A Telemedicine System for Remote Health and Activity Monitoring for the Elderly

Abstract

The aging population is placing increasing pressure on healthcare services around the world. Telemedicine, which provides medical information or healthcare services at a distance using telecommunication technologies, is of growing interest to governments and healthcare providers. Existing telemedicine systems are primarily for medical information sharing and consultation with no teleoperation capabilities for activity monitoring. Moreover, the equipment of most systems available to support older patients to stay in their living environment must be tied to a fixed location, which severely limits their feasibility and applicability. In this paper, a new telemedicine structure is introduced for regular and ad hoc health monitoring services. In particular, it aims at scenarios where frequent interactive contacts between patients and professionals are required. This system incorporates several different networking technologies that work harmoniously to facilitate data communication, which potentially have a profound impact on the method of delivering medical service remotely. Another unique characteristic of the developed system is its capabilities of adaptation to network conditions, such as network congestion and availability of bandwidth. The concept of the proposed structure is validated using a laboratory-based test platform with some pilot experiments. Preliminary results demonstrate its feasibility for remote health monitoring services of the elderly. The potential benefits of the system are also presented.

Exploring the impact of patient, physician and technology factors on patient video consultation satisfaction

“… 1 Using video technology in clinical care has reduced geographical barriers, travel costs and often waiting times. 2 , 3 While the uptake of telemedicine was generally slow due to a lack of data for the evaluation and information about the quality of video-mediated consultations and treatment, 1 , 3 the COVID-19 pandemic prompted large-scale implementation of telemedicine, including video consultations (VCs). 4 VCs are remote meetings that enable ‘real-time’ counselling by a healthcare provider via computer, tablet or smartphone.…”

A Secure and Synthesis Tele-Ophthalmology System

“…In the past decade, many researchers [1][2][3][4][5] have studied telemedicine systems that are essentially categorized into two different technical approaches: (a) offline store-and-forward systems that capture medical data and then forward them to doctors via e-mail or file; and (b) online systems that provide real-time consultation in terms of sampling medical data and consultation. Telemedicine is increasingly being deployed all over the world, and is applied to quite varied medical subdisciplines, such as home monitoring for the elderly, 6 home monitoring for patients who have had shoulder replacement surgery, 7 cooperative consultation for stomatological patients, 8 emergency care for critically ill patients, 9 assessment for patients with sleep apnea, 10 and even healthcare in prisons. 11 In other research, [12][13][14] based on a large number of experiments, the authors showed that telemedicine based on digital images can provide accurate and reliable consultation for retinopathy patients, and concluded that telemedicine was a valid solution for ophthalmology.…”

Design and real life deployment of a pervasive monitoring system for dementia patients

“…Technologies such as indoor location [1], activity monitoring [2], and wearable systems [8] are increasingly being presented and tested in the context of such applications. In [6] a survey of using new technology to support elderly people is presented and in [7] research for developing systems to enhance the quality of life of Alzheimer patients is described .…”