Home Care Artificial Heart Monitoring System via Internet

Abstract

The availability of a remote management system, which provides both physiological-related information about the patient and device-related information about the implanted device, would be helpful during in vivo experiments or clinical trials involving artificial heart implantation. In order to be able to monitor the course of the in vivo experiment continuously regardless of the patient's location, an internet-based remote monitoring system was developed, which can monitor physiological-related information such as pressure (AoP, LAP, RAP, PAP) and flow data, as well as device-related information such as current, direction and pump operating conditions. The home care artificial heart monitoring system which we developed consists of four main components, which are the transcutaneous information transmission system (TITS), local monitoring station (LMS), data server station (DSS), and client monitoring station (CMS). The device-related information and physiological-related information can be transmitted in real time from a patient in a remote non-clinical environment to the specialist situated in a clinic depending on the current capabilities and availability of the internet. The local monitoring station situated at the remote site is composed of a data acquisition and preprocessing unit connected to a computer via its RS-232 port, and which communicate using a Java-based client-server architecture. The remote monitoring system so developed was used during an in vivo experiment of the artificial heart implantation for 2 months and performed successfully according to design specifications.