Telemedical system "PulmoTel-2010" for monitoring patients with chronic pulmonary diseases

Abstract

Telemedicine is one of the most innovative and promising applications of technology in contemporary medicine. Telemedical systems, a sort of distributed measurement systems, are used for continuous or periodic monitoring of human vital signals in the environment of living. This approach has several advantages in comparison to traditional medical care: e.g. patients experience fewer hospitalizations, emergency room visits, lost time from work, the costs of treatment are reduced, and the quality of life is improved. Currently, chronic respiratory diseases comprise one of the most serious public health problems. Simultaneously patients suffering from these diseases are well suitable for home monitoring. This paper describes the design and technical realization of a telemedical system that has been developed as a platform suitable for monitoring patients with chronic pulmonary diseases and fitted to Polish conditions. The paper focuses on the system's architecture, included medical tests, adopted hardware and software, and preliminary internal evaluation. The performe d tests demonstrated good overall performance of the system. At present further work goes on to put it into practice. © 2010 Polish Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.