OTE-TS--a new value-added telematics service for telemedicine applications

Group profile management in ubiquitous healthcare environment

Nowadays, ubiquitous healthcare is of utmost importance in the patient-centric model. Furthermore, the personalization of ubiquitous healthcare services plays a very important role to make the patient-centric model a reality. The personalization of the ubiquitous healthcare services is based on the profiles of the entities participating in these services. In this paper, we propose a group profile management system in a ubiquitous healthcare environment. The proposed system is responsible for the dynamic creation of a group profile and its management.

e-SCP-ECG Protocol: An Expansion on SCP-ECG Protocol for Health Telemonitoring-Pilot Implementation

Standard Communication Protocol for Computer-assisted Electrocardiography (SCP-ECG) provides standardized communication among different ECG devices and medical information systems. This paper extends the use of this protocol in order to be included in health monitoring systems. It introduces new sections into SCP-ECG structure for transferring data for positioning, allergies, and five additional biosignals: noninvasive blood pressure (NiBP), body temperature (Temp), Carbon dioxide (CO(2)), blood oxygen saturation (SPO(2)), and pulse rate. It also introduces new tags in existing sections for transferring comprehensive demographic data. The proposed enhanced version is referred to as e-SCP-ECG(+) protocol. This paper also considers the pilot implementation of the new protocol as a software component in a Health Telemonitoring System.

TM-provider: a new communicatory model for telemedicine services support

In this paper a new model for telemedicine service providers denoted as TM-Provider is presented. The TM-Provider establishes two multilevel controllers for the fully administration of telemedicine sessions conduct. The communication between the controllers' levels is based on an advanced request-respond protocol that addresses the traffic of the messages and applies sophisticated security mechanisms for access and data protection issues. The proposed architecture and message-flow protocol synthesize a 'tool' for the designers and developers of telemedicine applications and provide them with an integrated architectural solution, independent of the various or advanced technologies and platforms that they intent to use.

Compression assessment based on medical image quality concepts using computer-generated test images

Compression algorithms are widely used in medical imaging systems for efficient image storage, transmission, and display. In the acceptance of lossy compression algorithms in the clinical environment, important factors are the assessment of 'visually lossless' compression thresholds, as well as the development of assessment methods requiring fewer data and time than observer performance based studies. In this study a set of quantitative measurements related to medical image quality parameters is proposed for compression assessment. Measurements were carried out using region of interest (ROI) operations on computer-generated test images, with characteristics similar to radiographic images. As a paradigm, the assessment of the lossy Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) algorithm, available in a telematics application for healthcare, is presented. A compression ratio of 15 was found as the visually lossless threshold for the JPEG lossy algorithm, in agreement with previous observer performance studies. Up to this ratio low contrast discrimination is not affected, image noise level is decreased, high contrast line-pair amplitude is decreased by less than 3%, and input/output gray level differences are minor (less than 1%). This type of assessment provides information regarding the type of loss, offering cost and time benefits, in parallel with the advantages of test image adaptation to the requirements of a certain imaging modality and clinical study.

New approaches toward the fully digital integrated management of a burn unit

In this paper, the design of an application that allows the integrated management of a burn unit is reported. Starting with the problems associated with the current procedures, technical solutions are found from the requirements demanded by the specialists. The major design considerations and implementation details are outlined. Special attention is devoted to the prescription of drugs and inventory control, as well as reducing the time that healthcare professionals spend in administrative tasks. The developed implementation is an example of a low-cost system suitable for adoption in a wide range of units in a hospital organization.