Emergency TeleOrthoPaedics m-health system for wireless communication links

Abstract

This paper focuses on the design and implementation of an Emergency TeleOrthoPaedics System (ETOPS). The proposed system, which integrates state-of-the-art devices with Internet and wireless telecommunication networks, is a useful tool for doctors, when they require a second opinion during the confrontation of mainly emergency orthopaedics incidents. Doctors can exchange securely medical images and video as well as other important data, and thus perform remote consultations, fast and accurately using a user friendly interface, via a reliable and secure telemedicine system of low cost. The quality of the transmitted compressed (JPEG2000) images was measured using different metrics. The results have shown that all metrics were within acceptable limits. The performance of the system was evaluated successfully under different wireless communication links based on real data.

Adaptive Bandwidth Reservation and Scheduling for Efficient Wireless Telemedicine Traffic Transmission

“…We set a strict upper bound of just one channel frame (75 ms; this choice is explained in Section V) for the transmission delay of an ECG packet. We consider that a typical X-ray file size is 200 kB [6], [35] and that the aggregate X-ray file arrivals are Poisson distributed with mean λ X files/frame. Medical image files have sizes that range between 15 and 20 kB/image [7] and are Poisson distributed with mean λ I files/frame.…”

“…Medical image files have sizes that range between 15 and 20 kB/image [7] and are Poisson distributed with mean λ I files/frame. The upper bound for the transmission delay of an X-ray file is set to 1 min (the average download time needed for it in [35]), and the upper bound for the transmission delay of an image is set to 5 s. A discussion on the strictness of these upper bounds will be made in Section V. Because H.263 is still the most widely used video-encoding scheme for telemedicine video, we use, in our simulations, real H.263 videoconference traces from [3] and [21] with a mean bit rate of 91 Kb/s, a peak rate of 500 Kb/s, and a standard deviation of 32.7 Kb/s. Due to the need for very high-quality telemedicine video, the maximum allowed video-packet-dropping probability is set to 0.01% [38].…”

“…Mobile health care (M-health; "mobile computing, medical sensor, and communication technologies for health care" [4]) is a new paradigm that brings together the evolution of emerging wireless communications and network technologies with the concept of "connected health care" anytime and anywhere. Various M-health studies have been conducted within the last few years on very significant aspects of public health [4]- [10], [13], [28], [30]- [35]. In many of these studies, the efficient use of the cellular network resources was of paramount importance for the correct and rapid transmission of all types of telemedicine traffic (video, audio, and data), particularly because only a limited bandwidth could be devoted to the transmission of this very urgent and crucial, for the patients' life, type of traffic (e.g., 40-60 Kb/s in [30], 50-300 Kb/s in [33], 360 Kb/s in [34], and less than 300 Kb/s (downlink) in [35] due to the limitations in the cellular system used in each country and depending on the type of telemedicine traffic transmitted in each study).…”

“…Various M-health studies have been conducted within the last few years on very significant aspects of public health [4]- [10], [13], [28], [30]- [35]. In many of these studies, the efficient use of the cellular network resources was of paramount importance for the correct and rapid transmission of all types of telemedicine traffic (video, audio, and data), particularly because only a limited bandwidth could be devoted to the transmission of this very urgent and crucial, for the patients' life, type of traffic (e.g., 40-60 Kb/s in [30], 50-300 Kb/s in [33], 360 Kb/s in [34], and less than 300 Kb/s (downlink) in [35] due to the limitations in the cellular system used in each country and depending on the type of telemedicine traffic transmitted in each study). In [31], the authors suggest that the problem of limited bandwidth in an emergency situation, where the number of patients being transferred in ambulances to the hospital is overwhelming, can only be handled by transmitting vital signs' data to the hospital in a reduced and packed format over a Third-Generation (3G) cellular network.…”

Scheduling for telemedicine traffic transmission over WLANs

“…In addition to ambulance vehicles, it is also of critical importance for the provision of health care services at understaffed areas like ships, trains, airplanes, as well as home monitoring [2]. Mobile healthcare (M-health) is a new paradigm that brings together the evolution of emerging wireless communications and network technologies with the concept of "connected healthcare" anytime and anywhere, for a large variety of medical purposes [3][4][5][6][7]. To the best of our knowledge, the problem of guaranteeing telemedicine QoS over WLANs has rarely been addressed in the relevant literature; exceptions include some works which are discussed in Section 2.…”