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Wireless Telemedicine System Deployment
As we have seen in the previous chapter, data conveying information about a person’s health can be obtained from many sources. Different types of data have different ways of being acquired and many have different requirements on transmission and subsequent processing. We have learned how various types of medical data can be captured and what to consider when making the data suitable for transmission through telemedicine networks. Vital signs and medical images are different in many ways; some have more stringent requirements than others. The diversity of data acquisition makes both instantaneous and long-term measurement necessary in order to cater for different health monitoring situations. One key requirement in common is an efficient and reliable communication network to support patient caring. Network implementations are determined by the specific application supported so that they are designed to satisfy the specific requirements imposed by the type of data sent. For example, sending an X-ray radiograph has very different requirements in terms of bandwidth than sending a prescription form that contains plain text information.
Any communication channel has a specific theoretical limit to the amount of data that can be conveyed, this applies to everything wired or wireless. The channel bandwidth governs how many data bits can ‘pass through’ the given channel in one second. A network must therefore make use of communication channels ...
