Hybrid satellite/terrestrial telemedicine services: Network requirements and architecture

This paper proposes a novel, interactive telemedicine platform, providing real-time audio and video interactions among patients, physicians and health service provider. Such a system has been developed within the framework of the European Space Agency (ESA) project TElemedicine Services for HEALTH (TESHEALTH) in collaboration among industry, academia, and hospitals. In particular, in the framework of the project, all citizens from many different sites have the same opportunity to access services promoting disease prevention and healthy life style, and professional users (specialists, physicians, operators) can exploit the platform to accomplish clinical studies and medical research. In such a context, an IP-based heterogeneous network architecture, composed of both satellite and terrestrial components, is considered in order to provide properly the TESHEALTH services. The paper presents the network parameters, the user requirements, and the hybrid satellite/terrestrial network architecture of the TESHEALTH platform. In addition, the platform offers Quality-of-Service, tailored to the individual user profiles and services, as well.