Wireless support for telemedicine in disaster management

Disaster response and recovery require timely interaction and coordination of public emergency services in order to save lives and property. An important role in this effort must be played by wireless telemedicine whose mandate is to bring to the scene of the disaster the experience and expertise of medical personnel that can direct and supervise paramedics in providing necessary life-support services. The main contribution of this work is to discuss a novel wireless architecture in support of a recently-proposed telemedicine architecture called WIRM incorporating leading-edge image compression technology, a robust interactive visualization tool, and a high-performance wireless multimedia network.