The multi-media medical monitoring, diagnosis, and consultation project

The authors have designed and are implementing a multi-media medical monitoring, diagnosis and consultation system. It combines computer, video, and voice data in a medical environment in support of both clinical care and basic research. They build on a distributed computer network (NeuroNet), which currently includes 80 computer nodes installed in six hospitals and multiple research laboratories throughout the University of Pittsburgh. The communications backbone of the current network is an Ethernet local area network to which are attached sub-networks defined by the functional requirements of clinical and research problems. In the existing system, all nodes on the network can access real time displays of data being acquired anywhere on the network. Thus physicians at remote locations can consult and collaborate with their colleagues on the interpretation of complex data. In the new system, they are integrating video, voice and computer data enabling multiple persons at multiple sites to consult using this shared data