Real-time cardiac monitoring over a regional health network: preliminary results from initial field testing

To meet the need for detailed diagnostic data in the follow-up of cardiac patients residing in remote areas we have developed an extensible platform that allows the plug-in operation and remote control of multi-vendor medical devices, including an electrocardiograph and an electronic stethoscope. The doctor has remote control of all the medical devices installed at the patient's site. Following satisfactory internal tests using a local area network with a bandwidth of 100 Mbps, we set out to test the platform in a 'real world' situation to assess its practical use. The real-time transmission was satisfactory over a dedicated channel of 128 kbps. However, problems occurred when the channel was shared, in which case the speed, latency and capacity of the network were the bottleneck. These early results suggest that a real-time tele-visit over a regional network is feasible and could help to bring health care closer to the patient, provided that suflcient bandwidth is secured.