Keywords:
eHealth, Catheter arteriography, Catheter venography, Lymphography, Health policy and practice, Education, Economics, Quality assurance, Workforce
Authors:
V. Spyropoulos, A. Tzavaras, M. Botsivaly; Athens/GR
Methods and Materials
In order to accommodate for the lack of sufficient medical supervision in Home-Care environment,
we have developed a low-cost prototype solution for monitoring basic physiological parameters,
at home.
The present paper describes the implementation of a wearable and wireless remote-monitoring system of vital parameters for LTC,
post operative or post interventional Radiology patients.
Recorded physiology parameters are transmitted through a digital wireless link to a portable computer.
The portable computer’s main tasks are:
- First to collect and present received data;
- Second to provide an interface for clinicians for remote viewing of recorded data and analysis through the web;
- Third to submit the vital signs to a remote hospital server updating the patient’s Electronic Health Record (EHR).
The core of the system is a wearable data acquisition and digital wireless transmission module.
The module was designed to acquire three parameters namely,
the Electrocardiogram (ECG),
the Non-Invasive arterial Blood Pressure (NIBP) and the arterial Oxygen Saturation (SpO2).
Data communication was performed with an Xbee [5] 802.15.4 Digi-International module,
which operates within Industrial,
Scientific and Medical (ISM) radio bands [6]-[9].
We have further developed a modular software system that consists of three modules:
- Τhe Patient Management module,
- Τhe Non Hospital Scheduling module,
- Τhe Non Hospital Supervision module.
The system comprises of Web applications that allow for:
- Easily accomplished remote access.
- Computing technologies like the Semantic Web,
which allow for the comprehension of the semantics of the exchanged data.
This appears to be the most promising approach,
towards the integration and interoperability problem solution.
Regarding the interoperability with other systems,
we have experimented with two promising techniques:
- The creation and transmission of an ASTM compatible Continuity of Care Record.
- The implementation of Semantically Annotated Web Services for the distribution of patients’ documents over the Web.
All modules are autonomous web-applications,
while at the same time they are fully integrated and communicate with each other through the Web.