Real-time Interactive Telemedicine for Ubiquitous Healthcare: Networks, Services and Scenarios

Abstract

Ubiquitous access to high-level healthcare (u-Health) requires increasing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions. Telemedicine describes the use of ICT for the delivery of medical services. It aims at equal access to medical expertise irrespective of the geographical location of the person in need. New developments in ICT have enabled the transmission of medical images in sufficiently high quality that allows for a reliable diagnosis to be determined by the expert at the receiving site (Pande et al., 2003; Lacroix et al., 2002). Through Telemedicine patients can get access to medical expertise that may not be available at the patients’ site. Networks for Telemedicine enable the integration of distributed medical competence and contribute to the improvement of the quality of medical care, to the costeffective use of medical resources and to quick and reliable decisions. For optimal performance of telemedical applications, the networks and communication tools used must be optimised for medical applications, both with respect to the Quality-of-Service (QoS, a set of parameters characterising the performance of the communication channel per se, such as transmission bandwidth, delay, jitter, data loss, etc.) as well as to the Class-ofService (CoS; a set of terms specifying the medical services offered in the network, like Telesurgery, Telepathology, Telesonography, Tele-Teaching, -Training & -Education, etc.). Using the specially-developed high-end interactive video communication system WinVicos for real-time interactive telemedical applications at a moderate transmission bandwidth of 0.5-1 Mbps OP 2000 has designed and implemented various satellite-based networks for telemedicine. To serve the specific requirements for management of disaster emergencies, the system developed in the framework of the DELTASS project provides logistic and telemedical services for disaster emergencies. OP 2000 has designed and validated various satellite-based interactive telemedical services that support the medical staff of a mobile field hospital within the disaster area by medical experts from a designated Reference