The Electronic Doctor (TED)-a home telecare system

Describes a telecare system which enables medical practitioners to remotely assess a patient´s vital signs using an integrated multi-functional sensor arrangement and an existing narrowband telephone network; it may be used as a filter by out-of-hours medical service providers to ensure that genuine emergency cases may be distinguished from more trivial requests and receive prompt attention. The system hardware in the home consists of a hand-held unit containing four simple sensors with appropriate electronic support circuitry. Data from the sensors together with duplex speech are transmitted down the telephone line to the medical practitioner´s telephone where they are separated into speech and data streams. A PC displays the data using dedicated software, either as numerical values (in the case of temperature) or as a continuous trace (for ECG or breathing response, etc.). The innovative design includes secondary checking functions resulting in a reliable sensor arrangement at very low cost