Advances in telemedicine using mobile communications

Future telemedicine systems will exploit mobile communications technology so that patients who are free to move around at home or at work, or in emergency medical situations, can be monitored in a hospital. At present, the GSM mobile telephone cellular network is limited to 9.6 kbps, but with the introduction of the third generation (3G) network, data rates of 144 kbps will be available, giving scope for the transmission of much more biomedical data as well as voice and video data if required. The paper discusses some of the issues involved and outlines the types of systems that will be viable with the new technology. A modular structured GSM-based mobile telecardiology system is used to illustrate the concept. The system carried by the patient comprises a mobile telephone linked to a processing unit by an infrared channel. The telephone/processor unit accepts signals from one or more sets of sensors attached to the patient. The prototype version is designed to transmit digitised electrocardiogram signals to a hospital via the GSM mobile telephone cellular network.