【正文】 anywhere by a mobile phone using blue tooth technology. Mobile phone has an in built analyzer to detect abnormality. In case of panic, mobile phone automatically initiates an alerting SMS to patient’s caretaker and doctor. It also initiates transmission of a sample ECG signal using FTP to medical center server via mobile network.
Keywords: ARM processor, Bluetooth, ECG, FTP, GSM modem, SMS, Telecardiology
Introduction For countries with limited medical expertise and Resources, telemunications has potential to provide A solution to telemedicine services to improve quality. And access to health care regardless of geography. Telemedicine applications implemented using wired Communication technologies are POTS (Plain Old Telephone System), and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network). However, modern wireless Telemunication using GSM and GPRS and Forthing UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System) allow operation of wireless telemedicine Systems freeing medical personnel and patient from fixed Locations. GSM in standard mode of operation provides A data rate of kbps, whereas GPRS supports a data Rate of kbps. GPRS has an additional packet data feature for GSM network, which allows both packets [switched (PS) and circuit switched (CS)] traffic to exist in GSM infrastructure. GPRS supports packet based protocols [Internet Protocol (IP), busty traffic and unbalanced traffic flow] and enables new services (reasonably fast access to the Internet, and telemetry services). Recent research has been done for transmission of biomedical data using wireless technologies . Ng highlighted use of various wireless munications such as cellular 3G, WiFi mesh and WiMAX, RFID ,Bluetooth, ZigBee, and wireless sensor networks in healthcare domain. Performance of transmission of vital biosignals and still images of patient from an ICU over GSM, satellite links and through Plain Old Telephony Systems (POTS) have been tested. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) has been used for transmission of biomedical data. Performance of GSM and GPRS systems has been evaluated in transmission/seception of Xray images. K Malhotra remended GPRS system for telemedicine facility. A wireless telemedicine system has been designed applying Bluetooth protocol and GSM /GPRS, where mobile phones acquire and transmit cardiac information from patients to cardiology department, performing transmission to hospital server and directly to doctor’s mobile for immediate action.Voskarides found FTP far superior over GPRS. Woodward implemented transmission on GSM based cellular network. Vladzymyrskyy explained new ways of telemedicine in wireless environment, which uses and SMS. AlRousing 18 presented a remote healthcare patient monitoring system (Virtual Eye) that utilizes infrastructure to monitor, collect, analyze and record patient’s health status. Aldajani19 proposed a method measuring and sending data related to blood pressure, blood sugar of patients using SMS to central server, which, equipped with a wireless modem, stores data in central database.
This paper presents design and development of a mobile telemedicine system (MTS) that continuously acquires ECG signals from highrisk cardiac patients.Proposed Mobile Telemedicine System (MTS)
Wireless Networks for Local Real Time Monitoring
Most feasible shortrange wireless network is Bluetooth, which is electro magnetically patible with tested medical devicesAu . Bluetooth (IEEE )is a universal shortrange lowpower radio protocol operating in unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical frequency band. It allows both data and voice transmission. Modulation technique is GSFK (Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying), with transmission at a rate of 1M symbols/s on one of 79 channels with 1MHz spacing in GHz band. Bluetooth uses spreadspectrum frequency hopping connection with a rate of1600 hops/s . Its key features are robustness, low plexity, low power, low cost, noise free transmission,privacy and security. Also, it costs onethird of WiFi to implement and uses and onefifth of power of WiFi. The signal wavelength used with Bluetooth munication ( cm) is three orders of magnitude greater than that of IrDA. Maximum munication range between sensor and Bluetooth together with its reliability is described. Therefore, Bluetooth is chosen for local real time monitoring.MTS
MTS monitors and performs real time analysis with mobile phone and alerts physician on a mobile phone about fatal conditions. MTS consists of a hand held device (HHD) that continuously acquires ECG signals from highrisk cardiac patients having mobile signals continuously acquired from wearable sensors of patient are forwarded to patient’s mobile, which is Bluetooth and GPRS enabled and has an inbuilt arrhythmia analyzer. In panic situations, an automatic call function in patient’s mobile establishes contact with doctor and caretaker’s mobile phone by sending an alerting SMS. Also, a sample of ECG is transmitted to medical center server as FTP via cellular network. This system maximizes mobility of cardiac patient.
Telemedicine Processor and Linux RTOS
ARM processor, heart of HHD, has a 32bit RISC processor with a registertoregister, threeoperand instruction set. ARM920T core is most advanced of all cores available among ARM series24. An Atmel product of AT920 architecture, AT91RM920, is used in present study. ARM processors have high performance together with low power consumption and system cost. ARM920T features instruction and data caches, memory management unit (MMU) enabling support for major operating systems. It is a single development toolkit for reduced development costs and shorter development cycle time. ARM processor provides solutions for open platforms running plex operating systems for wireless, consumer and imaging applications.
Embedded Linux that runs AT91RM920 has boot loader(Uboot), kernel and RFS (root file system).Uboot is used in AT91