Secure telemedicine system for home health care

This thesis describes a low-cost telemedicine system that provides home based patient care by linking patients with skilled nurses at the home care agency. The system employs compact vital signs sensors and a two-way real-time video conference over telephone lines. It stores the patient\u27s medical records, still images and enforces clinical pathways during the televisits. Physicians, paramedics, and nurses can then have access to these records from anywhere, securely, through a Web browser.;This document discusses the underlying technologies, the features implemented in the prototype, and the methodologies used in developing the software. The prototype uses the Enterprise Java Bean [EJB] architecture and emphasizes security and scalability. Preliminary experience of its use is presented. A performance analysis of the system\u27s behavior if it were scaled up has also been done

The technological growth in eHealth services

The infusion of information communication technology (ICT) into health services is emerging as an active area of research. It has several advantages but perhaps the most important one is providing medical benefits to one and all irrespective of geographic boundaries in a cost effective manner, providing global expertise and holistic services, in a time bound manner. This paper provides a systematic review of technological growth in eHealth services. The present study reviews and analyzes the role of four important technologies, namely, satellite, internet, mobile, and cloud for providing health services.Web of Scienceart. no. 89417

A Review on Provisioning Quality of Service of Wireless Telemedicine for E-Health Services

In general, on-line medical consultation reduces time required for medical consultation induces improvement in the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. All major types of current e-health applications such as ECG, X-ray, video, diagnosis images and other common applications have been included in the scope of the study. In addition, the provision of Quality of Service (QoS) for the application of specific healthcare services in e-health, the scheme of priority for e-health services and the support of QoS in wireless networks and techniques or methods for IEEE 802.11 to guarantee the provision of QoS has also been assessed. In e-health, medical services in remote locations such as rural healthcare centers, ambulances, ships as well as home healthcare services can be supported through the applications of e-health services such as medical databases, electronic health records and the routing of text, audio, video and images. Given this, an adaptive resource allocation for a wireless network with multiple service types and multiple priorities have been proposed. For the provision of an acceptable QoS level to users of e-health services, prioritization is an important criterion in a multi-traffic network. The requirement for QoS provisioning in wireless broadband medical networks have paved the pathway for bandwidth requirements and the real-time or live transmission of medical applications. From the study, good performance of the proposed scheme has been validated by the results obtained. The proposed wireless network is capable of handling medical applications for both normal and life-threatening conditions as characterized by the level of emergencies. In addition, the bandwidth allocation and admission control algorithm for IEEE 802.16- based design specifically for wireless telemedicine/e-health services have also been presented in the study. It has been concluded that under busy traffic conditions, the proposed architecture can used as a feasible and reliable infrastructure network for telemedicine

Usability and Reliability of Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) Module 4 Remote Administration

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social interaction, impairments in communication, and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) Module 4 is a semi-structured diagnostic assessment tool designed for verbally fluent adolescents and adults with possible ASD. Due to a lack of available clinical expertise, it can be difficult for adults to receive an accurate ASD diagnostic assessment, especially those residing in rural areas. An ADOS teleassessment system was developed using the Versatile and Integrated System for Telerehabilitation (VISYTER). VISYTER consists of computer stations at the client site and clinician site, and a web portal server for managing and coordinating all elements of the assessment process. Clinician usability and fidelity to standard, face-to-face administration, was assessed. After improvements to the system were made, a study was conducted to determine the reliability of the ADOS module 4 administrations delivered remotely. Twenty-three adults with an ASD diagnosis participated in a within-subject crossover design study in which both a remote and face-to-face ADOS were administered. Weighted kappa was calculated for all 31 ADOS items. There was substantial agreement on 11 items and almost perfect or perfect agreement on 10 items. Intraclass correlations (ICCs) were calculated for algorithm subtotals. ICCs were greater than .75 for three out of four subtotals. There was substantial agreement on ADOS classification (i.e., diagnosis) between assessments delivered face-to-face versus assessments delivered remotely, Po=83%; ĸ =.772, ICC=.92. Non-agreement may have been due to outside factors or practice effect despite a washout period. Finally, usability and satisfaction of the remote assessment system was evaluated from the participants’ perspectives. Participant satisfaction with the remote ADOS delivery system was high. The results of these studies demonstrate that an ASD assessment designed to be delivered face-to-face can be reliably administered remotely using an integrated web-based system

A Novel Secure Patient Data Transmission through Wireless Body Area Network: Health Tele-Monitoring

The security of sensitive data obtained from a patient has not been implemented properly because of energy issues of sensor nodes in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and constrained resources such as computational power and low battery life. The main of this paper is to enhance the security level of data transmission between patient and health service provider by considering the availability of energy at sensor nodes. The proposed system consists of a hybrid Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which provides simple, fast and high cryptographic strength of data security. ECC is used for securing AES encryption keys, and AES algorithm is used for encrypting/decrypting text. A scenario where sensor nodes are continuously supplied energy from solar power is considered and based upon the energy availability; respective encryption technique is implemented. The result shows that the proposed EEHEE algorithm increases the encryption of the data file by more than 19% compared to the State of Art's solution. The proposed EEHEE system is 11% faster in encrypting data file and reduces the energy consumption by 34 % compared to the current best solution.  The proposed system concentrates on reducing the energy consumption in WBAN and increasing cryptographic strength to the system by using the hybrid symmetric and asymmetric algorithm. Thus, this study provides an efficient scheme to enhance security for real-time data transmission in telemedicine

Telehealth Handbook

The Centre for Telehealth (CT@M) Handbook is a resource for the growing number of people working in the field of telehealth, with a particular focus on applications in the area of mental health and addictions. It is intended to provide Site Coordinators and others with practical information, guidelines, and forms for clinical and evaluation purposes

A framework for evaluating telemedicine-based healthcare inequality reduction in Ethiopia : a grounded theory approach

Text in EnglishTelehealth makes healthcare services accessible by underserved and resource-constrained rural communities of developing countries such as Ethiopia. However, the limitation of frameworks on telemedicine-based healthcare inequality reduction is a challenge for developing countries. In Ethiopia there are four telemedicine projects; however, there is no evidence that any of these projects have been evaluated by considering contextual issues. This academic research explored telehealth practices in Ethiopia with the aim of developing a comprehensive telehealth evaluation framework for developing countries. Such a conceptual framework could be used to inform health institutes and governmental policy makers and in so doing create a vehicle for the implementation of improved health practices in Ethiopia. A grounded theory approach is used to qualitatively explore the usefulness of telemedicine practices in Ethiopia, in mitigating healthcare inequality. Grounded theory makes use of emerging insights in order to contribute to new knowledge. From the inductive analysis of the study, themes such as barrier removal, service quality, synergetic effect, localization, technical setup, resource utilization and managerial readiness emerged to formulate a framework for evaluating telemedicine-based healthcare inequality reduction in the context of developing countries like Ethiopia. This study contributes to the understanding of the question of how telemedicine practices can be evaluated, to support the healthcare service and reduce the healthcare inequalities in resource constrained communities in Ethiopia. Moreover, the framework could be used during evaluation of telemedicine-based healthcare inequality reduction in the context of developing countries like Ethiopia.School of ComputingPh.D. (Information Systems