Telemedical application for centralized home care of high-risk pregnancy based on control sharing approach

Abstract

The paper presents a fetal telemonitoring system, where the signals are acquired remotely at patient's home using portable antepartum fetal monitor, and wirelessly transmitted to the central computer through the GSM network. The external telemedical channels were developed as a part of the centralized fetal monitoring system, whose architecture was extended by set of mobile instrumentation. While within a classical centralized fetal surveillance system all control functions are carried out from the central station, for remote monitoring the functions have to be shared between the hospital and the patient's side. Some aspects of the system design allowing for optimal usage of existing structure and service procedures, and for being more patient-friendly and cost-effective, are discussed.