Evaluation of the multimedia-multicast-mobile-terminal for hospital patient care

To apply the low cost mobile PC computers as communication terminal at hospital (TV-phone and EGG-telemetry), basic performance was evaluated. (1) Maximum frame rate for sending was 12 frames/s and throughput was 114K bits/s on mobile PC. (2) The limit of numbers of receiving channels (64 Kbits/sec/channel) was two, at the condition of sending own motion picture. At the receiving only condition, the limit was 3 channels for 128 Kbits/sec/channels. Thus it was suggested that the mobile PC terminals have enough performance for practical use. The simulation for estimation gave the network requirement for multimedia communications at the hospital between the medical staffs and patients on the beds, with the various telemetry images on the ward-scale-LAN. The total network requirement was estimated with our implementation (160×120 dots×16 bits×12 frames/s, 180 Kbits/s) as 925±152 Kbits/sec. These results suggested that the IEEE802.3 ethernet and the wireless-ethernet have the almost enough performance for practical use. It also suggests the possibilities “patient care at home” under the same conditions at hospitals with medical monitoring and communications over the middle-high speed (1.5-2 Mbits/s) network