Using handheld pocket computers in a wireless telemedicine system

Objectives: To see if senior emergency nurse practitioners can provide support to inexperienced ones in a Minor Injuries Unit by using a wireless LAN system of telemedicine transmitting images to a PDA when they were on duty. In addition, whether such a system could be sufficiently accurate to make clinical diagnoses with a high level of diagnostic confidence. This would permit an overall lower grade of nurse to be employed to manage most of the cases as they arrive with a proportionate lowering of costs. Methods: The wireless LAN equipment could roam in the Minor Injuries Unit and the experienced emergency Nurse practitioners could be at home, shopping or even at a considerable distance from the centre. Thirty pictorial images of patients who had been sent to the Review Clinic were transmitted to a PDA various distances of one to sixteen miles from the centre. Two senior emergency nurse practitioners viewed the images and opined on the diagnosis, their degree of confidence in the diagnosis and their opinion of the quality of the image. Results: the images of patients were sharp, clear, and of diagnostic quality. The image quality was only uncertain, as was the level of confidence of the diagnosis if the patient was very dark skinned. Conclusions: The wireless LAN system works with a remote PDA in this clinical situation. However there are question marks over the availability of enough experienced emergency nurse practitioners to staff a service that provides senior cover for longer parts of the day and at weekends

Applications of medical wireless LAN systems (MedLAN)

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Medical Marketing. The definitive publisher-authenticated version "Konstantinos A. Banitsas, R.S.H. Istepanian, Sapal Tachakra. Applications of medical Wireless LAN systems (MedLAN). Journal of Medical Marketing, Volume 2, Number 2, 1 January 2002 , pp. 136-142(7)" is available online at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pal/jomm/2002/00000002/00000002/art00008.In this paper the Wireless LAN (WLAN) networking principals are presented along with some of the implementation scenarios dedicated for Accidents and Emergencies wards. Preliminary simulation results of the MedLAN concept are also presented together with ongoing and future work in this area

Health and mobility: Current status and future paradigms

The movement of telemedicine to the wireless and mobile Internetable applications is imminent in the next few years. This migration from the desktop platforms to the wireless and mobile configurations will have significant impact on the future health care delivery system and their globalisation. The recent telecommunications and biomedical computing advances will significantly enhance the current methodologies of telemedicine and telecare systems. This editorial will present some of the evolutionary issues and important aspects that have to be considered in the developing technologies for the next generation of Internet and Third Generation of Mobile Systems (3G), geared for future telemedical applications. These will provide new dimensions to existing medical services and areas of outreach, that are not possible in the current generation and will have tremendous impact on how the health care delivery will be shaped for the 21 Century

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

Performance of a wireless telemedicine system in a hospital accident and emergency department

The article version is the pre-edited accepted version of the paper which is entitled: Performance of a wireless telemedicine system: MedLANThis paper validates a medical videoconferencing system previously developed, called MedLAN. Besides the positive comments that medical consultants might have regarding a wireless videoconferencing system designed for use inside the A&E wards, a methodically and exhaustive clinical testing of such a system must take place before adopting such technology in a wider scale. Clinical testing using a wide number of patients, modalities and a number of medical consultants proved that the suggested system could operate effectively under most conditions and it would be beneficiary to the patients. After this clinical evaluation, a number of hospitals showed interest on installing such a system in their A&E wards

Open-Source Telemedicine Platform for Wireless Medical Video Communication

An m-health system for real-time wireless communication of medical video based on open-source software is presented. The objective is to deliver a low-cost telemedicine platform which will allow for reliable remote diagnosis m-health applications such as emergency incidents, mass population screening, and medical education purposes. The performance of the proposed system is demonstrated using five atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound videos. The videos are encoded at the clinically acquired resolution, in addition to lower, QCIF, and CIF resolutions, at different bitrates, and four different encoding structures. Commercially available wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3.5G high-speed packet access (HSPA) wireless channels are used to validate the developed platform. Objective video quality assessment is based on PSNR ratings, following calibration using the variable frame delay (VFD) algorithm that removes temporal mismatch between original and received videos. Clinical evaluation is based on atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound video assessment protocol. Experimental results show that adequate diagnostic quality wireless medical video communications are realized using the designed telemedicine platform. HSPA cellular networks provide for ultrasound video transmission at the acquired resolution, while VFD algorithm utilization bridges objective and subjective ratings

Using digital watermarking to enhance security in wireless medical image transmission

This is the published version of the article. Copyright 2010 Mary Ann Liebert Inc.During the last few years, wireless networks have been increasingly used both inside hospitals and in patients’ homes to transmit medical information. In general, wireless networks suffer from decreased security. However, digital watermarking can be used to secure medical information. In this study, we focused on combining wireless transmission and digital watermarking technologies to better secure the transmission of medical images within and outside the hospital. Methods: We utilized an integrated system comprising the wireless network and the digital watermarking module to conduct a series of tests. Results: The test results were evaluated by medical consultants. They concluded that the images suffered no visible quality degradation and maintained their diagnostic integrity. Discussion: The proposed integrated system presented reasonable stability, and its performance was comparable to that of a fixed network. This system can enhance security during the transmission of medical images through a wireless channel.The General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Hellenic Ministry of Development and the British Council