funded by Highlands & Islands Enterprise, UK Technology Strategy Board’s Space and Life Sciences Catapult, University of Aberdeen’s dot.rural Digital Economy Hub and TAQA Bratani.Publisher PD

Ubiquitous Computing for Remote Cardiac Patient Monitoring: A Survey

New wireless technologies, such as wireless LAN and sensor networks, for telecardiology purposes give new possibilities for monitoring vital parameters with wearable biomedical sensors, and give patients the freedom to be mobile and still be under continuous monitoring and thereby better quality of patient care. This paper will detail the architecture and quality-of-service (QoS) characteristics in integrated wireless telecardiology platforms. It will also discuss the current promising hardware/software platforms for wireless cardiac monitoring. The design methodology and challenges are provided for realistic implementation

Design And Development Of A Secure Wireless System Using Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum [TK5103.2. A148 2007 f rb].

Dalam penyelidikan ini, satu sistem tanpa wayar automasi untuk menghantar data yang bersertakan kod PN secara automatik kepada pihak berkuasa berkenaan telah dibangunkan. In this research, an automated wireless system that sends the data accompanied with PN code automatically to the concerned authorities has been developed

An efficient emergency, healthcare, and medical information system

Many of the current Malaysian medical information and emergency systems are still paper-based and stand alone systems that do not fully utilize the Internet, multimedia, wireless and real time technologies. This research work focuses on developing an integrated Emergency, Healthcare, and Medical Information System (IEHMS) that can overcome many of the problems in the current systems. The main aim of this work is to incorporate the real-time and mobility technologies with medical emergency systems. Our proposed system can offer: SMS, MMS, live audio and video coverage. A prototype for the proposed system is implemented using open source tools