Development of PDA-based telecommunication device for telemedicine applications

Technology has been used to deliver health care at a distance for many years. Telemedicine is a rapidly growing area and recently there are studies devoted to prehospital care of patients in emergency cases. Our objective was to develop a compact, reliable and low cost Tele-communication device for telemedicine applications that can transmit audio, still images and vital signs from a remote site to the fixed station such as hospitals in real time. The above objective was achieved based on client-server architecture. Pocket PC, a miniature camera and hands free microphone was used at the client place and a desktop computer which was running on windows XP was used as a server. The server was located at fixed station. Whole system was implemented on TCP/IP and HTTP protocol. Field tests have shown that the system can reliably transmit still images; audio and vital signs from a simulated remote site to a fixed station either through wired or wireless network in real-time. Pocket PC was used at the client side because of its compact size and processing capabilities