Introduction to telemedicine#
Meaning#
- Telemedicine
General term for providing medical and health-related services remotely using telecommunications
Exercise 13 (Telemedicine illustration)
Illustrate (draw) a telemedicine scenario.
Hints:
You can include the following stakeholders or components:
patient
healthcare personal
sensor
smartphone
wireless telecommunication
server, database
mobile network
fiber at home
internet
…
Scenario ideas:
A diabetes patient is monitored by a communal hospital over a week
A senior living on a remote area gets remote health inspection
Several patients on the hospital are begin monitored for blood pressure with wearable sensors
Information Technology in Telemedicine#
- Information technology
A set of related fields that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data and information processing, and storage.
- Information and communications technology
is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications.
the marriage of computing systems and unification of many communication technologies (ICT), e.g., through internet enabled a wide range of applications
Exercise 14 (ICT’s role in telemedicine)
What is the role of ICT (information and communication technology) for telemedicine?
Explain it with a concrete example, i.e,.
ICT is used for … in the … scenario. If ICT wouldn’t exist, then …
Exercise 15 (Problems that telemedicine can solve.)
Give three concrete problems where telemedicine can support in solving?
A historical example: The Radio Doctor from 1924
Services made possible by IT are vast
e.g., drug prescription, spread of pandemic modeling, patient monitoring, etc
Here, we will focus on wireless communication.
Summary#
Many telemedicine applications requires sensing body data. These sensors in turn typically communicate using wireless technology. We will focus on wireless telecommunication fundamentals in context of telemedicine.
Exercise 16 (Analyzing a telemedicine example)
Find a telemedicine solution with a sensor. Present it using the following information
What is measured and how does the device measure?
Where is the data transmitted to and who / what analyzes the data?
What is the advantage of the solution compared to going to a doctor?
Examples for sensors: