An Internet based telemedicine system

It is natural to use the Internet in telemedicine. So far, some telemedicine systems have been proposed to interface with the Internet. In these system, "off-the-shelf" instruments were used as medical peripheral devices, meaning that a large array of separate devices have to be deployed in an already crowded room. We are currently developing an Internet based telemedicine system. The system has multi-functionality that was realized using virtual instrumentation technology. The Internet was used as a vehicle to deliver the virtual medical instruments and medical data in real time. The system facilitates the extraction of valuable diagnostic information using embedded advanced biomedical signal processing algorithms. We tested the delivery of virtual medical instruments and medical data using pcAnywhere and JAVA applets. In addition, we created a test-bed to send 16 channels of ECG through the Internet using a 300 kpbs cable modem. Our preliminary results demonstrated that the performance of medical virtual instruments is as good as their hardware counterparts because medical signals have low frequencies. It was also demonstrated that the current Internet supports the transmission of real time physiological signals, which provides a vehicle for home based telemonitoring. Compared with other telemedicine techniques, the presented technique transfers not only the medical data, but also the instrument (virtual instrument) and its signal processing capability through the Internet.