Remote Medical Care Research Articles

The Department of Defense: pioneers of early teledermatology

The United States (US) Department of Defense(DoD) has been a leader in using telecommunicationstechnology to provide remote medical care. The DoDhas been using telemedicine for more than twentyyears to provide medical services to military personneldeployed throughout the world, and has largelyinfluenced the development of teledermatology. Theexperiences of early military teledermatology serviceshave yielded valuable lessons that have been essentialto the creation of successful civilian programs.

Remote Medical Monitoring System in Wireless Sensor Networks

In order to solve the problem of monitoring remote medical care to identify good medical services, a medical service recommendation system based on privacy-preserved reputation scoring is designed. This system enables medical service users to get a reputation score of a Medical Service Provider before engaging in any services. The experiment results show that the proposed scheme is significantly more efficient in batch verification of digital signatures, making it a suitable practical solution to Mobile Health Care applications, while the third solution shows that the system is able to provide reputation scores as well as recommendation while preserving privacy as desired.

Faculty of Prehospital Care, Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh guidance for medical provision for wilderness medicine.

To support leaders and those involved in providing medical care on expeditions in wilderness environments, the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care (FPHC) of The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh convened an expert panel of leading healthcare professionals and expedition providers. The aims of this panel were to: (1) provide guidance to ensure the best possible medical care for patients within the geographical, logistical and human factor constraints of an expedition environment. (2) Give aspiring and established expedition medics a ‘benchmark’ of skills they should meet. (3) Facilitate expedition organisers in selecting the most appropriate medical cover and provider for their planned activity. A system of medical planning is suggested to enable expedition leaders to identify the potential medical risks and their mitigation. It was recognised that the scope of practice for wilderness medicine covers elements of primary healthcare, pre-hospital emergency medicine and preventative medicine. Some unique competencies were also identified. Further to this, the panel recommends the use of a matrix and advisory expedition medic competencies relating to the remoteness and medical threat of the expedition. This advice is aimed at all levels of expedition medic, leader and organiser who may be responsible for delivering or managing the delivery of remote medical care for participants. The expedition medic should be someone equipped with the appropriate medical competencies, scope of practice and capabilities in the expedition environment and need not necessarily be a qualified doctor. In addition to providing guidance regarding the clinical competencies required of the expedition medic, the document provides generic guidance and signposting to the more pertinent aspects of the role of expedition medic.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13728-015-0041-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Semi-automatic remote medicine monitoring system of mobile users

The advances in biological sensors have resulted in rapid development of various remote medical care systems, which enable extended independent living at home and improvement of quality of life for individuals. Now, it is possible for us to monitor not only people’s physical health but also mental health. Considering the incomplete utilization of mental sensors and electronic health record in most Remote medical care systems, we propose a remote medical care system to monitor people’s physical and mental health, with the help of ontology model for with Electronic health record knowledge. In this study, the system architecture will be presented first. Then health solutions about the EHR and emotion (the ontology model of EHR and the emotion detection method) are shown. And finally, some preliminary tests are given out to show this system’s practicability and novelty.

AIWAC: affective interaction through wearable computing and cloud technology

To reduce the heavy burden from rapidly growing demands of healthcare service, wearable computing-assisted healthcare has been proposed for health monitoring and remote medical care. Although the provisioning of healthcare services can be significantly enhanced via wearable-enabled technologies, great challenges arise due to the lack of a human-centric mechanism for affective interaction. In this article, we propose a novel architecture, Affective Interaction through Wearable Computing and Cloud Technology (AIWAC), which includes three components: collaborative data collection via wearable devices, enhanced sentiment analysis and forecasting models, and controllable affective interactions. Based on the proposed architecture, we present our AIWAC testbed, design a practical mechanism for wearable computing-based emotional interaction, and discuss its open problems, which inspire potential research as a new direction.

Teleultrasound: historical perspective and clinical application.

The health care of patients in rural or isolated areas is challenged by the scarcity of local resources, limited patient access to doctors and hospitals, and the lack of specialized professionals. This has led to a new concept in telemedicine: teleultrasonography (or teleultrasound), which permits ultrasonographic diagnoses to be performed remotely. Telemedicine and teleultrasonography are effective in providing diagnostic imaging services to these populations and reduce health care costs by decreasing the number and duration of hospitalizations and reducing unnecessary surgical procedures. This is a narrative review to present the potential clinical applications of teleultrasonography in clinical practice. The results indicate that although barriers persist for implementing teleultrasonography in a more universal and routine way, advances in telecommunications, Internet bandwidth, and the high resolution currently available for portable ultrasonography suggest teleultrasonography applications will continue to expand. Teleultrasound appears to be a valuable addition to remote medical care for isolated populations with limited access to tertiary healthcare facilities and also a useful tool for education and training.

Design and Application of Medical Monitoring System Based on Android

With the development of information and communication technology and the advent of new technologies including wireless communication, smart handheld mobile terminals and wearable medical sensor detection technology, mobile medical care is facing its development opportunity. In this context, our medical monitoring system combines wireless communication technology with wearable medical sensor and designs a remote medical monitoring of multiple physiological parameters. With the support of Android devices, this system offers medical reports retrieval, online diagnosis and health guidelines. It provides users with multi-functional, instant, real-time monitoring and interactive medical services in a high efficient low cost way, which enables remote interrogation and medical care become possible.

NDNC-BAN: Supporting rich media healthcare services via named data networking in cloud-assisted wireless body area networks

Nowadays, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is broadly utilized for health monitoring and remote medical care. When the physiological information collected in WBAN is distributed to cloud computing platform, a new healthcare service mode is enabled by “cloud-assisted WBAN”, where user’s body signals can be stored, processed, managed and analyzed over a long-term period. Though the provisioning of healthcare services is largely enhanced via cloud-enabled technologies, more challenging issues are raised due to the increased user’s requirements on quality of experience (QoE) in terms of user mobility, content delivery latency, and personalized interaction, etc. In order to tackle these challenges, this paper presents various solutions including: (1) a novel integration of WBAN with Long Term Evolution (LTE) to support high user mobility; (2) an efficient scheme to distribute contents by leveraging the emerging named data networking (NDN) technology, to support rich media healthcare content delivery without service interruption while achieving low cost and bandwidth saving; (3) the use of adaptive streaming to adjust suitable content size according to the dynamic bandwidth. The experimental results conducted by OPNET verify the viability of NDN and adaptive streaming to support the healthcare services involving the transmissions of rich media contents between WBAN and internet.

Trust function for multi-physiological signals fusion

This study presents multiple physiological signals collection and analysis processing based on neural network methods and evidence theory using wireless XBee devices for transmission between the host computer and sink sensors node. This study proposes a hospital guardianship and remote care medical system based on a wireless sensor network framework using optimal data fusion based on evidence theory. Because the global population is ageing with a limited number of medical professionals, reduced medical service has resulted from mistaken government medical policies. This research aims to reduce the hardware cost and enhance system efficiency and security using multi-physiology signals fusion. Medical supplies, wisdom, simplification, non-invasiveness and personalized development are the focus in this study. This remote medical care system involves the standard electrocardiogram, blood pressure, pulse, eye-movement measurement module, ZigBee transmission module that combines the signal acquisition card DAQ and LabVIEW system.

Intelligent Remote Medical Care System by Use of a Multiple of Network Protocol Integration

Remote medical care system is a challenge to overcome time and space. In this study, the key is to how to correct the measurement signal is sent to a remote medical center, to allow doctors to carry out an initial diagnosis, and track the history of the disease. The proposed remote system is built on the integration of ecological multiple network protocols. These integrated network protocols, including TCP / IP, ZigBee, of RFID, and Bluetooth signals. This thesis is to use the Arduino hardware in the Mega 2560 as the integrated controller. Through the program drive the TX and RX coding, this study proposes a very efficient way to complete a multi-protocol integration of intelligent control. Finally, the simulation of remote medical devices to measure a patient's physical condition, including ECG, blood oxygen concentration, blood pressure and respiratory rate, and through Wi-Fi network traffic control, do the use of an integrated, intelligent home appliances and ZigBee.

Evaluation of Tele-ultrasound as a Tool in Remote Diagnosis and Clinical Management at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and the McMurdo Research Station

Abstract Background: A large number of Antarctic stations do not utilize ultrasound for medical care. Regular use of ultrasound imaging at South Pole and McMurdo Stations first began in October 2002. To date, there has been no evaluation of medical events requiring ultrasound examination from this remote environment. Additionally, the importance of tele-ultrasound for clinical management in Antarctica has not yet been assessed. We therefore conducted a retrospective analysis of all ultrasound exams performed at South Pole and McMurdo Stations between October 2002 and October 2003. Radiology reports and patient charts were reviewed for pre- and post-ultrasound diagnosis and treatment. Sixty-six ultrasound exams were conducted on 49 patients. Of the exams, 94.0% were interpreted by the store-and-forward method, whereas 6.0% were interpreted in "real-time" format. Abdominal, genitourinary, and gynecology ultrasound exams accounted for 63.6% of exams. Ultrasound examination prevented an intercontinental aeromedical evacuation in 25.8% of cases, and had a significant effect on the diagnosis and management of illness in patients at South Pole and McMurdo research stations. These findings indicate that diagnostic ultrasound has significant benefits for medical care at Antarctic stations and that tele-ultrasound is a valuable addition to remote medical care for isolated populations with limited access to tertiary-healthcare facilities.

IT Systems of Remote Medical Care

Abstract Intensive development of medical sciences and information technology, and their cooperation offers new opportunities and sets course of action for complex healthcare and human life protection. With the development of equipment capabilities, the emergence of new sensors and advancement of information technology, the emergence of applications supporting life and health protection, ensuring both the healthcare and human protection against various threats, can be observed. Especially in an aging society a huge demand for this type of products and services is visible, and that niche in the market is still not filled. In this paper several existing systems of remote medical care are analyzed and a concept of the constructed system of own authorship is presented.

Based on ZigBee Technology Remote Health Care System Design and Research

In order to achieve the patient seeking for medical treatment, self-care at home and remote diagnosis, a kind of remote medical care system is researched, which combines with ZigBee, EDGE, Ethernet and ARM9 embedded Linux operation system. The research consists of monitor terminal nodes and home gateway nodes. The monitor terminal nodes are also ZigBee sensor nodes, which can gather every kind of information of the patient and implement artificial alarm and gate control switch etc., The monitor terminal nodes and gate nodes use 802.15.4/ZigBee wireless sensor networks. Based on the basic function of the gateway, and combining with ARM9 Linux systems, ZigBee technology and EDGE communications it supports wired and wireless information transmission. The scheme can meet the needs of the real-time, continuous, prolonged care to patients’ physiological information, it can be applied to Medical Surveillance and sports monitoring.

Cross-Border Medical Care and Telemedicine

Globalization is making cross-border medical care a reality. Cross-border medical care has three aspects: information, patients, and practitioners. The outsourcing of diagnostic imaging via communication lines has begun, and information on treatment poised to cross borders. However, the latter possibility raises issues concerning legal medical qualifications. Japanese legislation bans medical practice by persons not licensed by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare recently issued a bulletin regarding the medical activities of foreign licensed physicians and an interpretation of Article 17 of the Medical Practitioner’s Act, permitting foreign licensed physicians to provide medical care in the event of disasters. European countries have established a system for mutual recognition of national medical licenses, and cross-border medical care has achieved a solid foothold there. Based on these societal factors, Japan must revise its legal systems or conclude bilateral medical license recognition agreements. This paper describes the various difficulties and obstacles confronting Japan as it modifies its legal systems to achieve cross-border remote medical care and medical tourism and proposes some concrete solutions.

A Distortion-Aware Intelligent Context Aggregation Agent for Smart Environments

CPSs are mainly applied to time and safety-critical remote programmable services, including remote automotive care and medical care. Two of the major design issues of the CPSs are optimality and predictability of battery lifetime of real-time wireless sensor networks (RT-WSNs). In this work, we have proposed ICAA to solve the first issue by maximizing the battery life of RT WSNs. We will focus on the second issue next. Because some safety-critical applications, such as medical care services, require that the network lifetime of RT-WSNs should be predictable, our goal is to minimize the distortion of RT-WSNs while guaranteeing their minimum network lifetime.

The development of module for measurement and wireless communication of SpO2/PPG signals

In this paper, the module for measuring SpO2 and PPG(Photo Plethysmo Graphy) signal of human body and the module for wireless communication of these bio-signals to PC were developed. The program was developed to display transmitted SpO2 and PPG signal by various type data and graph without information loss during a emergency transfer. This syatem can be utilized as appropriate for remote medical care and a new market is expected. to be created according to revision of medical law.

輝度と色度差を考慮した複数の色変換マトリクスを用いたディスプレイにおける正確な色変換方式

In recent years, many specific fields require accurate color reproduction for displays. Such fields are, for example, remote medical care, industrial design, electronic commerce, digital archives and color proofing of printed materials. Changes in chromaticity of the primary colors against the luminance level cause inaccurate color reproduction. This is a common problem in liquid crystal displays (LCDs). In this paper, we propose a method for correcting the phenomenon by using many colors conversion matrices made on the basis of the chromaticity shift of primary colors and luminance levels in the measured profile data of an LCD. Accurate color conversion was performed using the matrices, and the effectiveness of the conversion technique was confirmed. The application of the method enables reproduction of colors with accuracy three times as good as the Shaper Matrix Model. Moreover, it was achieved with a fewer matrices than that of the adaptive matrix color conversion.

Design, field experiments and evaluation of a web-based remote medical care support system

In this research, we propose and develop a remote medical care system to support nurses, care managers and care helpers during their work. The proposed system has three functions: a multipoint communication function using video images and voice, vital signs data auto-uploading and referencing function, and a drip infusion monitoring function. In this paper, we present the proposed remote medical care support system and report the field experiment results using the system in a medical care support centre. The experimental results show that the proposed system has a good performance.

Characteristics of radio medical advice to fishing vessels in Scottish coastal waters

We examined the emergencies arising on fishing vessels in Scottish Coastal Waters which required ship-to-shore radio medical advice. All calls to the service were identified for the 12-month period from August 2005. A total of 186 calls were received; 38% of calls were from fishing vessels. During the study period 53% of the calls were trauma-related, while 47% were medical emergencies. Our data suggest that there are many fishermen working offshore with chronic medical conditions. Overall, 85% of calls from fishing vessels resulted in evacuation as the outcome. Improved occupational health screening, compliance with health and safety legislation, and an evidence-based approach to remote medical care may improve seafarer self-care and reduce emergency evacuations.

Design, field experiments and evaluation of a web-based remote medical care support system

In this research, we propose and develop a remote medical care system to support nurses, care managers and care helpers during their work. The proposed system has three functions: a multipoint communication function using video images and voice, vital signs data auto-uploading and referencing function, and a drip infusion monitoring function. In this paper, we present the proposed remote medical care support system and report the field experiment results using the system in a medical care support centre. The experimental results show that the proposed system has a good performance.