%0 Journal Article
%T Monitoring Heart Disease and Diabetes with Mobile Internet Communications
%A David Mulvaney
%A Bryan Woodward
%A Sekharjit Datta
%A Paul Harvey
%A Anoop Vyas
%A Bhaskar Thakker
%A Omar Farooq
%A Robert Istepanian
%J International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/195970
%X A telemedicine system is described for monitoring vital signs and general health indicators of patients with cardiac and diabetic conditions. Telemetry from wireless sensors and readings from other instruments are combined into a comprehensive set of measured patient parameters. Using a combination of mobile device applications and web browser, the data can be stored, accessed, and displayed using mobile internet communications to the central server. As an extra layer of security in the data transmission, information embedded in the data is used in its verification. The paper highlights features that could be enhanced from previous systems by using alternative components or methods. 1. Introduction Telemedicine is literally medicine from a distance and is synonymous with a telecommunications network for the transmission of medical information. The premise is that patients can be monitored away from a hospital or health centre, thereby accessing medical care that would otherwise be unavailable, given the time and cost of travelling. From a clinical standpoint remote monitoring allows patients to record their readings in a more relaxed home environment, rather than undergo the possible stress of travelling for a personal consultation. This is now a mature technology and the literal requirement for large distances has now diversified to include groups within local networks such as a hospital ward, a home network surrounding the patient and using mobile devices specifically. Diversified branches of telemedicine are generally referred to as e-health (electronic health), u-health (ubiquitous health), and m-health (mobile health) systems, amongst others. The fundamental parts of the telemedicine system are the measuring devices (e.g., instruments or sensors), a device or subcomponent (e.g., mobile phone, computer) to format the readings for a communications link, a clinic server to which the data is transmitted, a database for storing the data, and a display of the data obtained from the server. A typical system uses a dedicated program on a computer device (e.g., laptop, iPad) to obtain the patient¡¯s readings and a web browser for other users to access previous readings. The many types of conditions monitored include heart monitoring using an electrocardiograph (ECG) [1], type 1 and type 2 diabetes [2, 3], psoriasis [4], shoulder surgery [5], and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) [6]. Since this technology has been an active research area for at least twenty years, and many systems have been implemented for research and commercial use, our UK-India
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijta/2012/195970/