Use of Smart Phone Technologies to Offer Easy-to-Use and Cost-Effective Telemedicine Services

Timely review of patient data with close to real-time feedback is a critical success factor in today's disease management. This paper introduces eHit Health Gateway, an effective and secure tool to wirelessly transfer data from different measurement devices to the health care service provider by using a mobile platform. The system consists of a mobile platform, which collects the information from the measuring devices, and a server platform, which receives the collected data and forwards them to the existing Information System. The mobile platform can be used on most different devices such as mobile phones, smart phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA). An overview of the system functionality is followed by some important notes about security and privacy and by three reference cases illustrating the functionality of the system in different disease management environments. The paper also briefly points out some economical aspects to be considered when evaluating the use of telemedicine solutions.