The 920 fire departments expect reliable wideband circuit to support telemedicine

“”The purpose of our final goal is to develop a nation-wide broadband satellite communication system with HEO on Ku-band to support remote medical observations en rout, that could perform medical controls from specialists at a triage center to paramedics on an ambulance. A questionnaire investigation was sent to 920 fire departments all over Japan to recognize problems and gaps between radio communication on VHF or cell phone and the reality of needs in a means of telecommunication from an ambulance. 74.2% answered: there is a problem in a current radio communication. 87.0% answered: disturbed by non-propagation zone of a cell telephone. The fire department expect a reliable and broadband circuit in order to send image to triage center from ambulance to support telemedicine en rout (on the road). Based on this study, we are pushing forward a study in hope of the next generation mobile communication and/or satellite communication aiming to e-Health on ambulance.