Telemedicine improves quality of medical treatment
The provision of high quality medical care is one of the key objectives of a national health system. Depending on the seriousness of a medical condition, hospitalisation in many cases is required with available beds being insufficient to cover all patients. In addition, there are several circumstances where patients who live in remote areas with long distances from hospitals require continuous monitoring. On the other hand, many patients with less severe conditions are hospitalised with expenses becoming cumbersome for them, their families and society. Addressing these needs, this project focused on developing a robust tele-support home care system where patients receive a 24-hour real-time medical monitoring in their own homes. One of the major results derived was the development of advanced and reliable sensors for communicating medical information with the Local Patient Computer (LPC) for analysis and storage of data. Currently, four different miniaturised, non-intrusive medical sensors located on the patient's body will provide high quality measurements on ECG, blood pressure, oxymetry and temperature. In order to support the data acquisition process for many measurements such as ECG, and temperature, specialised software has been also developed. These sensors have primarily been developed for the promotion of home-based high quality medical care offering all the necessary data required for advanced home care. Moreover, they may also significantly contribute to a widespread range of health care scenarios that vary from acute care to nursing monitoring.
